Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Word games
We had a meeting the other day where we talked about how the modern church has used numbers (i.e., chapters and verses) to help quantify the Bible. We've turned the Bible's different genres into one: proverbs. This allows us to quote with certainty some snippet from the Bible, ignoring its true point(s). My boss noted that this was a Cartesian use of the Bible. Definite certainty, no open questions, [sing along] I've got the whole world . . . in my hands, I've got the whole world [stop singing]. My verbal mind started playing with the word "Cartesian." [No, really, I meant it, stop singing!] So I noted, probably to the group's chagrin, that the Cartesian approach to Scripture is opposed to the courtesan approach, where storytelling would happen before the king by jesters or bards. No doubt, kings needed certainty, but before the 1500s, they didn't rely on Enlightenment Rationalism to tell them how to think. They were comfortable with the ambiguity of a story, where good guys could be a little bad and vice versa. [Ha! The song's stuck in your head! I'm not sorry!] This courtesan approach is much more true to life and the world than a Cartesian approach. There's room for empirical data, but when we approach life, the world and the Bible from an empirical mindset, we're guaranteed to screw it up. How do you approach the Bible? As a Cartesian or a courtesan?
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2 comments:
I was having trouble finding a good definition of the 'cartesian' approach. I read a few things on René Descartes, among other things, but I'd like to get a better handle on the concept before replying further.
I'm using "Cartesian" pretty loosely here. It mostly has to do with one's self-perceived ability to objectively assess the object with certainty. Descartes defined the essence of being as cognition. While I will grant that cognition is necessary for a fully human way of being (as God designed pre-Fall), I'm not sure we can assess others who don't or can't think as less than human. We definitely can't say, "I think better than you, therefore I'm more human." It's the arrogance of self-actualization, self-determination, and therefore sitting in judgment on everything outside oneself, allocating bits for one's needs, that I'm terming "Cartesian." That probably goes a quite a bit further than Descartes intended, but it's a practical outworking of his anthropology that I see. Thanks for calling me on it. It made me think a lot more about the idea.
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