Historical intercontextuality, meta-communication and comparative linguistic analysis

The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

2008-06-18T14:03:00.000+02:00

Many linguists, including Noam Chomsky, contend that language in the sense we ordinary think of it, in the sense that people in Germany speak German, is a historical or social or political notion, rather than a scientific one. For example, German and Dutch are much closer to one another than various dialects of Chinese are. But the rough, commonsense divisions between languages will suffice for our purposes.

There are around 5000 languages in use today, and each is quite different from many of the others. Differences are especially pronounced between languages of different families, e.g., between Indo-European languages like English and Hindi and Ancient Greek, on the one hand, and non-Indo-European languages like Hopi and Chinese and Swahili, on the other.

Many thinkers have urged that large differences in language lead to large differences in experience and thought. They hold that each language embodies a worldview, with quite different languages embodying quite different views, so that speakers of different languages think about the world in quite different ways. This view is sometimes called the Whorf-hypothesis or the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, after the linguists who made if famous. But the label linguistic relativity, which is more common today, has the advantage that makes it easier to separate the hypothesis from the details of Whorf's views, which are an endless subject of exegetical dispute (Gumperz and Levinson, 1996, contains a sampling of recent literature on the hypothesis).

The suggestion that different languages carve the world up in different ways, and that as a result their speakers think about it differently has a certain appeal. But questions about the extent and kind of impact that language has on thought are empirical questions that can only be settled by empirical investigation. And although linguistic relativism is perhaps the most popular version of descriptive relativism, the conviction and passion of partisans on both sides of the issue far outrun the available evidence. As usual in discussions of relativism, it is important to resist all-or-none thinking. The key question is whether there are interesting and defensible versions of linguistic relativism between those that are trivially true (the Babylonians didn't have a counterpart of the word ‘telephone’, so they didn't think about telephones) and those that are dramatic but almost certainly false (those who speak different languages see the world in completely different ways).
A Preliminary Statement of the Hypothesis

Interesting versions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis embody two claims:

Linguistic Diversity:
Languages, especially members of quite different language families, differ in important ways from one another.

Linguistic Influence on Thought:
The structure and lexicon of one's language influences how one perceives and conceptualizes the world, and they do so in a systematic way.

Together these two claims suggest that speakers of quite different languages think about the world in quite different ways. There is a clear sense in which the thesis of linguistic diversity is uncontroversial. Even if all human languages share many underlying, abstract linguistic universals, there are often large differences in their syntactic structures and in their lexicons. The second claim is more controversial, but since linguistic forces could shape thought in varying degrees, it comes in more and less plausible forms.
1. History of the Hypothesis

Like many other relativistic themes, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity became a serious topic of discussion in late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century Germany, particularly in the work of Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). It was later defended by thinkers as diverse as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Winch. Thus Cassirer tells us that

...the distinctions which here are taken for granted, the analysis of reality in terms of things and processes, permanent and transitory aspects, objects and actions, do not precede language as a substratum of given fact, but that language itself is what initiates such articulations, and develops them in its own sphere (1946, p. 12).

But the hypothesis came to prominence though the work of Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf. Indeed, it is often called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or simply the Whorf hypothesis.

There are connections among some of these writers; for example, Sapir wrote his M.A. thesis on Herder's Origin of Language. Still, this is a remarkably diverse group of thinkers who often arrived at their views by different routes, and so it is not surprising that the linguistic relativity hypothesis comes in a variety of forms.
Sapir and Whorf

It will help to see why the linguistic relativity hypothesis captivated so many thinkers if we briefly consider the more arresting claims of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Sapir was an American anthropological linguist who, like so many anthropologists of his day, was a student of Franz Boas. He was also the teacher of Whorf, a businessman and amateur linguist.

Unlike earlier partisans of linguistic relativism, Sapir and Whorf based their claims on first-hand experience of the cultures and languages they described, which gave their accounts a good deal of immediacy. I will quote a few of the purpler passages to convey the flavor of their claims, for this was partly what galvanized the imagination of so many readers.
Sapir
In a paper published in 1929 Sapir tells us:

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection (1929, p. 209).

Our language affects how we perceive things:

Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much more at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we might suppose. …We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (p. 210).

But the differences don't end with perception:

The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same worlds with different labels attached (p. 209).

Whorf
The linguistic relativity hypothesis grained its widest audience through the work of Benjamin Lee Whorf, whose collected writings became something of a relativistic manifesto.

Whorf presents a moving target, with most of his claims coming in both extreme and in more cautious forms. Debate continues about his considered views, but there is little doubt that his bolder claims, unimpeded by caveats or qualifications, were better suited to captivate his readers than more timid claims would have been.

When languages are similar, Whorf tells us, there is little likelihood of dramatic cognitive differences. But languages that differ markedly from English and other Western European languages (which Whorf calls, collectively, “Standard Average European” or SAE) often do lead their speakers to have very different worldviews. Thus

We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated. …The relativity of all conceptual systems, ours included, and their dependence upon language stand revealed (1956, p. 214f, italics added).

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds (p. 213).

…no individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while he thinks himself most free (p. 214).

In fairness it must be stressed that these passages come from a single essay, “Science and Linguistics,” of 1940, and in other places Whorf's tone is often more measured. But not always; elsewhere he also says thing like

…users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world (1956, p. 221).

And in yet a third essay “facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them” (1956, p. 235).

The passages from Sapir and Whorf bristle with metaphors of coercion: our thought is “at the mercy” of our language, it is “constrained” by it; no one is free to describe the world in a neutral way; we are “compelled” to read certain features into the world (p. 262). The view that language completely determines how we think is often called linguistic determinism. Hamann and Herder sometimes seem to equate language with thought, and in these moods, at least, they came close to endorsing this view.
1.1 Linguistic Relativism and Metaphysics

Some writers have linked these themes directly to issues in metaphysics. For example Graham (1989, Appendix 2) argues that there are vast differences among human languages and that many of the concepts or categories (e.g., physical object, causation, quantity) writers like Aristotle and Kant and Strawson held were central, even indispensable, to human thought, are nothing more than parochial shadows cast by the structure of Indo-European languages. These notions, it is said, have no counterparts in many non-Indo-European languages like Chinese. If this is so, then a fairly strong version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis might be true, but the thesis hasn't been backed with strong empirical evidence and the most common views today lie at the opposite end of the spectrum. Indeed, Whorf himself held a similar view:

[Western] Science …has not yet freed itself from the illusory necessities of common logic which are only at bottom necessities of grammatical pattern in Western Aryan grammar; [e.g.,] necessities for substances which are only necessities for substantives in certain sentence positions …(1956, pp. 269-270).

