Particles

I have recently picked up H. D. F. Kitto’s The Greeks and read this interesting insight into the nature and differences between the Greek and Latin languages.  Speaking of the Greeks, Kitto notes that:

When they descended from the northern mountains they brought no art with them, but they did bring a language, and in the Greek language — in its very structure — are to be found that clarity and control, that command of structure, which we see preeminently in Classical Greek art and miss in the earlier.

. . . it is the nature of Greek to express with extreme accuracy not only the relation between ideas, but also shades of meaning and emotion.

. . . It is the nature of the Greek language to be exact, subtle, and clear.

. . . That is to say, both languages have a markedly architectural quality.  But there is a significant difference between them.  The Romans seem to have achieved the periodic style by sheer determination and courage: the Greeks were born with it.  Not only has Greek many more ways of slipping in a subordinate clause . . . but also Greek is well stocked with little words, conjunctions that hunt in couples or in packs, whose sole function is to make the structure clear.  They act, as it were, as signposts.  (emphasis mine)

 As I teach composition and read several student essays — and even reflect upon my own writing — I see an abundance of these “little words,” words that some grammarians refer to as particles.  Too many particles in a sentence, paragraph, or composition can take on the grammatical function of “space fillers,” and in doing so, detract the attention owed to the concrete embodiment of ideas formed in nouns and verbs.  What I appreciate from Kitto’s comments, and at the same time challenged with is the acute precision of words in the Greek language in accordance with their function and relation.

The use of a particle is not haphazard, or even casually administered.  A particle must be purposefully written and/or spoken.  It is a “signpost” iluminating form in its service to order.

Teaching

In Plato’s Phaedrus Socrates discusses with Phaedrus the nature of good writing and good speech. 

Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls–they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man.  Having proceeded thus far in his analysis, he will next divide speeches into their different classes:–”Such and such persons,” he will say, “are affected by this or that kind of speech in this or that way,” and he will tell you why.

The true rhetorician knows the natures of each human soul he addresses as they vary from person to person.  Only as the rhetorician knows the particular nature of a person is he capable of rightly fitting the correct speech to this person. 

It is the duty of a teacher to know the soul of each student in order that he or she might speak rightly to the student.  If I desire to teach my class and move their souls toward the good I must come to know the individual nature of each student so that I might rightly speak to each.

Orderly arrangement must follow a clear perception of the things to be arranged.  Knowledge of human nature as a whole is not enough; we must know the person we desire to educate just as we must know the substance of what we desire to teach.  Then are we able to fit the two together in a blessed union.

Affirming Truth

The following is an excerpt from the commencement speech I delivered on June 11, 2009 for The Geneva School of Manhattan.  The complete speech will be posted with my other essays.

***

A boy at the age of eight discovers a bundle of money lying on the floor while his mother pays for the food at the counter.  Does he take the money, or does he turn it in to the grocery clerk?

Truth has the ability to fuse thought and action.  Like wisdom, it stands watch inviting our submission and conformity to its defined course.  Assured passage requires our willful decision to submit and affirm truth.

But whoa, whoa, whoa – the modern immediately pulls back and recalls Pilate’s question with no regard to Pilate’s intention.

“What is truth?”

The modern’s intention is not to question the substance of truth, but to question the existence or even nature of truth.

“What kind of truth and whose truth are you prescribing?” they ask.

As this unwillingness to affirm truth expands the modern retracts by shaping new models of truth fashioned for the individual.  Those willing to preserve an externally prescribed truth that equally applies to all persons understand that they serve truth, truth does not serve them.

From the beginning mankind has sought to unfold the order of nature as the definitive pattern from which to construct first a society and secondly the human person.  Ancient societies preceding the Greek and Roman civilizations projected mythical stories that disclosed the order of the cosmos.  These stories established the authoritative pattern that a populus strived to copy in the constitution of a true and just society.  The city became a miniature copy of the cosmic order of the universe, and was appropriately venerated as a “cosmic center.”

In these ancient societies the king and the priest protected and preserved the divine order of the universe through the administration of a sound society.  It was the classical cultures of Greece and Rome that dedicated their attention to realizing the cosmic order within the human person.  A true man or woman embodied the cosmic order within his or her self.

The beliefs of ancient civilization reveal that mankind understood the existence of order as an inherent quality of the natural or created universe, and that they were to copy this order as a pattern for a just society and for human beingness.

