Why Red Letter Bibles Are Dumb

In 1901, Louis Klopsch published the first Bible in which those words "universally accepted as the utterances of our Lord and Saviour" were printed in red—the first "red letter Bible." They've been extremely popular ever since, especially amongst Protestants. Here's the problem with red letter bibles: nothing in the Bible is more or less important than anything else. It's all the Word of God, not just the stuff presented as quotations of Jesus.

Even though the Gospels are eyewitness accounts, and we believe the Apostles were given a special grace to be able to recall all of Jesus' teachings and recount them faithfully (cf. John 14:26), the Gospels aren't word-for-word, moment-by-moment, exact histories of what happened. The Gospels are history, yes, but the Apostles didn't conceive of history in the same way we do. I'm not suggesting that what they say happened didn't happen. I am saying that they're not, nor were they ever intended to be, perfectly factually accurate accounts with exact quotations.

To say that everything the Bible says is the Word of God and absolutely true is not to say that every part of it should be interpreted in the same way. Obviously the Gospels aren't the same kind of literature as 1 Corinthians or Revelation. Different books and sections of the Bible have to be interpreted in light of how they were intended to be read.

For example, when John says that angels in heaven are singing (cf. Rev. 5:8-13) he clearly doesn't mean that literally, because it's not possible. The angels are purely spiritual beings, they have no bodies. A being without vocal cords can't sing. What John is saying is something like: "the angels declare the glory of God and worship him." In order to get this idea across, he likens it to human songs of praise. In other words, it's a metaphor. It's still absolutely and undeniably true. But it's true metaphorically, not literally.

This principle must be extended out over the entirety of Scripture. The question is, How do we determine which parts should be interpreted in which way? Well, there are several answers. First, the Church, carrying on the Apostolic Witness to Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit is custodian to the truth of the Word of God, of which Scripture is the special, written testimony. Second, theologians determine how we must interpret particular passages of Scripture in light of what we know to be true about God and Christ. Third, bible scholars, archaeologists and the like are always coming up with new information about the people and times which produced Holy Scripture, giving us new insight into their culture and, as a result, literature.

To be sure, there are portions of Scripture which it's less crucial to read than others. Someone once suggested a new Christian read the New Testament twice before he ever read the Old Testament. Obviously, every last ceremonial precept in Leviticus and Deuteronomy don't need to be memorized to get the idea. Nevertheless, we ought not to treat the "words of Jesus" in the Gospels as exact quotations. Nor should we devalue the rest of Scripture as any less authoritative (when interpreted properly).

Tale As Old As Time

All works of art, no matter what the medium, are at the same time both new and old, both novel and traditional. As William Faulkner put it in his speech upon accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, one of the artist’s primary tasks is to “[leave] no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed.” All artists ever do is tell a very old story in a new way—for a new time and place. Drawing on their own particular experience of the world, artists retell “the old universal truths” insofar as they have experienced them. To use Michael Oakeshott’s term, artists “re-create” the world and the human condition according to their own experience of it, and insodoing, they give life to and delineate the eternal principles of Truth underlying all that exists.

In his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, T.S. Eliot called this simultaenous perception in the artist of both the universal past and his own particular present the “historical sense.” “The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity.”

This is the principle which Joseph Campbell picks up on in his work in comparative my-thology. All myths, all great stories are really just different cultures’ takes on the same fundamental ideas and principles. All stories have their foundation in the same basic human experiences, thoughts, and desires. More than that, they have their foundation in the same truths of the world in which we live. That is what artists do, tell very old stories with new characters and new imagery based on their own personal experience of the world. That is what they must do, for art re-creates the world, and the truth in the world never changes, it merely takes on new shapes and faces.

Take for instance one of Campbell’s own favorite myths—the heroic journey. All heroes follow the same simple pattern: Battle, Journey, Homecoming. Though the pattern expresses itself differently across different times and cultures, nevertheless the pattern remains the same. Let’s look at a few specific examples:

Odysseus cleansing his house of the suitors.