It is worth noting, finally, that although Whorf was certainly a descriptive relativist he was not a normative relativist. He believed that some languages gave rise to more accurate worldviews than others. Indeed, he thought that the Hopi worldview was superior in various ways to that of speakers of Indo-European languages (e.g., 1956, p. 55, p. 262).
2. The Many Versions of Linguistic Relativism

Any serious discussion of the linguistic relativity hypothesis requires us to answer three questions

1. Which aspects of language influence which aspects of thought in some systematic way?
2. What form does that influence take?
3. How strong is that influence?

For example, certain features of syntax or of the lexicon might exert a causal influence on certain aspects of visual perception (e.g., on which colors we can discriminate), classification (e.g., on how we sort things by their color), or long-term memory (e.g., on which differences among colors we remember most accurately) in clearly specifiable ways. If there is such an influence we would also like to know what mechanisms mediate it, but until we have clearer answers to the first three questions, we are not well positioned to answer this.

Human languages are flexible and extensible, so most things that can be said in one can be approximated in another; if nothing else, words and phrases can be borrowed (Schadenfreude, je ne sais quoi). But what is easy to say in one language may be harder to say in a second, and this may make it easier or more natural or more common for speakers of the first language to think in a certain way than for speakers of the second language to do so. A concept or category may be more available in some linguistic communities than in others (e.g., Brown, 1956, pp. 307ff). In short, the linguistic relativity hypothesis comes in stronger and weaker forms, depending on the hypothesized forms and the hypothesized strength of the hypothesized influence.
Language

Various aspects of language might affect cognition.

Grammar
Languages can differ in their grammar or syntax. To take a simple example, typical word order may vary. In English, the common order is subject, verb, object. In Japanese it is subject, object, verb. In Welsh, verb, subject, object. Languages can differ in whether they make a distinction between intransitive verbs and adjectives. And there are many subtler sorts of grammatical difference as well. It should be noted that grammar here does not mean the prescriptive grammar we learned in grammar school, but the syntactic structure of a language; in this sense, a grammar comprises a set of rules (or some equivalent device) that can generate all and only the sentences of a given language.

Lexicon
Different languages have different lexicons (vocabularies), but the important point here is that the lexicons of different languages may classify things in different ways. For example, the color lexicons of some languages segment the color spectrum at different places.

Semantics
Different languages have different semantic features (over and above differences in lexical semantics)

Metaphor
Different languages employ different metaphors or employ them in different ways.

Pragmatics
It is increasingly clear that context plays a vital role in the use and understanding of language, and it is possible that differences in the way speakers of different languages use their languages in concrete settings affects their mental life.

For the most part discussions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis have focused on grammar and lexicon as independent variables. Thus, many of Whorf's claims, e.g., his claims about the way Hopi thought about time, were based on (what he took to be) large-scale differences between Hopi and Standard Average European that included grammatical and lexical differences (e.g., 1956, p. 158). Subsequence research by Ekkehart Malotki (e.g., 1983) and others suggests that Whorf's more dramatic claims were false, but the important point here is that the most prominent versions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis involved large-scale features of language.
Thought
Language might influence many different aspects of thought. Most empirical work has focused, appropriately enough, on those aspects that are easiest to assess without relying on language. This is important, since we otherwise risk finding influences of one aspect of language on some related aspect of language, rather than on some aspect of thought. Commonly studied cognitive variables include perceptual discrimination, availability in memory, and classification.
2.1 Testing the Linguistic Relativity Hypotheses

In light of the vast literature on linguistic relativity hypotheses, one would expect that a good deal of careful experimental work had been done on the topic. It hasn't. Often the only evidence cited in favor of such hypotheses is to point to a difference between two languages and assert that it adds up to a difference in modes of thought. But this simply assumes what needs to be shown, namely that such linguistic differences give rise to cognitive differences. On the other hand, refutations of the hypothesis often target implausibly extreme versions of it or proceed as though refutations of it in one domain (e.g., color language and color cognition) show that it is false across the board.
2.2 Many Versions of the Hypothesis have not been Tested

A linguistic relativity hypothesis says that some particular aspect of language influences some particular aspect of cognition. Many different aspects of language could, for all we know, influence many different aspects of cognition. This means that a study showing that some particular aspect of language (e.g., the color lexicon of a language) does (or does not) influence some particular aspect of cognition (e.g., recognition memory of colors) does not tell us whether other aspects of language (e.g., the lexicon for spatial relations) influence other aspects of cognition (e.g., spatial reasoning). It does not even tell us whether the single aspect of language we focused on affects any aspects of thought besides the one we studied, or whether other aspects of language influence the single aspect of thought we examined.

The point here is not merely a theoretical one. When the mind is seen as all of a piece, whether it's the result of stepping through Piaget's universal stages of development, the output of universal learning mechanisms, or the operation of a general-purpose computer, confirming or disconfirming the hypothesis in one area (e.g., color) might bear on its status in other areas. But there is increasing evidence that the mind is, to at least some degree, modular, with different cognitive modules doing domain specific work (e.g., parsing syntax, recognizing faces) and processing different kinds of information in different kinds of ways. If this is right, there is less reason to expect that findings about the influence of language on one aspect of cognition will generalize to other aspects.
The Upshot

Only a handful of versions of the claim that linguistic feature X influences cognitive feature Y in way Z have ever been tested. Some can doubtless be ruled out on the basis of common sense knowledge or previous investigation. But many remain that have yet to be studied. Moreover, those that have been studied often have not been studied with the care they deserve. A few have, though, and we will now turn to them.
Example: Color Language and Color Cognition

Much of the most rigorous investigation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis involves color language and color cognition. In the 1950s and 60s, this was an area where linguistic relativity seemed quite plausible. On the one hand, there is nothing in the physics of light (e.g., in facts about surface spectral reflectances) that suggests drawing boundaries between colors at one place rather than another; in this sense our segmentations of the spectrum are arbitrary. On the one hand, it was well known that different languages had color terms that segmented the color spectrum at different places. So since nothing in the physics of color could determine how humans thought about color, it seemed natural to hypothesis that color cognition followed the grooves laid down by color language.