The Greeks had a term for the single unifying principle that held all things together – they called it the logos.  For the Greeks, the logos represented an idea, a principle.  Roughly five hundred years later a small selected band of Jewish commoners came to behold the logos in human flesh.  When John began his gospel with the words, “In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God…and the logos became flesh and dwelt among us” he made a profound statement bearing the weight of the heavens.  From within the tradition of the Jewish faith Christianity proclaimed the message of “Christ in you.”  This message complemented the Hebrew tradition of the temple and the tabernacle before it, receding all the way back to the pattern of creation unveiled in the opening chapters of Genesis.  The apostle Paul even goes on to rhetorically ask in 1 Corinthians 6 “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?”

The temple portrayed a physical blueprint that mirrored the divine pattern of the created universe.   It stood as a symbol of Jewish identity and marked the parameters of Jewish society so that the shape of the human soul reflected the form of an ordered society interchangeably woven together through the functional and structural design of the temple.  Biblically, the true human person incorporated the order of nature in accordance to the design of the creator.

Theory and Practice

Theory often sounds nice and can wear a certain mark of perfection, but sometimes falls far short of the aims it aspires to realize. 

I remember a good friend of mine that I grew up with talking with a MIT engineer whom he had never met.  Maren is a master of common sense and all things practical.  He is also 6′2″ and around 280 – 300 lbs.  Maren and I grew up together in the foothills of northern CA, and I watched as he would chase rattle snakes and pull them out of their holes by the tale — crazy!  We also took shop together in high school and he can build pretty much anything out of wood or metal.

Maren explained to this engineer how they can build things that look perfect on paper, but almost completely useless once manufactured.  As he held up his hands he asked, “How am I supposed to replace a part this big (making a gesture with his hands) through a hole no bigger than my finger?  Genius.”

Theory equally applies to politics.  Political rhetoric contains equally as little substance as the theories and ideologies it upholds.  I have found the words of G. K. Chesterton alarmingly perceptive when he writes in “What’s Wrong With the World” that progress must be built on principle not precedent, but the problem with moderns is that they continue to promote a form of progress entirely built on precedent.  This is what Darwin has gifted us, by which I mean the notion of adaptation.  When principle are forsaken, the eternal is lost and the hope for true progress unrealizable.

I found this article about the general public’s recent judgment concerning socialistic ideologies no longer practical in Europe interesting.  The headline on the Drudge Report read, “USA moves left, EU goes right.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_eu/european_elections

Shaping Character

In chapter 3 of Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum Kerbouchard ponders that,

Appearances count for little, and I knew I must shape the character of the man I wished to be into something of worth.

 This sets the stage for the rest of the book.  Near the end of the book chapter 46 begins this way:

It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask: where am I going?  What am I becoming?  What do I wish to do and become? 

Most people whom I encountered were without purpose, people who had given themselves no goal.  The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another.  The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination. 

Until now my task had been to find if my father was alive, and if so where, and then how to free him from slavery.

These were but temporary goals.  What was it I wanted?  Where was I going?  What had I done to achieve it? . . .

. . . Yesterday I arrived hungry and in rags; today I was the confidant of kings; so can a man’s fortune change.

Yet power, riches, and the friendship of kings are but transitory things.  Riches are a claim to distinction for those who have no other right to it.  Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves, and often the ancestor from whom they claim descent is one they would not allow in the house if they met him today. . . .

. . . Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be.  Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate.  Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.  The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.

That last paragraph is worth reflection.  But notice the relation it bears with the first quote from the beginning of the book.  Who or what is “shaping the character” of men, women, and children today?

Each day I witness a culture that increasingly relies upon others for personal fulfillment and progress.  People today ideed have goals, but many set the responsibilty of reaching those goals upon the wealthy and/or the government.  This sort of reliance is not a simple matter of trust; it is the offering of one’s life.  The one who shapes the soul has the power to enslave the will.  Such external reliances come with a risk.  As the many grow more and more dependent upon those above them they become less and less capable of standing on their own two feet. 

We are still asking the questions, “What is it that I want?” “Where am I going?”  The question not asked is, “What have I done to achieve it?”  Instead we ask, “What will you do to get it for me?”

Order of Being

 

The dualism between body and spirit has a long history of division and conflict.  I have always baulked at the idea of a dualistic universe and at any attempt to elevate one side over the other.  In particular, much of what I encounter sets spirit over the body upon a hierarchical ladder that reaches into the realm of reality.  What happens is that the non-material is associated with what is real and the material with what is less real, or the opposition is expressed in terms of what is good and what is evil, or true and false.

