The point that interests me is why he continues and whether what we see is peculiarly religious behaviour. It’s just possible that it is not. What the Archbishop is holding on to is the idea that we can’t have ideas alone. They are always part of a conversation within a particular community, and sometimes the things that we get from that community are more important than any particular idea. In his case, as a Christian, who believes that the church (in some sense) is a means for God’s purpose in the world, he has to think that connection with it is a vital part of what he is called to do.
Something like this has to be the position of anyone who is aware that they are part of any kind of intellectual and cultural tradition. Even when we disagree with old ideas, we do so in the belief that the people we admire and have learned from would agree with us if only they could have had our experiences. In some fairly limited areas this is actually more or less true. Scientists, for example, can be brought round by new experiments to change their minds about scientific facts, though on matters of the heart, or of politics, they can be just as stupid and illogical as everyone else.
But in those parts of life which aren’t susceptible to clear and simple demonstrations, we have to face the possibility that people we love and admire really can sincerely disagree with us. The only alternative ”“ though I agree that it is a very popular one ”“ is to demonise entirely everyone who disagrees. But anyone who is not prepared to do that may one day find themselves in a position almost as grotesque and as humiliating as Williams’, though not, perhaps, on this particular subject.
The ABC is simply a Hegelian. There is not truth: only thesis , antitheses and synthisis in an unending cycle of process. The object is not the end or a decision but the process itself and the perpetuation of that process. Lambeth was the ABC’s masterpiece in which there was process and no decision resulting in more process.
Enough already. Let GAFCON end the thing.
Not quite. I think it’s more Bakhtin than Hegel to whom the Archbishop is looking at the moment.
Explain?
This is an excellent analysis, the best I have read so far. I see no sign of Hegelian motion in the ABC and neither does Andrew Brown, whoever he is. LM
Perhaps a description of [url=http://www.public.iastate.edu/~honeyl/bakhtin/chap2a.html]Bakhtin’s[/url] ideas may help:
[blockquote]In his work on Dostoevsky, Bakhtin introduces his concept of “polyphony,” whereby an author creates characters who are ideologically different from himself. In doing so, he also uses, for the first time, the term “dialogic” to describe his views on philosophy of language. Tolstoy, Bakhtin argues, is the prime example of a monologic author, whose characters, sooner or later, come around to his own views of literature, religion, and philosophy. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, was the first author to achieve full creation of characters whose consciousnesses were distinctively different from his own. Bakhtin coined this achievement “polyphony,” borrowing the term from a Soviet literary critic who in turn appropriated the phrase from music theory (Problems 20). [1] While Bakhtin did not originate this phrase, he took the basic principle much further in applying it to the whole of Dostoevsky’s work.
Though most of this book analyzes particular passages of Dostoevsky, Bakhtin covers a wide range of issues in philosophy of language as well. Among these is the idea that language is indeed ambiguous, but whereas deconstruction would highlight this ambiguity as the inability of words to convey precise meaning, Bakhtin welcomes this vagueness of language as a means by which to create meaning dialogically. Indeed, in describing the nature of the polyphonic novel, Bakhtin sees the entire scope of human life as a dialogic process whereby we find meaning only through our interactions with others….[/blockquote]
Isn’t this just a form of pluralism?
[blockquote]Baktin also briefly outlined the polyphonic concept of truth. He criticized an assumption that if two people disagree, at least one of them must be in error. He challenged philosophers for whom plurality of minds is accidental and superfluous. For Bakhtin, truth is not a statement, a sentence or a phrase. Instead, truth is a number of mutually addressed albeit contradictory and logically inconsistent statements. Truth needs multitude of bearing voices. It cannot be held within a single mind, it also cannot be expressed with “a single mouth.†The polyphonic truth requires many simultaneous voices. Bakhtin does not mean to say that many voices carry partial truths that can simply complement each other. A number of different voices do not make the truth if simply “averagedâ€, or “synthesized.†It is the fact of mutual addressivity, of engagement, and of commitment to the context of a real-life event, that distinguishes truth from untruth.[/blockquote]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakhtin
Any “Truth” that has “contradictory and logically inconsistent statements” doesn’t sound like Truth in my ears. Another problem that I have with this is the concept of polyphonic Truth. Christ boldly proclaims that He is the way, the truth, and the life and that no man comes to the Father but by Him. If truth cannot be had by a single voice…where is God? The God I follow speaks authoritatively.
