Avdat

Doubting Thomas

Glenn W. Most has written a most interesting book on Doubting Thomas.  It combines a close reading of the story in John 20 with an examination of how the synoptic gospels handle issues of doubt and faith after the resurrection, as well as interpretations of Thomas by the Church Fathers, Gnostics and medieval and renaissance artists. 

Most shrewdly observes that no where does it state that Thomas actually touched the wounds in the body of the resurrected Jesus, yet we tend to mis-remember the story as if he did.  This is due in some part to a long history of interpretation that insisted he did probe the wounds in order to refute the Gnostic denial of a resurrected body.

But there's also the problem of visually representing a modal verb.  Simply put, it's easier to paint a finger entering the hole in Jesus' side than painting an invitation to put said finger there.  We remember the story as we've seen it on the canvas and in stained glass.

In the chapter on Thomas in art, Caravaggio's portrait is the hub around which the discussion spins.  Most doesn't shy away from pointing out the contrast between Jesus' delicate, wounded body and Thomas' crude violation of it, represented by the vulva-like slit in Jesus' side, and the stiffly erect shape of Thomas' probing finger.  Are we meant to feel revulsion at Thomas' impertinent request?  Or, noticing Jesus' hand on Thomas' wrist, which may be restraining Thomas' hand or pulling it toward the wound, are we meant to see something different, a discovery that leads to the miracle of faith?

Most observes that Thomas' forehead is furrowed in a way that seems to indicate astonishment, even wonder, while the other two disciples' brows are wrinkled in a manner than connotes extreme concentration.  One thinks of Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson, which is also pictured in Most's book. 

Perhaps for this reason, Most argues, the Italian Cardinal Ottavio Paravicino wrote of Caravaggio that he had painted "some paintings which were in that middle between piety and profanity, such that I would not have wished to see them (even) from afar," for in his Doubting Thomas, the artist has represented "the irrevocable conflict and the indispensable interdependence between" faith and doubt, scientific belief and religious skepticism, and the knowledge that arises from a leap of faith and that which is the result of "scrupulously punctilious inquiry."

Most concludes by observing that we live in a relentlessly skeptical age, and yet our relationships demand that we suspend for a time the very skepticism that has generated such advances in knowledge in favor of a trust that cannot be justified on rational grounds alone.  Thomas thus represents both the doubters and believers among us and within us.

I look good in a turban, just like the Normans of old did

Bede asks, "How dark were the Dark Ages?"  and because he is a Medieval historian, he finds some surprisingly bright shafts of light piercing that supposedly benighted era.  Not surprisingly, classical historians take a dimmer view of the Middle Ages.

I suppose that my own view of the Middle Ages is that of a night sky.  The darkness was pretty dark:  a combination of the "Bring out your dead," and "She's a witch; burn her!" scenes from Monty Python's The Holy Grail.  But even the night sky has the lovely moon, twinkling stars and the Milky Way.  These would be the studious monks in their cells, chivalrous knights in their castles, and damsels if, not in distress, then certainly fetching in their pointy hats and silk scarves.

Rather than comparing Medieval Europe to Rome, why not ask, "How did Medieval Europe compare to its contemporaries, especially the Muslims that conquered the southern rim of the Mediterranean?"  That's more of an apples to apples comparison, and in that respect, Europe looks rather backward. 

It could be argued that the Islamic caliphate was the true successor to the Roman Empire.  Certainly it's borders more nearly approximated ancient Rome's than Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire--Italy being, of course, a glaring exception.  Baghdad and Cairo boasted hundreds of thousands of people when London and Paris were barely bigger than Salisbury (meaning my hometown, Salisbury NC).  The Arabs gave the world the number zero, and thus rendered obsolete the crazy Roman numerical system.  And most importantly, Greek philosophy, science and medicine were never forgotten in the Caliphate like they were in Europe.  "We" had to learn that stuff all over again, from the Arabs. 

Or, as my church history professor put it, "In this clash of civilizations, one boasts an excess of raw materials for powering the economy; the other boasts highly advanced arts, sciences and technology."  Only, she was talking about the Crusades, not our post-9/11 world, and the raw material was the wood in European forests, not the oil under the sands of Arabia.

What if we taught "World Civilization" as the story of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the Caliphate, rather than tacking on the less-than-civilized European feudal states at the end of that progression?  It would go against the grain.  There's a Western Civ. video series in our public library.  The host is a Brit, an unreconstructed imperialist.  His take on the Middle Ages is the traditional one:  Rome fell apart, only to rise in a new form in Medieval Europe, though sorely beset by a new generation of barbarian invaders, the Vikings out of the north, and the "Moslems" in the South.

