Seminary is a Cemetery

“Did I just see you guys at the café?” A generic looking Caucasian man said to me as I stood in line at a restaurant with Esther.

“Maybe so…we were just there,” I trailed off and turned my attention to the menu hoping to avoid a conversation.

He began to aim words in my direction again…

…aimless chatter…

“So what are you doing in Pasadena?”

“Going to seminary,” I said. I did not want to disclose the name of the seminary, lest I be obliged to defend myself.

“Cemetery?” His inflection seemed to indicate confusion.

“Seminary,” I corrected.

“Yeah, I heard you. I know exactly what that is.” His all-knowing pretentious tone spoke volumes.

I felt a combination of amusement and annoyance. I looked at him with what I hoped would be an unassuming smile, though I don’t know precisely how I came across. “Oh, ok.”

“I know all about seminary…” His voice was loud and seemed to permeate all the corners of the room.

…the conversation continued for a minute or two, and he concluded by wishing me good luck, which I thought just added to the oddity of the peculiar conversation.

I will not waste breath defending a theological education because I will likely be either “preaching to the choir” or pouring words onto deaf ears. However, I must say that it struck me as rather odd that a complete stranger would say something like that to me. After some informal research, which involved nothing more than turning to Esther and asking who in the world that was who spoke such tactless words to me, I learned that he was involved at a local church (I will not disclose which denomination or “nondenomination”). And I thought to myself, “We’re so bored and have lost any remnant of direction that we must fight amongst ourselves.”

Death and Love

I have not felt the urge to write a blog for quite some time, so I have decided simply to mention a few of the books I have been reading recently each accompanied with a brief quotation.

The Aeneid by Virgil. "Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?” (110, Penguin Classics).

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. "Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death” (487, Vintage).

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats.

"Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam

And Usna’s children died”

(“The Rose of the World”, Scribner)

The Complete Poems and Plays, T.S. Eliot.

"Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many.

I had not thought death had undone so many.”

(“The Waste Land,” I. The Burial of the Dead; faber and faber)

The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade. "Religious man can live only in a sacred world, because it is only in such a world that he participates in being, that he has a real existence. This religious need expresses an unquenchable ontological thirst. Religious man thirsts for being. His terror of the chaos that surrounds his inhabited world corresponds to his terror of nothingness” (64, Harcourt).

The Rise of Christianity by W.H.C. Frend. "Christianity arose from the life, preaching, and death of Jesus of Nazareth” (12, Fortress). This opening statement of the first chapter illustrates this book’s rather peculiar underplaying of the importance of Jesus’ resurrection. Accordingly, I suggest this book be read in conjunction with The Resurrection of the Son of God, which expounds upon the significance that Jesus’ resurrection had for the early Christians.

I did not realize until after I compiled these brief quotations that they all involve death. I had not planned that; I did not plan to be so gloomy. However, I think it is important not to ignore death. I think it is important to realize that death is the fate of us all and that with Christ death loses its sting.

isolated and without the gods

I am currently reading The Aeneid. It is a beautiful and tragic story, but good stories are tragic. Reading The Aeneid has reminded me of the narratological difference between classical stories and modern stories. For example, there is a bit of a difference between The Aeneid and Nausea. A litany of differences and similarities could probably be compiled, though I am not interested in compiling such a list. However, I am interested in the fact that The Aeneid is far less focused on providing the audience with every jot of Dido’s phenomenology. Instead, the motions of her heart are intimately entwined with wishes of the gods and fate; there is a microcosm and a macrocosm, and the microcosm must conform to the macrocosm. And in Nausea Roquentin is not concerned about the gods. He wishes only to divulge his personal nightmare. In Nausea there is only an inconsequential individual; there is only a microcosm. With these thoughts in mind, I wonder how the Odyssey and Ulysses would match up. I suspect it would epitomize what I’m talking about.

I used to think that modern novels were sophisticated for their keen psychological insight, and in some cases I still think that. However, reading The Aeneid reminds me that the vast majority of modern stories are but footnotes. That said I do not wish to set modern stories over and against classical stories or vice versa, though I do have affinities for modern stories. I am mostly interested in the fact that story telling has changed. Also, I am interested in how we got from point A to point B, and I really don’t think that it was a straight line.

