Category Archives: English Language - Page 2

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.

Where to keep the books?

Posted by on September 23, 2009 36 comments

This is my dilemma. I have an office with ample shelf space where I could easily house the large part of my library, thus having it with me every day during the work week. This would also have the advantage of having my books on-hand while doing editorial work. However, I have this deep-seated fear of not having my books at home, close at hand in my place of living. However my room can’t take any more books. Hence the conundrum.

Now, obviously these questions are of the utmost importance. Though it may seem trivial to some, the location of one’s library is actually a thing of massive significance that cannot be settled on lightly. So, with that in mind, what are folks’ different philosophies about where to locate your books? Home or office? Or home office, I suppose. Regardless, I pose the question to you all. Where should one’s books reside?

Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky

Posted by on September 15, 2009 22 comments

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.

Augustine Translations

Posted by on September 10, 2009 15 comments

Even though Augustine Week only produced a handful of posts, I’m still furiously reading all things Augustine. So far I’ve been quite impressed with the New City Press editions of Augustine’s works. Sadly they haven’t done The City of God yet, but the Cambridge University Press edition seems pretty good to me.

But, as a total dilettante at Augustine scholarship, I find myself wanting to ask the question: what translations of Augustine do people find to be the best? And why?

Round Again with Gendered Language

Posted by on August 13, 2009 7 comments

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. Read more »

More on Gendered Language

Posted by on August 12, 2009 10 comments

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.

Why the Kindle Shouldn’t be Trusted

Posted by on July 21, 2009 5 comments

Turns out that the only way to really own a book is to . . . well, actually own a book. Farhad Manjoo has a good article in Slate about the recent debacle regarding Kindle users who had purchased 1984 and then subsequently had their book deleted when it came out that it was in violation of a copyright:

Let’s give Amazon the benefit of the doubt—its explanation for why it deleted some books from customers’ Kindles actually sounds halfway defensible. Last week a few Kindle owners awoke to discover that the company had reached into their devices and remotely removed copies of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Amazon explained that the books had been mistakenly published, and it gave customers a full refund. It turns out that Orwell wasn’t the first author to get flushed down the Kindle’s memory hole. In June, fans of Ayn Rand suffered the same fate—Amazon removed Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness, with an explanation that it had “recently discovered a problem” with the titles. And some customers have complained of the same experience with Harry Potter books. Amazon says the Kindle versions of all these books were illegal. Someone uploaded bootlegged copies using the Kindle Store’s self-publishing system, and Amazon was only trying to look after publishers’ intellectual property. The Orwell incident was too rich with irony to escape criticism, however. Amazon was forced to promise that it will no longer delete its customers’ books.

Don’t put too much stock in that promise. The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct; it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1′s and 0′s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

Evangelicals and Empire

Posted by on June 22, 2009 3 comments

For those who are interested, I’ve just had my review of Bruce Benson and Peter Heltzel’s new book, Evangelicals and Empire published in The Other Journal. The book is a fascinating engagement with the empire theory of Hardt and Negri from the standpoint of evangelicalism. The book looks both at how Hardt and Negri’s theory might be brought to bear on evangelicalism and how evangelical theology might offer challenges to Hardt and Negri. Definitely worth a read.

Mere Yoder

Posted by on June 21, 2009 12 comments

John Howard Yoder continues to become more and more of an influence on me, both materially and methodologically in regard to both theology and ethics. Of course, many, many folks have never read or even heard of Yoder. This is to be expected, given his Mennonite context. If you’re not a Mennonite or lack much connection with that tradition there’s a pretty good chance that you wouldn’t run across Yoder’s work too readily.

So, for those who are looking for some kind of vector of entry into Yoder’s thought and “style,” my recommendation (as far as introductory secondary literature goes) would actually be Lee Camp’s Mere Discipleship. This is one of the most accessible books I’ve ever read. It succeeds at distilling most of Yoder’s thought without reductionism or mere parroting. Part of the reason for this, I think is that Camp’s book is not simply trying to be an analysis of Yoder’s work. Rather he is trying to say what Christianity is in the way that Yoder understood it. And he accomplishes this task admirably. Certainly there’s stuff to criticize in the book, and it sets out to present, not defend the ideas articulated therein. But, regardless this is definitely the layman’s introduction to Christianity according to Yoder.

Summer Reading

Posted by on June 11, 2009 24 comments

Since everyone else in the friggin blogosphere is posting lists of things they’re hoping to read this summer, here’s mine. I tried not to get too carried away. If I can do this, I will have done plenty:

  • Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics—Keep/get back on track with my reading plan (I’m about three weeks behind right now, for those who have been wondering)
  • John Howard Yoder
    • Read the new edition of Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution
    • Finally read Preface to Theology all the way through
    • Same for The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited
  • Warren Carter—Some great New Testament stuff I’ve been meaning to get to, especially on the gospel of John as a counter-imperial document
    • John and Empire
    • John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist
    • The Roman Empire and the New Testament
  • Articles to Write
    • Something for PTR on J. Kameron Carter’s book on race, possibly dealing with his use of analogy
    • An entry for this year’s Colin Gunton Memorial essay contest on whether or not ecumenical theology has a future (I am planning on giving a clear answer to the question)

The Holiness of Book Acquisition

Posted by on May 25, 2009 9 comments

Turns out that radical biblioholism goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. Mike Gorman has recently posted this great quote from Epiphanius on how acquiring books makes us less inclined to sin:

The acquisition of Christian books is necessary for those who can use them. For the mere sight of these books renders us less inclined to sin, and incites us to believe more firmly in righteousness.