Now you can say Alfred the Great and Charles Martel are equally heroic, but it's quite unfair to compare the raping, looting and pillaging of the pagan Danes and Norsemen to the monotheistic, religiously tolerant, and intellectual (albeit expansionist) Arabs. 

Just how tolerant some of them were is the point of the book I'm currently reading (see sidebar).  The reviews at Amazon seem to turn on whether or not the author's presentation of Medieval Span is too optimistic, and in a sense, I'm sure it is.  A wicked chamberlain slaying the goose that laid the golden egg of ancient Andalusia is too bad, but just think of the poetry! she writes.

The back cover of the book contains a quote by someone saying that The Ornament of the World has important lessons for today.  But what lessons?  Rather than cultivating an appreciation for Islamic culture, the book seems to have done just the opposite for this National Review writer.  In short, "Too bad the Muslims went all intolerant on us.  And bully for the Christian West that we outgrew our religious intolerance." 

Really, we live in a world where facts are simply ink blot tests.  People see what they're predisposed to see.

Might learning that the coming of the Muslims to the Iberian peninsula was actually good for the Jews chasten our self-congratulatory posture via the Islamic world?  Might knowing that the Muslim Umayyad dynasty in Spain once had a Jewish foreign minister torpedo the cynical conventional wisdom that says, "They've always been fightin' each other; always will be"--the "wisdom" that underlies the hands-off approach to Israeli-Palestinian relations our foreign policy has embodied these last six and one-half years?

I'm only halfway through the book.  But thus far the point seems to be that, while the three monotheistic religions seem to be at each other's throats today, it hasn't always been that way, and therefore it doesn't have to be that way.  Pluralism can enrich all parties in a society while not necessarily diluting the core convictions of the various religious and ethnic groups that compose that society.  At the same time, pluralistic societies are fragile.  If we value what we have in 21st century America, then we need to work to sustain it.  And, the neocon comparisons of bin Laden to Hitler notwithstanding, I think that the real threats to tolerance are from within, not without.

Culture vs. Agriculture

Did I mention that I'm taking German at our local community college?  Our professor, a native of Germany, extols the virtues of super-sized words such as Mitbewohnerinnen while barely concealing her contempt for American pop culture.

Her foils in the class are two girls, recent graduates of Rowan County's finest, rural, directionally-named high schools, who constantly complain about the class lasting all the way until 8:20 PM.  The other week, they vigorously debated Frau W. over whether or not the dearth of Wal-Marts in Germany was a good thing.  They dislike hard breads and dry wines.  They are, in short, a cultured European's worst nightmare.

Last night Frau W. was trying to read the writing on the back of one of their T-shirts (die T-shirts in German!) as one of them exited the class at break time.  Something like "I'm a genetic experiment gone wrong."  (Please, no jokes about Germans and experiments.)  Anyway, she shows her the front, and explains, "It's a Lilo and Stitch shirt."

Frau W. grimaces.

"What?"  asks the other girl.  "You didn't like that movie?"

Icy, Teutonic haughtiness spreads across Frau W.'s face.  "Do I look like somebody who watches Disney movies?"  she asked.

Maybe you had to be there, but I fell apart laughing.

Later, we did diphthongs.  In German, "ay" is pronounced like a long "I" in English.  "Eu" is like our "oy."  The German city of Bayreuth is thus an excellent specimen for this drill.

Frau W. makes an aside.  "Do you know what Bayreuth is famous for?"  she asks.  "It's Wagner's home.  Every year the politicians get all dressed up and go listen to five hours of Wagner."  She gestured, indicating disapproval.  Just because you're a cultured European doesn't mean you're into it lock, stock and barrel. 

Girl pipes up:  "What do you expect?  Y'all don't have Wal-Mart there."

Touché.

Writer's Block

A critique of PowerPoint's corrosive effect on Protestant worship by in a recent Christian Century reminded me of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I re-read this week.  I mentioned Postman in passing in this post about potential problems with Emergent Christianity.  What I've been trying to do all week is write a post, or series of posts comparing the aesthetics of Emergent worship with those of Eastern Orthodoxy--another form of Christianity that revels in the visual--in light of Postman's critique of electronic media. 

I've been failing.

So I'll put it up here when I finally say it right. 

In the meantime, more frivolity...

Saturday Morning Bullet Points

• My next door neighbor calls out "Smallsbury's" cheapskate art patrons.
• Saddam Hussein was an important ally in the War on Terror.
• Just because you made it out of high school without getting shot doesn't mean you're out of the woods yet.