In Shakespeare there appears to be both a microcosm and a macrocosm. The heavens reflect Hamlet’s heart, as do his poignant soliloquies. There is a macrocosm and a microcosm, but the macrocosm serves as a mere reflection of the microcosm – for example, the heavens function merely as an indicator of Hamlet’s turmoil; the macrocosm is not to be reflected by the microcosm. There appears to be a reversal in roles.

It might then be asked, did the Enlightenment strip us of the gods and fate? Did the Enlightenment strip us of the macrocosm? I don’t know precisely, but I do think it is interesting that by the nineteenth century the macrocosm seems to have been put aside as inconsequential. What truly matters then is the autonomous “I,” a move that had been fermenting for hundreds of years and finally came to fruition.

In some of my favorite novels, the macrocosm is peeking through, but their stories are not of cosmic proportions. If Alyosha doesn’t find Dmitri, then Dmitri may be in trouble but the kingdom won’t be lost and the world won’t end. The Brothers Karamazov is not an epic, but rather ironically a large element of the story is a sort of debate about there being a macrocosm of which the microcosm is to be a reflection.

And then as if to throw a wrench into things, we have stories that have remained such as The Lord of the Rings. There is Frodo, and there is the struggle between good and evil that is sweeping middle earth. There is a microcosm and a macrocosm, and they are reflective of each other. However, even this is more similar to Hamlet, for Frodo is not seeking to reflect a personified macrocosm.

In light of these crumbs, it might also be noted that we often tell the truth with stories. And as our way of telling stories has changed, it appears that the way we tell the truth has changed. It would be rather nice to say that truth is truth, but alas we think and speak truth; truth does not reside in an unchanging vacuum; it passes along various and ever-changing contours of human experience, from generation to generation. We once spoke of the gods and our wills being reflective of their wishes, and now we speak of individuals as if they are gods.

“A Window into Your Soul”

I am currently in a Presbyterian Creeds class, and that to most people, I think, will seem most boring. Reciting, studying, and even dissecting creedal formulations written hundreds of years ago hardly seems like a day at the playground. The Book of Confessions is probably not next to Harry Potter on many people’s list for summer reading.

One of our culminating assignments for the class is to write a one-page statement of faith, a personal creed. On one of the first days of class, our professor looked at us – we few, we happy few, we band of brothers – and said, “your statement of faith shall be a window into your soul.” This window may be a beautiful window that says much of God and of you, or it may be a minute hole that is so generic that it does little more than reiterate a few lines of arcane theological jargon.

Our task then is to speak as best we can about God and humans in the course of a page and to do so using language that is unambiguous. How a mere page could be a full-fledged window I do not know, but I suppose I shall attempt.

This class is chockfull of short assignments each constituted by about six sentences all pointing toward the culminating assignment, the personal statement of faith. On one of the first assignments, our professor challenged me on the inclusion of a particular word. I must confess, since we are in the business of confessions, that I was not all that prepared for such a challenge regarding this simple word, “but.” It was then that I realized this class would require that I think carefully and do the best I can to craft lucid articulations of the Christian faith. It was then I realized that literally every word must be weighted with shiploads of meaning. Such is the case with creeds (and short stories!).

I have since considered the building of this window as a personal challenge, not a mere assignment. If I were to consider it a mere assignment, I am sure that it would feel quite laborious. But as a personal challenge, it is rather daunting and exhilarating. “A window into your soul!” Indeed! What a thought! Up to this point in my theological education (in college and in seminary), I have sufficed it to parrot the work of other theologians and to use proper citation. But now I shall attempt to do the unthinkable. I shall attempt to formulate a statement of faith that is both orthodox and personal with language that expresses the tenets of tradition with a refreshed and self-bespeaking vitality. Though it should be personal, I am, perhaps ironically, not trying to be original (in content). In fact, I must seek to be as unoriginal as possible, lest I find myself to be unorthodox.