If only this were true, I’d be pretty freaking holy.

Up and Coming Theologians?

Posted by on May 18, 2009 25 comments

Working in publishing, one the key elements of our work is trying to acquire new books that promise to be game-changers, at least in some respects, in their field. We editors are like vultures swooping around looking for talent and then dive-bombing them until they agree to give us a book.

So, in the interest of helping me foster this mission, I wish to pose a question to my theologically-astute readership: Who do you think publishers should be trying to solicit books from? What new theologians are pursuing ideas that need attention in print? Who should my next phone call be to?

Stephen Fowl on Theological Interpretation

Posted by on May 18, 2009 1 comment

At the new Christian Theology on the Bible blog, fellow Wipf & Stocker, Chris Spinks is posting a series of quotes from Stephen Fowl’s forthcoming book on Theological Interpretation of Scripture in our Cascade Companions series. Other notable books in the series include Michael Gorman’s Reading Paul and D. Stephen Long’s Theology and Culture. This new book by Fowl is sure to be a good one.

Here’s the first quote that Chris has posted so far:

Open up virtually any biblical commentary written before the 16th century; then look at the discussion of that same passage in virtually any commentary written after 1870. The differences are so significant that a beginning student may well wonder if these two commentaries are actually speaking about the same biblical text. I can think of no better way to begin to think about the role of history and historical criticism in theological interpretation than to perform this exercise.

Pre-modern interpretation is very different from the types of interpretation you encounter in a modern biblical commentary or article. Understanding the nature of this difference is what is most important for now. If you have already been exposed to some pre-modern interpreters, they may seem less strange. For many students, however, their encounter with pre-modern interpretation can seem like traveling to a different planet. It may be tempting to think that the difference between pre-modern interpreters and us is that they had a naïvely literalistic understanding of the Scripture, that they read the gospels with harmonizing eyes such that they neglected or glossed over textual puzzles. Although there may be some examples of these interpretive flaws, they are not characteristic of pre-modern interpretation at its best. Pre-modern interpreters understood that Scripture was extraordinarily diverse, and contained various textual puzzles and obscurities.

For the most part, the various interpretive practices common in the pre-modern period arise from Christian theological convictions. Scripture was seen as God’s gift to the church. Scripture was the central, but not the only, vehicle by which Christians were able to live and worship faithfully before the triune God. It is also the case that faithful living, thinking, and worshipping shaped the ways in which Christians interpreted Scripture. At its best, the diversity and richness of the patterns of reading Scripture in the pre-modern period are governed and directed by Scripture’s role in shaping and being shaped by Christian worship and practice. Ultimately, Scriptural interpretation, worship, and Christian faith and life were all ordered and directed towards helping Christians achieve their proper end in God.

It is important to understand that the difference between modern and pre-modern biblical interpretation is not due to the fact that we are smart and sophisticated while they are ignorant and naïve. Instead, modern biblical study is most clearly distinguished from pre-modern interpretation because of the priority granted to historical concerns over theological ones. Ultimately, if Christians are to interpret Scripture theologically, the first step will involve granting priority to theological concerns. This, however, is to anticipate my conclusion.

Looks to be a good book and good blog series. Keep your eyes on it.

Freedom: Augstinian-Style

Posted by on May 14, 2009 31 comments

James K.A. Smith’s article in Evangelicals and Empire is good overview of the contrast between the rhetoric of freedom in the West and the classical Christian and distinctly Augustinian notion of freedom as rightly ordered desire:

If we valorize freedom as mere freedom of choice, then we end up affirming the condition of a disorderd should as metaphysically normative, and we will end up describing as “free” what Christian theology describes as a state of sin. We will also end up describing the rightly ordered agent as some how unfree because he is not free to do otherwise.

I pretty much agree with this. The equation of freedom with the experience of choice is, frankly just stupid. Also, I am a firm believer that true freedom is freedom that can do no other. The one who cannot help but love his wife is free. The man who chooses to cheat on his wife with his secretary is enslaved.

But, of course this line of reasoning has an ideological danger to it (which does not militate against it—it just needs to be noted). Equating freedom to rightly ordered desire must not be allowed to turn into a sort of enforced moral totalitarianism if it is to be true freedom. In other words, while reducing freedom to choice is slavery, it is not any less slavery to say that since freedom is not ultimately about the experience of choice it doesn’t matter whether or not we coerce the choices of others.

Remembering P.T. Forsyth

Posted by on May 11, 2009 Comments Off

Jason alerts us to the fact that today is the birthday of Scottish theologian, P.T. Forsyth. Forsyth is one of the great underrated theologians and probably always will be. His books are worth anyone’s time. The Holy Father, The Cruciality of the Cross, and The Soul of Prayer are some of the best books of his.

Here’s a quote of his to add to the one Jason already posted:

Man is indeed incomparable with God, but incompatible he is not. And in Christ the compatibility becomes full communion. In Christ the living God is, to the extent that he lives, the giving God. In Christ we were neither made nor saved to eke out some lack in God, nor to meed some hunger in his being; but of his fullness we have all received. And we are here as the fullness and overflow of his creative love, to his praise and glory in our faith’s receptive and sympathetic love.

God in Christ is the maker of his own revelation. It was God himself that came to us in Christ; it was nothing about God, even about his eternal essence or his excellent glory. It is God that is our salvation, and not the truth about God. And what Christ came to do was not to convince us even that God is love, but to be with us and in us as the loving God forever and ever. He came not to preach the living God but to be God our life; yes, not to preach even the loving God but to be the love that God forever is.”

~ P.T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 353-54.

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