Behold! He bloggeth the KJV!

This year Rev'd Glen Scrivener is blogging his way through phrases of the 400 year old Authorised Version of the Bible over at The King's English.

The importance of language

C S Lewis claimed:

Nothing about a literature can be more essential than the language it uses. A language has its own personality; implies an outlook, reveals a mental activity, and has a resonance, not quite the same as those of any other. Not only the vocabulary - heaven can never mean quite the same as ciel - but the very shape of the syntax is sui generis. (Discarded Image, p6)

A language shapes "the tone and rhythm and the very 'feel' of every sentence" (p7).

Like, "Whatever"?

From UPI website:

NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Nearly half of Americans surveyed for a new poll said "whatever" was the most annoying word that could be used in a conversation.

The Marist Poll received votes for "You know" and "anyway," but they weren't even close to the 47 percent that pegged "whatever" as something that had definitely run its course.

The breakdown found "whatever" to be particularly tiresome among respondents in the Midwest, Latinos and people under 45 years old.

Phrases that bug Americans include "it is what it is" and "at the end of the day."

The poll, based on 938 responses, had a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

HT: Today Programme.

Then there are also incorrect uses of literally and less to get irked by, of course...

Sacramental Words and World

I'm frequently coming across things that might just be relevant to the great thesis. Today someone kindly suggested the work of David Brown (Professor at St Andrews) that is up for the Archbishop's book prize.

If I had a great theological library on my doorstep, I'd be having a good look in:

God and Mystery in Words: Experience through Metaphor and Drama (Oxford University Press, 2008)

First Sentence: “ONE way of characterizing what I am trying to achieve in this part of the book is as an exploration of how language can sometimes be said to function sacramentally, in conveying experiences of divine presence.”

God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary (Oxford University Press, 2007)

Mrs Church

The church: she, not it, right?

Interesting, disputed or wrong?

Whatever is the world coming to and I never thought I'd hear the like and how times change, and so on.

I was interested - not to say shocked and distressed - just now to hear "disinterest" used on a BBC Radio 4 trailer as if it meant "uninterest", which to my mind it clearly does not.

The choice was no doubt influenced by the sequence of "disgust" and "dis- I forget what" in the phrase and I can understand that a tired presenter might make such a slip, but to me it seems unforgivable in a pre-planned trailer. One would think that someone in the BBC would have noticed it before broadcast and that the phones would have been red-hot since.

The "dis"/ "un" interested distinction is just the kind that we need to preserve as it allows the convenient and economical distinguishing of two related ideas.

However, I was surprised to see that the Concise OED on my desk allows:

Disinterest, noun, 1. disputed, lack of interest, unconcern; 2. impartiality

The usage note says:

The use of disinterested in sense 1 to mean 'lack of interest' is sometimes objected to, but it is in this sense that it is most commonly found and the alternative uninterest is rare. The phrase lack of interest avaoids both ambiguity and accusations of incorrect usage.

Even a lack of interest need not be unambiguos, as in the phrase, "he lacked (an / any) interest in Sky Television": does he not wish to watch it or does he not own shares in it?

Clearly usage determines meaning but this is a usage up with which we should not put.

Language: Substance & Accidents

Aristotle’s distinction between substance (inner essence or reality) and accidents (outward appearance or form) is applied to the Lord’s Supper in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1292) applied also applied the same distinction to languages arguing that: “with respect to its substance, grammar is one and the same in all languages, although it does vary accidentally”.

Its not a very helpful way of thinking in either case.

Getting Over Grammatical Historical Exegesis

Grammatical Historical Exegesis is good as far as it goes. We want to seek to work out what Amos probably meant to his first audience and what Paul probably meant in writing his letters to the Corinthians. Our interpretation should pay careful attention to what the text actually says and we mustn’t leap to conclusions or to applications. The thought associations in my brain, which may be provoked in part by the biblical text, must be weighed against the Scriptures, not unreflectively prefaced with “thus says the LORD”.

Yet we also want to get over GHE. We are much more interested in what God the Holy Spirit means in speaking these same words to his church today than in what the human author may have thought. Praying for the Spirit’s help, we want to understand God’s words as fully as we can, with all the connections and implications that we can perceive. We will think in terms of the fullness of meaning and associations, not simply reduction to some essence or crunching down the text into propositions, principles, sermon headings or aim sentences. Significance will be located within a Biblical world view and symbolism suggested in the Bible will be taken into account. There may be many helpful perspectives on a passage and we don’t want to be overly anxious about not straying from the human writer’s main point, or too minimalistic in our reading.