No matter how I look at this assignment, I find myself paralyzed by fear and joy. It may be exciting to craft such a window. But what shall be seen when the window is complete?

A Place for Fiction in Faith

I remember a particular day in college when a fellow student told me I should spend less time reading novels and more time reading the bible. I responded with a smile and a few lines of admiration for his fervor, but what I said to him was miles apart from what I was thinking. There were many things I wanted to say to him, but probably most of all I wanted to know why many Christians find no room for fiction in faith.

For many folks in Christian circles, fiction is something of entertainment and is thereby of lesser value than a Christian devotional book or the latest spiritual book by so and so (take your pick who the author is). That fiction is often put to some lower level of importance is sad and ridiculous. Look at the best stories ever told. They are all fiction (see the parables of Jesus for example).

Before considering fiction and the bible, I shall consider novels and devotional books because it seems that Christians nowadays read devotional/spiritual books about as much as anything, maybe even more than the bible itself.

I need only to survey briefly a few personal favorites to point out that the latest devotional/spiritual books do not stand a chance. The Brothers Karamazov shows more vividly the ramifications of depravity, doubt, forgiveness, and love than any contemporary devotional book. A Tale of Two Cities does more to indicate the harsh disparity between rich and poor than the myriads of contemporary Christian books on generosity. War and Peace possesses more than any spiritual book pertaining to the existential predicament and journey of humans. The Lord of the Rings does more to show the realization of hope and despair than any devotional book ever conceived. I am laughing at myself for even comparing these novels to some of the devotional/spiritual books I have come across.

Many Christian folks are quick to pick up a devotional/spiritual book instead of the bible. To these folks I want to say, “Pick up A Tale of Two Cities or Crime and Punishment or Anna Karenina instead.” In response some may say, “But a devotional gives me what I need right now and it’s easier to read and it’s more accessible.” To that I might say, “First, how do you know what you need right now? Second, the struggle of reading a thick book is part of what makes the process fulfilling and edifying; it’s an opportunity to build qualities such as patience, something we Christians in America need to acquire.”

I am treading on dangerous ground here. I am not saying the reading of a novel should replace daily devotions, i.e. prayer and bible reading. However, I am suggesting that a good novel may be a much-needed substitute for a devotional/spiritual book.

It might be pointed out that devotional books are functioning differently than these novels that I have mentioned. I will not mount an entire argument here, but I will remark briefly. Devotionals may seem initially different than some of these novels, but in the final analysis these novels will likely serve to shape a person in similar though in even more profound ways than an average devotional book. That brings me to my next point.

But why read these novels of mere “entertainment” when I could be reading the bible?

Permit me a tangent. I remember when in college a few of us were debating about the importance or unimportance of philosophy, which involves a dash of irony. Our opponents contended that philosophy is not practical. To that I decided to turn their rationale on its head; I responded that philosophy is the most practical of all disciplines, for we use philosophy more than any other discipline, be it implicitly or explicitly. Of course, I was being a bit facetious but not entirely, for even they were making use of philosophical argumentation (though shabbily) as they argued against us.

When it comes to reading fiction, I think it is similar to what I argued in college about the practicality of philosophy. By reading fiction, our imagination and our sense for literary drama, beauty, and narrative structure are formed. This is crucial for reading the bible. We can use the fruits of reading fiction in our reading of the bible.

To this some might say, “Perhaps, but reading the bible makes me a better reader of the bible.” I might respond, “Perhaps, but wait just a minute. Reading the bible with all the verse markings, annotations, and personal baggage from Sunday school and years worth of sermons makes many of us susceptible to reading the bible on rigid railroad tracks, incapable of seeing the many unexplored dimensions of a given biblical text.” Developing as a reader and more specifically developing as a reader of the bible seems to require that our reading involve stories from outside that may form us as readers.

I’m finding that even now I am learning to read. I said this to my older sister in Albania, and she laughed because it is rather funny that I am still learning to read at the age of twenty-four. I suppose I am a slow learner. However, I am learning that by reading fiction I am developing as a reader.

