If I could do it all over . . .

I doubt there is anyone nearing the latter phase of their dissertation who has not said "If I could do it all over I would have studied that instead." All you can see, the deeper into the process you go, is how difficult your topic truly is. So, at the risk of being a cliché, I will herein say what I would do if I could do it all over.

At the beginning of the dissertation process I did not yet fully understand what I was asking, and why. I thought I was asking questions about the historicity of the Johannine aposynagogos passages (i.e. 9:22, 12:42, 16:2). I was, of course, and am, but it has only been as I went on that I realized more fully why I was asking these questions. I now realize that I was really asking three questions. First, what was the sociological role of memory in the construction of the Jesus tradition? Second, given that most scholarly efforts at answering the first question have focused upon the Synoptic Gospels and to a lesser extent Paul, how would we answer that question if we focused instead upon the Gospel of John? Third, given what we have to say about the first and second question, what can we say about a particular set of historical claims made in John's Gospel, specifically those found in the aposynagogos passages?

If I could do it all over, I would focus just upon the second of these questions. I would bring more fully into the discussion the Letters of John. I would thus have focused upon what I call in my dissertation "the social history of Johannine knowledge." Certainly, this has emerged as a major theme in my dissertation. In retrospect, I think that I ought to have made it the central theme.

Of course, if I had done so, I would probably be sitting here writing about how I should have made the aposynagogos passages the focus of my dissertation. The grass is always greener. It seems the way of things. That said, I did not yet clear;u recognize that I was so keenly interested in "the social of Johannine knowledge" when I began this dissertation, and perhaps the fact that I would like to focus my attention there speaks to how much I have learned through writing this beast.

"Life Isn't Fair. Deal With It"

I have noticed the rise of a bizarre argument as of late. It's the "Life isn't fair. Deal with it" argument. Now, let's be clear: the statement is a truism. Life isn't fair. Sure. What is bizarre is when it is adopted as an counter-argument to an argument which says "You know what? It isn't fair how these people are being treated. We should, as people of good will, stand alongside them as they fight for fairness." To such an argument many today will now respond "Life isn't fair," as if that is sufficient reason to say that we should not, in fact, be upset about unfairness. We should just "Deal with it." That we should just accept that this is the way life is and say nothing. We should, in other words, stay in our respective places.

The problem with the argument is that it fails to recognize that "Fair" is a synonym for "Just." To say "Life is unfair. Deal with it" is to say "We should not strive against injustice." There are of course always those who say this to every group and person who has strove for justice. Yet, where would we be today if African-Americans, women, workers, etc., did not sense deeply that they were not being treated justly and strove for justice? Slavery would be legal and there would likely be little to no legislation against rape and spousal abuse, few if any women in university or the professions, little to no workplace safety legislation, little to no laws against child labour, etc. All these wonderful things, and more, which we now take for granted, came from people deciding that the way to deal with the fact that life is not fair is to strive for fairness, that the response to injustice is to fight for justice: people who realized deeply that accepting injustice is identical to defending and supporting injustice, and that this is a monstrous thing indeed.

A Prediction

I am going to look into my crystal ball to consider political events over the next five years. I predict a merger of the centre-left Liberals and NDP (which stands for New Democratic Party, historically Canada's social democratic option) comparable to the merger of the Canadian Alliance (the party formerly known as Reform) and the Progressive Conservatives back in '03. If you combined the Liberal and NDP support in this election you would easily have a majority, and that is what I predict for the next election, probably in 2015 or 2016 (unless there is an election before the merger can be finalized). The likelihood of that outcome will be enhanced greatly if the Liberal-NDP elect a charismatic leader. Jack Layton is the best bet. Bob Rae has been floated as a possible leader of a new centre-left united party, but I think that's a bad call. There's too much bad blood against the man in Ontario, and you need Ontario to make a go of it in federal electoral politics.

The Green Party will emerge as a new "far left" option (although today's Green Party is about as far left as my right shoe), bringing us back to something resembling the days before the debacle known affectionately as the Mulroney years splintered the right and turned federal politics into a Three Stooge-esque farce for two decades. The wild card in this new alignment will continue to be the Bloc, although I suspect that a strong centre-left party might make serious inroads into their support. Things might look a lot like 1990, minus Brian's chin.

The truth of the matter is that the NDP and Liberals better represent the values of most Canadians. The Conservatives keep winning because no one takes the NDP seriously, because the Liberals have had a series of unpopular front men, and because they are fragmenting the not-a-quasi-fascist vote. Combine the Liberals and the NDP into one centre-left party, get a strong leader, and all these problems evaporate. And maybe we could once again have human rights in Canada.

