Per Caritatem

In chapter seven of his book, Redeeming Beauty:  Soundings in Sacral Aesthetics, Nichols discusses, among other things, Jacques Maritain’s view of pulchrum (the beautiful).  Maritain appeals to St. Thomas’ dictum in which beauty is defined as id quod visum placet.  According to Maritain this definition relates to the effect, not the essence, i.e., the beautiful gives joy to the knower.  However, as Nichols points out, Maritain is quick to add that the “bestowal of delight in knowing” is a “formal constituent of beauty” (p. 133).  Here Maritain and U. Eco part ways, as Eco believes that Maritain is reading more into Thomas than is present in the text. According to Eco, “what Thomas actually says is, ‘people call things beautiful when they give pleasure on sight’.  For Eco this is a ‘sociological finding’ with ‘introduces the problem’ rather than solves it” (p. 133).  It seems to me the Eco’s point merits further consideration.

This brings us to Maritain’s account of the beautiful as found in Art et scolastique.  According to Maritain, “[i]f a thing exalts and delights the soul by the very fact of being given to its intuition, it is good to apprehend, it is beautiful” (p. 36).[1]  Here beauty is no doubt connected with the intellect, but following Thomas, beauty delights the mind through the senses.  “‘Our [human] art’ works over sensuous matter to bring joy to the spirit.  It is in a sense a taste of Paradise, the first Paradise, the Paradise of Eden, because ‘it restores for a moment the simultaneous peace and delectation of the mind and the senses’” (Art et scolastique, p. 37).[2]

Notes

In the previous post, I mentioned two experiences that helped bring Bulgakov back to the Orthodox Church.  In this post, we encounter the third experience, viz., the death of Bulgakov’s  four year old son in the summer of 1909.  At his son’s funeral, Bulgakov had a strong sense that “his child lived in the life of the Resurrection” (p. 602).  This experience moved him to re-read Soloviev’s works in which the theme of wisdom (created and uncreated) is prominent.  Bulgakov develops his theme of “the Wisdom of God as the foundation and goal of all earthly reality” and begins to employ it in his writings on economics and philosophy.  In his book, Философия Хозяйство (The Philosophy of Economy, 1912), Bulgakov argues that even though our labor is toilsome, the economic process is meaningful because it participates in the Divine Wisdom.  Moreover, our struggles in nature also involve (besides pain and difficulties) joy and beauty, if we, as followers of Christ, realize that human beings possess a “hidden potential for perfection [and so must] work to resurrect nature, to endow it once again with the life and meaning it had in Eden.”[1]  For Bulgakov, the most mundane human activities have value and are redeemable “by the Christian message of the fall and resurrection of man and, with man, nature.  We have a common task and it is universal resurrection out of fall, bringing resurrection-life into everything” (p. 603). 

By 1917, Bulgakov was recognized in Russia as a gifted Orthodox intellectual and was elected a member of the Russian Church Council-a council which had the massive responsibility of picking up the pieces after the fateful February Revolution (1917).  However, with the subsequent October Revolution and the rise to power of the Bolsheviks, the Orthodox Church came under great persecution, and Bulgakov, now ordained as a priest, was forced the following year (1918) to flee (p. 603, 604).  He found a temporary place of rest in the Crimea, but this was soon taken over by the Bolsheviks in 1922.  As a result, Bulgakov, as were many intellectuals, was forced to leave and eventually made his way to Paris where he lived his remaining years (1925-1944).  In Paris, Bulgakov became a founding member of the theological institute, Saint-Serge, where he taught for a number of years (p. 604).  During his time in the Crimea, Bulgakov briefly entertained becoming a Catholic; however, this period of doubt ended in a strengthening of his own Orthodox roots. Nonetheless, Bulgakov was extremely ecumenically minded and interacted with a number of Anglicans and other Protestants. Describing Bulgakov’s ecumenical activities, Nichols writes:

In 1927 he helped found-in England-the Anglican-Orthodox Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, and in the years 1933 to 1935 published some remarkable articles in English in the journal of that Fellowship, arguing that Orthodoxy remained in what he called an “invisible, mysterious communion with Catholicism (p. 604).

Although Bulgakov was well-known as a theologian-in part due to the publication of his “Little Trilogy”:  The Friend of the Bridegroom, The Burning Bush, and Jacob’s Ladder-in 1935 Bulgakov was charged with heresy by two Russian jurisdictions (both of which were not his own jurisdiction, the Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarch for Western Europe, in which Bulgakov remained in good standing) [p. 604, 605].  The charge against Bulgakov, which he strongly denied, was that “Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is in effect a fourth person of the Holy Trinity” (p. 605). 

In the years 1933-1936, Bulgakov wrote his “Great Triology”:  The Lamb of God, The Comforter, and The Bride of the Lamb.  He became ill with cancer of the throat in 1939 and died on July 12, 1944, not long after the completion of his final book, The Apocalypse of John. 

Nichols, Fr. Aidan.  “Wisdom from Above? The Sophiology of Father Sergius Bulgakov,” New Blackfriars 85, (2004): 598-613.

Notes

My brief introduction to Bulgakov is based on Fr. Aidan Nichols article, “Wisdom from Above? The Sophiology of Father Sergius Bulgakov”[1]-an article that is worth reading in its entirety.  Bulgakov, who was to become an important 20^th century theological figure in both Orthodox and Latin theological circles, was born in 1871 in a rural town in south-central Russia.  Bulgakov’s father was an Orthodox priest, and his family line included a number of priests (p. 599).  Although his early education was religiously focused, as a young teen Bulgakov underwent a faith crisis and in 1888 publicly proclaimed himself an unbeliever at the age of 18.  Two years later, he enrolled at the University of Moscow, where his interest in and commitment to Marxism grew with an ever-increasing intensity (p. 599).  Entailed in Bulgakov’s embrace of Marxism was the idea that human beings are essentially material beings, “albeit an expression of the nobility and complexity matter could attain” (p. 599).  In 1897 Bulgakov published his first work, “On Markets in the Capitalist System of Production,” and even so, he had already begun to experience some uncertainties with regard to central Marxist claims. 

As Nichols explains, there were three significant experiences (two of which are described below) that played crucial roles in bringing Bulgakov back to his Orthodox faith.  The first occurred

in 1894 when holidaying in the Caucasus mountains on the border between the present day Georgia and the Russian Federation.  It was an experience of the beauty of the mountains as somehow more than material-a pointer to a beauty that transcends matter [...].  A few years later, in the period 1898 to 1900 while he was studying abroad (by this point, incidentally, he had married), he underwent the second experience which led to his re-conversation to the faith.  And this was by way of response to the spiritual purity he glimpsed in a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael.  Known as the “Sistine Madonna”, he saw it displayed in Saxony, in the City of Dresden art gallery.  On his return from Germany to Russia, his Marxism was definitely shaken, and his master’s thesis on capitalism and agriculture, which he presented at this time, is generally regarded as the work of someone already leaving a distinctively Marxian viewpoint behind (p. 600). 

With the completion of his thesis, he was able at the age of thirty to obtain a teaching position in political economics at the University of Kiev.  In addition to teaching, Bulgakov was also very active in politics and served in 1907 as a deputy to the Second Duma (p. 600).  During this time, Bulgakov began to doubt the ability of Russia’s newly introduced constitutional reforms to truly change people’s lives.  As Nichols observes, the changes in Bulgakov’s views

coincided with a change of direction in the aspirations of the Russian intelligentsia generally.  They become more interested in the creative powers of the human mind-an interest which, in philosophy, is often connected with the school of thought called “Idealism”.  They also began to look more sympathetically at religion and especially at the Russian heritage of Orthodox Christianity.  Such intellectuals hoped for a reform and renewal of the Church. That was partly because they expected so deeply rooted an institution to have some effect in transforming the rest of society.  Bulgakov’s own personal developments mirrors these trends.  He moved from Marxism to Idealism, without, however, denying his earlier interest in the economy and the potential of matter.  And then he moved from Idealism to a rediscovered Orthodoxy, without, however, denying his earlier convictions of the importance of human creativity, the uniqueness of the human subject, the person who says “I”.  This happened at an exciting time in Russian cultural and intellectual life, a time historians have dubbed Russia’s “silver age” (pp. 600-601). 