Color was also an auspicious object of study, because investigators could use Munsell color chips (a widely used, standardized set of chips of different colors) or similar stimulus materials with subjects in quite different locations, thus assuring that whatever differences they found in their dependent variables really did involve the same thing, color (as anchored in the chips), rather than something more nebulous.

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's work (1969) on basic color terms did much to raise the quality of empirical work on the linguistic relativity hypothesis. And together with much subsequent work it strongly suggests that the strongest, across-the-board versions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis are false when it comes to color language and color cognition. We now know that colors may be a rather special case, however, for although there is nothing in the physics of color that suggests particular segmentations of the spectrum, the opponent-process theory of color vision, now well confirmed, tells us that there are neurophysiological facts about human beings that influence many of the ways in which we perceive colors. We don't know of anything comparable innate mechanisms that would channel thought about social traits or biological classification of diseases in similarly deep grooves. There may well be cross-cultural similarities in the ways human beings think about these things, but we can't conclude this from the work on color.
3. Innateness and Linguistic Universals

The linguist Noam Chomsky has argued for almost half a century that human beings could only learn natural languages if they had a good deal of innate linguistic equipment to guide their way. He has characterized this equipment in different ways over the years, but the abiding theme is that without it children could never get from the sparse set of utterances they hear to the rich linguistic ability they achieve.
3.1 Poverty of the Stimulus Arguments

In just a few years all normal children acquire the language that is spoken by their family and others around them. They acquire a very complex and virtually unbounded ability to distinguish sentences from non-sentences and to understand and utter a virtually unlimited number of sentences they have never thought of before. The child acquires this ability on the basis of the utterances she hears and the feedback (rarely in the form of corrections) she receives. The problem is that the child's data here are very unsystematic and sparse compared to the systematic and nearly unbounded linguistic competence the child quickly acquires.

Hence, the argument continues, the child needs help to get from this impoverished input to the rich output (the acquisition of a grammar of a complex natural language), and this help can only be provided by something innate that constrains and guides the child in her construction of the grammar. The point is quite general: if the input, or data stream, is exiguous then (barring incredible luck) it is only possible for someone to arrive at the right theory about the data if they have some built-in inductive biases, some predispositions to form one kind of theory rather than another. And since any child can learn any human language, the innate endowment must put constraints on which of the countless logically possible languages are humanly possible.

If the features of human languages are limited by such innate, language-acquisition mechanisms, there is less scope for the large differences among languages that the more extreme linguistic relativists have imagined. But might linguistic universals leave room for less extreme versions of linguistic relativism that are still interesting? That depends on what linguistic devices there are and on their relationships to other cognitive mechanisms.
3.2 Modularity

From the perspective of nativist accounts of language, many of the questions about linguistic relativity boil down to questions about the informational encapsulation of mental modules. To say that a module is encapsulated means that other parts of the mind cannot influence its inner workings (though they can supply it with inputs and use its outputs). What are the implications of this for the linguistic relativist's claim that a person's language can exert a dramatic influence on his perception and thought?

The answer may be different for perception, on the one hand, and the higher mental processes, on the other. For example Jerry Fodor (1984) argues that there is a module (or modules) for visual perception and that information from other parts of the mind cannot influence it in the way that many psychologists have supposed. For example, even though I know that the two lines in the Müller-Lyer illusion

missing text, please inform
Müller-Lyer Illusion

are the same length, I cannot help seeing the line on the left as longer than the line on the right. I know the lengths are the same, but my visual module (or models) does not. It is encapsulated; this information can't get through to it, so it can't influence how I see the figure. If this is so, then linguistic information could not penetrate any vision modules, and so versions of linguistic relativism which hold (as most do) that our language can influence how we see things is wrong.

By contrast, Fodor holds that there is no special module for higher mental processes and, indeed, that we are a long way from having any account of how thinking and reasoning work (e.g., 2000). If this is right, then for all we know now, some aspects of linguistic relativism could be right. The workings of various linguistic modules might influence thought in interesting ways.

It bears stressing that many of the issues involving cognitive architecture are vigorously contested. Among other things, not all champions of modules see them as Fodor does. According to them what is special about visual modules may just be that they process visual information, not that they lack access to other kinds of information (indeed, top-down aspects of perception suggest that they often do have such access). If this is so, there is more room for language to influence perception and other cognitive processes than there is if modules are tightly insulated.

The dust here hasn't begun to settle, but one general moral is clear. If at least moderately strong nativist and modular views of the mind are on the right track--and there is now certainly some reason to think that they are--then many of the empirical issues about linguistic relativity will translate into issues concerning the ways in which various modules can influence one another.
4. Morals for other Independent Variables: Modularity and Encapsulation

We have gone into detail about the linguistic relativity hypothesis, because the main lessons here carry over to the study of the impact of other variables, e.g., culture, on cognition. Some of these emerged above; others are obvious once they are noted. They are

1. Questions about the impact of a variable on cognition are empirical and causal questions.
2. Such questions can only be answered with care once we specify which aspects of an independent variable, say culture, influence which aspects of thought and what form that influence takes.
3. Such hypotheses can vary greatly in specificity, strength, and scope.
4. Testing a specific version of the hypothesis requires a combination of skills, including those of a good ethnographer, linguist, and experimental psychologist.
5. A comparison of more than two cultures is needed to draw any firm conclusions.
6. The truth of specific hypotheses may turn on issues involving the modularity of mind and the degree of modular encapsulation.
7. If the mind is highly modular, finding an influence of one aspect of language or culture of some aspect of cognition may tell us little about the influence of other aspects of language or culture on cognition.

These lessons are easier with some variables than with others. It is probably easiest with some aspects of language, because a good deal is now known about many of the languages of the world. It will often be more difficult in the case of culture, where things are more difficult to pin down than they are in the case of language. And it will be virtually impossible when history is the relevant variable; here much more speculative interpretations of historical documents may be the best we can do. But the basic point remains. Relativistic claims are empirical causal claims and they can only be settled by empirical evidence.

It is not always easy to strike the proper balance when thinking about empirical work on these matters. On the one hand it is useful to cultivate an “it-can't-be-that-simple” reflex for use when reading an isolated study or two. But on the other hand empirical investigation is the only thing that can answer many of the difficult questions about the complex, entangled processes of language, culture, and thought.