N.B. I posted this before the May 2 election. That election confirmed one of my smaller suggestions: the Bloc Quebecois were decimated, going from 37 to 4 seats in Commons. I think this significantly increases the possibility of an effectively tripartite 2015/2016 election, with the Conservatives and a merged Liberal-NDP as the main contenders and the Green--that bizarre love child of the right and left wings--as a third party option. Also confirmed was my suggestion that the Liberals and NDP better represent the values of a majority of Canadians than the Conservatives: the Conservatives, although they will now lead the first majority federal government since 2004, only received 40% of the popular vote, whereas the Liberals and NDP combined won 50%. The real story from May 2 is that whilst the Conservatives went from 143 to 167 seats the NDP went from 36 to 102. Overall the most left-leaning of the three major federal parties actually gained more ground among the electorate than did the most right-leaning, even if the most right-leaning did win the election. I think that 2015/16 could see a most fascinating election.

A further N.B. Obviously, with Jack Layton's recent passing, he is no longer a viable candidate to lead a Liberal-NDP merger. Indeed, with him gone, it remains to be seen whether the NDP can maintain its popularity. Was it Layton or the NDP which so many people liked in the last election? This could derail the party. Perhaps not, though. One of Layton's strengths as a leader is that he surrounded himself with smart people. He died from a fast-acting cancer, which is giving his legacy an almost martyr-like aura. Saint Jack will remain as central, if not more, to the NDP's legacy as is Tommy Douglas, the party's founder (and, for those Americans who might wonder on to my blog, incidentally the grandfather of actor Kiefer Sutherland. Yes, Jack Bauer's grandfather was one of Canada's leading social democrats).

Scholarly De- and Re- Lexicalization and the Totalitarian Impulse

I have been re-reading that great classic of modern paranoia, not to mention one of the best 20th century libertarian critiques of authoritarianism, George Orwell's 1984. It's a brilliant piece of writing, primarily in its reflections on the relationship between language, thought and politics. In the novel, for those who have been living under a rock since the late 1940s, George Orwell describes a dystopian British society governed by a totalitarian Party, which has systematized circumscribed the English language, so as to render dissent literally unthinkable. Words have been eliminated from the English language, and those which remain are given very precise meanings by the Party, such that the vocabulary no longer exists by which one could express or even think dissent. Consequently those who police the use of language are called "Thought Police," for the Party understands that insofar as we think in words the to police language is to police thought.

As I read I realize much more clearly why I have never been comfortable with certain scholarly enterprises which aim to remove or completely redefine (thus to de-lexicalize or re-lexicalize) certain words from and/or within our vocabulary. We can no longer use "Christians" to describe early Christians, we are told. Why? Well, it is said, "Christian" implies "not-Jewish," but the earliest Christians were Jewish. Therefore they were not Christians. Of course, the argument is nonsensical, for it takes the form "C were J and therefore not C." Thus we must conclude that C is not C, which violates the most basic premise of logic, promulgated by no less a personage than Aristotle, that a thing is always self-identical with itself. X is always X. More to the point, the very statement that Christians were Jewish necessarily means that one can speak of Christians as Jewish, and thus it is a non sequiter to say that we must abandon the term "Christian" if we wish to speak of Christians as Jewish.

This logical inconsistency should be the first clue that, in point of fact, the argument is not motivated primarily from either logical or empirical grounds but rather from ideological ones. This is not to posit a rationalism or empiricism or empirico-rationalism independent of ideology; there is no such animal. However, when otherwise intelligent women and men advocate that which is demonstrably invalid, one suspects that ideology, rather than enabling clarity of thought (and ideology can and does, for although all is always at least implicitly ideological not only ideologies are born equal), has become a barrier thereto.

Let me suggest that ideology crosses over from enabling to hindering clarity of thought whenever the totalitarian impulse is given free rein. The totalitarian impulse lurks somewhere within all ideologies (and theology, Christian or otherwise, should not think itself exempted from this axiom), with some ideologies (notably fascism) being really nothing but this impulse. However, other ideologies also possess a counter-totalitarian impulse alongside the totalitarian, what we might call the libertarian. Such impulse does not seek to circumscribe but rather to multiply available linguistic options. It delights in multiplicity, but risks succumbing to the totalitarian impulse whenever it assumes that the newly forged options are ipso facto superior to the older, more venerated, ones. It might recognize that in some cases the newly forged options are better than older ones. For instance, a genuinely counter-totalitarian impulse will probably recognize that the language of anti-semitism has become inextricable from a certain sort of totalitarianism, and thus aim to produce language which counteracts anti-semitism. However, and here is the real risk assumed by any who seek genuine freedom, it also recognizes that absolute prohibitions against any language are by definition totalitarian. This is not to deny that anti-semitism is a horrible blight on our collective humanity, for it is, but rather to suggest that this blight is treated not by limiting but rather enjoying freedom, for anti-semitism, like all hatreds, is rooted ultimately in the deep-seated convicted that some people--whether because of their race or creed or sexuality or politics--simply do not have the faculties to live in genuine freedom. Restricting freedom cannot be the solution to fear of freedom, but rather the solution is live the dangerous risk that is freedom. Of course, prohibitions on prohibitions can become a totalitarianism in their own right; again, freedom is risk, for even the slightest deviation from the path can result in a tumble into the totalitarian, and even more dangerously the very act of delineating that path risks said tumble.