Bulgakov’s contribution to Russia’s short-lived Silver Age was to help reawaken interest in Dostoevsky by giving a famous lecture on the novel, The Brothers Karamazov.  Ironically, or rather providentially, Bulgakov’s efforts to draw attention back to Dostoevsky occurred during the same time that Dmitri Merezhkovsky-a highly influential literary critic-was also promoting Dostoevsky’s works among the intelligentsia of St. Petersburg.  According to Merezhkovsky, Dostoevsky’s work points to the religious principle that should govern human culture, viz., “Godmanhood”-a principle of grace by which God raises humanity into union with Himself and, which stands opposed to the principle operative and ruling in the West, “mangodhood” (p. 601).  Bulgakov, in his essay “Церков и культура” (”Church and Culture”)-an essay written prior to his return to the Church-stressed Christianity’s mission to culture, claiming that there are no “religiously indifferent” or neutral zones; “[t]here must be nothing that is in principle ‘secular’”.[2]  In essence, Bulgakov’s essay was a challenge to the Church, “for the Church had in effect abandoned its task of being yeast to the leaven of the rest of culture and [had] withdrawn into the ghetto of its own rituals” (p. 602).  As a number of Silver Age intellectuals grew weary of the claims made by the then predominant anti-religious voices of Russian intelligentsia, they published a collection of essays entitled Вехи (Signposts), which served both as a kind of manifesto as well as a critique of their predecessors.   One of the new (religiously attuned) intelligentsia’s main points of contention focused on how a true and lasting transformation of culture is possible.  According to the authors of the Signposts essays, genuine transformation of society must include, and in fact presupposes, conversion of human hearts to the Good. 

Notes

[2] As found in “Wisdom from Above?” p. 602.  Republished in S. Bulgakov, Dva grada (Two Cities), Moscow, 1911, p. 309. 

“God is the light by which, indispensably, we perceive our darkness.  The light itself is not perceived.  The cognitive pursuit of God, like the sunflower weary of time, counts the steps of this Sun, seeking after journey’s end but falling again and again to earth with each circuit of the central and invisible Presence.  The mystic goes like a moth to the flame and is consumed, but the theologian who survives relapses into autobiography.  The sun can illumine only if it keeps its distance; God can authorize our inscriptions only so long as they fail to catch him.  The remotion of the signified is the life (mortal life and living death) of the signifiers and the condition of signification” (pp. 42-43). 

Louis Mackey.  Peregrinations of the Word:  Essays in Medieval Philosophy.  Ann Arbor:  Univ. of Michigan Press, 2000.

I recently finished reading the book of Job, and came across a few surprising verses in the last chapter.  For example, at the end of Job, we read that part of Job’s restoration included ten more children-seven sons and three daughters-and that Job “named the first [daughter] Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch.” The text goes on to say that Job “gave them an inheritance along with their brothers” (Job 42:13-15). First of all, it struck me as very unusual, particularly in an Old Testament book, to find a listing of the daughters’ names and not the sons’ names. Likewise, I wondered whether, in light of the cultural practices of the day, it was significant that the text highlighted the fact that the daughters also received an inheritance from their father.  Lastly, it seemed that a number of redemptive historical connections that might be drawn from these “clues.”  So I ran these questions/thoughts by a friend of mine who happens to be an Old Testament scholar, Professor Douglas J. Green (Ph.D. Yale University).  Below is a summary of what he said:

(1)  It is indeed unusual that the daughters are named and the sons are not.

(2)  It is also surprising that the daughters along with the sons receive an inheritance, as this instance in Job is unlike some cases that we find in the OT where daughters receive an inheritance because there are no male siblings. 

(3)  If we read the end of Job as a metaphorical return from exile, i.e., as a proleptic view of what things will be like (or at least will begin to be like) in the age to come (i.e., our present age), then a number of interesting possibilities present themselves. 

In other words, the end of Job can be understood as a proto-resurrection story and, as mentioned above, as a foretaste of kingdom life in which both sons and daughters receive an inheritance from the Father, and male and female are given an equal status in the Resurrected One (Gal 3:28) to whom Job’s proto-resurrection points!

I haven’t done justice to Green’s insights on Job-trust me he has significantly more to say than what I’ve summarized briefly above.  Perhaps he will publish the detailed version of his reading of Job sometime in the near future, until then, I’ll leave you with a lengthy quote from Green from one of his lectures on the topic.

Allowing for a reading that transcends (strict) authorial intention, Green suggests that there are a number of connections to be made between Job and righteous Israel’s suffering in exile, and that even if some readers refuse to listen to these clues because they have been overly influenced by modernist hermeneutical assumptions, such was not the case for readers of the late or post-exillic period.  As Green explains,

perhaps readers in the late Exilic or post-Exilic period, readers familiar with Deuteronomy and the Prophets, readers struggling with questions about the suffering of righteous Israel similar to the ones that Second Isaiah is trying to answer, might read Job very differently. The language of Job as Yahweh’s servant, the apparent “echoes” of Second Isaiah in Job 16-19 (or are they echoes of Job in Isaiah?) and the use of Deuteronomic-prophetic “return from captivity” language to describe Job’s reversal of fortunes – all this may have provided more than adequate grounds for these ancient readers to pull Job into the orbit of the Suffering Servant of Second Isaiah and even to (metaphorically) identify the two.

If this is what happened – and yes, it is speculative but in the light of some hints in later exegesis, not entirely so  – then this might explain why Job eventually found its way into that body of literature that Israel eventually labeled as “Scripture.” My contention is that Job came to be read, not as the story of the suffering of “Any Man.” Rather, later readers have pulled Job into the metanarrative of redemptive history, interpreting and valuing the book as another creative commentary – like Second Isaiah – on the meaning of one of the great conundrums of the Exile: the inexplicable suffering/exile of the righteous remnant of Israel. 

In suggesting that Israelite readers made this connection, I realize that I am pulling both the question of Job’s meaning and the question of its canonicity out of the realm of authorial intention and into the realm of reader-response.  Not wild reader response. Not deconstruction or ideological criticism. A reader response that has its roots at least in the text’s connotations if not its denotations. There are enough “hooks” in the text – again, whether they are authorially deliberate or accidental is of no consequence at this point – to invite and encourage, or at least make Job susceptible to, a reading that connects the story to the metanarrative of redemptive history. A reading that makes Job a parable (extended metaphor) of the Exile and Restoration of righteous. A reading that turns it into an additional commentary (besides Second Isaiah) and theological reflection not merely on the generic problem of the suffering of the righteous, but the very specific problem of the God’s apparent violation of the (Mosaic/Deuteronomic) covenant when he brought the covenant curse of Exile/Captivity (Deut 28) on the covenant-keeping remnant of Israel.

Whether I am right my speculations about the reasons behind Job’s canonicity matters little.  What I am arguing for here is a way of reading Job – as an intertext to the story of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant.  I am not suggesting that this is the only right way of reading Job, only that it is a good reading – a good midrash! – (that is, a profitable interpretation that creatively reads with rather than against “grain” of the text, and a reading that will conform to the shape of the Gospel once it is fully revealed to us).  

In a section discussing the ways in which Gadamer relativizes Heidegger’s ontological difference, Wachterhauser states the following:

If [according to Gadamer] we cannot raise issues of Being apart from other related issues like Being’s relationship to the other transcendentals-including the Good-and these issues in turn involve us in questions about the relationships between transcendentals and Ideas, as well as Ideas and things, then we can no longer insist on a strict and unequivocal ontological difference.  This is perhaps the most profound implication of Gadamer’s ontological insights.  Gadamer’s position implies a modern appropriation of the analogia entis and as such it emphasizes the analogical connections between all realities.  Such ontological analogies or connections imply a challenge to any unbridgeable gap or difference between Being and beings.  If Heidegger’s thought suffers from an increasing tendency to insist on this unbridgeable difference, Gadamer’s thought relatizives the difference between Being and beings and draws them closer to each other without forgetting that there is also a difference to be preserved.  The most important implication of this relativizing of the ontological difference is that questions about the Good can once again be seen as central to ontology” (Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontology. Evanston:  Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999, pp. 193-194).