The Vocabulary of Ontology

2008-06-18T13:49:00.000+02:00

Being

A) THE CONCEPT OF BEING
1) THE CONCEPT OF BEING IN LINGUISTICS
"Any linguistic study of the Greek verb be is essentially conditioned, and perhaps ultimately motivated, by the philosophic career of this word. We know what an extraordinary career it has been. It seems fair to say, with Benveniste, that the systematic development of a concept of Being in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle, and then in a more mechanical way from the Stoics to Plotinus, relies upon the pre-existing disposition of the language to make a very general and diversified use of the verb einai. Furthermore, insofar as the notions expressed by on, einai, and ousia in Greek underlie the doctrines of Being, substance, essence, and existence in Latin, in Arabic, and in modern philosophy from Descartes to Heidegger and perhaps to Quine, we may say that the usage of the Greek verb be studied here forms the historical basis for the ontological tradition of the West, as the very term "ontology" suggests.
At the same time it is generally recognized that this wide range of uses for the single verb eimi in Greek reflects a state of affairs which is "peculiar to Indo-European languages, and by no means a universal situation or a necessary condition." (1) The present monograph series on "the verb 'be' and its synonyms" shows just how far the languages of the earth may differ from one another in their expression for existence, for predication with nouns or with adjectives, for locative predication, and so forth. The topic of be can itself scarcely be defined except by reference to Indo-European verbs representing the root *es-. The question naturally arises whether an historical peculiarity of this kind can be of any fundamental importance for general linguistics and, even more pressing, whether a concept reflecting the Indo-European use of *es- can be of any general significance in philosophy."

(1) Émile Benveniste - "Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue" (1958) - in: Problèmes de linguistique générale - (Paris , 1966) p. 73
From: Charles H. Kahn - The verb 'Be' in ancient Greek - Dordrecht, Reidel (1973) p. 1 (Reprinted Indianapolis, Hackett, 2003 with a new introduction)

2) THE CONCEPT OF BEING IN OCCIDENTAL PHILOSOPHY (BEFORE HEIDEGGER)
"When the early Greek thinkers initiated philosophical speculation, the very first question they asked themselves was: What stuff is reality made of? Taken in itself, this question was strikingly indicative of the most fundamental need of the human mind. To understand something is for us to conceive it as identical in nature with something else that we already know. To know the nature of reality at large is therefore for us to understand that each and every one of the innumerable things which make up the universe is, at bottom, identical in nature with each and every other thing. Prompted by this unshakable conviction, unshakable because rooted in the very essence of human understanding, the early Greek thinkers successively attempted to reduce nature in general to water, then to air, then to fire, until one of them at last hit upon the right answer to the question, by saying that the primary stuff which reality is made of is being.
The answer was obviously correct, for it is not at once evident that, in the last analysis, air and fire are nothing else than water, or that, conversely, water itself is nothing else than either air or fire; but it cannot be doubted that, whatever else they may be, water, air and fire have in common at least this property, that they are. Each of them is a being, and, since the same can be said of everything else, we cannot avoid the conclusion that being is the only property certainly shared in common by all that which is. Being, then, is the fundamental and ultimate element of reality.
When he made this discovery, Parmenides of Elea at once carried metaphysical speculation to what was always to remain one of its ultimate limits; but, at the same time, he entangled himself in what still is for us one of the worst metaphysical difficulties. It had been possible for Parmenides' predecessors to identify nature with water, fire or air, without going to the trouble of defining the meaning of those terms. If I say that everything is water, everybody will understand what I mean, but if I say that everything is being, I can safely expect to be asked: what is being? For indeed we all know many beings, but what being itself is, or what it is to be, is an extremely obscure and intricate question. Parmenides could hardly avoid telling us what sort of reality being itself is. In point of fact, he was bold enough to raise the problem and clear-sighted enough to give it an answer which still deserves to hold our attention."
From: Étienne Gilson - Being and some philosophers - Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies - Second edition, 1952, pp. 6-7

In a first acceptation, the word being is a noun. As such, it signifies either d being (that is, the substance, nature, and essence of anything existent), or being itself, a property common to all that which can rightly be said to be. In a second acceptation, the same word is the present participle of the verb 'to be.' As a verb, it no longer signifies something that is, nor even existence in general, but rather the very act whereby any given reality actually is, or exists. Let us call this act a 'to be,' in contradistinction to what is commonly called 'a being.' It appears at once that, at least to the mind, the relation of 'to be' to 'being' is not a reciprocal one. 'Being' is conceivable, 'to be' is not. We cannot possibly conceive an 'is' except as belonging to some thing that is, or exists. But the reverse is not true. Being is quite conceivable apart from actual existence; so much so that the very first and the most universal of all the distinctions in the realm of being is that which divides it into two classes, that of the real and that of the possible. Now what is it to conceive a being as merely possible, if not to conceive it apart from actual existence? A 'possible' is a being which has not yet received, or which has already lost, its own to be. Since being is thinkable apart from actual existence, whereas actual existence is not thinkable apart from being, philosophers will simply yield to one of the fundamental facilities of the human mind by positing being minus actual existence as the first principle of metaphysics."
From: Étienne Gilson - Being and some philosophers - Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies - Second edition, 1952, pp. 2-3