In getting over GHE, the transcendental or incarnational hermeneutics of John W. Nevin may be of use.

Here are some jottings from DiPuccio, William, The Interior Sense of Scripture: The Sacred Hermeneutics of John W. Nevin Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics 14 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998)

“For Nevin, the Incarnation is the transcendental (or top-down) archetype of all hermeneutics and philosophy.”

n the editor’s preface, Charles Mabee comments: “This is an important issue for those of us trained in Eurocentric historical-criticism of the Bible (called by Nevin “grammatical-historical method”), and we will have our cages rattled yet one more time by this book. As all practitioners of Eurocentric historical-criticism may readily acknowledge, there is very little “transcendental” about it. Yet, it is important to hear this criticism from a fresh angle that is neither postmodern nor fundamentalistic…. Nevin’s primary concern was not to allow the collapse of faith into the merely human. (pviii) ... This book provides us with a paradigm for biblical study that is both old and stunning in its freshness.” (pix)

“Nevin’s transcendental and even mystical hermeneutics is presented here to the church and the academy as a postcritical but orthodox alternative to modern and postmodern systems.” (p3)

“The spiritual is first, inmost, foundational and substantial; the natural is secondary, outmost, contingent, and phenomenal.” (p45) but there is a real connection or correspondence between them.

“The genius and power of Nevin’s system rests on the fact that the spiritual world is foundational to all else. As Paul once said, “the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). Behind our mundane world is an immense and unfathomable “spiritual” cosmos which is, in a manner of speaking, more real and more concrete, than the world of sense. The heavenly is not a metaphor of things invisible and eternal. In other words, it is we who are the “metaphor”, God is the “reality.”” (p48)

“Following the pattern of the Incarnation itself, the historical sense (inseparably joined to this higher spiritual sense) is not diminished or set aside; rather, it is sanctified and ennobled.” (p49)

“Mercesrsburg’s sacramental [ and analogical] understanding of language…” (p49)

“sacramental and organic view of creation” (p50)

“The Incarnation serves as the archetype of the sacraments and the word by uniting distinct things (that is, the created and divine, unlike in their natures) into an indivisible, organic whole without transmutation or separation. It denominates the relation between the sacramental sign and the grace which it signifies, as well as the relation between the words of Scripture and the divine life they embody….” (p53)

“… an incarnational view of language… which sets the stage for his sacramental view of Scripture…” (p54)

Nevin: “The whole constitution of the world is sacramental, as being not simply the sign of, but the actual form and presence of invisible things.” (p55 citing Erb, NT 372-373

“For Nevin, … the Scriptures are the incarnation of the Divine life in human language. They are “the very embodiment in natural form of a supernatural spiritual power and glory surpassing immeasurably the reach of all merely natural intelligence and thought.” [Nevin, “Christianity and Humanity” p476] … Like the two natures of Christ, the words of the text are organically joined to the spiritual life they embody.” (p79)

“Even more fundamental than an understanding of the Bible’s grammar and history (though these are necessary) is a true faith which holds directly to Christ in and through the apostolic life and teachings of the church. Those who disregard or minimize the necessity of this first principle, or who adopt a worldview based upon other foundational principles (e.g., rationalism, humanism, historicism), can never grasp the true life and meaning of the Scriptures.” (p80)

“The continuity between the incarnate Word (Christ) and the word written was the basis of Nevin’s sacramental view of the Scriptures.” (p81)

“Allegorico-mystical Exegesis” (p87ff)

“The words of Scripture are to Christ what the body is to the soul.” (p90)

“The interior sense of the Bible is not behind, beyond, or even before the word, but in the word.” (p91)

typological more than allegorical since historical sense retained (p91f)

Spiritual-Dynamic Inspiration and Exegesis (p100ff)

“Because so much of the historical evidence used in biblical scholarship and ancient history is (relatively speaking) indirect, inferential, and even tenuous, it is often sorted and adapted to support a variety of theoretical constructs. Or to put it another way, though historical facts and grammatical constraints do indeed limit the variety and scope of our interpretations (some constructs / interpretations are impossible to sustain), they may still yield a number of competing interpretations. The ever-changing and even contradictory history of biblical criticism over the past two centuries ably bears this out.