Although a Christian might want to probe further, asking whether Gadamer’s position (on Christian presuppositions) is not guilty of a possible blurring of the Creator/creature distinction, the idea that Gadamer’s project is a kind of “modern appropriation of the analogia entis” harmonizes well with Gadamer’s hermeneutical claims regarding the multivalent nature of meaning.   In other words, his hermeneutic maps nicely onto his ontology. 

Given Gadamer’s rejection of a foundationalist paradigm of knowledge, he does not attempt to provide indubitable justification for his ontological views.   According to Gadamer, all forms of foundationalism fail to demonstrate that their own claims are indubitable; hence, he “rejects the possibility of a reflexive self-grounding of any philosophical position.”  Rather, as we have seen, Gadamer speaks of our grasping truth in the context of our various dialogical interactions.  In addition, Gadamer claims that “there is kind of self-validating truth that is available to those who are willing to participate in the dialogue of question and answer which we find in the philosophical tradition” (p. 12).  These self-validating truths do not purport to present us with certainty, yet they can be known and are (as the name suggests) true.  Many truths, such as those found in the human sciences, are simply part of our experience and are either taken as valid on their own terms or are rejected (p. 12). Rather than attempt to find a place outside of our experience upon which to stand so as to justify our experience of these truths, Gadamer endeavors to

offer a holistic explanation of that experience that attempts to understand it by thinking through the question of how mind and reality must be related to each other in order to make this experience possible.  This is an explicitly circular procedure that avowedly accepts its circularity but does not concede that such circularity is logically vicious.  Even logic itself rests on experiences of self-evidence that it cannot deduce (p. 13). 

Here Gadamer is operating against the grain of much of modern epistemology in that he assumes that our experiences are true “until their limitations are dialogically demonstrated.”  In other words, Gadamer offers a hermeneutics of trust rather than a hermeneutics of suspicion, and his position is not ignorant of the problems of modern epistemology.  Incarnating his own understanding of hermeneutics, Gadamer is in dialogue with the present (modern epistemology) and he also pulls from ancient philosophy, particularly Plato’s reflections on the connection between beauty and truth.  For example, in his book, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, Gadamer writes,

Plato describes the beautiful as that which shines forth most clearly and draws us to itself, as the very visibility of the ideal.  In the beautiful presented in nature and art, we experience the convincing illumination of truth and harmony, which compels the admission:  “This is true.” [...] The beautiful [...] gives us an assurance that the truth does not lie far off and inaccessible to us, but can be encountered in the disorder of reality with all its imperfections, evils, errors, extremes and fateful confusions.  The ontological function of the beautiful is to bridge the chasm between the ideal and the real (pp. 14-15; as quoted in Wachterhauser, p. 13).

Here we have the self-validation of the beautiful whose connection with truth is not to be equated with certainty, as no truth-claim is beyond doubt.  Yet, according to Gadamer, the true manifests itself in the beautiful in that the true possesses a kind of luminosity or radiance.  With this claim, we see Gadamer drawing from the “metaphysics of light” tradition that Plato assimilated via Parmenides.  “In fact, Gadamer argues that ‘the close relationship that exists between the shining forth [Vorscheinen] of the beautiful and the evidentness [das Einleuchtende] of the understandable is based on the metaphysics of light.  This was precisely the relation that guided our hermeneutical inquiry’ (Truth and Method, 483).” Moreover,  Gadamer believes that  a critical  reworking of this tradition “can point the way beyond the impasses of skepticism and foundationalism by giving us the resources to rethink the concept of a self-validating or self-illuminating truth that does not make the fateful mistake of equating such ‘light’ with certainty” (pp. 13-14). 

In short, Gadamer’s neo-ancient view of truth, wherein truth presents itself as beauty and evinces a luminosity or radiance that is self-validating, does not deny the possibility of encountering truth, yet it does perhaps encourage us to embrace a more humble view of truth and in so doing to acknowledge our finitude in a non-despairing way. 

*Unless otherwise noted, all citations are taken from Brice R. Wachterhauser, Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontololgy.  Evanston:  Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 

As mentioned in Part II, Gadamer’s conception of identity is dynamic rather than static and is based on Gadamer’s critical reworking of Plato’s reflections on unity and multiplicity.  As Wachterhauser explains, Gadamer’s “general strategy is to argue that all Being is such that it is always at one and the same time both ‘one and many.’  Thus it is no surprise that interpretation constantly confronts us with the reality of ‘identity in difference.’  In fact, wherever we turn, ‘identity and difference’ or ‘one and many’ is the mark of Being itself” (p. 7).  [Here, it seems that a Christian could make a number of Trinitarian connections].  

In order to further support his ontology, Gadamer turns to the later Plato’s account of the nature of number.  Wachterhauser summarizes this better than I can, so I shall quote him at length:

Just as any number in the number series can be described only by its logical or intelligible relationships to other numbers, so any reality is what it is only by being situated in its logical or intelligible relationships to other realities.  With regard to number, the ‘hermeneutical’ implication of this relational ontology is that any number is always both ‘one and many,’ i.e., it is what it is in its distinct logical contours but those contours can be described from an infinite number of perspectives generated by the fact that it can be defined only in its relationship to all the other numbers in the infinite series, including its relations of negation (p. 7). 

In addition, Gadamer believes that non-numerical realities exhibit the same ontological features.  That is, “[a]ll things are what they are only in their infinite relationships to other things, including both positive and negative relationships.  Thus all things are always both ‘one and many’” (p. 8).  Such a situation suggests that a diversity of interpretations is to be expected.  However, this diversity is not “ontologically vicious, i.e., it does not necessarily threaten the identity of things, nor does it preclude a critical rejection of some interpretations in favor of others” (p. 8). 

Wachterhauser next attempts to unpack Gadamer’s oft misunderstood claim that language is a necessary medium of all thought.  As Wachterhauser explains, Gadamer is neither a “linguistic constructivist” nor does his position move in the direction of “alinguistic essentialism.”  Rather, Gadamer understands language as a necessary medium to thought in the sense that “language is an indispensable place where the intelligibility of the real makes itself manifest for us” (p. 9).  Here Gadamer is not claiming that without language, reality has no intelligibility, nor is he saying that language “represents in conventional signs an otherwise alinguistic reality” (p. 9).  Here Gadamer’s engagement with Plato plays a crucial role.  Drawing on Plato’s insights, Gadamer claims that language and reality have a participatory relationship and that both participate in intelligibility.  Wachterhauser describes this relationship as follows:

Intelligibility participates in both things and words such that words potentially clarify and enhance the inherent intelligibility of things. Moreover, things themselves are inherently intelligible such that we must always look to them as the beginning and end of all inquiry.  The intelligibility of language is not to supplant the intelligibility of things but to complement and complete that intelligibility in such way that the things themselves become more manifest and provide the final warrant for any justifiable articulation (p. 9). 

In short, we might say that Gadamer claims that reality is manifest through language, and yet reality is simultaneously concealed.  Here Gadamer shows continuity with both Heidegger and with the ancient tradition in that he affirms a dialectic of the unconcealment and concealment of reality.  However, Gadamer bases this dialectic “in the tendency of language to reveal reality in a limited set of semantic and logical relationships, which simultaneously covers over other possible sets of relationships from which the same reality could be disclosed.  Thus language can reveal, but it also simultaneously conceals, how any one thing stands to the whole of all things in which it is what it is” (p. 10). 

