He came to those who were his own, but his own did not receive him. They drove him out, outside the gates, exiling him among the sick, the perverted, the disgusting, the damned. And there he made his home. None would have noticed except for the outbursts of life that began to occur in incorrect places. They were regularly stifled, and attacked when necessary. This was often so.

What made for the most consternation was the occasional person who would wander outside the gates and be found by him, or those who claimed to be his people. Sometimes these wanderers were themselves driven outside the gate. Most often they simply happened to go that way. But once in a great while he or his alleged friends would find them, wandering outside the gate and bring them into their  hovel. For reasons unknown some of them would claim to have been housed in mansions beyond count, and to have been fed, clothed, and liberated from the weight and pain of all things. The mud on their clothes betrayed their delusions.

Most returned, happy to be received back inside the gates. The charcoal fires keep warm there, and the smell of food is never lacking. But some still wander outside the gates. Few know why. Less care.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body.
If the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the
amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
eleven apostles;
it was as his flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that – pierced – died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of
enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a thing painted in the faded credulity
of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier mache,
not stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will
eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the
dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not make it less monstrous,
for in our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour,
we are embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

– John Updike, “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” in Telephone Poles and Other Poems (London: Andre Deutsch, 1964), 72–3.

David Bentley Hart has a new article in First Things that argues for the unthinkable: the wholesale superiority of Tolstoy over Dostoevsky both literarily and theologically:

Among converts to Orthodoxy, for instance, as well as among many cradle Orthodox of a particularly rigorist kind, Dostoevsky is especially honored for having held firmly to Chalcedonian orthodoxy and having introduced the greater world to the figure of Father Zosima, from whom all the light of Eastern Christian contemplative spirituality shines out; and, more generally, among Christians of many confessions, Dostoevsky is revered as a prophet, the great Christian anti-Nietzsche, the voice of ancient Christian truth crying out in the spiritual desert of the modern West.

Tolstoy, by contrast, was practically a liberal Protestant, who thought of Jesus principally as a divinely inspired teacher of moral truth; he was not only indifferent to, but scornful of dogmatic tradition; he was even excommunicated, for goodness’ sake.

Fair enough, I suppose. I would observe, however, that there are all kinds of orthodoxy and all kinds of heresy. It is true that Dostoevsky personally assented—despite occasional episodes of doubt—to the creeds of the ancient church, and that he believed deeply in the mystical and sacramental traditions of the Orthodox church, and that in general his vision of things was shaped by traditional Christian understandings of sin and redemption.

That said, it is also true that his Chalcedonian orthodoxy was often almost inextricably confused with a dark, semipagan mysticism of the “Russian Christ” and of Russian blood and soil, and that he nursed slightly deranged fantasies of an Eastern Christian crusade to recapture Constantinople by violence, and that his virulent and contemptible anti-Semitism was anything but an accidental feature of his moral philosophy.

Tolstoy, on the other hand, despite his creedal heterodoxy, at least believed that, say, the sermon on the mount should be taken quite literally, and that Christ’s injunction to love our enemies and Paul’s claim that, in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek (and so forth) meant that Christians really ought not to kill Turks or hate Jews. If we were really to make conformity to Christian teaching our chief criterion of comparison between the two men, I would still hesitate to concede Dostoevsky the advantage.

One point that really needs to be emphasized in the dispute over gendered language has to do with the importance of a literary work ethic. What is at play in the problem of gendered language is twofold. First, there is the ethical problem of referring to both genders only using masculine terms. For most people who aren’t strong patriarchalists today, this is at least acknowledged as an important problem. Second, there is the grammatical problem of how to write well when using an indefinite singular pronoun. If the English language had one readily available this whole discussion would likely be a non-issue. However this is the impasse as things stand. Attempts to create new pronouns seem bound to fail. As such we must pursue other options.

We’ve already seen that in a wide variety of cases the universal “they” is literarily appropriate, and offers a way out of many of these sorts of problems. However, as we’ve also seen that there are clearly some cases where such usage of “they” is pretty difficult grammatically. What to do?

My most basic answer here, as an editor who has a vested interest in good writing, is simply that writers need to be less lazy. In almost every case where we seem to need a singular pronoun there is generally an easy way to write the the sentence using different syntax that does not require the use of the problematic pronouns. It just takes some actual thought and work when writing. Speaking as one who has to edit the work of authors all the time, I would really suggest that one of the real issues at play here is the issue of laziness. To write in ways that are both grammatically appropriate and gender-accurate is more difficult. It takes more work. Some authors don’t want to take the trouble. But good writing demands that we take both matters seriously rather than looking for the easy way out by trying to deny one of the problems.