Odysseus left his home, wife Penelope, and son Telemachus in Ithaca for ten years to fight in the Trojan War. After his victory, he had to travel another ten years in order to reach home. The point of this journey was that the hero should learn how to leave the Battle behind and prepare the way for a life of peace. Upon returning home, Odysseus finds his house overrun with potential usurpers. He applies the things he learned on his journey to the cleansing of his house, setting it in order once and for all.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante must fight his way through Hell, literally. He must then journey up Mount Purgatory, being purified more and more along the way, allowing himself to be prepared for his eventual homecoming in Paradise, in which he is granted the vision of God himself.

Christ our Savior came down from Heaven to do Battle against Sin by dying on the cross, even to the point of descending into Hell. Like Odysseus, Christ waits in order that the victory he won may be perfectly applied to his Body the Church through his heroic patronage, until the time is right for him to return and set his house in order once and for all.

Like every element of art and literature, this heroic pattern contains inherant within it implications and meanings beyond a simple tale being told. This is not to say that the any work of art proposes to send an explicit message. If that were the case it would be mere propaganda. That being said, by virtue of the truth that lies in its characters and events, it can be more than just characters and events. These characters and events, insofar as they are representative of larger truths and realities, are able to signify them, stand for them, personify and incarnate them.

In this case of the heroic journey, we can draw an analogy to the general experience of Mankind. All men must fight their own Battle for the principles of Truth, Jusice, and Honor. All men must endeavor on the Journey to bring the victory home, work to restore order to their sphere of influence. And it is the Homecoming, the setting into Order of our household for which we fight, and for which we hope. By extension from this analogy, we are all called to be heroes, in our own specific times and places—we are all called to live a heroic life, especially in those mundane things which occupy everyday existence. We must fight for Truth, Justice, and Beauty, sacrifice our lives to the principles which are greater than us, and the people whom we love. More than just being true for us men, however, we have seen how this heroic journey is true universally and eternally by virtue of the Christ having lived it out himself.

It turns out, then, that his is the Truth that poets, painters, composers, and authors have been recreating over and over again throughout history, bringing it to us in new ways, for new times and new peoples. Insofar as any character (fictional or real) is heroic, then, he is Christ-like, and the title of an old film about his life seems all the more apt—The Greatest Story Ever Told.

The Fundamental Problem With The DC Comics Reboot

Article first published as "The Fundamental Problem With The DC Comics Reboot" on Technorati.

Many good points have been raised both for and against the upcoming massive, universe-wide reboot. If you ask me, I think the Cons far outweigh the Pros (see this article from ComicBookMovie.com), but that’s really beside the point. A reboot like this hits at the heart of what comic book superheroes are.

As soon as superhero comics started catching on in the 1930s, they began to carve out their place in the American mythos. To put it simply, more than anything else, they are our heroes. They are beginning to occupy a place much like that which Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, Hercules, and all the rest did in Ancient Greece. That Greek literary tradition developed gradually and organically over many hundreds and thousands of years, being retold again and again from generation to generation. Over time the stories and characters were reshaped many times, refined, tested by the ages, and perfected into those we have today. This process is admittedly ugly, time-consuming, and, at times, confusing. It might seem like a much better idea to simply start from scratch and make up the whole thing at once, start to finish. It would certainly all be much more coherent and cohesive, but the authenticity gets lost in the process. No one person or small group of people can accurately represent the mindset of an entire people. This is to say nothing of losing the organic and fluid nature of the traditional method, which allows the characters and ideas to be honed and polished, at the same time that it fosters novelty and creativity.

Stupid - Image courtesy of ComicBookMovie.com

It was in the 80s that superhero comics finally grew out of their infancy and proved that they could make their mark as a legitimate art form. Usually this level of quality and substance is not achieved except by a graphic novel or limited series, but that is not to discount the value in the ongoing continuity. Frank Miller’s work in Batman: Year One or The Dark Knight Returns could be considered analogous to that Homer did when he adapted the historic and noble tradition of Greek history and mythology into his own, stand-alone work of art. The Iliad and The Odyssey don’t displace the entire Greek literary tradition, they merely augment it.

