different perspectives. Equally, though, I have lost some respect for Answers. That is, I have lost respect for simplistic Answers. Growing in the practice of my reflective nature has uncovered for me the understanding of how few Questions there are which are not, in some way, linked to our own worldview and experience. But of course, this is a basic human truth, is it not?What postmodernity has failed to do for me is map out an acceptable interaction between Questions and Answers. You see, I am not of the mindset that wisdom lies only in the Questions (although there is much more there than I might have earlier thought!). Just as Answers which exist without Questions are not Answers at all (but rather arguments, propositional statements, claims, etc.), I would postulate that Questions are not meant to survive completely independently. Put simply, Questions and Answers exist symbiotically.
This is where my faith steps in. (And I should note it would be unreasonable for me to attribute all of my growing reflective nature to postmodernity...faith has, I believe, played some role there, too!) My gut-level sense is that Questions tend to live in two broad (and interactive) categories: pragmatic (What time is it? What's your name? When is the bus to arrive?) and philosophical. As for the latter, such Questions can become quite intricate and profound, and there is a whiff of wisdom in believing that their intricateness and profundity suggests not only that a simplistic answer does them (or more accurately, the asker) violence, but that any answer does. But my worldview won't support that, as following that track eventually leads me to a hopeless state of existentialism or nihilism. No, Christianity, once again holding competing truths together in tension, seems to me to suggest that both Questions and Answers can be simultaneously simple and profound.
In addition, our Western, fix-it world seems to be obsessed with the natural flow being from Question to Answer. (Or worse yet, from Answer to Answer, but that's another matter.) To me, the symbiotic relationship must necessarily flow from Answer to Question, as well.
And when I follow all of this progression in any line of thinking, I again and again find my Questions and Answers both beginning and ending with Jesus, and more specifically, with his cross. Jesus teaches me to ask the right Questions, to uncover, in my soul, what is r
eally there--even (especially?) when I don't really know, myself. Jesus invites me to explore the depths of who he is, and find satiation for some of my Questions...before introducing the next Questions to be asked. He is the Answer. Yet he is not only the Answer, he is the Question. He is the Truth...and the Truth, I am finding, is Questions and Answers.In the surety of my relationship with him, I freely release my surety of other philosophies and wisdom. In the Answer of him, I am freed to ask Questions of him. In the conviction of his death on my behalf, I am released from the expectation of conviction. In this way, I am reborn. In this way, I am remade.
Posts
18 comments:
I have had many conversations with people about how Jesus might be posing some good questions to us beyound just the usual answers, but until now I had never thought of how both answers and their questions must interact to give substance to truth. It is interesting that both questions and answers are attempts to describe aspects of the truth. Indeed, they exist symbolically. Where can I sign up to get new thoughts like this everyday?
"symbiotically" or "symbolically"?
I kind of like them both,
Oh well, it was a meanful mistake on my part.
P.Fidelitas
Maybe all answers do do some violence to their respective questions, and maybe that's a good thing... Wait a minute, no, that can't be right.
Of course, I guess, unless you're into that sort of thing. I mean, no one gets whipped unless he/she enjoys getting whipped. Maybe you like answers because you like being whipped.
I like your take on the value of questions dear Pat. Having picked up a book by Henri Nouwen just this last week... I was fascinated by his perspective on silence in this chatty society we live in. I have come to appreciate a higher virtue perhaps- TO SHUT UP!
Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu expresses it well- The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits... When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of a word is to convey ideas... when ideas are grasped- the word is forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I'd like to talk to!
Sorry, I'd not logged in for a couple of days.
to post_fidelitas: symbiotically. while some Q's & A's might well be symbolic, I would argue that the substance of Q's and A's can be some of the most real stuff we have. "It's the Question that drives us..." note my comments to saju below.
to e. twist: i take your point...A's are bound to be incomplete this side of the New Jerusalem, but in my mind, that speaks the need for Q's all the more! (and before you ask it...no, i'm not saying there'll be no more Q's in eternity.)
to saju: ah, how i love your eastern perspectives! to offer a western philosopher's insight on SHUTTING UP: "'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain. the chuang tzu quote is another matter, though. it's interesting the easy dissociation he makes between word and idea...i don't think i can do that. i have a hard time not thinking in words. (case in point, right here.) but Scripture might seem to suggest that, ultimately, there is an intimate linkage between word and idea, or that word is much more than just word, ala John, chapter 1.
When the word is forgotten, the idea vanishes.
Prove to me otherwise.
Actually, let me put it this way.
The Chuang Tzu quote is ridiculous. It seems to me to be spoken by a man who has neither fished nor hunted for his sustenance. When a man is dependent upon his trap or snare for food, he never forgets either at any stage. Instead he immediately sets his traps again in the hope that he may still eat tomorrow.
Chuang Tzu sounds like a man who is attempting to wield power among his flock by speaking with enigmatic abstractions that offer the listener no context but the amorphous mysticism that has created both those Eastern religions that design new gods every week or deny the existence of any gods at all.
I have got very few things to say; so I shall gather thoughts from two people I respect in response. One a Easterner and the other a Westerner.