For some examples of how to do this, read on after the jump.Some of the different options include the following (take from Garner’s Modern American Usage):

1. Delete the pronoun reference altogether. E.g.: “Every manager should read memoranda as soon as they are delivered to him [delete to him] by a mail clerk.”
2. Change the pronoun to an article, such as a or the. E.g.: An author may adopt any of the following dictionaries in preparing his [read a] manuscript.”
3. Pluralize, so the he becomes a they. E.g.: “A student should avoid engaging in any activities that might bring discredit to his school.” (Read: Students should avoid engaging in any activities that might bring discredit to their school.)
4. Use the relative pronoun who, especially when the generic he follows an if. E.g.: If a student cannot use standard English, he cannot be expected to master the nuances of the literature assigned in this course.” (Read: A student who cannot use standard English cannot be expected to master the nuances of the literature assigned in this course.)
5. Repeat the noun instead of using a pronoun, especially when the two are separated by several words. E.g.: “When considering a manuscript for publication, the editor should evaluate the suitability of both the subject matter and the writing style. In particular he [read the editor]. . .“

Sometimes a quick flip through the dictionary can be most helpful on these matters. The argument by proponents of male-centric language goes something along the lines of saying that using “they” as a universal singular pronoun is grammatically incorrect and would only be done by Philistines who have no sense of literary decency. However, history and, ironically enough, tradition is against them on this.

Here are just a few samples of “they” being used as a universal singular pronoun in Western literature:

— Shakespeare: and every one to rest themselves betake;
— Jane Austen: I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly;
— W. H. Auden: it is too hideous for anyone in their senses to buy;
— Shakespeare: ’tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear the speech;
— W. M. Thackeray: a person can’t help their birth;
— G. B. Shaw: no man goes to battle to be killed. — But they do get killed;

- From Merriam Webster

All this to say, using “they” as a universal singular pronoun is not bad English whatsoever, nor is it grammatically problematic. Strangely then, it seems to me that the only reason for rejecting a grammatically-appropriate gender-accurate pronoun in favor of a male one would be . . . ideological. Imagine that.

The geniuses at Salon have brilliantly taken transcripts from Fox New douchebag, Glenn Beck and put them, verbatim, in verse. The result a somewhat more fantastic than can be described in prose:

FORGOTTEN MAN

At first, the idea of the Forgotten Man was
The little orphan that was in the middle here and
Everybody forgot that, and government and
The businessman was happy and
Playing the role of government is Jesus because
I think that’s who we have as president now, and so …
What would happen is this guy would be happy and
This guy would be happy, but the little orphan
Was left out, but now the Forgotten Man; help me out on this;
Now the Forgotten Man, Jesus, decides that he
Is going to help out the little orphan person; so …

You, no longer wearing the top hat and no longer happy,
And of course, the little orphan boy now has a crack pipe and
Octomom is back here with her tentacles; OK,
There’s Octomom; Jesus decides to take the money from you
Now, and then he gives it to Octomom.

Tons more here, here, and here. I’ve also included a couple other favorites after the jump.

IMAGINE

Let’s say you are in Saudi Arabia
Where nobody’s ever heard of the Trinity.
You’re a Catholic. Nobody’s ever heard of
The Trinity. What, the Trinity?

What, it’s three in one,
They’re everywhere and nowhere.
Jesus is on the cross
But he’s really God.

So God has died but
Yet he didn’t die
And how does this –
Imagine you’ve never heard this before.

So you’ve never heard
Any kind of explanation.
So it works.
You know what I mean?

THE BORDER

You stand up for the border,
You’re a racist.
Are you really a racist?
I’m not a racist.

TIME TO BELIEVE

It’s time to stop playing
Games in this country.
It is time to actually believe
In something. I do.
I know you do as well.
Believe in something.
Even if it’s wrong.

Ken draws some interesting connections in a couple posts between Tolkien’s epic tale in The Return of the King and the Gospel of John’s perspective on Jesus’s messiahship in relation to the institutions of Judaism. Some good analysis here that’s worth a read. Check it out.

I’m sure that some have noticed the dearth of posts over the last few days. Well, part of the reason for the current lacuna is that I have been in the process of moving back to Portland from Eugene, Oregon where I have spent the last two months. I was spending some time working out of the offices of Wipf and Stock Publishers, though from now on I will be working off-site, and in fact for the next two months I will be working from my own home. So far so good.

There are a lot of exciting projects happening at Wipf and Stock with which I’m excited to be affiliated. Right now I’m spending the bulk of my time on a forthcoming book by John Milbank, entitled The Future of Love: Theological Interventions. It is a collection of some of Milbank’s most important essays, both early and recent, dealing especially with the issues of theology and politics, religious pluralism, and Milbank’s overall theological agenda. It promises to be an important volume to anyone interested in Milbank’s theology.

Also, incidentally, we have also just finished up another book by Milbank entitled The Legend of Death which is Milbank’s collected poems. It promises to be a good read for anyone theologically-minded who also has an interest in poetry. It should be available in a matter of days or weeks and most. Here is one of the many notable poems (page 10):

Early Autumn Vagrant

A day brushed with lemon.

Luminous wafts
of light lapping frequently
like inverted shadows
beneath a dull-cast heaven.