 

Some of the problems this leads to are:

1. Escapism – abandoning this world for the next.
2. An inordinate reliance upon reason.
3. Utilitarianism – value transfers from being to efficiency.

 

The problem I have always had regarding dualistic frameworks has been the notion that they represent an hierarchy of being.  What happens if the hierarchy is understood rather in terms of order?

 

I was reminded of this after reviewing Iranaeus’ beliefs concerning subordination among the persons of the Trinity in his defense against the Gnostics.  He argues that the subordination of persons is not in terms of being, but in terms of doing the will of the Father.  This does not limit the being of the Son or of the Spirit, but rather expresses the ways God is fully present in the creation.  Subordination does not limit the being of God, but rather unveils the fullness of God.

 

If we view the relation between the senses and the soul in this light a different image emerges.  The senses are not in any way less than the mind or soul.  They are not less real, less good, less true.  They are precisely what they are – the senses.  They are however, subordinate. 

 

I believe without a doubt that the universe is sustained by order.  The material world is governed by immaterial “laws.”  I do not see how the material governs the immaterial, except in the case of miracles.  In the same way, the human person consists of parts that can be termed as material (body, senses) and immaterial (soul, mind, will).  Human beingness is ordered in such a way that mirrors that of the creation, and, I would argue, that of the Triune Creator.  The soul ought to govern the body, not the body the soul.  This has nothing to do with degrees of beingness, but everything to do with the order of being.

 

 

Thoughts on the Trinity

Some modern misconceptions of the Trinity include:

 

1.  The plea of ignorance, or, the Trinity is a mystery that cannot be understood so it becomes a dogma to be professed by Christians.  The significance of this is that it discloses a belief that the Trinity bears little practical importance.  Rather, the Christian is to give more attention to the work of Christ on the cross.  Western culture has rooted much of its constitution in a theology of redemption without much thought to one of creation.  The history of Western civilization has continually fluctuated between the poles of law and liberty.

 

2.  Pantheism – conceptions of God that are too closely wedded with the creation.  When inadequate space is given between the creator and the creation then theories concerning the being of God are grafted into the being of the creation.  But the greater risk moves in the other direction.  Creation divinized constructs a creator in its own eyes.  In both constructs neither the creator nor the creation have legitimate freedom of being; one becomes the extension of the other and thereby limited and controlled.

 

3.  Immanency – the unknowable (and thus, impersonal) or spiritualized God.  This is perhaps the most dominate perception of the Trinity.  The persons of the Trinity are not understood in relation, but according to their individual tasks (this easily slips into modalism).  The unity of God is not perceived in the communion of the many, but rather, the historic search for the unity of God has looked to God’s oneness as that which underlies the economy of persons.  Consider how most people will attempt to defend the Trinity by showing how the Sod is God, how the Spirit is God, and how the Father is God.  The search reaches for the core attributes that stand for the single divine substance – that which makes God, God.  The “substance” of God resides in certain eternal qualities (or attributes) that are prior to the economy of the divine persons.  The being of God rests in a pre-revelatory state, and is consequently unknowable and spiritualized.  One result is an impersonal creator who has established an impersonal creation.  Augustine made the attempt to reach back into the divine immanency through the mind since the mind, human reason, was perceived to be a carrier of the imago dei.  God could only be known through the individual mind.  Ontology is grounded for Augustine not with persons (in-relation), but in mind.  Knowledge is rooted outside of persons-in-relation accessible rather through the individual mind, which consequently questions materiality.  The Trinitarian analogy used by Augustine was memory, understanding, and will.  The inner structure of the human mind reveals the inner being of God.  Thus, the human mind is perceived as the image of the being of God.  Is it any wonder that Western civilization and Christianity has given so much stock to reason, the individual, and the spiritual life?  Thus my suspicion and caution directed toward Augustine (and the Platonic influences that he embraced) and toward “a rationalism that claims too much for the intellect” (C. E. Gunton).

 

Colin E. Gunton stated that the doctrine of the Trinity was “a quest for ontology.”  He aptly confessed that “it is only through an understanding of the kind of being that God is that we can come to learn what kind of beings we are and what kind of world we inhabit,” and that “everything looks – and, indeed, is – different in the light of the Trinity.”