In his Essay on the Development of Doctrine, Blessed John Henry Newman expounds the Christian position on how it is that doctrine develops over time. He explains that “when an idea...is of a nature to arrest and possess the mind, it may be said to have life, that is, to live in the mind which is its recipient. ...When some great enunciation, whether true or false, about human nature...is carried forward into the public throng of men and draws attention, then it is not merely received passively in this or that form into many minds, but it becomes an active principle within them, leading them to an ever-new contemplation of itself....” That is to say that influential new ideas and doctrines (like those proposed by early Christianity) do not lie dormant over time. Instead, they take on a new life within those who contemplate them. “At first men will not fully realize what it is that moves them, and will express and explain themselves inadequately.” In the beginning, a new idea will be poorly and incompletely understood. All new ideas have implications beyond their explicit original content. Over time “new lights will be brought to bear upon the original statements of the doctrine put forward; judgments and aspects will accumulate. ...Thus in time it will have grown into [a body of thought].” Experience, knowledge, and wisdom originally exterior to a new idea will, over time, be compared against it.

Throughout this process the idea grows and flourishes into its full self. The body of thought produced has not added anything which the explicit original content of the idea did not contain implicitly and in germinal form. “This body of thought, thus laboriously gained, will after all be little more than the proper representative of one idea, being in substance what that idea meant from the first, its complete image as seen in a combination of diversified aspects, with the suggestions and corrections of many minds, and the illustration of many experiences.” In other words, the body of Catholic dogma as it exists today is in fact no more than that which was there implicitly from the beginning having been fleshed out to a greater degree and with more clarity “through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts.” Authentic development is not addition or subtraction, but “the germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field.”

While Newman treated of this principle of development especially as it pertains to doctrine and theology, he does not limit its sphere of application to these only. On the contrary, the same can be said of many things, including a body of literary and mythological tradition.

The fundamental problem with the DC reboot is that it attempts to do exactly what Descartes set out to—rewrite the whole of Philosophy (or in this case, the American mythology) singlehandedly. Insodoing, DC is turning its back on almost a century of tradition, of natural and organic growth and development, of progress and refinement, not to mention its own fans. Insodoing, DC has caused countless hours of artists’ sweat and toil to count for nothing, and, more than that, DC has cheapened its comics’ appeal, quality, even their very nature.

Linguistic "Affectation"

While vs. whilst, who vs. whom, split infinitives, dangling prepositions, farther vs. further, the list goes on and on. I know what you’re thinking. These are mere affectations having little to nothing to do with actual communication, what’s their use? Good riddance, I say! Hmm...

Here’s the question: Do such things contribute to the goodness and beauty of the language, or do they not? What is beauty in a language? It might be true that a certain combination of sounds determines something of a language’s beauty. It could also be that phonology is simply arbitrary, and a preference for the way one language sounds as opposed to another is simply a result of either taste or cultural conditioning. I don’t know, and it is beyond the scope of this post to probe into such an issue. We must, therefore, leave it aside for the time being.

At the very least, language is meant to serve a function—that of the communication of ideas from one mind to another. Like a chair, table, or anything functional, then, a language’s beauty is at least tied to its functionality; that is, how well it serves its function of communication.

Due to its unique and somewhat tumultuous history, contemporary English is home to a dizzyingly vast array of vocabulary as well as syntactical forms. These two elements which make up the matter (in the case of vocabulary) and form (in the case of syntax) work together to provide nuances of meaning to which other languages are simply not privy. To quote Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue: “English retains probably the richest vocabulary, and most diverse shading of meanings, of any language. We can distinguish between house and home (as, for example, the French cannot), between continual and continuous, sensual and sensuous, forceful and forcible, childish and childlike, masterful and masterly, assignment and assignation, informant and informer. For almost every word we have a multiplicity of synonyms. Something is not just big, it is large, immense, vast, capacious, bulky, massive, whopping, humongous. No other language has so many words all saying the same thing. It has been said that English is unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture: popular, literary, and scholarly—so that we can, according to our background and cerebral attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a stairway, shrink in fear, terror, or trepidation, and think, ponder, or cogitate upon a problem.”