No, this stuff is nonsense. “A” does not equal “non-A”. Baktin is irrational.
By the way, exactly how many voices are required to arrive at “polyphonic truth”? Two? Ten? 100? 1,000? A billion? Isn’t this just a new package for skepticism? We cannot know the Truth because we have not heard enough voices [even conflicting voices] to determine it.
If Bakhtinism was the template of this Lambeth conference, then surely it was an utter failure without the voices of the GAFCON assembly being present. There can be no valid claim of discovering Truth with that model, because the majority of the opposing voices that make up the communion were not heard.
[blockquote][b]2 Timothy 3:1-9[/b]
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith.
But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also. [/blockquote]
ABC is a hegelian? That’s ridiculous. Second, Hegel was onto something, and actually undergirds some pretty interesting modern Christianity (say, Charles Taylor, for example).
“Pluralism” is a term usually used in political contexts of religion. “polyphony” is a discussion of how people actually use words. Bakhtin is especially useful as literature.
I can understand, Sick, why you are suspicious of literature, as it seems to undermine “truth.” It may be that Jesus knew Bakhtin (he was omniscient, right?) and thus when he said he was the truth, he was also the “polyphonic truth,” which makes reading scripture much more interesting, and relevant. If anything, that both of us can read two texts and disagree on its meaning just seems to indicate that bakhtin was right, empirically.
RE: ” . . . that both of us can read two texts and disagree on its meaning just seems to indicate that bakhtin was right, empirically.”
Well, no — it could also mean that the readers are fallen, “empirically.”
But the “empirically” verbiage is merely a pretension anyway.
It could also mean that one of the readers is just plain stuped or otherwise couldn’t understand what they were reading, or it could mean that they have an agenda and simply create (manufacture) a different reading of the text which they call an “interpretation” in order to advance an agenda.
Scripture isn’t mere literature. It is inspired. As such, it is authoritative. Though written by many men, it is not a multitude of voices. It is one voice, one Truth, one Way. There is no other name under heaven than Jesus’ name whereby men must be saved. He is the unmatched singularity. His sheep hear His voice…not the multitude of voices.
Bakhtin’s “truth” may only be found in many voices ““contradictory and logically inconsistent†, but my Truth is not so. My Truth is Truth whether I or anyone else believe it or give it voice. In fact, the very rocks and trees will cry out that Truth if mankind fails to do so.
The following comments might very likely please no-one and annoy everyone so far on this thread. But perhaps not … I stupidly persevere. For Andrew Brown has done us a real service – potentially.
First a general comment. The canonical scriptures present us with four Gospels, four portraits if you will, of the significance of Jesus’ Coming: from “Messiah and Son of God†(Mark) to the Fourth Gospel’s Logos Incarnate, via Luke’s “Man of the Spirit†who becomes “Lord of the Spirit†(in Acts) and Matthew’s “Immanuelâ€. Yet even these grotesque summaries spoil the very point. It is only by working our way patiently through the narratives of the Gospels that we are able to learn to discern the identity of the One who is at the centre of the drama. And even then, we’d better start over again once we get to the end, so subtle and deft are the brush strokes often. E.g. Matthew’s conclusion, 28:18ff, as an inclusion regarding the very nature of Who it is that is God among/with us, with its emerging Trinitarianism and its now curious depiction of the form of divine authority (via crucifixion) that prompts faithful discipleship. And similar exercises may be performed with all the other Gospels – especially the Fourth in which famously “both toddlers may paddle and elephants swimâ€, to paraphrase.