 

The immediate practical implications of the Trinity are seen in Gunton’s statement about how an understanding of the Trinity informs an understanding of the nature of man and the nature of the world.  Creation bears the ontological mark of its Creator.  Other practical suggestions that emerge from humanity and creation would include stewardship, relation, otherness, freedom, personhood, and ethics.  In light of the company Christian classical education keeps with the classical world I believe it is vitally important that we seriously consider how the Triune Creator shapes and forms all reality.   “Everything looks – and, indeed, is – different in the light of the Trinity.”

 

 

The Eye of Beauty

It has been said that “beauty rests in the eye of the beholder.”  Some find comfort in this and will accept it as a true statement being that it provides an answer to the variety of tastes people possess.  What more appropriate way of explaining why some prefer Country music and others Rock, or of preferences for blue Chevys over red Fords?  This axiom gives hope for those lacking in beauty that someone will see them as beautiful because beauty rests in the eye of the beholder.  Regardless of the comfort this may provide, the notion that beauty rests in the eye of the beholder looses sight of and draws attention away from genuine beauty.

 

When one makes the recognition that something or someone is “lacking in beauty,” he or she begins with the assumption that beauty is some type of universal ideal that a person or thing either possesses or lacks.  Beauty is a reality that either is or is not, and cannot be questioned or redefined.  In other words, one cannot look at something and call it beautiful if it is not beautiful.  Claiming to “see something as beautiful” in one’s own eyes attempts to subjugate beauty to a realm of conditionality that can call something beautiful if it is viewed as such, or even reject beauty from something that may posses it.

 

The phrase “beauty rests in the eye of the beholder” expresses a particular desire to internalize the reality of beauty for any number or reasons.  One possible reason is the fear and rejection of the material world. 

 

The Hebrew sage Qohelet offers an alternative understanding for beauty when he asserts that, “‘et-hakol ‘asah yapheh be’ito,” “he made everything beautiful in its time.”  The language here echoes the words of Genesis after God examines everything that he made and declares that it is “tov me’od,” “very good.”  If one were to accept this declaration the traditional axiom of beauty could be restated as, “beauty rests in the speech of the creator.”

 

The restated axiom affirms that the creator designed creation according to a particular order or pattern embedded within the creation.  When something, anything, appropriately corresponds to its created order it is beautiful.  Beauty embodies a physical form according to a non-physical nature.  Beauty is unconditional in so far as it is only what it can be, but conditional when it is placed within alien contexts.  The unconditional nature of beauty holds that one cannot make something beautiful outside of its time.  Outside of its time beauty is veiled giving way to what is ugly.  This disruption of beauty denotes its conditional nature.  Beauty’s conditionality does not rests upon my authority, but the authority of creation.  We are “makers” of beauty only in so far as we mimic the order of creation, as we adhere to the pattern already laid. 

 

It is no argument that Mt. Shasta in northern California is beautiful.  But suppose living a lifetime seeing the white peaks of Shasta every winter and enjoying those slopes with a pair of skis or a board only to witness the tragedy of a white-less winter.  For the peaks of Shasta to stand bare in the middle of winter, to look like summer in winter, would present a mountainous state absent of beauty.

 

The absence of beauty signals a violation of justice and of what is appropriate or good.

 

Buck

Qohelet on the Soul

Ecclesiastes 6

This is a working translation based off of the BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia)

There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on Man: a man to whom God gives wealth, property, and honor so that he lacks nothing  for his soul from all that he desires, yet God does not empower him to eat from it, but a stranger consumes it.  This is hevel and an evil sickness.  If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many be the days of his years, but his soul does not receive satisfaction from the good—he does not even receive a burial—I say better the stillborn than he.  For it comes in hevel and goes in darkness, and its name is covered in darkness.  Even the one who does not see or know the sun has more rest than he, even if he lives a thousand years twice over and does not enjoy the good—do not all go to one place?

All of Man’s labor is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not filled.  For what advantage has the wise man over the fool?  What has the poor man knowing how to walk before the living?  Better the sight of the eyes than the goings of the soul.  This too is hevel and a pursuit of wind.

 

---

 

In this segment of Ecclesiastes 6 Qohelet gives incredible insight into the nature of the soul.  He begins by describing his observation as “an evil” and later modifies this to “an evil sickness.”  Qohelet describes the event in which a man gains possession of “wealth, property, and honor so that his soul lacks nothing,” and yet the man is not empowered to enjoy these things.  Qohelet continues by stating that death surpasses (tov)* the soul that “does not receive satisfaction from the good” because at least in death one finds rest.  Qohelet concludes that death, and the kind of death that never experiences life, is better than a life devoid of the pleasures generated by the good.  What interests me about this text is not simply the relation of the soul to the good, but what the soul derives from the good.  Qohelet refers to the person who technically has possession of the good, but lacks the ability to enjoy it.  The separation of possession from enjoyment is incomprehensible—hevel.  Enjoyment ought to accompany possession.