By employing the Platonic model of participation Gadamer of course is not simply repeating ancient ontology, but he does believe that it has something to say to us.  For example, Gadamer takes up the subject/object relation and instead of a mere repetitio Graeci regarding this relationship or promoting a modernist position that makes the subject the source of all meaning, he speaks of a belonging together between the subject and object that “takes place in our linguistically mediated experience of the world.”  Here we neither look solely to the object nor to the subject to serve as the source of meaning.  But instead, “we are driven back by ‘an internal necessity of the thing itself’ to discover a participation of thing and word in a common intelligibility.”  Thus, for Gadamer, words neither create meaning nor do they simply reflect it.  “Rather, words have the capacity to ‘enhance’ and in a sense ‘complete’ an already given meaning.  In this sense, language is the medium where thought and reality discover their prior accord.  Language is the place where intelligibility can manifest itself in a way that was not completely manifest before” (p. 10).  With these claims, we see that Gadamer is not merely repeating Plato’s views on language, but is taking Plato’s insights and extending them further so as to engage contemporary issues that are particularly relevant to our hermeneutical landscape. Gadamer does, however, see Plato as grappling in his dialogues with the idea of linguistically mediated truth.  According to Gadamer,

the Platonic dialogues are nothing less than Plato’s artful accounts of [these] limited, linguistically mediated insights into what is genuinely real and rational. For Gadamer, Socrates’s ‘flight into the logoi‘ is Plato’s testimony to the indispensability of linguistically mediated inquiry to the Platonic project.  According to Gadamer, Plato’s reliance on the Ideas is not an attempt to escape from the various logoi or discourses but a way to illuminate the fact that although our thought is always “in language,” or in some discourse with its own way of presenting issues and insights, such discourses inevitably point beyond themselves in their confrontation with other discourses to a truth which transcends them both (p. 11).   

This last statement needs further explication, lest one think that Gadamer is sneaking the traditional (dualistic) Plato in the backdoor.  For Gadamer, this “truth which transcends them both” is not grasped “outside of language, but is itself another linguistically mediated truth whose meaning and limits can only begin to show themselves in dialogue with other logoi.  For Gadamer, the claim that “all truth is relative to a language of inquiry or a dialectic of question and answer” does imply that the truths grasped through our dialogic engagements are “limited to the linguistically mediated questions we ask” (p. 11).  However, this limitation does not close us off from obtaining new truths through new dialogue partners who ask different questions.  Thus, a “finite truth” for Gadamer,

is neither a linguistic construct nor is it an alinguistic intuition; it is a truth that develops in time in conversation between historically situated conversation partners. Moreover it is a truth whose genuine possibility we can understand on the assumption that language participates in the intelligibility of reality such that finding the “right words” enhances and complements intelligible insight without brining it to final historical closure.  In sum, one might say that for Gadamer reason finds its voice through language but it is a voice with many valences that register themselves through the many discourses we engage with each other (p. 11). 

*All citations are taken from Brice R. Wachterhauser, Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontololgy.  Evanston:  Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 

As Wachterhauser stresses, Gadamer’s path avoids the pitfalls of both the relativist and the ahistorical dogmatist, not by eschewing all things metaphysical, but rather by gleaning ontological insights from ancient philosophy (particularly the later Plato).   Here we encounter a significant divergence between Gadamer and Heidegger in that the former rejects important aspects of Heidegger’s critique of the Western philosophical tradition’s so-called Seinsvergessenheit (”the forgetfulness of Being”).  That is, though appreciative of Heidegger’s contribution to philosophy, Gadamer thinks Heidegger’s narrative of Western metaphysics as necessarily culminating in nihilism is based on a univocal understanding of metaphysics.  Moreover, Gadamer discerns nihilistic tendencies in Heidegger’s own position, viz., a failure to consider the ways in which questions about the human good are fundamentally related to questions about Being (Beyond Being, p. 15).   For Gadamer, “Plato is not clearly the author of the so-called metaphysics of presence,” nor is metaphysics a “univocal phenomenon destined for the nihilism that dominates many parts of our culture” (p. 15).  Instead of seeing metaphysics as a dead end in need of overcoming, Gadamer “leaves the door open to the possibility that ‘metaphysics’ contains possibilities or resources for development that have not been adequately explored” (p. 15).  Interestingly, Gadamer’s project, in light of his openness to the ancient tradition and his appreciation for Heidegger’s work, attempts to synthesize the best of both worlds.  As Wachterhauser explains,

Not only does Gadamer’s hermeneutics rely on Heidegger’s insights into ‘self-manifesting Being, the Being of aletheia‘ but it attempts to expand these insights into a more fundamental ontological inquiry by reintroducing the fundamentally Platonic concern with the transcendentals (p. 15). 

So just what is Gadamer’s ontologico-hermeneutical strategy-a strategy that Wachterhauser claims carves out a path that bypasses the problems of relativism and ahistorical dogmatism?  First, Gadamer directs our attention to ontological questions, viz., what kind of being do works of art or texts possess that allows an identity in difference?  Here Wachterhauser introduces what he calls Gadamer’s “ontological perspectivism,” which claims that

things like texts are such that they contain within themselves different ‘faces’ or ‘looks’ that present themselves in different historically mediated contexts in such a way that we can say that it is possible for one and the same reality to show itself in many ways (p. 7). 

With his understanding of a non-univocal, non-staticized view of identity, Gadamer can, on the one hand, allow for the possibility of ever new (legitimate) interpretations, and on the other hand, because some kind of identity obtains, he can also regard other interpretations as illegitimate.  Here I propose a few of my own musical examples to further elucidate how Gadamer’s ontological perspectivism does not fall prey to relativism.  Jazz musicians often use what is called a “lead sheet” when learning a new piece of music.  A jazz lead sheet is similar to a notated score for a classical piece; however, only the melody is written out in standard musical notation.  Both the lead sheet and the classical score are “texts” that the musicians must engage and interpret in order for the music to, so to speak, appear.  In contrast, however, to the classical score in which the bass line, the chords, and more or less every note that will be played is written out in full notation, a lead sheet allows for much more flexibility.[1]   For example, above the melody one simply finds chord symbols, as opposed to chords displayed in standard notation with specific voicings.  Writing the chord symbols in this manner affords the pianist or guitarist, as well as the bassist, a significant amount of creative freedom in performing the piece.  However, we should be clear that this freedom does not swallow up the form or structure nor does it fundamentally alter the piece itself, as one must choose harmonies and bass lines that fall within a certain trajectory of the specified chord symbol that supports the melody and marks out the general harmonic structure of the piece.  Thus, with a jazz lead sheet, one is in a sense tied to the score, i.e., one must agree to submit to the givens that make the piece to be what it is and respond accordingly.   Yet, in other sense, one’s own personality, skill level, and creative sensibilities also come through making each performance something unique. (In Gadamer universe of discourse, a “fusion of horizons” occurs). One might even say that the flexibility that lead sheets afford, coupled with the distinctly human traits and personal idiosyncrasies that manifest in improvisation, in a sense engenders greater intelligibility and appeal to the piece itself.  That is, the built-in flexibility of lead sheets aids in preserving the piece through the passage of time while simultaneously allowing and even expecting various re-articulations because it has room for the creative expansions that inevitably come with temporal/historical progression and human interpretative endeavors.   

Just as in no way is it the case that when a jazz piece is performed and interpreted by various musicians from different time periods, a kind of free-for-all takes place in which the original melody is somehow destroyed, neither would it be the case according to Gadamer’s hermeneutical thesis that our interpretations have no strictures whatsoever and no relation to the to the text and even the author’s intentions.  (However, Gadamer would quickly add that our interpretations are not confined solely to the author’s intentions).  Though it is the case, that each jazz performance is distinctive, there is a common, yet dynamic range that unites each performance such that the melody is recognizable when played in a wide range of styles (from traditional to more avant-guard styles).  If one simply ignored the melody (text) and harmonic structure or distorted either such that they became completely unrecognizable, then clearly one has gone astray.  However, this is neither what I nor Gadamer have in mind.

In part III, I shall discuss in more detail Gadamer’s non-repetitious use of Platonic insights. 

Notes

In Job chapter 32, an interesting Melchizedek-like character appears on the scene, Elihu the Buzite.  Elihu is a mysterious fourth interlocutor who, though silent up to this point in the discourse perhaps due to his youth, now enters the conversation.  Chapter 32 opens by informing us that Job’s previous three interlocutors have been silenced, yet the text also says that at least part of the reason for their silence was due to that fact that Job considered himself “righteous in his own eyes.”  In light of the way in which that phrase is used in the book of Judges, one senses that perhaps Job is not as righteous as he has presumed.  That is, Job has no doubt been unjustly charged by his former dialogue partners because they had no category for the possibility of God’s chastening or testing his own.  Rather, they immediately concluded that Job’s suffering must be the result of his sin.  Job, then, rightly defended himself against their accusations; however, as the story unfolds and the conversational exchanges occur, Job begins to overstep his boundaries, and this is precisely what bothers Elihu and compels him to speak.  By the end of chapter 31, Job has defended himself well against his accusers; yet, as Reardon suggests, Job has gone too far. 

