This morning, minutes after I saw (on BBC TV) the
Senate pass the health bill, Norman Gottwald emailed me permission to share with
you the interchange below.
You know Norman at least from his ('59) "A Light to
the Nations: An Introduction to the OT" + ('79) "The Tribes of Yahweh: A
Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel" + ('85) "The Hebrew Bible: A
Socio-Literary Introduction." I've known him 64 years, since he began
to learn Greek from me, then became my assistant in Hebrew & Greek.
/ Before you read the below, I have a few reflections this Christmas
Eve:
1
Norman - for as long as I've known him, &
probably longer - has steading viewed human societies from the bottom up,
something he picked up from Jesus, whose mother sang of how upsetting this way
of seeing could be (L.1.51-53). (In the same vein, Tolstoy said judge a
society "by its prisons.")
2
"All the way down" has become a common phrase for
thoroughness - e.g., that something is true "all the way down." Well, it's
hard for POWER to see all the way down to
POWERLESSNESS. The palace lights blind against seeing the people
outside in the darkness. From the Herodium, Herod could see Bethlehem; but
he paid no attention to its babies until he heard that one of them might grow up
to compete for his power. And he was wise to fear: all the way down, in
and under that Baby, was a Power greater than his. All the way down to the
center of the earth & of the universe.
3
Norman's PhD dissertation was on
Lamentations. I suspected that he might have written "Lamentations" in
"Harper's Bible Commentary" (1988), checked, & found that he did (when
teaching at NYTheological Seminary). Its five poetic laments are models of
"grief work" ministry as their composers sweat out a "theology of active
engagement with national crisis," communicating "directly and concretely with
the demoralized survivors of 586 B.C" (the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem and
exile of its upper classes) - Lamentations thus providing "a paradigm by
which Jews and Christians might struggle with the meanings of calamity and work
out strategies for living through world-shaking catastrophes...."
(Sidebar: At UTS/NY, Norman's PhD mentor [James Muilenburg] said to me, in
Norman's presence, "If you and I, in our teaching careers, have two students of
Norman's quality, we will be successes.")
4
LAMENTATIANS, a "paradigm" for ministry to "the
demoralized" in "world-shaking catastrophes" - including those of the 21st
century: 9/11 (religion-based terrorism), econo-bubbies (Wall St., Main St., no
st. [the homeless]), eco-deterioration (desertification,
air/soil/water-pollution).....Theology's task is sense-making when "It just
doesn't make sense" a sense-sorting when the people are confused by a profusion
of senses (clashing paradigms). The preformative, elliptical question for
this task is this: What is God doing in light of what is happening to the
people? Theology can be done without reference to what is happening to the
people, but Bible-based theology cannot.
5
More than any of the other prophets, JEREMIAH uses
the lament-form. He bewails the corrupt, degenerate behavior of Judah's
political, religious, even prophetic leadership, & proclaims that
Babylon's pressure on Judah is of YHWH's doing: "Babylon would offer
openings for renewed reformation along the lines of Josiah's aborted efforts"
(p403 of Norman's "The Hebrew Bible..."). Jeremiah's "coexistence" party
focused on what was happening to the people of Judah, against their rulers'
"autonomy" party, which focused on what would happen to their power if Babylon
overran Jerusalem. Conflict: "interstate" or "interclass." Power say
Jeremiah's behavior as treasonous, but (p404) he (& his "party") were
nonviolent, looking to "the impending intervention of Babylon to overturn a
status quo they viewed as prejudicial to the real interests of the people
and inimical to the known will of Yahweh" (which was the social equality of the
pre-monarchic, tribal communities - a continuous theme through Norman's
writings). / Again, so much potential light on today's world.
Can self-interested power (e.g., Wall St. & Main St., finance &
business), when humiliated (as 2007-2009), turn to the good of the people (as,
e.g., micro-finance, "social business")? Or will power fancy up another
romantic Garden of Eden without a snake? Or was Kant correct: nothing
straight can be fashioned from the twisted wood of humanity? Or will God
"draw straight with crooked lines" (in the full-come kingdom ["kindom," Norman
likes to add] we pray for in the Lord's Prayer)?
A merry-thoughtful-prayerful
Christmas.
Grace and peace--
Willis
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 9:18 PM
Subject: Re: Thomas Chalmers & "the habitual vision of
greatness" (continued, in conversation with Norman Gottwald)
Dear Norman,
Thanks for your comments on Chalmers' "The
Expulsive Power...." I've numbered your paragraphs for my
commenting. (The "Attach" is relevant as on how to read the Bible: trying
to help a pastor get past scribism - which I've been doing even before I met you
in 1946.)
1
"Let heart and mind, according well, / make one
music as before, / but vaster."
Yes, Chalmers was into that vaster.....up against
Hume's vaster mind than heart. For Chalmers, nature has values continuous
with the character of the Creator: for Hume, the universe has no Creator or
values, only facts (values are OUR creatures, from our pecular admixtures of
facts & feelings). But, asked Chalmers, what are we to say of
discovered regularities in the processes & patterns of the admixtures?