Read it. I seriously  just saw it at Half Price for cheap. Ish. Do it.

Likewise, on the syntactical level, it is possible in English to distinguish linguistically between a person performing an action simply (“I walk”) and doing so continuously at this very moment (“I am walking”)—a distinction of which most languages are woefully incapable. This variability of speech is so because of the many and sundrous languages that have wielded influence over English through the ages, so that it has become a truly cosmopolitan tongue, having absorbed the best of those languages which were its progenitors (chiefly Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman) and borrowed much good from many others with which it has had contact.

It is not true, however, that English has a monopoly on nuanced vocabulary and grammatical forms. A classic example in which English is deficient lexically is our word love. We use this one term to signify many different meanings. As I’m sure you know, the Greeks had four: eros, storge, philia, and agape, which stood for romantic love, the affection between a person and a thing or animal, familial love, and unconditional love, respectively. It is true we have terms which we might use to communicate these ideas. We could, for example, use “friendship” for philia and “affection” for storge, though these don’t usually carry quite the same meaning as the Greek words, and were we to translate them so, we would need to qualify in what exact sense they were being used.

This is the case grammatically as well. Vietnamese, for instance, makes use of a grammatical principle called “clusivity,” in which there are different words to indicate when one intends to use we inclusively (“You and I together did something.”) or exclusively (“This other person and I did something.”)

Nevertheless, I would argue that English is, on the whole, capable of far more complexity and nuance than most other languages. Evidence of this might be that children in other countries learn English partly so they can read Shakespeare in the original, whereas we read their literature in translation. Of course, it also might simply be evidence that children in other countries are better educated. Either way, all of this is to say that it is this very intricacy, in service to its function of communication, which makes English beautiful.

To return to our initial inquiry, it is true that there is room for natural development in a language, and that such development is a good thing. If there were not, the Middle English of Chaucer, though beautiful, would never have evolved into the Modern English of Shakespeare, also beautiful, though in different ways. Diversity itself is good, even in one language over time. Bill Bryson again: “One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency no matter how many authorities hurl themselves into the path of change.” The question, then, is whether or not a particular development contributes to the ability to communicate with clarity or does not. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

What about while vs. whilst and the other words that follow the same pattern: among/amongst, amid/amidst, and mid/midst? The “-s” in these constructions is a relic of the Middle English adverbial genitive. In other words, when adjectives were used as adverbs they were put into the genitive case, so that an “-s” was added as in our contemporary possessives. The “-t” is simply a parasitic particle formed in accordance with the old phonetics (but as they’re residual forms, it’s a package deal). That being the case, the list of these relics turns out to be considerably longer than at first glance, including: alway/always, toward/towards, backward/backwards, one/once, two/twice, three/thrice, here/hence, then/thence, when/whence, and others. It turns out, then, that these distinctions are actually of significant value, namely, to differentiate between a word’s adjectival and adverbial forms. Here’s a commonplace example in which we would never consider not making the distinction: “I walked to the store two times today,” as opposed to “I walked to the store twice.” In like manner we should say either “I walked forwards,” or “I walked in a forward direction,” but never “I walked forward.” After examination, the same conclusion can be reached for the distinction between farther and further, continuous and continual, between and amongst, and many others, albeit on different grounds. After all, an affectation is only an affectation if there is no reason to practice is beyond pretension.

On the other hand, a prescription like that against split infinitives is really pretty absurd. The idea is that in many languages an infinitive is one word (for example, that language most revered for centuries, Latin). Since it is impossible to split an infinitive in Latin, one shouldn’t in English. Other than that, though, why exactly is it better to say “to go boldly” than “to boldly go”? They mean exactly the same thing. Silliness.