But has Job really demonstrated his right to hurl down a gauntlet to the Almighty?  Can anyone, in fact, rightly establish such a claim?  From a theological perspective it is imperative that Job now be challenged on this point, and it will be the responsibility of Elihu to do it.  Without the words of Elihu, the Book of Job would be a different book.  Elihu’s “summing up” prepares for the divine verdict on which the book will end (p. 84). 

Here we should also point out that Elihu’s criticisms are directed against both Job and his three comforters.  Moreover, Elihu does not claim to offer a final word, nor does he attempt to reduce things to an either/or scenario as did Job’s accusers.  In stark contrast with the tone of Job’s former dialogue partners, Elihu does not speak condescendingly to Job, but rather “confesses himself at one with Job in their human solidarity, their descent with Adam (Job 32:6-7). Yet, Elihu speaks rather frankly with Job, charging Job with an improper pretentiousness with regard to his claims to be without transgression and his demand that God give him an explanation for his sufferings (32:9-14).  As Reardon puts it, “God is greater than man,” which is to say, “God owes man no explanations at all” (p. 85).  Elihu is also concerned that Job be made aware of God’s presence in Job’s sufferings and does not presume that suffering is always connected with punishment (32:19-30).  Then in chapter 34, Elihu presents his thesis directly, viz., “God sends afflictions not only to punish, but also to admonish,” and if received, these afflictions are restorative and salutary (p. 87).  Elihu believes that neither Job nor his comforters have adequately entertained this possibility.  In order that his argument advance,

Elihu must put to rest any notion of injustice in God.  Such an idea involves an internal contradiction, Elihu contends (verses 10, 12); the very existence of the world depends on the thesis of God’s righteousness (verses 13-15).  There is no justice higher than God (verse 17), nor is the Almighty likely to be influenced by the more powerful of His creatures (verse 19).  Truly, nothing in man’s experience is hidden from the gaze of God (verses 21-22).  The font and source of justice, God holds all human activity to the same standard and the same sanctions (verses 24-28).  What Job’s comforters should have asserted is that God, through the sufferings that He has sent to Job, had only the latter’s proper correction in mind (verses 31-32).  The insistence of his friends, however, that Job was being justly punished for his crimes simply provoked him to an improper assertion of his innocence.  It was the responsibility of these men, says Elihu, to provide Job with proper instruction.  The ineptitude of their arguments has served only to incit the sufferer into open rebellion against the Almighty (verses 35-37).  Moreover, Job’s call for a trial, in which he might argue his case against God, distorts the proper relationship between God and man. God is not man’s enemy or opponent.  God needs opponents no more than He needs powerful friends, nor does He ever act from a sense of need (p. 88). 

All citations are taken from Patrick Henry Reardon, The Trial of Job:  Orthodox Reflectiosn on the Book of Job.

Brice R. Wachterhauser, in his book, Beyond Being:  Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontololgy, argues that Gadamer’s hermeneutical studies must be read in dialogue with his work on Plato in order to properly understand a number of Gadamer’s significant hermeneutical insights, as well as to avoid common misreadings of Gadamer.     In other words, Wachterhauser’s claim is that crucial Gadamerian hermeneutical claims presuppose his interpretation of Plato, particularly the later Plato and a Plato whom Aristotle would find more palatable.  As Wachterhauser explains,

unlike some commentators who think the Parmenides represents a definitive rejection of the Ideas, Gadamer thinks it reveals a common, mistaken interpretation of the Ideas, an interpretation that Plato himself may have inadvertently contributed to, but one which he never intended when he introduced the theme of the Ideas.  According to Gadamer, the Parmenides teaches us that we should not think about Ideas as discrete transcendental realities.  Instead we should think of the Ideas as internally related to each other and the things they inform.  Thus they cannot be defined without various kinds of logically complex relationships to each other and to the things which instantiate them.  And instead of thinking of them as occupying a transcendental realm of their own-a kind of repository of discrete ideal types-we should think of them as immanent to the things they inform, without being identical to them” (p. 5). 

In sum, according to Gadamer, Plato’s later dialogues show a greater depth in his thinking concerning the nature of methexis (participation), and consequently, they are not to be taken as Plato’s self-critical razing of his previous work. 

Among the most important findings in Plato’s later dialogues are insights concerning what later thinkers call “transcendentals” (being, unity, truth, beauty etc.).  On Gadamer’s read, Plato, in his later dialogues, was attempting to work out the problems of his comprehensive ontological vision via deeper a understanding of the transcendentals in order to correct a false understanding of the Ideas, viz., the interpretation that the “Ideas represent a second, transcendent reality wholly detached from the realm of ordinary things and logically distinct from each other” (p. 5). 

Wachterhauser then attempts to support his thesis regarding the importance of Gadamer’s interpretation of the later Plato for his hermeneutical writings by discussing one of the central concerns of Gadamer’s magnum opus, Truth and Method, viz., identity and difference as it relates to interpretation. With regard to identity, we have the claim that a text or a work of art exhibits unity or oneness and thus has only one meaning (or one finite set of meanings).  Yet, it seems impossible to deny that many valid interpretations exist for the very same text or work of art.  Likewise, in order to gain access to the identity of the text or work, we cannot bypass the interpretative process.  But admitting these claims seems to land us in an uncomfortable position, as the “diversity of interpretations threatens to dissolve the identity of the work” (p. 6).  And after all, if we lose the identity of the work, then how are we to discern a legitimate interpretation from an illegitimate one?  According to Wachterhauser, Gadamer provides a way out of this hermeneutical despair. 

Gadamer is neither a relativist or subjectivist who would say that interpreters may legitimately impute any meaning to the work, nor is he oblivious to the reality of genuinely legitimate but diverse interpretations.  Instead, Gadamer always has his eye on clarifying the unique type of identity that characterizes the objects of interpretation.  In this vein, he writes, ‘we ask what this identity is that presents itself so differently in the changing course of ages and circumstances.  It does not disintegrate into the changing aspects of itself so that it would lose all identity, but it is there in them all.  They all belong to it’ (TM, 121). His intent is to describe this identity in a plausible way that leaves room for multiple interpretations, without falling into the morass of relativism or the iron cage of dogmatism.  This issue is at the very heart of Truth and Method.  Key to his hermeneutics is the thesis that works like texts always present themselves differently in different historical circumstances, but they do so in such a way that they neither lose their identity nor safeguard it by unduly restricting its possible meaning (p. 6). 

Stay tuned for more…

Joel at Sacra Doctrina has a very interesting post on Reformed views of the visible Church:  On the Church visible. 

Andy continues his series on some of Jamie Smith’s works:  Part I and Part II. 

Daniel has two posts discussing Henri de Lubac: “On Christian Philosophy”:  Part I and Part II.

Bret blogs on Catholic Apologetics at the Threshold of Modernity. 

Jonathan has a number of posts discussing Reformed Orthodoxy.  In this post he discusses Richard Muller’s scholarly contributions. 

After several conversations with friends, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, I have formulated the following (rough, very unpolished) proposed reading of Augustine’s spiritual journey.  In light of the fact that it would take significantly more research to substitiate this thesis properly, I doubt that I will use it in my paper for the Villanova conference, but I do think that there may be something to it and plan to revisit it at a later date.  Comments, criticisms, and literature recommendations are most welcome.  Thanks also to all who have helped me to think through problem areas.