So my first point pertains to content. There are many good novels out there that are simply more worthwhile than the vast majority of devotional/spiritual books out there. My second point pertains to we the readers. Reading a healthy diet of fiction exercises our imagination, perception, mental agility, and ability to read a story well. The fruits of reading good fiction may then be put to use when reading and discussing the bible. But keep in mind that fiction is to be enjoyed not just used as a tool.

A few novel suggestions:

The Movie Goer by Percy

A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

Moby Dick by Melville

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

Do not be daunted by the length of these novels. Think of the length of a novel as the size of a treasure chest. The longer the novel, the more room there is for gold.

Surprised by Hope: a Review of N.T. Wright’s book

There are innumerable book reviews on the Internet, so forgive me for adding to the mass. I would like merely to highlight a few points in N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope, which especially struck me as either rather wise or helpful. It should be said also that this particular book is not one of his scholarly works and should be judged accordingly. It seems to be largely pastoral, which I appreciate immensely.

Wright remarks on the rather apparent confusion about Christian hope for the future. We are all going to die, so what is the Christian hope? Christians describe death in all sorts of ways and with wide degrees of reactions. No doubt many Christians consider their hope to be in zipping off to heaven after they die, residing in perpetual bliss for eternity. Wright contends that this belief is due in part to Platonic philosophy infiltrating Christian theology. Furthermore, Wright notes that immaterial immortality was not the early Christians’ hope and that actually early Christians hoped for future resurrection based on Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection adumbrates and is the foundation for the future resurrection of the saints. Physical resurrection is the Christian hope (for as Wright notes in one of his longer works, there is no other kind of resurrection). The Christian hope is not to escape a condemned world but is to resurrect and become part of a redeemed world, a new heaven and a new earth. The future resurrection of the saints is what Wright deems life after life after death. Basically, a loose chronology based on various New Testament texts: people die, people go to be with Christ (life after death), people resurrect (life after life after death). He speaks briefly of hell and arrives to a similar conclusion as C.S. Lewis.

I would suggest that any critique of Wright’s view regarding the physicality and centrality of resurrection should first consider Wright’s longer scholarly work, The Resurrection of the Son of God (a great book by the way!).

New creation began with Jesus’ resurrection, but the present day is riddled with trouble; evil is a reality, but “Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of new life, the fresh grass growing through the concrete of corruption and decay in the old world” (123). The culmination of new creation will be the marriage of heaven and earth (again, the hope is not to ascend into an immaterial heaven but is for a new heaven and a new earth). With this there will be an eradication of evil, and in the present day Christians may work for the kingdom. Wright aptly distinguishes between Christians building a kingdom themselves and God’s reign in which Christians may participate. He subscribes to the latter, and I think rightly so.

Christians may participate in God’s reign, and what Christians do in the present day has implications for the future. What we do today matters a great deal. All we do now God can use for the future in the new heaven and new earth, a future that is not static but is teeming with new projects and possibilities. “Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness…every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk…every act of care and nurture…every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church…all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation God will one day make” (208). As we stand in an aching world and look to a future filled with hope, there is work to be done with Jesus at the helm. Working for justice in the present is a crucial element of participating in God’s reign today and contributing to the future life after life after death.

I have not, of course, done an adequate job of tying together the elements of Wright’s book, nor have I done an adequate job of reviewing all the major points. But perhaps this will suffice as a start. I highly recommend Wright’s book as a desirable and biblically founded alternative to escapist theologies that are so prevalent in today’s churches.

Crumbs: Hamlet and Consciousness

The title to this blog involves two of my perennial interests, especially so when I was in college. Hamlet the Shakespearian play and Hamlet the character are each among my favorites in literature. Consciousness lists near the top of my curiosities in whatever field I happen to be reading at the moment, usually philosophy or theology or literature (I admit ignorance regarding psychology, which makes me an unequivocal layperson on the topic). Needless to say, Hamlet and consciousness overlap to a large degree.