3) THE CONCEPT OF BEING ACCORDING TO HEIDEGGER
"If for us Being is just an empty word and an evanescent meaning, then we must at least try to grasp fully this last remnant of a connection. So we ask, to begin with: 1. What sort of word is this anyway --Being -- as regards its formal character as a word? 2. What does linguistics tell us about the originary meaning of this word?To put this in scholarly terms, we are asking 1) about the grammar and 2) about the etymology of the word Being.
The grammatical analysis of words is neither exclusively nor primarily concerned with their written or spoken form. It takes these formal elements as clues to definite directions and differences in direction in the possible meanings of words; these directions dictate how the words can be used within a sentence or within a larger discursive structure. (...)We can easily see that un the formation of the word Being, the decisive precursor is the infinitive 'to be.' This form of the verb is transformed into a substantive. The character of our word Being, as a word, is determined, accordingly, by three grammatical forms: verb, infinitive, and substantive. Thus our first task is to understand the meaning of these grammatical forms. Of the three we have named, verb and substantive are among those that were first recognized at the start of Western grammar and that even today are taken as the fundamental forms of words and of language in general. And so, with the question about the essence of the substantive and of the verb, we find ourselves in the midst of the question about the essence of language. For the question of whether the primordial form of the word is the noun (substantive) or the verb coincides with the question of the originary character of speech and speaking. In turn, this question entails the question of the origin of language. We cannot start by immediately going into this question. We are forced onto a detour. We will restrict ourselves in what follows to that grammatical form which provides the transitional phase in the development of the verbal substantive: the infinitive (to go, to come, to fall, to sing, to hope, to be, etc.).
What does "infinitive" mean? This term is an abbreviation of the complete one: modus infinitivus, the mode of unboundedness, of indeterminateness, regarding the manner in which a verb exercises and indicates the function and direction of its meaning. (...).
Above all we must consider the fact that the definitive differentiation of the fundamental forms of words (noun and verb) in the Greek form of onoma and rhema was worked out and first established in the most immediate and intimate connection with the conception and interpretation of Being that has been definitive for the entire West. This inner bond between these two happenings is accessible to us unimpaired and is carried out in full clarity in Plato's Sophist. The terms onoma and rhema were already known before Plato, of course. But at that time, and still in Plato, they were understood as terms denoting the use of words as a whole. Onoma means the linguistic name as distinguished from the named person or thing, and it also means the speaking of a word, which was later conceived grammatically as rhema. And rhema in turn means the spoken word, speech; the rhetor is the speaker, the orator, who uses not only verbs but also onomata in the narrower meaning of the substantive.
The fact that both terms originally governed an equally wide domain is important for our later point that the much-discussed question in linguistics of whether the noun or the verb represents the primordial form of the word is not a genuine question. This pseudo-question first arose in the context of a developed grammar rather than from a vision of the essence of language, an essence not yet dissected by grammar."
From: Martin Heidegger - Introduction to metaphysics - New translation by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt - New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 55-60 (notes omitted).

________________________________________
B) THE HISTORY OF BEING (LINGUISTIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES)

1) HEBREW LANGUAGE: THE VERB "BE"
"On the other hand, by means of the so-called noun clause the Hebrew language is much better able to express the 'static' or 'that which is' in its logical sense than the Greek and our modern languages permit with their copula and their verbs of inaction. We shall define the noun clause in agreement with Gesenius-Kautzsch, in order to be able to understand the 'being' expressed in it:Every sentence, the subject as well as the predicate of which is a noun or noun equivalent is called a noun clause, while in a verbal clause the predicate is a finite verb. This distinction is indispensable for more subtle understanding of Hebrew syntax (as of Semitics in general) because it is not merely a matter of an external, formal distinction in meaning but of one that goes to the depths of the language. The noun clause, the predicate of which is a substantive, offers something fixed, not active, in short, a 'being'; the verbal clause on the other hand asserts something moving and in flux, an event and an action. The noun clause with a participial predicate can also assert something moving and in flux, except that here the event and action is fixed as something not active and enduring, as opposed to the verbal clause. For our purpose, it is not necessary to discuss all the various kinds of noun classes, and in particular not those with participial predicates which should logically be considered as verbal clauses."
(1) Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Gesenius (1786-1842) and Emil Friedrich Kautzsch (1841-1910) - Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar. Edited and enlarged by E. Kautzsch Translated and revised from German 28th edition by Arthur Ernest Cowley. 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910 - § 140 [Reprinted by Oxford University Press in 1995]
From: Thorleif Boman - Hebrew thought compared with Greek - English updated translation by Jules Moreau - Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1960; reprinted by W. W. Norton & Company, 2002 pp. 35-36. (some notes omitted). Original edition: Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem griechischen - Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1952 (second revised edition 1954)

"What is the basic fact of 'being' for the Israelites will result from the analysis of the verb hayah that follows.
A) The verb hayah: We must devote special attention to this verb not only because it occurs most frequently but also because the verbal problems discussed above are concentrated in this verb and appear in it in their most difficult form. (...) The most important meanings and uses of our verb 'to be' (and its equivalents in other Indo-European languages) are: (1) to express being or existence; (2) to serve as a copula. Now, as we have shown above, Hebrew and the other Semitic languages do not need a copula because of the noun clause. As a general rule, therefore, it may be said that hayah is not used as a copula; real or supposed exceptions to this rule will be cited later. The characteristic mark of hayah, in distinction from our verb 'to be', is that it is a true verb with full verbal force. The majority of formal considerations as well as the actual ones lead to this conclusion:
I. The peculiarity of emphasizing the verbal idea by use of the infinitive absolute before finite verbs;
II. the occurrence of the passive form Niph'al;
III. its frequent occurrence in parallel with other verbs whose verbal force is beyond doubt; this is so frequent an occurrence that a few examples will suffice: Jahveh hurled a great wind, and a mighty tempest was ( Jonah 1.4); God created (made, spoke) and the corresponding thing was ( Gen. 1.3, 9, 11); its parallel use with qûm = 'be realized' (Isa. 7.7; 14.24); the messengers of the king command the prophet Micaiah to prophesy safety and victory, 'Let thy word be as the word of one of them (i.e. the prophets of good fortune)', ( I Kings 22.13).
The meaning of hayah is apparently manifold; hayah has thus been considered to some extent a general word which can mean everything possible and therefore designates nothing characteristic. Closer examination reveals, however, that this is not the case. It is therefore necessary to establish the many meanings and shades of meaning of hayah and to find their inner connexion. We shall use first the results of Ratschow (1) who has examined the occurrences of hayah in the Old Testament with a thoroughness hardly to be excelled and in whose work is to be found extensive evidence. He found three principal meanings: 'to become', 'to be', and 'to effect'; but these are related internally and form a unity. In the main this will be right, and it agrees with our understanding of Hebrew thought; we must object, however, to details."
(1) Carl H. Ratschow - Werden und Wirken, Eine Untersuchung des wortes hajah als Beitrag zur Wirklichkeitserfassung des Alten Testaments ("Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft", 70) - Berlin, A. Töpelmann, 1941.
From: Thorleif Boman - Hebrew thought compared with Greek - English updated translation by Jules Moreau - Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1960; reprinted by W. W. Norton & Company, 2002 pp. 38-39. (notes omitted). Original edition: Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem griechischen - Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1952 (second revised edition 1954).