***

Could it be the case that Augustine became a believer in Christ during his time as a catechumen under the spiritual care of Ambrose within the context of the Church?  If so, then it would seem to be the case that Augustine already possessed faith in Christ well before the famous garden scene in book VIII.  We know that it was through Ambrose that Augustine acquired a new hermeneutical orientation to Scripture, and since Ambrose was part of what we might call the premodern Christian interpretative tradition, it seems plausible to conclude that Augustine’s new hermeneutical approach (which was likely also practiced by Ambrose in the sermons that Augustine was hearing) involved reading the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, i.e., I am suggesting that it is conceivable that Augustine had embraced a Christocentric reading of Scripture by way of Ambrose. If that is correct, then perhaps this might also support the view that Augustine had become a believer in Christ during his catechumen stage and prior to his baptism-(when exactly, who knows and who cares-the more significant point that I am trying to argue is that Augustine had faith in Christ well before book VIII). In fact, a comment made by Augustine the narrator at the end of book V might be interpreted to support my proposal. As Augustine reflects on his reasons for coming to Milan and his encounter with Ambrose, he writes,”[u]nknowingly I was led by you to him [Ambrose], so that though him I might be led, knowingly, to you [God].”^[1] In other words, although the young Augustine did not recognize God’s providence directing him to Ambrose while existentially experiencing those (now) past events, Augustine the narrator informs us that God had in fact used his friendship with Ambrose to bring him into friendship with God. And this, I claim, can only come about by grace through faith in Christ.  To be more specific, my proposal is that Augustine had already moved from a state of unbelief to a state of belief (in Christ) during his time as a catechumen in the Catholic Church and that by Augustine the narrator’s own testimony, Ambrose played an instrumental role in this movement.  If this is case, then perhaps what we see in books VII and VIII are a deepening of Augustine’s, as he calls it, “unformed” faith (fides). 

In book VII, two passages in particular seem to support this reading.  The first passage is found at VII.5.7, where Augustine the narrator says, “Faith in your Christ, our Lord and Savior, as I found it in the Catholic Church, still persisted steadfastly in my heart, though it was a faith still in many ways unformed, wavering and at a variance with the norm of her teaching. Yet my mind did not abandon it, but drank it in ever more deeply as the days passed”^[2] (Boulding trans., p. 164). The second passage occurs at VII.7.11, where again Augustine the narrator says, “[s]o it was that you, my helper, had already freed me from those bonds [i.e., false teachings], but I was still trying to trace the cause of evil, and found no way out of the difficulty. Yet you allowed no flood of thoughts to sweep me away from the faith whereby I believed that you exist, that your essence is unchangeable, that you care for us humans and judge our deeds, and that in your Son, Christ our Lord, and in the holy scriptures which the authority of your Catholic Church guarantees, you have laid down the way for human beings to reach that eternal life which awaits for us after death.  These beliefs were unaffected, and persisted strong and unshaken in me as I feverishly searched for the origin of evil”^[3] (Ibid., p. 168; emphases added). These passages, at least from my vantage point, seem to strongly suggest that Augustine was already a believer in Christ; and hence, a Christian, though one yet unbaptized.^[4]

Early in book VIII, Augustine writes that he no longer desired “greater certainty” about God, “but a more steadfast abiding” in Him (Ibid., p. 131).^[5] Augustine then describes what continued to keep him from a more steadfast abiding, viz., his “bondage to a woman.” Here Augustine seems to suggest that he already had a relationship with Christ; yet, his continual yielding to sin was preventing deeper intimacy in his experience of Christ. When we finally reach the famous garden scene, we find Augustine in a state of spiritual turmoil-on the one hand, longing to embrace Christ more intimately, yet lacking the power to do so. 

It is also interesting to me that Augustine employs a number of Romans 7 allusions in this section of the Confessions. My interpretation of Romans 7 is that it speaks of Paul as a believer who still struggles with sin (and is not a flashback to his life before his experience on the road to Damascus; however, I am not sure whether this is the interpretation that Augustine held in the Confessions (though I have recently heard that in his writings against the Pelagians, Augustine, did follow the interpretation of Romans 7 that I suggest).  Lastly, my proposal would seem to harmonize well with pastoral concerns that Augustine the Bishop no doubt had.  That is, keeping in mind the multiple audiences that Augustine was addressing, e.g., believers and unbelievers, the believers would be particularly encouraged by Augustine’s story-a story that suggests that one’s faith unfolds slowly, maturing with time and that Christ is sufficient to meet all of life’s challenges (whether intellectual, moral, emotional or whatever). 

Notes

^[2] stabiliter tamen haerebat in corde meo in Catholica ecclesia fides Christi tui, domini et salvatoris nostri, in multis quidem adhuc informis et praeter doctrinae normam fluitans; sed tamen non eam relinquebat animus, immo in dies magis magisque inbibebat (VII.5.7).  “Yet, firmly fixed [haerebat] in my heart was this faith of your Christ, our Lord and Savior as found in the Catholic Church-a faith no doubt in many ways unformed and wavering from her doctrinal norm; yet, my soul/mind did not forsake it, but absorbed it more and more as the days passed” (my translation).

 ^[3] Iam itaque me, adiutor meus, illis vinculis solveras, et quaerebam, unde malum, et non erat exitus. sed me non sinebas ullis fluctibus cogitationis auferri ab ea fide, qua credebam et esse te, et esse inconmutabilem substantiam tuam, et esse de hominibus curam et iudicium tuum; et in Christo, filio tuo, domino nostro, atque scripturis sanctis, quas ecclesiae tuae Catholicae commendaret auctoritas, viam te posuisse salutis humanae ad eam vitam, quae post hanc mortem futura est. his itaque salvis atque inconcusse roboratis in animo meo, quaerebam aestuans, unde sit malum (VII.7.11). 

^[4] The fact that in the two passages from book VII Augustine uses fides instead of assentio in relation to Christ seems significant.  That is, not only is it a scriptural way to speak, but it points to a fiduciary element particularly when this faith in Christ (or of Christ) is connected with the authority of the Catholic Church (as it the case in both passages). 

^[5] At the end of book V, Augustine the narrator informs us that he had decided to live as a catechumen in the Catholic Church “until some kind of certainty dawned by which I might direct my steps aright” (V.25).   In light of my thesis, perhaps now that Augustine’s faith has matured and deepened, he no longer seeks this “certainty” that he had pursued as a younger believer.  Some will quickly point out that the reason that he no longer desired greater certainty was due to the treasures that he pillaged from the Platonists; however, as Augustine’s writings demonstrate, we know that he continued to wrestle with a number of intellectual and theological problems throughout this career and that he would never have considered himself to have comprehended God or all things theological.  With these two points in mind, it seems plausible to suggest that as Augustine grew in his faith and knowledge of God, he abandoned the quest for certainty, particularly the kind of (mathematical) certainty that he had sought as a young man. 

Below are additional thoughts/findings related to my ongoing Augustine/Gadamer paper. 

***

Interestingly, those who, in the spirit of B. Spinoza, adopt a strict grammatico-historical method of interpreting Scripture tend to embrace only the literal or historical sense of Scripture.  Likewise, those advocating this methodological stance often claim to interpret Scripture in an unbiased manner, free from all prejudices and uncritical claims of authority.  Postmoderns, of course, are very suspicious of this alleged neutrality, and from a certain perspective, premoderns are as well.  For example, as Henri de Lubac indicates (and Augustine would agree), the Church Fathers and medievals openly acknowledged their dependence on tradition and the interpretations handed down to the Church by the apostles and their successors.  “Right from the beginning, in the first century of the Church’s existence, at the time of the very first generation of Christians, it was a matter of Scripture being read or the word of God being heard in the Church and interpreted by Tradition.”[1]  So we see that the Church from its very inception openly acknowledged her dependence on the interpretative authority of her leaders-Christ being the chief interpreter, who in turn instructed the apostles, and they in turn faithfully taught others.  Moreover, neither the Church Fathers nor the medievals approached Scripture as just another human book or piece of literature to be studied or examined scientifically, much less as something to be dissected and treated atomistically.  Rather, Holy Scripture was first and foremost understood as the very word of God, which having many parts is nonetheless, one story, written ultimately by One Author, and culminating in One Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.[2]  In other words, instead of approaching Scripture as a collection of divergent and contradicting accounts, the Christian comes to Scripture assuming its unity because she understands both testaments as unfolding one drama whose main actor is Christ.[3] 

