Tilting at windmills redux

[Devadatta]

That’s the problem with saying stuff here – you never know when someone’s going to come along and dig it up again.

I’ve just read through a debate from like 5 years ago between Bob x and BB, all about Redaction Theory or the Document Hypothesis.

It was an interesting debate, though as a lot of these things tend to do it seemed to wind down into mutual incomprehension. But BB was as entertaining as ever. Even when I totally disagree I have to admit he makes his points in a far more lively fashion than most of us do.

As usual for me, it comes down to a question of language. The dispute here is between the discourse of Athens and the discourse of Jerusalem, as BB sometimes puts it.

I guess it’s obvious that every discourse, like every game, has it rules. You don’t apply the rules of chess to basketball, except very selectively. And I guess BB might say that you don’t apply the rules of Athens to Jerusalem, except selectively.

This I think is BB’s most salient point: that within his tradition in particular the hermeneutics have been worked out that are mutually consistent (or consistent enough) and that one can not easily interject a foreign method or logic without damaging or falsifying that consistency.

Bob x, on the other hand, applies from outside the tradition a discourse of reason, or of Athens, that subverts and distorts the discourse of faith that informs the tradition from within.

Here, if I understand “faith” correctly, BB is not talking about “belief” or any notion that requires evidence as such. “Faith” is an inner disposition that allows for certain experiences. If we allow that such experiences are in effect a kind of knowledge, then “faith” like “reason” is a means to knowledge.

The heart has its reasons that the reason knows not, Pascal said. Some contemporary philosopher types like to talk about “embodiment”. That makes sense to me, since it’s just a physiological fact that we are not some little calculating machine sitting atop a marionette, whose strings we pull. We touch reality intimately, at all points, at every instant. Human reason, and consciousness, as not a few have noticed is like a flashlight in the darkness; it can illuminate only a one point at a time.

On the other side, however, Bob x might say that the problem with the heart and its reasons is that the heart can make up any reasons it likes. He might say – if he were as impolitic as me – that it’s the various discourses of faith that have already misapplied themselves, gone beyond their jurisdictions, violated other spheres of discourse. He might say that the faith traditions brought the club of reason on themselves.

It’s a question I guess of the various human discourses and how they interact.

On an individual level, many of us seem able to pass between the most widely divergent discourses with no apparent cognitive dissonance. Most of us live the greater part of our lives as good little Aristotelians, eschewing the excluded middle at every turn. At the same time we’re able to flip a switch and enter a world full of logical impossibilities. I think most of us who are reasonably well balanced can handle this.

The problem I think is far more difficult on the social level. As long as a particular discourse goes along tickety-boo benefiting its participants without harm to others then certainly there’s little call to meddle with its logic. It would be like watching a chess game and complaining to its participants that you didn’t like their rules for moving knights and pawns. (This is on the assumption that what they’re doing isn’t some foul cruelty; there you have every human right to let them know you think they’re foul. Here is the crucial distinction between pluralism and relativism.)

So if Christians and Muslims stuck to building beautiful cathedrals and mosques, administering to the poor and sick and making peace between warring parties, who would ever criticize their theology, deconstruct their holy books or rewrite their founders’ biographies?

Unlike my usual practice, I won’t beat this into the ground. But one other point: BB rightly points out that anti-Semitism played a role in bible criticism, especially in 19th century Germany. But these days it’s more likely to be lapsed or liberal Christians who are really going after other Christians (and Muslims). Unfortunately, to get at their real targets they have no choice but to pass through the bible on the way, it being a founding set of documents. Of course much more must have gone into the creation of these ideologies than simply the bible, so certainly it’s not altogether fair. But there it is.

[juantoo3]

That is quite an insightful post Devadatta. Thank you for that.

Athens and Jerusalem, reason and faith, science and religion (usually Christianity)...so many false dichotomies with eager zealots willing to defend to the death their "magisteria."

[Devadatta]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

That is quite an insightful post Devadatta. Thank you for that.

Athens and Jerusalem, reason and faith, science and religion (usually Christianity)...so many false dichotomies with eager zealots willing to defend to the death their "magisteria."

Cheers, Juan. Hope all is well with you. (My own magisterium is held over a tiny expanse firmly located somwhere in the realm of fools.)

[bananabrain]

i think that's rather a good summary, devadatta - and elegantly written besides. but did you have a question?

b'shalom

bananabrain