"In modern biblical theology it is commonly held that the Israelites were not interested in 'existence' as distinct from active existence, action or life; and correspondingly that the language has no means of expressing mere existence. The same seems to be the opinion of Boman, who several times says that a static being is a nothing to the Israelites.
It was mentioned earlier that 'the verb 'to be' as copula or existential was one of the subjects of the questionnaire circulated by Basson and O'Connor and reported on in their article. On this question they got an answer, and they report as follows: 'Semitic languages have in general no copula, but Hebrew and Assyrian both have a special word for "exists" '.1 Does this contradict the opinion I have just described?There are at least three linguistic phenomena which are relevant to the discussion of 'to be' in Hebrew:(a) The ordinary type of sentence where the copula 'is' is used in English, such as 'David is the king', 'he is the man', has no verb as copula in Hebrew. Hebrew uses the nominal sentence, which is a mere juxtaposition of the two elements 'David' and 'the king'. The nominal sentence is a very well-established feature of Semitic syntax. A common addition is the pronoun 'he' or 'she' introduced after the subject, giving the sentence 'David-he-the-king'. Since this pronoun is not indispensable and is indeed very frequently not so inserted, I think it can be neglected in a discussion of the copula.
(b) The verb hayah 'to be'. This is discussed at length by Boman, and I shall later make some remarks about his treatment of it. For the present we have to make clear only the most important fact for the co-ordination of hayah with other terms corresponding to English 'to be': it is only at certain points that this verb coincides in function with 'to be as copula or existential'. In a very large number of its occurrences it will be well translated by 'come to be' or 'come to pass'. Or, conversely, English sentences using 'is' in the present tense either as copula or as existential will seldom be rendered into Hebrew with hayah; they will much more normally use the nominal sentence, or the particle yel 'there is'. We are not on the other hand justified in removing hayah altogether from the sphere of what is relevant to English 'is' and making it equivalent (say) to English 'become'. For example, a statement like 'the earth is waste' will have the nominal sentence, and no verb; but if we put it in the past and say 'the earth was waste (and is no longer so)', then the verb hayahis used, as in Gen. I: 2. It would be quite perverse to insist on the meaning 'became' here, and so a certain overlap with 'be' has to be observed. In fact the sense of 'come to he' or 'come to pass' is not to be explained by going over to 'become' as the basic sense, but by noticing that very frequent uses have an ingressive element which with a verb meaning 'be' will lead to a sense roughly of 'come to be' or 'come to pass'.
(c) The word yeš; 'there is' and the opposite 'ayin or 'en 'there is not'. This is of course the 'special word for exists ' mentioned in the report above. Boman in his discussion of 'being' does not mention this frequent and important word at all. Moreover, a considerable complication is introduced into the discussion by this word. Basson and O'Connor (1) are right in saying that it is a 'special word for 'exists', in the sense that it is not normally used as a copula in sentences like 'David is the king'. You use it in sentences like 'There is a dish on the table' or 'There is a God in heaven'.
The complication to which I refer is that this word, which we might describe rather vaguely as a particle, is certainly not a verb, has some of the characteristics of the noun and may be translated 'being, existence' in a rather over-literal rendering.
(...)
"Now another point of some importance can be illustrated from this word. The point I wish to make is that the question whether the Israelites laid any emphasis on 'mere' existence as distinct from active existence of some kind is a different one from the question whether their language had words that could express 'mere' existence. The word yeÅ¡ can be well translated by 'there is', and as in English 'there is' we press too far if we try to find in it the expression of 'mere' existence. In fact many cases which use it have also some locality indicated: 'There is bread in my house', 'There is Yahweh in this place'. This is no doubt the 'existential' sense of 'is' as against the 'copula' type. Nevertheless 'exists' would not be a good translation in these sentences, since we would not normally say 'Bread exists in my house' or 'There exists a dish on the table'. In other words, the 'existential' use of the word 'is' does not coincide semantically with 'exists' and does not raise the problem of 'mere' existence, especially when a locality is indicated."

(1) A. H. Basson, and D. J. O'Connor - Language and philosophy: some suggestions for an empirical approach - Philosophy, XXII (1947) p. 59.

From: James Barr - The semantics of biblical language - Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1961 - pp. 58-61 (some notes omitted).

2) GREEK LANGUAGE: ON THE MEANING OF "EINAI" AND "TO ON"
"einai: to be, to exist; to on: that which is, the real; ousia: being, essence. This verb caused great philosophical difficulty to the Greeks and consequential difficulties for us. Much of the trouble arises from the fact that one can say Platôn esti - Plato exists - or Platôn esti philosophos -- Plato is a philosopher - making use of the same verb, whereas in English `Plato is' is at best an unidiomatic way of saying that he exists. This double use led some earlier Greek philosophers to think that a sentence beginning Platôn ouk esti... must deny the existence of Plato even if the next word is barbaros. This leads to translation difficulties for us, as for instance with the sentence ei ti phaneiê hoion hama on to kai mê on, to toiouton metaxu keisthai tou eilikrinôs ontos kai tou pantôs mê ontos(Plato Rep. 478d), which might be translated either as 'if something should appear such as both to have and not to have a certain predicate [we said that] such a thing would lie between being clearly of that sort and not being so at all' or as `if something should appear such that it simultaneously exists and does not exist [we said that] such a thing would lie between clearly existing and not existing at all'. It was presumably these difficulties that led Parmenides to say such things as khrê to legein to noein t'eon emmenai esti gar einai, mêden d'ouk estin - that of which one can speak and think must be: for it is possible for it, but not for nothing, to be (Parmenides in Simplicius, Physics 117.4). In an impersonal use esti frequently means `it is possible' as in estin adikounta mêpô adikon einai - it is possible to do what is unjust without being an unjust person (Aristotle N.E. 1134a 17), and in the quotation from Parmenides above. There are also adverbial expressions such as estin hote, sometimes, and estin hôs, in some ways.".
"on: to on,in the widest sense, is everything that is and, as such, is contrasted with to mê on, that which is not; in a narrower use to on, sometimes called for clarity to ontôs on, the really real, is unchanging and imperishable and eternal, and is contrasted with the gignomenon that is changing and perishable. In the dispute between Parmenides and the atomists it is hard to doubt that to mê on as the non-existent is confused with empty space: oute gar an gnoiês to ge mê on: ou gar anuston -- you cannot know that which is not; it is impossible (Parmenides, fr. 2); ouden gar estin ê estai allo parex tou eontos -- nothing other than what is either is or will be (Parmenides, fr. 8). But Simplicius reports Leucippus as saying ouden mallon to on ê to mê on huparkhein -- there is that which is no more than that which is not (Simplicius, Physics 28.12); here to mê on seems to be the kenon, void; cf. the den of Democritus. In the narrower use, to men pantelôs on pantelôs gnôston -- the completely real is completely knowable (Plato Rep. 477a); ei gar panta to onta tou agathou ephietai, dêlon hoti to prôtôs agathon epekeina esti tôn ontôn -- for if everything that is aims at the good, it is clear that the primary good transcends things that are (Proclus, Elements of Theology 8); to gar houtôs on proteron têi phusei tou gignomenou esti - that which is in this [narrow] way is prior in its nature to the becoming (Simplicius, Physics 1337.4)."
From: James Opie Urmson - The Greek philosophical vocabulary - London, Duckworth 1990 pp. 49-50 and 117.

