In which I hop off the cultural-linguistic bus

We've read the first half of Elizabeth Johnson's She Who Is for my class on the attributes of God. Among other things it makes an argument that, by now, we're all familiar with: exclusively masculine language for God underwrites patriarchal social structures, and finding new, faithful ways of naming the Deity is an integral part of liberating women from oppression.

I have never found this argument all that convincing. As far as dismantling the patriarchy goes, balancing feminine and neuter metaphors with masculine ones seems like an interesting sidebar at best. The sharp tip of the spear, however, would seem to be vigorously enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Or enacting universal health care.

I don't think that women run meetings these days because, back in the 60s and 70s, people stopped calling Chairmen "Chairmen," and started calling them "Chairs" or "Chairpersons." I think that some women managed to put themselves in the position of running meetings, enough so that calling them "Chairman" began to sound strange.

Inclusive language is a shibboleth. It doesn't change society. It is a shorthand way of identifying a group of people with a shared set of political commitments that one hopes will change society.

Now I'm only halfway through Johnson's book, but she doesn't strike me as a kind of Wittgensteinian--Lindbeckian--Radical Orthodoxy-Postliberal kind of theologian. She's genus Liberal, species Feminist Liberation. And yet Feminist Liberals and Postliberals--many of whom can be notoriously non-Feminist (especially in the secular political sense)--do seem to share the conviction that language does not merely describe a world; it creates a world.

I used to believe that, but I no longer do. 15 years of tinkering with liturgy and writing sermons has shown me that there is a big world out there that decisively impinges on whatever kind of reality the Church tries to create in a service of Word and Sacrament. I don't think that you reform the Church or change the world by re-describing or re-imagining either. I think you need to change the world and reform the Church, and the words you use to describe it will follow.

It's starting to occur to me that my dissatisfaction with postliberalism isn't limited to the quietistic streak that some of the younger members of the movement display. I have methodological problems with it as well. That said, Liberalism, "submitting all truth claims to the bar of reason or experience," as Gary Dorrien puts it, also seems problematic.

I suppose it's good that I didn't wind up at a place like Duke. I would really be kicking against the pricks there.

I am having a really hard time taking the temperature of a place like Union-PSCE. As a PhD student I don't attend very many classes, or interact with a broad cross-section of the student body. Moreover, as a Church History student, I spend most of my time reading people who are neither liberal, postliberal, fundamentalist or conservative. I think the best category to put them in is "strange." Augustine. Columbanus. The Puritans.

What I'm trying to say is that it's nice to be back at school but not "in a school," so to speak.

Comments

[Sarah E]

I tend to think all those things need to happen and not in a linear progression - sometimes things need to be spoken to become reality as well as embodied. Kind of like perichoresis - hard to tell when one Person of the
trinity begins/ends - hard to draw a line between change the world , reform the church, and the words (symbols) to describe it.

Peace - and enjoy this time of schooling of whatever kind it is for you!

[Lee]

Surely the only tenable position about language and the world has to fall somewhere between "creates" and "describes." "Creates" seems absurd on its face, but "describes" is at least a more complicated notion than people once thought. That's what I take to be the essential "Wittgensteinian" insight. Language can affect what it is possible for us to "see" out there in the world, but the world in turn impinges on and shapes language. I see it as a more reciprocal relationship than a one-sided one. And when we start talking about God things get considerably murkier.

[Jonathan Marlowe]

I think you still have one foot on the bus, as long as you realize that there is a problem with submitting all truth claims to the bar of reason or experience.

[Lee]

In my view, "Wittgensteinians" (which I recognize is a broad and diverse category) tend to underestimate the universals of reason and human experience, which are, if nothing else, rooted in our common biology. It's an understandable reaction to a naive universalism you get from some strains of the Enlightenment, but there's a tendency toward over-correction there.

I'm not even sure I have much trouble with Dorrien's maxim, suitably interpreted; if truth claims aren't submitted to reason or experience, how are they to be tested? Tradition and culture are just the accumulated reason and experience of some group of people or another, after all.

[Camassia]

I've never read a book about inclusive language, but when I've heard people try to use it it seems to create as many problems as it solves. I recall someone saying that calling God "Father" is difficult for people who've been abused by their fathers; but what about people who've been abused by their mothers? Also, my former church would often substitute "Father" with "God" in trinitarian references, but they aren't quite the same thing -- the Father is just one person in the godhead, after all.

Having said that, I remember visiting a church last Pentecost where the pastor emphasized that the Holy Spirit is not an "it" but a "he." It was only then that I realized that I'd always called the Spirit "it" and thinking of it as male was extremely difficult. I don't know, maybe it's because of the Spirit's invasiveness, but I still find that very uncomfortable.

[Marvin]

Dorrien's quote, in full, is, "The essential idea of liberal theology is that all claims to truth, in theology as in other disciplines, must be made on the basis of reason and experience, not by appeal to external authority." I softened it quite a bit in trying to quote from memory.

[Jonathan Marlowe]

The problem with submitting all truth claims to the bar of reason or experience is that they don't exist, (in and of themselves - separate from a more determinative tradition). They are therefore usually a cover for appeals to the authority of whoever has power at the time - which is usually white male Unitarians. They are therefore inherently conservative means of maintaining the status quo. This is why feminism is a friend of postliberalism.

Truth claims are evaluated in terms of how they relate to the One who said, "I am the way, the truth, the life." In other words, truth is not a principle; it is a person.

Any attempt to get beyond this particular to a universal is a ..... scandal.

[Lee]

Sorry, Jonathan, no matter how much MacIntyre and Hauerwas I read, I still don't buy it. Where does the claim that "reason and experience don't exist ... separate from a more determinative tradition" come from anyway? Sounds like a totalizing universal claim to me! I'll grant that reason and experience are shaped by tradition, but they aspire to universality. Otherwise, what's the point?

And why can't truth be both a principle (or a property or relation) and a person? It's not like it's a univocal term. (One can be a "true friend," a statement can be "true," a color can be "true", etc.) I guess I just don't know what it means to evaluate all truth claims in terms of how they relate to Jesus. I'd be interested in hearing more.

[Jonathan Marlowe]

Lee, if you haven't been convinced by MacIntyre or Hauerwas, neither will you be convinced by me. You are right that I have made totalizing universal claims, but they arise from within the narrative tradition. They are universal in the sense that the God of Jesus is the God and Creator of all.

I consider science to be a subset of theology, specifically the doctrine of creation. I consider Leslie Newbigin and Michael Polanyi to be even more instructive than MacIntyre or Hauerwas.

[Kevin Baker]

"And yet Feminist Liberals and Postliberals--many of whom can be notoriously non-Feminist (especially in the secular political sense)--do seem to share the conviction that language does not merely describe a world; it creates a world. I used to believe that, but I no longer do."

I think Lee's first comment about language (somewhere between creates and describes) is right - though I tend to agree whole-heartedly with Marvin about inclusive language here as well. I think the difference, theologically speaking, is my belief that God's words create worlds.

It certainly did so in Genesis and I have experienced it numerous times in ministry. Speak God's words of life into a child and watch a world be created. Speak destructive words that diminish, belittle, demean - and it seems less a creation of a world and more like a total negation of one. In so far as our liturgy, our speech, and our language inhabit God's words, they are busy creating ... and that means more than just changing pronouns to suit political sensitivities.

[Sarah]

Marvin, I thought of you and this post when I heard this story on NPR on 4/6 -
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565

some food for thought about language shaping culture, etc.

Holy Week blessings,
Sarah