Harold Bloom, a noted literary critic, regards Shakespeare as the inventor of the human (in literature) due to Shakespeare’s creation of Hamlet. Many people “see” consciousness in Hamlet, and this seems to be due to Hamlet’s soliloquies. Hamlet seems to demonstrate a keen self-awareness and disillusionment. It is little surprise then that many writers (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Sartre, etc.) of varying classes have been drawn to Hamlet, for Hamlet displays all the qualities of a self-aware individual. He is an excellent case study for phenomenology.

Consciousness is often proclaimed to be a mystery – Hamlet himself says so, and indeed it seems to be the case. It is elusive, and sometimes strikes me as a mere philosophical muddle that we are guilty of describing poorly and consequently consider it inscrutable.

There is a twist with Hamlet’s self-awareness. Walker Percy remarks on consciousness in general saying, “The paradox of consciousness is that the stranger we meet on the street and glance at for a second or two we see more clearly than we shall ever see ourselves” (“Is a Theory of Man Possible?”). Percy seems to be a bit facetious here, but there may also be some truth to his analysis. If Percy isn’t too far off the mark, then it is we the readers/hearers who see Hamlet more clearly than he could ever have seen himself; and yet we see him only with processes and patterns of thought that seem largely out of our control.

Hamlet is considered to be a self-aware individual, and yet he is mostly unaware. We see Hamlet, but we see him according to patterns of which we are unconscious. Are he and we interacting in an ambiguous Bermuda Triangle of the unconscious? But what am I saying?

When we “see” Hamlet’s consciousness and when we speak of consciousness in general, we should likely speak briefly of anthropology more generally, for what we are doing – when we are seeing Hamlet and speaking of our own consciousness – involves anthropological constitution. If it is accepted that humans are constituted by materials, then it might also be said that these materials working together create a synergy that produces what we often call “consciousness.” These materials are basically “unconscious.” This means that we humans, though you could say we are “conscious” beings, are largely “unconscious.” It is this immense “unconscious” side of us that paves the roads for consciousness and consequently has much to do with determining our patterns of thought, albeit not entirely because our contexts also seem to contribute to paving the roads for our patterns of thought but to this we indeed are also largely unconscious.

It may be the case in literature or philosophy that we consider the degree of a person’s self-awareness according the perspicacity of their phenomenology. And yet a portrait of a person’s phenomenology is only a single window into their dynamic being. And this single window only sees a product, and this product is seen only by a product. What is called “raw realism of subjectivity” is not raw (though “raw” may denote “less polished”); it is a polished product, polished by the seemingly unconscious materials that contribute to our constitution and by our context.

It is in part because we are largely unconscious beings that we need to practice habits, for it is with physical habits that have the potential to condition those “unconscious” aspects of who we are and consequently those conscious aspects of who we are that we contribute consciously to forming our unconsciousness. It is habits then that have the capacity to train us comprehensively. With habits we can train those tangible “unconscious” aspects of who we are, which contribute to that synergy that contributes to the rise of consciousness. It is difficult and elusive for “me” to discern the line between what is conscious and unconscious, for I find myself stumbling into habits of thought all the time, which seem random and largely unconsciously engendered. This would, I suppose, be an example of “slipping” into habits. However, I would contend that we need to learn to practice “intentional” habits of thought and behavior, lest we “slip” into detrimental habits, which have comprehensive ramifications.

This blog may seem as if I am going down a dead end road of materialism, which of course I am not. I have not said a word about God and God’s relation to humanity, which entails involvement of consciousness but does not require consciousness to be “immaterial.” Consequently, I have also not commented on the nature of spirituality, though spirituality also entails involvement with consciousness. Needless to say, speaking of consciousness as inadequately as I have done here does not insinuate nor necessitate a completely materialistic anthropology.

In this blog, I have spoken generally and as such rather vaguely, but I am merely emphasizing that we humans are indeed physical beings. This is obvious, but it is often (it seems) overlooked. We are quite physical, and as oxymoronic as it may seem, we need to become aware of just how unaware we actually are that we might use our infinitesimal consciousness to train our immense unconsciousness. If human consciousness is an ocean, then human unconsciousness is a galaxy.

Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” and I might add, “there are many things in heaven and earth, Hamlet, that give you dreams of philosophy.”