"on ónta (pl.): being, beings.
1. The question of the nature of being first arose in the context of Parmenides' series of logical dichotomies between being and nonbeing (me on): that which is, cannot not be; that which is not, cannot be, i.e., a denial of passage from being to nonbeing or genesis (q.v.; fr. 2) , and its corollary, a denial of change and motion (fr. 8, lines 26-33, 42-50; for the theological correlatives of this, see nous 2). Secondly, being is one and not many (fr. 8, lines 22-25) . And finally, the epistemological premiss: only being can be known or named; nonbeing cannot (fr. 3; fr. 8, line 34); see doxa. Being, in short, is a sphere (fr. 8, lines 42-4g) . Most of the later pre-Socratics denied this latter premiss (cf. stoicheion and atomon), as did Plato for whom the really real (to ontos on) were the plural eide, and who directed the latter half of the Parmenides (137b-166c) against it.
2. The solution to the nonbeing dilemma (for its epistemological solution, see doxa and heteron) and the key to the analysis of genesis began with Plato's positing of space (see hypodoche) in which genesis takes place, and which stands midway between true being and nonbeing (Tim. 52a-c). For Plato, as for Parmenides, absolute nonbeing is nonsense (Sophist 238c), but there is a relative grade illustrated not only by the Receptacle cited above, but by sensible things (aistheta) as well (Sophist 240b; Timaeus. 35a, 52c). Among the Platonic hierarchy of Forms, there is aneidos of being; indeed it is one of the most important Forms that pervade all the rest (Sophist 254b-d; compare this with the peculiar nature of on in Aristotle, Metaphysics 1003a) . Further, Plato distinguishes real beings (ontos onta) from those that have genesis, and in Timaeus 28a he works out an epistemological-ontological correlation: onta are known by thought (noesis) accompanied by a rational account (logos); generated beings are grasped by opinion (or judgment, see doxa) based on sensation (aisthesis).
3. Since being is the object of the science of metaphysics (Metaphysics 1031a) Aristotle's treatment of on is much more elaborate. The first distinction is between "being qua being" (to on he on), which is the object of metaphysics, and individual beings (onta), which are the objects of the other sciences. This is the view in Metaphysics 1003a, but Aristotle is not consistent on the point: elsewhere (see Metaphysics 1026a; Physics 192a, 194b; De an. 403b) he states that metaphysics studies being that is separate and unmoving (see theologia). Again, 'being' is peculiar in that it is defined not univocally or generically, but analogously through all the categories (Metaphysics 1003a) , and in this it is like 'one' (hen) (Metaphysics 1053b ) and 'good' (agathon) ( ibid. Nichomachean Ethics I, 1096b ) ; see katholou. There follows a basic distinction (ibid. 1017a-b): something 'is' either accidentally, or essentially, or epistemologically, or in the dichotomy act (energeia) / potency (dynamis). The epistemological 'being' (see doxa) is dealt with elsewhere ( see Metaphysics 1027b-1028a, 1051a-1152a), as is potency/act (see Metaphysics Theta passim), so Aristotle here concentrates his attention on what 'is' essentially. It is something that falls within the ten kategoriai (Metaphysics 1017a) and is, primarily, substance (ousia; ibid. 1028a-b). A somewhat different point of view emerges from Aristotle's breakdown of the various senses of nonbeing (me on) in Metaphysics 1069b and 1089a: something is not either as a negative proposition, i.e., a denial of one of the predicates, or as a false proposition, or finally, kata dynamin, i.e., by being something else only potentially but not actually. It is from this latter that genesis comes about ( see also dynamis, energeia, steresis) .
4. In the Plotinian universe the One (hen) is beyond being (Enneads V, 9, 3; compare Plato's description of the Good beyond Being in Republic 509b and see hyperousia). The realm of being begins on the level of nous since both being and nous are contained in nous (ibid. V, 5, 2; V, 9, 7). Nonbeing is treated in much the Platonic and Aristotelian fashion: matter (hyle) that is only a replica (eikon) of being is only quasi-being ( Enneads I, 8, 3). Philo, with his strongly developed feeling of divine transcendence (see hyperousia), restricts true being to God alone (Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat. 44., 160) , arid introduces into the discussion the metaphysical interpretation of the famous phrase in Exodus 3, 14: 'I am who am'; see hypodoche, hyle, genesis."
From: Francis Edwards Peters - Greek philosophical terms. A historical lexicon - New York, New York University Press, 1967 pp. 141-142.