Consequently, our exegesis, as well as our critical disposition toward the Bible, is moulded, to a large degree, by our presuppositions. Conscious or unconscious, this pre-understanding shapes the criteria we use to adjudicate questions of meaning, historicity, and authorship. Every method of interpretation, therefore, is rooted in assumptions which often depend more on faith than on demonstration. Nevin was on solid ground, then, in rejecting many of the presuppositions that have been superstitiously appended to the historical-critical method in favour of the Apostles’ Creed and the catholic tradition.” (p111)

In praise of Interlinear Bibles

Maybe there's some sort of comfort here for those of us who haven't really progressed beyond inter-linear Bibles:

For Benjamin, the optimal confrontation of source and target text takes the form of an interlinear version of the scriptures, ‘in which literalness and freedom are united’ (Benjamin, Illuminations, 1968:82). … In the space between the parallel lines of the two texts, the translation and its original are united in a ‘true langauge’ without the mediation of meaning (Benjamin 1968:77)…. Yet this space of the interlinear text is utopian and uninhabitable; it is a sacred space, untouchable (Derrida, The Ear of the Other,1985:115)…. For Benjamin, the literal, interlinear juxtaposition of texts reveals a ‘pure’ or ‘true’ language lying behind or within all actual languages… (1968:79)

Aichele, George, Sign, Text, Scripture: Semiotics and the Bible (Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) pp44-45

Is French such a rubbish language?

In arguing for the arbitrariness of words, the concepts they signify and the connection between the two, Jonathan Culler claims that:

The English concepts of a “wicked” man and of a “pet” have no real counterparts in French. (Culler, Jonathan, Ferdinand de Saussure (New York, Penguin, 1976) p13)

Is that really so?

No doubt Culler would just tell me how much it shows that I'm shaped by my language and culture but it seems to me that "wicked" and "pet" are pretty basic ideas. Are the Frenchies really that different from us that they have no morally depraved individuals and no domesticated animals they treat as members of the family?

Incarnation and the possibility of meaning, speaking etc.

By the time you have thought with Paul Ricoeur (Interpretation Theroy, p25) of “… the kind of intentional exteriorization that writing exhibits….” and “… Plato’s critique of writing as a kind of alienation…” you have to say that the incarnation of the Word is the precondition of the possibility of all successful speaking, writing and meaning.

The Son is “the kind of intentional exteriorization” of the Father: he is begotten.

The Son is made even more “external” in his incarnation as he wills to become Man in a meaningful way that speaks to men.

In the inter-Trinitarian relations and the incarnation there is no alienation required or implied. Plato’s “problem” is solved since the Word does not change in becoming: he remains entirely himself. The Father’s eternal begetting of the Son is not a “loss” to him but a gain in meaning as he knows Himself in a new way in the Son.

Real Presence / Absence of Authors & Jesus

Is writing something down the elimination or preservation of the human messenger-author?

Both, surely. The author is both absent (probably distant in space and time from the readers and very likely dead and gone) but present in, with, through, by or behind his words.

Now compare the Lord’s Supper in which Jesus is really absent (bodily in heaven) and really present (by His Word and Spirit).

What a difference writing a word makes

Paul Ricoeur says in Interpretation Theory, p26:

The most obvious change from speaking to writing concerns the relation between the message and its medium or channel. At first glance, it concerns only this relation, but upon closer examination, the first alteration irradiates in every direction, affecting in a diverse manner all the factors and functions. Our task, therefore, will be to proceed from this central change toward its various peripheral effects….

The inscription, substituted for the immediate vocal, physiognomic, or gestural expression, is in itself a tremendous cultural achievement. The human fact disappears. Now material “marks” convey the message.

Langue and Parole in Scripture, Human and Divine

I should have mentioned yesterday when blogging about the usefulness of Saussure’s categories of Langue (language as system) and Parole (language in use) and the Supper as a word or language, that the distinction is worth applying to Scripture too.

Claims to special inspiration of Scripture apply properly and fully to the parole of the Bible: these words in use in their situations (addressed by God to his people, both the original hearers and all subsequent generations), not to the Langue of the Bible.

No claim is being made that the words of Scripture as Langue are uniquely inspired. God did not use a whole new language (called Bibline or Scripturish) or a special set of vocabulary (though neologisms in Scripture, especially in prophetic oracles) would be an interesting case). The words of the Bible are really and fully are human words.