A present-day parallel: while Dawkins rejects "intelligent design," what (asks
Stephen Meier) has he to say about the regularity, within the cell, of the
particular programming running along the DNA to govern the intracellular
processes? / Chaos theory is another parallel: myopia deludes the
viewer into thinking that cosmos does not exist. (So David Bentley Hart's
latest book displays the delusion of Dawkins' "The God Delusion.")
/ Chalmers' sermon uses an observable human behavior as both revealer
& predictor of the nonobservable reality that (to use #534 in the Episcopal
hymnal) "God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year / ...and the
time is drawing near /...when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as
the waters cover the sea." (As you know far better than I, Marx produced,
on the basis of eco-processes, a secular version of this
confidence.)
2
I agree that TC's text is not a good fit for his
theme, which is (as put plainly in 1Jn.2.15) that "the love of the Father" is
the ultimate "new affection" which "expels" "the love of the world"
(as one's personal experience of the completion of the cosmic
Love-cycle from creation to consummation, [e.g.] the snake eating its
tail). / His text, L.7.36-50, contrasts less love toward the
Forgiver of less debt with more love toward the Forgiver of more debt.
/ Your suggested substitute text (if I read you aright)
contrasts less with more demon-possession, mere cleanup being insufficient:
an old passion loses its power only to a new passion. While (as you say)
that's psychotherapeutically sound, the text lacks TC's sermon's central
"affection," viz. love.
3
YES! Implicit in *agape* as self-giving love
is BEING good news (to the "neighbor," the world) as well as BRINGING
good news. (After I said something like this at the [Berlin 1966]
World Congress on Evangelism, in response to John Stott's evangelism
lecture, which didn't mention the gospel's social dimension, I was
privately-officially asked to say no more from the floor during the remainder of
the congress.) / I agree with your translating Jn.18.36 in a manner
avoiding the possibility of an ascetic, other-worldly reading.
Context: Jesus' reference is not place (space-time locative) but type: "The type
of my kingdom is not coercive, military." (It is not "from here" -
*enteuthen*; Lat., *hinc*; Luther's German - *von dannen* - is
emphatic ["from HERE"].) / In Jn., "type" corresponds to "quality"
(as in your reference to 3.16: God loves "the world" [people & what sustains
them] & so makes possible for them, here & now, "eternal
life"). / "Worldness" is a neologism for virtural-world thinking,
but let's use it here in the elative sense of the *kosmos* God
intended/created/intends/loves - the sustainable world in which humanity
flourishes to the glory of God and the good of his creation. In this
sense, God loves "worldness" & (e.g., 1Jn.1.15-17) hates worldliness (as
described in vs.16, a virtual picture of the Wall St. collapse). Amos
Wilder's "Otherworldliness in the New Testament" (1954) makes the proper &
useful distinctions.
4
Chalmers died the year before Europe's
1848 uprisings with their stimulus to imaging new possibilities within
"history." But a more pertinent reason for his exaggerated emotional
distance between loving the Creator & loving creation is rhetorical: for
clarity, structural simplicity, & power, the sermon is radically
EITHER/OR. ("Structural simplicity," I say; we agree that it's not
intellectually simple. The structure is concatenation, a series of links
on a single theme for cumulative effect - as in Heb. & Rev. But
one's words & works are interinterpretive, & Chalmer's social activism
(including social structuring both to help the poor & to help the poor help
themselves) should prevent our reading his words as
God-loving/world-rejecting. / A current parallel is Rick Warren, who
can't be read off as only a pietistic evangelical (& if he could, Obama
wouldn't be regularly talking-praying with him). This in his "The
Purpose-Driven Life" (p42): "The Bible offers three [life-]metaphors that teach
us God's view of llfe: Life is a TEST, life is a TRUST, and life is a TEMPORARY
ASSIGNMNET. These ideas are the foundation of purpose-driven
living." / As I've often put it (& in substance did so in my
formal interchange with Billy Graham at the NCC '66 Miami Beach Triennium), what
does the Lord say to you after you "come forward" in an evangelist
meeting? He says, "Now turn around, and go love the world."
5
Yes, I was there, & agreed with your point then
as I do now. E.C.Colwell made this point in his '41 course (which I took),
"The Common Christian in Early Christian Times" (as he did also in his book,
"The Fourth Gospel and the Struggle for Respectability"). / Raymond
Brown's last work on the Fourth Gospel puts more emphasis on its literary form,
which (I've long believed) captures, for a Christian understanding of nature
& history, the gnostic mentality (e.g., the antignostic "The Word
became flesh" [1.14; cp. 1Jn.1.1: "we have heard...seen...our hands have
touched, & 4.2: "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh"]).
6
Yes, Chalmer's "praxis was ahead of his
theory" as expressed in this sermon. Oh, blessed inadequacy! DAVAR:
would that our deeds outshine our words!