In conclusion, one last quote from The Mother Tongue: “It seems to me there is a case for resisting change—at least slapdash change. Even the most liberal descriptivist would accept that there must be some conventions of usage. We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one’s lap and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceedingly difficult to house-break. In precisely the same way, clarity is generally better served if we agree to observe a distinction between imply and infer, forego and forgo, fortuitous and fortunate, uninterested and disinterested, and many others. As John Ciardi observes, resistence may in the end prove futile, but at least it tests the changes and makes them prove their worth.”

To put it simply, it seems to me the hermeneutic of continuity applies equally well to the development of language as it does to that of everything else.

A Traditional Temple

You may remember from the Inaugural Post that an analogy was drawn between this blog and the forum of an ancient Roman town. It was always the case that in this forum stood a Temple (usually to Jupiter) which cooperated with the other important buildings present in the forum in cultivating the good of the community. To complete the analogy, then, we must erect our own source of ethos and duty. I suggest that this be an ongoing deference to Tradition.

Temple of Vesta - Taken by the Mrs.

Tradition is something of a naughty word, isn't it? Our post-Modern ears are trained to burn at the mere mention of it. Now, it is altogether mistaken to be of the opinion that simply because a thing or idea is old it is necessarily better. Many things that are old are good, like farming. Many things that are old are bad, for example, the oldest profession on earth. Likewise, many new things are good, such as, air conditioning. Many new things are bad. That being said, even though it has taken somewhat of a beating lately, we are the inheritors of a great and wondrous Tradition, the product of millenia of intelligent men and women—a Tradition which would not have survived to this day were it of no value whatsoever. Over time old ideas were honed and perfected. Many didn't make the cut. Many may yet prove to be false. A distinction must be drawn between those elements of our Western heritage which are essential, and those which are not—those which are open to alteration, and those which are absolutely fundamental to the Occidental mode of understanding the Truth.

Tradition includes within itself the potential for continual development. Paragraph 23 of the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium says “that sound tradition may be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress.” BUT (that was a big “but”) this development must grow naturally out of that which came before. Speaking to the ongoing development of the Liturgy, the Council wrote that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” Pope Benedict calls this the “heremeneutic of continuity;” that is, the right way to interpret the past, in light of the present, looking toward the future. This is set in opposition to a “hermeneutic of rupture,” in which the past is offhandedly discounted as the folly of ignorants.

Let’s look at a couple of concrete examples of how this hermeneutic of continuity might be put into practice. The Western world once thought that there was a vein in the human body running directly from the fourth finger to the heart. To this day we tip our caps to this old belief when we wear our wedding rings on that very finger. Over time, more study of human anatomy revealed this to be false. It was, though, really pretty arbitrary whether or not that vein existed. I suppose there might have been some clan whose tribal worship revolved around that imaginary vein, and it might have mattered quite a lot to them. But, looking at the subject objectively it really doesn’t matter that much.

There are things that our Tradition teaches us which are not so incidental. From at least the time of Aristotle onwards Western Tradtion (both Classical and Christian) has taught us that there is a God who is Being itself that caused (and continues to cause) all that is to be. This is undeniable fact, proved according to the dictates of reason itself over and over again by countless philosophers and theologians through the ages. As such, and by virtue of the subject matter itself, the question of the existence of God strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human, for that matter, to be, human or not. This is an element of our Tradition which is absolutely fundamental. At the very least, it is one which one may be by no means cast off without considerable deliberation and investigation.

Nevertheless, it is possible to be an open-minded Traditionalist. By all means, open your mind, explore new ideas and new civilizations, boldly go where no man has gone before. But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” St. Augustine put it slightly less brusquely: “In essentials, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.”

All of this is to say, we ought, as a minimum, to respect and revere the ideas and beliefs of our ancestors. We may doubt and question them insofar as there is room to do so, all the while understanding that to disagree with the consensus of our forebears is a risky proposition. It would frighten me to do so. In other words, if Tradition and I found ourselves butting heads, I would double-check my math before going any further.

You might have noticed this post turned out to be an excuse to discuss the nature and import of Tradition. Oops.