Daily Archives: October 26, 2009

The Logic of Institutional Perdurance

Posted by on October 26, 2009 11 comments

Brad has a post up responding the rash of discussion about the latest development between Rome and Canterbury regarding the future of Anglo-Catholics. The question he raises is whether or not Protestants have good reasons for desiring the perpetual existence of their denominational and institutional structures at all.

Certainly a worthy point. However, I think all of this hints towards a bigger ecclesiological question: Is the desire for perpetual institutional perdurance something that is theologically acceptable for any ecclesial tradition?

As Brad notes, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions make the strongest claims for the necessity of their own institutional perdurance, but I don’t think that matters too much in regard to the actual theological question. Clearly any institutional structure will find its own perpetuation supremely important, so we should expect this, especially from institutions that have a very long history. It should come as no surprise to us that the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox are the most vocal proponents of the absolute theological necessity of their institutional propagation. However, the theological question is if this survivalist and protectionist mentality is what the gospel calls out and seeks to create in the scope God’s own work, in Christ and the Spirit, of transforming the world into the kingdom of God.

Obviously one could make the argument that simply by virtue of their prolonged existence, God has validated the claims of churches that make such arguments, but clearly that rests on major historiographical assumptions about the nature of God’s work in the world. This argument simply proceeds by identifying God’s work with the historical outcomes that have led to things as they currently are. In short, it rests on the assumption that God is behind the survival of a given institution simply by virtue of the fact that it has historically come to exist and remain in existence. Clearly there are some ideological problems that inhere in such a historiography, at least from my own perspective on the issue.

None of this is meant to argue that Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox are simply a bunch of survival-obsessed ecclesial bureaucrats (a very different argument would be needed to substantiate that notion). Rather it is just to say that any argument for the necessity of ecclesial institutional perdurance ought to be made from within the logic of the gospel itself, indeed, if one cannot show how the gospel requires a specific form institutional self-propagation to be required by the gospel, it seems to me that we should view all such claims with suspicion given the way in which all institutions inevitably seek self-propagation and survival.

To Strongly Be Against Grammatical Correctness

Posted by on October 26, 2009 2 comments

The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, by Jack Lynch looks to be something well worth getting for those interested in the jujitsu that is writing in the English language. Salon has a decent review of the book:

“Correct” English, as Lynch characterizes it, is basically “the English wealthy and powerful people spoke a generation or two ago.” And sure enough, the first guides to English usage promised to teach people to write and speak with greater “elegance” and “politeness,” not greater correctness. These manuals, born of an age of increased social mobility, were intended for “a newly self-conscious group of people who were no longer peasants but still were excluded from the traditional aristocracy.” The suddenly rich children of merchants and manufacturers needed instructions on the elegant grammar (and manners) of the aristocracy in order to blend in with their social superiors. Tellingly, the 300-year history of fulmination against improper usage is marked by diatribes against those “inferior” and upstart groups supposedly most prone to transgression: women, young people, racial and ethnic minorities and, of course, Americans.

To protests that the language police are only protecting the accuracy, precision and clarity of our tongue, Lynch lifts a skeptical eyebrow. Many of the most roundly deplored “debasements” of English are nevertheless perfectly comprehensible: I didn’t confuse you by writing “Ain’t it the truth?” in my opening paragraph, did I? The only truly unbreakable rules of grammar and usage are the ones that, when broken, result in a genuine failure to communicate. The rest is a form of covert class warfare, and today’s usage reproofs constitute a status-protecting thump on the head delivered by the upper middle class to uppity members of the lower middle.

Thinking of the grammar wars in this light helps explain why they provoke such rage. Much as some people might detest seeing the noun “impact” used as a verb, if a lot of people say it and almost everybody understands it when it’s said, then a coup has been effected. The “verbing” of nouns (or the creation of “nerbs”) has been a flashpoint for the past four or five decades with the growth of business management lingo. Complaints about this point to a particularly American social fissure: between the cultured sensibility of the liberally educated and the can-do utilitarianism of striving MBAs.

Some sort of comment about the evangelical rage that roils over whenever someone suggests that “man” is maybe not the best word to describe men and women seems appropriate here.

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