Norman, this exchange touches a number of concerns
now under discussion in our UCC online OpenForum. May I share it (not for
other publication, of course)?
A merry Christmas & a blessed New
Year!
Grace and peace--
Willis
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 12:48
AM
Subject: Re: Thomas Chalmers & "the
habitual vision of greatness"
Dear Willis,
My fullest gratitude for forwarding this sermon of Chalmers
1
I have heard of its title without knowing the identity of the
preacher. I thought at first that I would not be able to get beyond the
first paragraph or two--and that because of the rhetorical "overkill" that was
the mark of his time. However, I was amazed that such a sermon
could ever have been delivered orally. Frankly, I think it not to be
oral prose, but a super-sophisticated argumentation that is repeated over and
over again in altered ways that bespeak a resourceful mind. It is
nonetheless supremely cerebral, even though it paradoxically exalts the human
heart in its desires and loves. I seriously wonder about the composition
of his congregation which, unless I misread the text, would necessarily have
been highly educated in order to sit, or even sleep, through this
magnificently verbose text.
2
With the basic thesis, which is really the spine of the sermon, I largely
identify. In my judgment, a much better text for his sermon
would have been Matthew 12:43-45//Luke 11:24-26, "When the unclean
spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking
rest, but finds none. Then the person says, 'I will return to my house from
which I came.' And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in
order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil
than himself, and they enter and dwell there and the last state of that man
becomes worse than the first." This says it all.
Incidentally, It is totally concordant with psychologically based therapy.
3
I don't think Chalmers grasps the dialectic in the love of world vs.
love of God conundrum in John. When Jesus allegedly says, "My
kingdom is NOT OF this world," a far better translation would be, "My kingdom
is NOT DERIVED FROM this world." The kingdom (or
kindom) of God, and intense love for it, does not separate us from the world
but summons us into a simultaneous love of the world, precisely as the only
object and site of the kingdom= kindom of God open to us. Ponder
John 3:16. If God loves the world, are we not to love it?
4
The power of a new affection is wonderfully, if tediously, expounded by
Chalmers. Yet his severance of the link between world (as God's
creation) and God (as the world's creator) sadly diminishes, even undermines,
the power of an affection that seems too remote from the world we know to have
much of an effect or influence on the world we live in. It is not
only the HEART OF THE BELIEVER that is at stake. Critical also is the HEART OF
THE WORLD, or more correctly, the HEARTS of the many polities, societies and
cultures that constitute the world God is said to love.
5
Willis, I seem to recall that at an SBL meeting long ago, I gave a paper on
John, and you were there. I don't have the text any more, but I believe
I was arguing that the perspective on a believing community's life in
this world is not so different after all than that implied in the
Synoptics. John is not at all as ascetic and world-denying as his
rhetorical arsenal, seen from our perspective, appears to be.
6
All of this is not to deny that Chalmers made many significant
contributions to life in this world, but only to suggest that his praxis was
ahead of his theory.
Willis, if I know you, you will like a bit of what I
state, but find a good measure of fault in it. What say you?
From an old student and admirer,
Norman
----- Original Message -----
From: "Willis E.
Elliott" <elli...@charter.net>
To: "Confessing Christ O.F."
<Confessi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2009
6:35:28 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Thomas Chalmers & "the
habitual vision of greatness"
THOMAS CHALMERS (1780-1847) was one of Scottish
history's acknowledged greats - for his contributions in mathematics, natural
science (including old-earth thinking before Darwin), the reconciliation of
revelation & science (as Francis Bacon), politics (separation of church
& state), philosophy (confronting the influence of Hume [d.1776]),
Adam-Smith economics (helping the poor to help themselves), ecclesiology
(separating congregations into groups of 60-100 families, each ministered to
be an elder [for spiritual needs] & a deacon [for spiritual needs],
pastoring ("Show me a people-going minister, and I will show you a
church-going people."), & preacher (see "Attach," which I first read in
'36-'37 Homiletics, as [said the prof] "one of history's 50 great sermons" -
yes, we had to read them all]). / He's one I sometimes think of
when "Greatness Passing By" comes to mind (the 1931 classic by the three
Niebuhr brothers' older sister, Hulda).
In my mind & life-story, Hulda's
"Greatness Passing By" is associated with "the habitual vision of
greatness," which was Whitehead's definition of the essence of
education.
As a pre-Christmas present, I offer y'all
GREATNESS in the person & work, & concretely this sermon, of
Thos.Chalmers. (The text? L.7.36-50, on the love of the world OR
of the Father. One way he put his conversion from "the worthlessness of
the things of the world" to "the worth of the things of God": "The world
became the wilderness." "The gospel is foolishness to those who view it
through mortal eyes and reason." But the gospel is practical: it assigns
its believers not to flee the wilderness but to invade it with intelligent
compassion.)
Grace and peace--
Willis