I quote an Indian friend of mine- “I just find that western theology with all of its proofs, rationale and evidences, leave my spirit trailing in a wake of sad energy. What ever happened to the great mystics of our time: St Francis of Assisi, Augustine, Sadhu Sunder Singh? Has God now been rationalised, mechanised, modernised, reduced and put down into loose answers and pat formulae’s? Are creeds, cannons, statements of faith sufficient for ultimate belief? Can a finite species honestly grasp the sum total of the infinite? At best I think we see a part of it. In this world we see that contradictions and indeterminacy exist in all levels. It is not that Ultimate Truth is inconceivable, its just that the presumptuous always seem to assert their views as complete, because they may feel its based on some form of orthodoxy. I have a problem with this. I think somewhere scripture does tell us "Taste and see." whatever happened to the experiential? Have Christians all become text deists?”
Let’s not forget Erik and Pat that it is out of the eternal silence that God spoke the Word... and through the Word created and recreated the world… God spoke the sun.. moon… and the rest. In the fullness of time God’s Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. .. In all this the Word of God does not break the silence of God, but rather unfolds the immeasurable riches of that silence. The word is the instrument of the present world and silence is the mystery of the future world. If a word is to bear fruit, it must be spoken from the future world into the present world. The desert fathers therefore considered their going into the silence of the desert to be a first step into the future world. From that world their words could bear fruit because there they could be filled with the power of God’s silence.
Any more words from my part will only prove how foolish I am.. So I’ll shut up!
my 2 cents at this stage: first, i will go so far as to admit that at times we (esp. Westerners) may go too far in trying to verbally contain the infinite. but please note the Brueggemann comment on e. twist's blog. and saju, i call to question your notion that "silence" preceded creation, again ala John 1: In the beginning was the Word...nothing preceded the Word.
Are we seeing a distinction here? In my opinion there is a difference between the 'Word' and the 'word'. The Word you are making reference to was God (Jn 1.1). The word that I am making reference to is not God and consequently had a beginning.
Saju,
that's fine, but what is this so-called "word" and what is its beginning? Furthermore, where did you hear about/discover this "word?"
saju, the "Word" to which you refer at the beginning of your last paragraph is doubtlessly the same I have in mind, the same as John 1. It is this "Word" you claim was spoken "out of the eternal silence". I'm a bit Platonistic, perhaps, but I believe John 1 is suggesting that the Word either (a) has perfect existence even when not verbalized and/or (b) co-exists in such a manner with God that it is an embodiment and expression of the very thoughts of God. My assertion is simply that there is significance that our common faith portrays our God as Word. I think the minutiae of my argument is that the Word is not simply a disposable vehicle for us to understand a cosmic, eternal "silence" of God, but rather that the Word embodies and exhibits God to us. The Word is that in which the Godhead is pleased to dwell in its fullness.
Wow lots of chatting going on here.
Paddy, I think I'm a fan of questions and anwers existing "symbolicaly" in the place of truth. Whenever I think of the both the questions I ask and the answers I give, I realize they may exist symbiotically as my symbolic representative for God, Like a big golden calf, they are my human creation of divinity, made partialy in the image of what I would prefer to worship and partialy out of the motivation to create something more concrete that I can look toward. My "concretions" feel so much "nearer to my affections" than any questions God may actually be posing to me. Thus God begins to look an aweful lot like the questions most dear to me.
I don't know that it should be that way, but I know that in my heart, that is what it easily becomes.
On the other topics,
I don't understand the silence thing, but yes it is clear that one can and does think in images without words.
Ok, back to homework now. Cheers
to post_fidelitas,
the problem i see with Q's and A's existing symbolically "in the place of truth", as you put it, is that (a) robs truth of existence outside of the individual's cognitive process and, relatedly, (b) lets each of us, as you pointed out, fashion truth as we see fit. i'm not sure if that's wholly what you meant. i would consider, in theory, a line of thinking that said Q's and A's were amongst our ways of "wrestling with" or perhaps even "apprehending" truth--in a way.
But, as in my original post, i yet firmly believe that Jesus (the Way, the Truth, and the Life) is most fully known on the cross, and that he (especially at the crucifixion) is the fullest revelation of God we'll know on this earth. And i find--for me, not necessarily normatively--that one of the chief ways i interact with Jesus is through the Q's and A's that we share...and somehow, mysteriously, those Q's and A's exist in him before I think them or speak them. I prefer to view it such that he introduces them to me in their proper time.
Thoughts?
Yeah, that sounds good, I like the possiblilty that God/Jesus reveals the Q's/A's at the right times to us. My affection for saying symbolism rather than actual Truth, is not that Truth may be constructed in symblence with anyone's preferance, but rather then very opposite. Truth is not ours to hold. If truth walked among us or was in front of us on the cross, then the purpose of theologies whether expressed in Q's or A's, is to inquire and communicate and describe what we saw of that truth. I like how you put it, "the symbiotic nature" of the two because I think the two together form a more solid alloy of description and symbol for that truth but that our theologies are not themselves the truth.
Actually what I just said is a bit inncorrect. While truth is not ours to hold, I think we can in fact do more than just describe the truth we saw on the cross. In, in the case of Christianity, I suggest that the truth we saw proclaims that truth is a way of being. Therefore we can do more than just attempt to describe the truth we saw on the cross, we can attempt to live consistant with the truth that walked and suffered among us.
From here (truth as being), the questions and aswers we create should be those wich are more helpful in forming us into that truthful way of being. I think I also see where we are differeing, because I had been assuming that the questions and aswers orriginate inside of us, but if you are saying the questions and answer predate us, and originate from God who gives them to us, then that changes everything. Very interesting. I must go back to get some beer and finish reading for class.
Cheers, P.Fidelitas
Post a Comment