As Gadamer points out, in stark contrast with premodern hermeneutical practices, the modern Enlightenment critique is directed against the Christian tradition and in particular, against the authority of Scriptural tradition.  “In general, the Enlightenment tends to accept no authority and to decide everything before the judgment seat of reason.  Thus the written tradition of Scripture, like any other historical document, can claim no absolute validity; the possible truth of the tradition depends on the credibility that reason accords it.  It is not tradition but reason that constitutes the ultimate source of all authority.”[4]  Here, as well as in other places, Gadamer alludes to a kind of pride exhibited by modern Enlightenment figures in their claim to be free of all prejudices and to insist that we “accept no authority” but rather “decide everything before the judgment seat of reason.” If this is correct, then perhaps Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment shares another point of contact with Augustine’s hermeneutical views as elaborated in the Confessions, viz., the idea that virtue and vice affect one’s interpretative endeavors. In other words, it seems to be the case that at least part of Gadamer’s critique involves the claim that the Enlightenment proponents exhibited a lack of humility (and hence a vice) which blinded them from seeing that their own position was driven by a “prejudice against prejudice itself.”
Notes

[2] De Lubac in describing the two Testaments not as two books but rather as two dispensations or covenants also alludes to the progressive unfolding of Scripture in redemptive history.  “The goal of the one that is prior in time is to prepare the way for the second.  But this is not what merits them those respective terms of ‘old’ and ‘new.’  The New Testament does not take its name solely from the fact that it comes second in time. It is not merely ‘modern.’  It is the last word, in an absolute sense [...] The New Covenant is not repeated.  It is completed and fulfilled once and for all” (Medieval Exegesis, p. 227).

[3] As Thomas Martin observes, Augustine communicates the unity of Scripture in the way he chooses to structure book XII of the Confessions.  “The very tapestry of scriptural texts that permeate the entire narrative where Old Testament verses and allusions are inextricably intertwined with New Testament verses and allusions becomes an operative demonstration of the unity between the Old and the New Testaments and the vitality of their interrelationship.  Book Twelve’s exploration of the opening words of Genesis is done by way of a deluge of New Testament citations, and once again the careful reader knows that this is not simply rhetorical amplification or incidental ornamentation.  What is being demonstrated is the unity of the Bible, the very antithesis of a Manichean reading of the Bible” (”Book Twelve:  Exegesis and Confessio,” p. 190). 

[4] Truth and Method, p. 272. 

Through a very helpful dialogue with a friend, I am beginning to question the claim that Augustine had an intellectual conversion in book VII of the Confessions, and then a moral conversion in book VIII.   Instead of a twofold conversion, perhaps Augustine’s one conversion occurred as early as book V through his interaction with Ambrose (as if we could pinpoint a precise time, but nonetheless) and then later in book VIII, as Augustine grew in faith, he became increasingly convicted of his immoral living and through God’s grace was released from his sexual bondage.  

A related question also arose in the dialogue with my friend, viz., is Aristotle’s virtue theory able to give a satisfactory account of Augustine’s moral status prior to and during his conversion?  E.g., one could argue that in the early books of the Confessions, Augustine seems to be in a vicious state (using Aristotle’s categories), yet by book VII he has, as a result of his (one) supernatural conversion moved to a state of incontinence (not possible on Aristotle’s view) and then by book VIII Augustine has (again by God’s grace) become continent.  Regarding Augustine’s supposed intellectual conversion in book VII, it would seem that even though his focus is on what he learned from the Platonists (e.g., he is now able to conceive of God in a non-corporeal way), the fact that he perceives something missing in the writings of the Platonists (e.g., the Incarnation, Christ’s self-emptying, His resurrection from the dead, etc.) seems to presuppose at minimum that he already possessed some knowledge of these teachings as Christian distinctives.  The fact that Augustine judges the Platonists’ writings as deficient suggests that he not only knew about these Christian distinctives but also believed them to be true. 

Thoughts? 

According to Gadamer, we all have “fore-meanings” that we bring to the text-meanings that we each employ as a kind of standard in our attempts to understand the text.  If this is the case and my fore-meanings do not exactly match your fore-meanings, are we in a hopeless hermeneutical situation?  Gadamer answers with an emphatic “no.” Upon closer examination, explains Gadamer,

we find that meanings cannot be understood in an arbitrary way.  Just as we cannot continually misunderstand the use of a word without its affecting the meaning of the whole, so we cannot stick blindly to our own fore-meaning about the thing if we want to understand the meaning of another (Truth and Method, p. 268). 

This is not to suggest that in our attempts to understanding another person’s meaning we must somehow eradicate ourselves of our own fore-meanings-how could one perform such an impossible feat anyway?  Rather, according to Gadamer,

we must remain open to the meaning of the other person or text.  But this openness always includes our situating the other meaning in relation to the whole of our own meanings or ourselves in relation to it (Ibid., p. 268).

Gadamer seems to have a rather dynamic view of meanings, or perhaps one might say, he speaks more in favor of an analogical rather than a univocal concept of meaning.  This dynamic understanding of meaning, however, does not result in a kind of hermeneutical anarchy. 

[M]eanings represent a fluid multiplicity of possibilities (in comparison to the agreement presented by a language and a vocabulary), but within this multiplicity of what can be thought-i.e., of what a reader can find meaningful and hence expect to find-not everything is possible; and if a person fails to hear what the other person is really saying, he will not be able to fit what he has misunderstood into the range of his own various expectations of meaning.  Thus there is a criterion here also.  The hermeneutical task becomes of itself a questioning of things and is always in part so defined (Ibid., p. 269).

Gadamer goes on to explain that a person who truly desires to understand the text will not simply rely on her own fore-meanings, but instead will allow the text to speak to her.  In fact, this is in part what it means to exercise a “hermeneutically trained consciousness,” viz., to be “from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity” (Ibid., p. 269).  Yet, as we mentioned above, this hermeneutical sensitivity,

involves neither “neutrality” with respect to content nor the extinction of one’s own fore-meanings and prejudices.  The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings (Ibid., p. 269). 

According to Gadamer, romanticism shares a certain schema of the philosophy of history with the Enlightenment. In its reaction to the Enlightenment, romanticism takes this schema as a premise, viz., “the schema of the conquest of mythos by logos.”  Gadamer goes on to say, “[w]hat gives this schema its validity is the presupposition of the progressive retreat of magic in the world. It is supposed to represent progress in the history of the mind, and precisely because romanticism disparages this development, it takes over the schema itself as a self-evident truth.  It shares the presupposition of the Enlightenment and only reverses its values, seeking to establish the validity of what is old simply on the fact that it is old [...] the romantic reversal of the Enlightenment’s criteria of value actually perpetuates the abstract contrast between myth and reason.  All criticism of the Enlightenment now proceeds via this romantic mirror image of the Enlightenment.  Belief in the perfectibility of reason suddenly changes into the perfection of the ‘mythical’ consciousness and finds itself reflected in a paradisiacal state before the ‘fall’ of thought” (Truth and Method, pp. 274-275).

Corrine Crammer, in her article, “Balthasar’s Theology of the Sexes,” engages Balthasar’s views on gender and concludes that Balthasar’s theology of the sexes, though well-intended, is ultimately incoherent. If you have been following this blog for at least the last three months, you should know that I am a huge fan of Balthasar and am even considering writing my dissertation on Balthasar; however, I found Crammer’s essay quite provocative and at this time convincing on a number of points. I do not have time to present her analysis in its entirety, but I will briefly summarize her conclusions.