Having said that, of course, God is the creator (we might say, the author) and Lord of human language. The language (langue) is “divine” in the sense that God made it and governs it (providentially) but this would really be an abuse of the term: a similar claim could be made for every created thing. We thus distinguish the special inspiration of these words of Scripture for these purposes from the creation, sustaining and providential governing of these and all other words alike.

The Bible is then human words (and grammatical constructions and so on) used by God such that they are divine words (and syntax). The inspired word is the product of creation, providence and special inspiration.

Who am "I"?

According to Paul Ricoeur in Interpretation Theory (p13):

“I” is a shifter: “I” is the one who in speaking applies to himself the word “I” which appears in the sentence as the logical subject.

Good. So I hope that's clear? That's alright then. QED.

Obviously, of course

But isn’t that just stating the obvious?

Yes, probably. But somehow it only seems really obvious once you’ve stated it. The obvious is too easily overlooked. And your “obvious” is sometimes my obscure(d).

This comment from Paul Ricoeur (Interpretation Theory, p15) is pertinent and would be relevant to postmodern claims that we can't get at an author's original intended meaning:

For the linguist, communication is a fact, even a most obvious fact. People do actually speak to one another. But for an existential investigation [i.e. to the philosopher] communication is an enigma, even a wonder.

Obvious, really.

Its all semiotics now

Ricoeur, Paul, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, Texas Christian University, 1976) p4 says:

As concerns the extension of the structural model to non-linguistic entities, the application may be less spectacular – including, as it does, road signals, cultural codes such as table manners, costume, building and dwelling codes, decorative patterns, etc. – but it is theoretically interesting in that it gives an empirical content to the concept of semiology or general semantics, which was developed independently by Saussure and Charles S. Pierce. Linguistics here becomes one province of the general theory of signs, albeit a province that has the privilege of being both one species and the paradigmatic example of a sign-system.

Langue and Parole in the Supper

Given (once again) that the Supper is a word, I wonder if (using F. de Saussure’s categories from Course In General Lingusitics) you could have a langue and parole understanding of the Supper.

The Langue is the language as system or grid, the fixed meaning that prevails across time and place, the collective code, the shared framework or common linguistic world. This would have a special connection to Christ’s institution of the Supper. We might say that in instituting the Lord's Supper, Jesus coined new (tangible) words, even that he created a whole new way of speaking, a new language.

The Parole is language as event or transaction, a personal, specific individualisation in use, a message given and received between persons in a particular place and time. This would have a special connection to each celebration of the Supper, even to the individual giving and receiving of the elements.

Language, Meaning and Time

Paul Ricoeur’s Interpretation Theory argues that meaning and speech (or even thought) requires a noun and a verb and that verbs always bring an element of time to the predication which is essential to meaning.

Do you buy that?

Are there any true aorists, utterly undifferentiated as to time [c.f. Porter]? Is that a gnomic aorist?

And is this just to do with English or all languages?

As I may have mentioned before, we’ve talked in doctrine of God classes about the fact that some kind of eternal atemporal predication is needed for God, though not easily available in English.

Translating Bread and Wine

Since the bread and wine of The Lord’s Supper are (visible or tangible) words, given in what one might call the particular “language” of one situated culture, that of Israel in the first century, one might argue that what is needed is a dynamic equivalence “translation” of the elements into all the different cultural languages of human societies over time and around the world.

On this view, one would isolate the essential meaning of the word-signs (perhaps a staple food and a red drink used in festivity) and render it in meaningful ways: say, rice and red tea might be used China.

For my self I am a literalist. Let’s always and consistently have bread and wine. The most important meaning given to bread and wine is that found in the Scriptures, where bread (or its constituents, such as grain) and wine are presented very frequently.

Behind all this is are question of whether all cultures and languages are equal or whether we should seek to learn the Bible’s language and conform to its culture and whether the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper is natural (general) or conventional (special).

No doubt one could use other elements if bread and wine really weren’t ever going to be available to you, but would it really be The Lord’s Supper in gold capital letters? Similarly, one might use the Good News Bible or The Message, but we wouldn’t want to confuse them with the Word of God, would we?

No burger and coke eucharists for us and perhaps some time with James Jordan’s Through New Eyes (on biblical symbolism / worldview).