So; [i]four[/i] presentations of Jesus and God’s actions identifiable by and with him. But NOT [i]twenty four[/i], say! [b]Not[/b] all those additional ‘apocryphal stories’ that emerged out of the 2nd C and beyond: e.g. of Thomas or Phillip or Matthias or the Twelve or According to Mary, etc. I.e. we do have a real degree of polyphony in the very Scriptures already; yet one bounded by certain parameters that emerged during those first centuries of Christian mission, leading to an acknowledgement of the canon. [i]Faithfulness [/i] to [b]both[/b] these facts means that Christian disciples and the Church are on pilgrimage this side of the Second Coming.
And now back to Rowan Williams. His behaviour and words are, from my reading of the situation – always nowadays from afar, and so fraught with even more trickiness – an exercise in a form of faithfulness to what he has learned, tried to learn, as a disciple of Jesus. But not just any disciple: his [i]own[/i] discipleship; albeit one learned in a number of particular communities over a period of time, from whom in conversation he has necessarily drawn much. And it’s the same with all of us – has to be the same!
Yet again, his own exposure to and immersion in [i]certain[/i] communities has meant a staggering engagement with the giddy heights of ‘the Academy’. To take but one example that puts the finger right on the present button of this thread: “Between Politics and Metaphysics: Reflections in the wake of Gillian Roseâ€, [i]Modern Theology[/i] 1/11, 1995, pp.3-22. Rose was a Jewish philosopher, turned Christian very late in her short life, who herself straddled multiple communities in her attempts to faithfully ‘figure it out’ via “Love’s Workâ€. And her wrestling took in all those heavies cited in this thread – and a whole stack more, especially Theodor Adorno, whom she beautifully surpassed (in my view).
The problem is what happens when such a one as Williams becomes the chief pastor of the Christian community we know as the Anglican Communion? Donning his donnish hat makes it impossible for “sick and tired†to follow, and Br Michael to seriously spin. Yet Larry derives some real benefit – as do I. However, my conclusions are still guarded; for I know that an essential aspect of Christian leadership is to guard precisely Jesus’s “little ones†(Matt 18). Curiouser and curiouser, we are [i]all[/i] in fact “little ones†in Matthew’s scheme of discipleship. And this Williams also knows. The problem for us lesser mortals is to learn to ‘cut some slack’ with the likes of colossuses among us. Yet again, they too have to ‘cut some slack’, especially when called to [b]lead[/b]. (I paraphrase the parable on forgiveness.) For real communities in the real world of history and politics can only suffer conscious deferral within limited boundaries (back to the canon): a truly endless process of deferral might resemble hell indeed.
Williams’ own challenge, I surmise, is to allow enough “crumbs†– but only enough, and not the entire loaf which would only choke us – “from the table†of the Academy to fall that will indeed assist us “dogs†to become healed in our thinking and practice, to become self-consciously more faithful disciples of Jesus. Lambeth perhaps tried this with the bishops themselves: a kind interpretation anyway, that resembles Andrew Brown’s article. What they all forgot however was that meanwhile the rest of us, the flock, were being violently harassed by wolves – even wolves in sheep’s clothing. And Matthew’s Jesus is prepared to give [i]them[/i] both barrels, ch.23, rather than nice cups of English tea. My surmise therefore includes another aspect, an even more rigorous dialectic of engagement for our Archbishop with ‘alien’ “conversationsâ€, which would hopefully correct too his own “errorsâ€. And this none too soon lest we all in the AC fracture beyond repair.
#9 – you could be right: people make mistakes reading all the time. But writers often write deliberately to allow for multivalent meanings – this is what makes books worth rereading. If anything, this is required if a text is to last beyond its generation. Your view, however, doesn’t disprove Bakhtin – if anything, it confirms it.
#11 is interesting – and poetic. I am not a sheep myself, unless you are meaning the word “sheep” as a metaphor. As far as hearing Jesus’ voice, is it in the tone of James Mason, or is it like a Bach Fugue? Or is it your own voice, read through scripture? Or is it in Aramaic? But I’m not sure why Truth has to be of one sort for God. For Sick and Tired, it might be comforting, but God may have powers that might allow for nuance, subtlety, irony and even contradiction. Or maybe he is not omnipotent in that way.