As Crammer points out, Balthasar wants a two-sex/two gender model (in the terminology of Laqueur) in which we have genuine difference yet equality;[1] however, despite his good intentions, according to Crammer, he ends up with a one-sex/two gender model in which Woman is defined by the Male and provides what the Male lacks-she serves as a kind of boundary for the man “and never truly exists as a subject and actor.”[2] According to Balthasar, the feminine is essentially characterized by receptivity and obedience; whereas the masculine is essentially characterized by action, initiative, and leadership-all highly problematic claims in my opinion, which do not correspond with my own experience as a woman or with what I have observed in other women.[3] For Balthasar, Man is question, and Woman is Answer (Antwort; hence, Woman is not an actor but a reactor, not an initiator but a responder. Balthasar bases his argument in part on the fact that the German word Antwort is feminine and not neuter, which violates the typical rule for German nouns made up of two words, viz., the new word reflects the gender of the of the second morpheme.[4] I find this aspect of his argument rather odd and arbitrary. For example, in Russian, the word for answer is ответ (otvyet), which consists of two morphemes mirroring the German in meaning and function, the latter of which is вет (vyet) meaning “say” or “speech,” and yet, the word is masculine. So why privilege the German? Balthasar also uses the metaphor of Woman as reflecting gaze (Antlitz) or mirror in which her gaze is fixed on Man; whereas, in contrast, Man’s gaze is able to look around and is not fixed solely on Woman. Both metaphors seem to make Balthasar’s Woman both overdetermined and underdetermined. Crammer then employs Marilyn Frye’s Venn diagrams to help further illustrate her point.

Rather than constructing a model of human sexual difference as a truly dualistic schema [here meaning a true dyad, wherein genuine difference exists] of A/B [and hence allowing for genuine difference], I believe that Balthasar constructs a fundamentally monistic A/not A model [...]. As Frye points out, to be an A (or B) is to be something or someone, whereas not A is not something anyone can be. Using the image of Venn circles, she describes A/not A as a single circle: everything inside that circle is A, everything outside the circle is not A-a category or space she describes as ‘the infinitation of the negative’. A/not A splits the world, but not into two, since not A is an infinite undifferentiated plenum, unstructured and formless, a chaos without internal boundaries. A/not A is therefore a dualism and cannot construct two things-there are no ‘somethings’ outside the circle drawn around A. Using this diagram, Woman provides the line that creates the circle defining Man. In this ‘positive-negative mirror-logic’, everything that man is, Woman is not; everything that Woman must be, man cannot have been.’[5]

In the end, Crammer sees Balthasar’s theology of the sexes, in spite of his affirmation of the equality of women and desire to present a two-sex/two gender model as incoherent and unintentionally “reproducing the one-sex model in which the normative human being is implicitly male and Woman’s definition is based around Man, particularly around what Man is seen to need Woman to be. The result of this methodology is that Woman in Balthasar’s theology lacks substance, subjectivity, and a voice of her own.”[6]

Notes

[3] E.g., Balthasar writes, “[i]t is the natural role of a man to command, but in profound dependence on the planning, careful woman. He symbolizes freedom, but now, how would round he is by clinging ivy, which often threatens to choke him-by wife and children, home and profession, a knot of cares” (Theological Anthropology, p. 309).

 [4] Balthasar also, of course, turns to Scripture for his argument, particularly Gen 2:23 and I Cor 11:7. Here I would to want ask how Gen 1:26-28 and Gal 3:28 are to be understood within Balthasar’s theology of the sexes? For example, in Gen 1:26-28, God gives dominion over the earth to both the man and the woman.

[5] “Balthasar’s Theology of the Sexes,” pp. 101-103.

[6] Ibid., p. 102.

In preparing for the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference this fall at Villanova, I have been reviewing texts by Augustine and Gadamer, as one of the goals of my paper (see abstract) is to bring the two into fruitful conversation. 

According to Gadamer, though it is the case that our prejudices and presuppositions can and do set limits on our interpretative endeavors, it is not the case that our prejudices are unalterable nor are they always active in a negative, confining way.  Rather, they can and do often have a positive or productive function (contra Enlightenment assertions) and actually help to promote understanding.  For example, Gadamer writes,

Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word [pre-judgment], constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience.  Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world.  They are simply the conditions whereby we experience something-whereby what we encounter says something to us.  This formulation certainly does not mean that we are enclosed within a wall of prejudices and only let through the narrow portals those things that can produce a pass saying, ‘Nothing new will be said here’ (emphasis added).[1]

Here we should highlight several pertinent aspects from the passage above.  First, biases and pre-judgments can actually be true and reasonable.  Second, paradoxically our prejudices in a sense both make possible our openness to reality and change and simultaneously delimit our openness to other options once a decision is made either for or against whatever is being considered.  Third, through our dialogic encounter with a text or an individual, the possibility arises for us to become aware of our prejudices and to have them altered or perhaps done away with completely.  Perhaps here it is helpful to recall Augustine’s description of his encounter with Ambrose’s teaching and how his increasing openness to Ambrose’s teaching was due in part to Ambrose’s oratory skills.  The fact that Augustine possessed a positive predisposition toward those skilled in rhetoric was a significant factor in Augustine’s willingness to listen to Ambrose in the first place.  Such openness of course does not guarantee that one will embrace that which is presented (whether in a verbal or textual dialogue)-here Faustus is a case in point.  With Faustus, additional factors hindered Augustine’s acceptance of his teachings, viz., through Augustine’s study of certain philosophers, he had come to see their views on natural science as more convincing than the Manichean doctrines.  The deficiency of the Manichee position on these points was evident in Faustus’ speech; hence, Augustine found the content wanting.  In contrast, Augustine describes his experience with Ambrose as follows:  “[A]s his words, which I enjoyed, penetrated my mind, the substance, which I overlooked, seeped in with them, for I could not separate the two.  As I opened my heart to appreciate how skillfully he spoke, the recognition that he was speaking the truth crept in at the same time, though only by slow degrees.”[2]  Of course Augustine the narrator would want to point out the mysterious workings of God’s grace in his encounter with Ambrose (a claim with which I tend to agree); however, I don’t think that one’s affirmation of this claim negates Gadamer’s observations about the positive role of prejudices-observations which in my opinion give us valuable insight into Augustine’s two experiences from a kind of hermeneutico-existential perspective. 

Bibliography

Augustine.  Confessions. Trans., Maria Boulding.  Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997. 

Gadamer, Hans-Georg.  Philosophical Hermeneutics.  Trans. and ed., David E. Linge. 
     Berkeley:  Univ. of California Press, 1977. 

Notes

Robert McMahon, in his essay, “The Creation of the Church as the Paradigm for the Confessions,” suggests that in order to understand both the dynamism and the structure of the Confessions, one must distinguish between Augustine the narrator and Augustine the author.  If one is attentive to this distinction, then one is able to discern certain parallels between the two Augustines, as well as the unity of the book as a whole.  For example, just as God providentially lead Augustine to faith in what appeared to him in his existential experience as a series of direction-less meanderings, God also guides Augustine the narrator in all his seeming digressions in the Confessions.  “In other words, the Confessions does not merely tell a story about God’s providential grace in Augustine’s life.  Rather, its very literary form enacts, moment by moment, the dialectic between divine grace and human freedom in its unfolding prayer.”[1]  As Augustine the narrator dialogues with God, the course of his prayer, though unfolding dynamically with the freedom to go this way or that, proves providential in the end because “its course emerges from the dynamism of his dialogue with God.”  McMahon goes on to say that “the Confessions unites speech about God with the action of God:  as a dialogue with God, the work does what it says, is what it talks about.  Its literary form embodies providence and grace.”[2]  Consequently, form and content cannot be separated in the Confessions. 

In addition, McMahon suggests that the common claim by many scholars that the Confessions lacks unity is due to the failure to recognize the “two Augustines” mentioned above. 

To be sure, Augustine the narrator has no plan for his prayer, for it unfolds in the dynamism of his dialogue with God, with all its digressions and discoveries.  But Augustine the author had a plan for the whole, for he structured it as a return to the Origin.  The Confessions thereby reflects human experience as Christians understand it:  the seeming planlessness in its small-scale movements is taken up into God’s providential structure over the whole.  If we think there is only “one Augustine” in the work, we cannot see this structure, because Augustine the narrator never remarks on it.  In order to grasp the unity of the Confessions and Augustine’s achievement in designing it, we must distinguish what its narrator says from the large-scale structure designed by its author.  Once we have distinguished them, we can see the Confessions’ unity of texture and structure, planlessness and plan, in the narrator’s turning to God at every moment and his return to the Origin enacted over the whole.[3]