Thus must emerge a negative theory of language which is simultaneously a positive theory, one which eschews proscriptive statements about language whilst recognizing that by its on account of language it cannot actually proscribe proscriptive statements. It is thus a discipline, a refusal to proscribe language and thus a refusal to proscribe proscription. It is an opening for reasoned discourse, for it forces me to engage with, rather than simply dismiss, another person's reasoning.

Religion--Good or Bad?

Chris Hitchens and Tony Blair recently debated whether religion is good or bad for the world. That seems like asking whether climate is good or bad. There are climates conducive to human thriving, and there are climates non-conducive to human thriving. Many are mixed bags. So too with religion. Hitchens asks whether it is good to terrify children with visions of hell or to consider women inferior creatures. The answer is probably "No," and certainly if that summed up the totality of global religious practice one would have a good case for religion being unilaterally bad. Unfortunately, at least to those sympathetic to Hitchens' argument, it does not. Global religious practice, Christian and otherwise, is more, much more, than that.

In any case, even if Hitchens were right, he has to face reality: globally religion is not receding. For instance, Pentecostalism has exploded worldwide, going from a handful of Wesleyan Holiness folk hanging out on Azusa Street in 1906 to a quarter of a billion people today. Next to Catholicism it is the single largest Christian group. It is the fastest growing religious movement worldwide, and arguably the fastest growing of any social movement (can one think of a non-religious movement whose growth even begins to rival that of Pentecostalism? I can't). I would suggest that political progressives like Hitchens are missing the boat. One cannot defeat or destroy movements such as Pentecostalism. One can only fruitlessly bemoan their existence. Alternatively, one could engage in constructive conversation.

What sort of engagement can secular humanists such as Hitchens have with Pentecostalism? I would suggest that Pentecostal theology, especially its theology, offers something which secular anthropologies frequently fail to provide: hope for active transformation of the human person into something qualitatively better. Secular humanism generally proceeds on the assumption that humanity is basically all right. However, on Hitchens' own premises, this is not the case. How can humanity be basically all right if billions of people are deluded into believing in deities which do not exist, and if that delusion is moreover used to warrant oppression of various sorts? Hitchens' offer of salvation is that of reasoning our way out of the delusion, of intellectually grasping that the gods are not real. However, if it is our very reason which is deluded, then how can we turn to our reason for salvation? If we are suffering from mass delusion how can we ever trust our own reasoning? This is a problem which, as far as I know, Hitchens does not address.

The Pentecostal turn to the Holy Spirit allows them to affirm, as does Hitchens in practice if not in theory, that humans are not all right. At the same time, it is empirically demonstrable that this Pentecostal turn provides something which Hitchens' soteriology really does not: radically changed lives. People who experience the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal settings frequently leave behind alcoholicism, drug addiction, etc. If Pentecostals are changing the world for the better, why not work with them? Engage with their ideas of a just world, challenge them on their suppositions, suggest that perhaps the Holy Spirit is concerned with matters of political and economic injustice (matters, incidentally, hardly foreign to the Pentecostal tradition), and perhaps you will find that they have much to teach you.

The Logic of Grace

The logic of grace asks but one question: "What does this person need?" The logic of grace does not, cannot, ask "What does this person deserve?", for that is the logic of merit. Unfortunately, too many who most loudly proclaim themselves servants of grace in fact utilize the logic of merit. Consider the question "Can we accept homosexuals in the church?" Is this not simply another way of saying "Do homosexuals deserve to be in the church?" Should not the question, if grace is the logic, be "Do homosexuals need to be in the church?" If the answer to that question is a sincere, resounding, "Yes," then how can one governed by the logic of grace ever even conceive the question "Can we accept homosexuals in the church?" Should not the question be "How can we not accept homosexuals in the church?"

The logic of grace knows no qualification, for the moment one puts on a qualifying statement, one is back into the logic of merit. When one says "We can accept homosexuals in the church, but only if they are celibate," one is demanding of the homosexual that she or he earn the right to be in the church. That is the logic of merit, of works-righteousness, that all-too-common "If you do this work then you will be righteous" sort of logic. The logic of grace will not say "A homosexual needs to be in church, but only if she or he is celibate." Rather, quite the opposite: if one believes sincerely that same-sex relations are sinful, then the logic of grace will, must, say that "The homosexual needs to be in church, especially if she or is not celibate." Jesus, after all, said that it is not the healthy but rather the sick who need a physician.

But this post is not about homosexuality, but rather uses it as an example. This post is ultimately about considering why the church, which is charged with being an beach head of grace in a world of pain and suffering and injustice, is known by so many as a fortress of ungrace. And here is my thesis: perhaps the reason, ultimately, that the church gets so much negative press today is not because people do not like Christianity, but because they recognize on a deep level that the church is not Christian enough!

The End of an Era

The world is a little less lucid today. Martin Hengel, perhaps the greatest scholar of early Christianity active in the latter half of the 20th century, has passed away. His was a voice of sanity in a discipline which otherwise tends to run a deficit therein. Some people ought to live forever, as the world really can't live without them.