All ignored by the brimming
schemes of afternoon pastures

for their harvest of sun-tide,
with wave after wave of
wind at last blindly illuming

the bench of the end of everything:
all cast-up, awaiting unknown salvage.

It has all been perfect,
but has left me languished,

my world swept away from me
and myself along with it.
My bodily eyes, self-bereft,
watch my soul depart on its last
and surest voyaging,

while I read on eagerly
in the book about love
as the dusk sweeps out
the open clearness.

In his book, A Theology of Compassion, Oliver Davies suggests that theology has a fundamentally poetic character.  The act of theology is an act of imaginative poiesis, of making language strange.  Poetry, he says leads us to the threshold of theology, but not beyond precisely because of theology’s commitment to historicity.  While poems in some sense remain tied to the empirical reality of the world, they basically function as a semiotic system, as a textual world of their own.  What is fundamental to poetry’s reality is its status as distinctly other than the physical world that we inhabit.  Theology however, makes distinctly historical claims in its own narration of the world.  Theology does not merely encode an alternative semiotic world to question, interrogate, or illumine the empirical world of sense perception. 

Rather theology seeks to interrupt the real world with the Real World revealed in Jesus’ history.  It is this Reality that theology proclaims to be actualized in the history of Jesus.  As such, theology’s poeticity does not consist of it suspension of of the historical; rather its historicity is the very condition of theology’s particular poetic character.  It is in the Reality of Christ’s history to which theology witnesses that the poetic dimensions of human imagination find their telos and fullness.  “The radical dialectical antitheses of Christian faith, of incarnation and Trinity, personally made manifest to us in the hypostatic union, are the consummation, overflow, and ‘passion’ of human existence itself, accomplished in every form of human feeling, thinking, and speaking.”

One of the wonderful things that is a sad rarity in reading theology is to find a theologian who is also an excellent writer.  Sadly the greatest of theologians are often some of the worst writers you’ll ever read.  I remember my glee in reading Alan Lewis’ wonderful book Between Cross and Resurrection because not only was it some of the best theology I had ever read, it was definitely the best theological writing I had yet encountered.  David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite was another such joyous experience of great theology being wed to beautiful writing. 

Other theologians I’d put in the good writers category would be Robert Jenson, Herbert McCabe, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.  Where else have people read theologians whom they consider to be good writers?  In what great theologians does true literary ability meet theological acumen?

In keeping up with the current trends, I now have a tumblr.com blog, where I can do the lazy kind of posting (just links, quotes, and pics).  Hopefully some of you will visit it sometime.  The title for it is taken from the captivating poem by W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming: 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

If you have ever owned
a tortoise, you already know
how difficult paper training can be
for some pets.

Even if you get so far
as to instill in your tortoise
the the value of achieving the paper 
there remains one obstacle -
your tortoise’s intrinsic sloth.

Even a well-intentioned tortoise
may find himself, in his journeys
to be painfully far from the mark.

Failing, your tortoise may shy away
for weeks within his shell,
utterly ashamed, or looking up with tiny,
wet eyes might offer an honest shrug.
Forgive him.

–Scott Cairns, “Slow Learner” in Compass of Affection: New and Selected Poems (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006), 5.

With the release of the latest Harry Potter book there has been a flurry of interesting theo-blogger posts evaluating the fascinating theological emphases in the final – and clearly most theological – book in this popular series.

Ben opens up a great discussion of the theological themes in Harry Potter.  Alastair at Aversaria has a great post on Boggarts illustrating some important points about fear, evil and the power of truth as seen in Harry Potter.  And Jon MacKenzie has an interesting post on Poteriology.

Being a late-comer to the series and a terrible person for spoilers, I’ve read all this stuff and haven’t yet finished the series.  But I have given my word that I will, and hopefully that will redeem my flagrant participation in reading spoilers.  Regardless, I think there are some great theological themes in Harry Potter, the most profound of which is the power of love over death, as embodied in one the greatest verses in the Bible, which also is quoted in Harry Potter: “The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.” (1 Cor. 15:26)

Christians have a bad track record in being good readers of fictional literature.  Often Christians evaluate whether fictional books should be read based on whether they cohere with their version of “the Christian worldview”.  In other words, for many Christians, fiction simply serves the instrumental purpose of bolstering Christian convictions and books that don’t do that should be ignored, at best.  However, I think this is just a very impoverished way to live.  Reading fiction should not primarily be about reinforcing our beliefs about God and the world, but about learning how to inhabit, play, and imagine inside of a fictional world.  Certainly some fiction is ideological, but most good fiction isn’t about pushing an agenda, it’s about inviting the reader to imaginatively enter another world, simply for its own sake.  I propose that Christians shouldn’t seek to strictly measure the Christian-ness of their fiction reading.  The purpose of fictional reading is to not have a purpose, it is simply to read and play in another world.  In fact, I suspect that if Christians were able to read fiction in this playful manner of learning to indwell a fictional world, we might learn far better how to read the Bible.