 

It is not enough for the soul to merely possess the good, for, as Qohelet argues, the soul must enjoy the good.  Qohelet instructs that it is the nature of the soul to partake in the fruit of the good, to both possess and enjoy the good.**  Without satisfaction the soul is better off finding rest in death.  By deferring to the rest one finds in death as something “good,” or better than the unsatisfied soul, Qohelet discloses “rest” as the enjoyment that accompanies (rather, what should accompany) possession of the good.  The soul is designed to find rest in the good.

 

This point is also made by use of the word “walk”—halach, which Qohelet uses three times.  Halach is used as a “going” through life to the human end at the grave where there is rest (do not all go to one place), the poor person’s knowledge of how to “proceed” before the living—I presume a knowledge of how to stay alive by constant striving—and halach is used for the “goings” of the soul that does not receive satisfaction indicating restlessness.  The contrast is between rest and wandering, striving, working restlessly.  The equivalent to rest is satisfaction—enjoyment.  A restless wandering of the living are those who possess life, but devoid of its pleasures.  Possession without enjoyment is labor without rest.  Just as the purposed end of work is rest, so enjoyment is of possession.

 

 

*  The Hebrew tov is the word for “good,” but it is translated as “better” when it is followed by the prepositional prefix mem/min – “from” – and is typical in proverbs that are making a comparison that states one thing is better than a second thing.  There are two of these proverbial tov structures in this passage.

 

**  I am wandering what (intentional?) relation this might have with Genesis 2 – 3?  In other places of this book Qohelet clearly works from particular themes of early Genesis.  The disclosure of the nature of the soul in this passage of Qohelet 6 as a partaking in the good echoes the taking of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as opposed to the tree of life and all other trees in the garden.  Tov—good is also a dominant theme through Genesis 1.  But it is the idea of taking from the one tree with the desire to possess rather than receiving from what was already given that draws my attention.  The soul desires to possess, but not devoid of pleasure.  All these terms are prevalent in Genesis 3:6-8.  Pleasure was present in the gift, in which adam was invited to partake but not possess.  I am inclined to believe that it is the possession of a thing that redirects the soul away from the enjoyment/rest that it seeks.  And this is certainly something Qohelet alludes to over and over again throughout Ecclesiastes when he laments over the requirements of the grave forcing one to leave behind their possessions to be enjoyed by another.  The point is that we never truly possess anything, but the one who proceeds through life with the notion of possessing marks the empty soul—the one eating from the wrong tree.

 

Buck

Assessing Assessments

The central question of assessments concerns the nature and purpose of being human.  Any assessment applied to a human person must be appropriate for a human person.  The dilemma is how to avoid depersonalizing students without at the same time marginalizing students in a way that disconnects them from the communities in which they live.  This is difficult because the culture comprised of today’s communities is increasingly growing impersonal.

 

My wife recently told me that one of her co-workers (they work retail in Manhattan) suggested that the reason so many people lack basic social skill is that they decreasingly deal directly with people.  The push of a button gets people what they want immediately.  The required language is direct and impersonal.  The only acceptable service is individual satisfaction.  Indirect and impersonal digital networking is taking the place of direct and personal human relations.

 

Put differently, modern culture labors to smooth out differences.  Particularity is generally frowned upon in a time and place that desires to level personal identity for the purpose of making everyone the same.  The many are swallowed up by the homogenous one enslaving the person to a form of collectivism.  Some examples are:

 

1. Politics: bi-partisanship, and by that we mean no partisanship.
2. Economics: everyone deserves to own a home—everyone.
3. Arts: reality television—everyone is famous.
4. Church: non-denominationalism

 

But Christian classical education does not accept this, and it should not.  We are education persons not monads.  However, at some point when the student will leave home and enter the world a degree of dissonance is likely to occur.  Does this, or should it change the way we assess?

 

Currently, the majority of assessments that I see on a day to day basis as a Christian classical educator take a non-personal form.  What is the alternative?  Can we attempt to draft some guiding principles, or move forward in some other way?

 

Assessment principles:

 

1. Any assessment administered to a student should be written by the teacher.
2.  
3.  
4.  
5.