"There can be no doubt that Parmenides' Goddess's philosophy course is concerned with 'being.' But saying this is not saying anything. In Greek, as in Spanish [or English], 'to be' is a verb and, like any verb it can be used as a noun, and then we can speak of 'being' (used as a noun). But this verbal noun is essentially different in Greek than it is in other languages, and so we cannot ignore the problem. This specificity is one of the results of the flexibility of the Greek language, which permits all kinds of juggling. E. Benveniste wrote that "the linguistic structure of Greek created the predisposition for the notion 'to be' to have a philosophical vocation." (1) Indeed, the use of the verb 'to be' as a noun absolutely does not mean what Philosophers call 'being' (the noun). To use an infinitive as a noun in Spanish it must be preceded by an article, in this case 'el' ['the']. Then the infinitive 'ser"'['to be'] becomes 'el ser' ['the being'] used as a noun, in Greek 'tò eînai.' However, this formula never figured among the concerns of the Greek philosophers. No Greek philosopher who inquired into what today we might call 'the being of things,' or even 'certain types of beings,' including the supreme being, ever asked 'what is tò eînai?' literally 'what is being?' As we know, especially since the Aristotelian systemization, the formula used by all Greek philosophers to ask the question of being is tí esti tò ón (to eon in Parmenides), 'What is being?' 'Tò eon' is the present participle of the verb to be, used as a noun. The difficulty of grasping the scope of this neuter present participle (since there is also a masculine and a feminine present participle) has always given rise to all kinds of misunderstandings, since its use as a noun, represented by the neuter article 'tó,' is deceptive, and so Parmenides avoids it whenever he can. Indeed, just as verbal-noun infinitives always have a dynamic character, something similar occurs with the participle tò on, which as a present participle means that which is being,' that which engages in the act of being now. In all that I have said up till now, philosophy is absent: I have only summarized, perhaps too superficially, what Benveniste calls 'un fait de langue,"' (2) a fact about Greek simply as a language.
It is upon this linguistic fact that Parmenides reflects. In Greek the word for 'things' is ónta. Even in current everyday language, things are 'beings,' 'something(s) that is (are),' 'that which is being.' Philosophy has not yet come into it: that's the way the Greek language is. But why do we call something that is a 'being'? Because the fact of being manifests itself in that which is; if there is that which is, then the fact of being is assumed. Without the fact of being, there would not be things that are. This sort of platitude will constitute the nucleus of Parmenides' philosophy. And that is the reason why his thinking starts from an analysis of the notion of the fact of being, arrived at from the evidence that 'is' is occurring. If there is something undeniable for anyone who is, it is 'is.' If Greek syntax allowed the formula, we could say, with R. Regvald, that the basic question would be 'tí esti ésti,' 'What is 'is'?"
(1) Emile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale - Paris, Gallimard, 1959 p. 73
(2) ibid. p. 71 note 1.
From: Néstor-Luis Cordero - By Being, It Is. The thesis of Parmenides - Las Vegas, Parmenides Publishing, 2004 pp. 59-60 (some note omitted).

"It is an understatement to claim that `being' is one of the central concepts of ancient Greek metaphysics. Unfortunately, there is a split between contemporary commentators as to what is under discussion when being is the topic. On one side are those who think that these discussions are basically about existence; what exists, the various sorts of existence, what can be inferred from the fact that something exists, etc. On the other side are those who believe that these discussions are investigations into the nature of predication; of being something or other, the various ways a thing can be what it is, what can be inferred from the fact that a thing is something or other, etc. Obviously these are two quite different topics. For example, on the existence interpretation, as I shall call it, one of Parmenides' main points is that we cannot (meaningfully) speak of what does not exist. His mistake is to think that words and phrases which purport to refer but which do not refer are meaningless. On the predication approach, Parmenides is correctly pointing out that we cannot speak about nothing (what is not anything at all) and still be speaking. His mistake is to confuse not being something or other with not being anything at all. (1) On the existence interpretation, it is perhaps fair to say that Plato's distinction between real being and a lesser sort is a distinction between kinds of existence. On the predication approach, it is a distinction between really being this or that and being in a way or qualifiedly this or that. One's view of Greek metaphysics is going to be strongly influenced by which approach one takes. A little can be said about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches without getting into the details where, as we all know, the devil dwells. In philosophical discussions of being we frequently find the Greek, 'èsti', occurring without a completion. On the predication approach, sentences of the form, 'x is', are understood as meaning much the same as, 'x is something or other', in the way that, 'x sees', means much the same as, 'x sees something or other'. Furthermore, 'x is something or other', is understood as different in meaning from, 'x exists'. For example, Centaurs do not exist but they are mythical creatures, discussed, thought of and sometimes believed in. Thus, they are something or other though they do not exist. The problem for the predication approach is that there is no unambiguous use of, 'x is', to mean, 'x is something or other', in ordinary Greek. Such sentences can, however, mean, 'x exists'. This is a significant point in favor of the existence reading. This would probably be the end of the story were it not for the fact that in the metaphysical texts in question examples are given or inferences are drawn which make it clear that predication is in some way involved. For example, in the Theaetetus, 152 a ff., Socrates introduces Protagoras' relativism as follows: "Man is the measure of all things - of the things that are that they are and of the things that are not that they are not." Though an existential reading is perfectly natural, it is all but contradicted by what follows. Socrates illustrates the quoted dictum by pointing out that a wind may be chilly to one person and not chilly to another, i. e., that a thing may be thus and so to one person and not be that to another. Existence seems not to be in question. The strength of the predication approach stems from the fact that frequently the philosophical texts in question require us to somehow understand the verb,'ésti', as the copula.
(1) Mohan Matthen, "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth", presents and defends what is perhaps the most detailed and well worked out existence approach in the literature.(2) After pointing out that Greek philosophers sometimes use the verb, 'einai', in such a way that it seems to express both existence and predication, he presents an interesting account of this phenomenon which allows us to read absolute occurrences of the verb as neither the copula nor as (con)fused but as meaning simply, 'exists'. The assimilation of these occurrences to the copula is achieved by arguing that speakers of ancient Greek were committed to the existence of a type of entity which is unfamiliar to us and which he calls a 'predicative complex'. (3) (1) Richard J. Ketchum "Parmenides in What There Is", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 20/2 (1990), 167-190.
(2) "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth", Phronesis, 28/2 (1983), 113-135.
(3) Matthen sometimes writes as if his thesis is restricted to philosophical Ancient Greek as opposed to Ancient Greek generally. For example, the task he sets for himself is to explain why Greek Ontologists accepted some principles which he in turn uses to account for the apparent ambiguity (p. 116). I shall assume here, however, that this thesis is intended to cover Ancient Greek generally. Greek ontologists other than Aristotle were at least sometimes writing for the general public. If the principles in question were accepted only by the ontologists, the various uses of 'shat' would have been as confusing to the ancient Greek as they are to us. If we restricted the thesis to ontologists, we would also need some explanation as to why the ontologists assumed principles of which the ordinary Greek was unaware.
From: Richard J. Ketchum "Being and existence in Geek ontology" Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 80, (1998) p. 321-322

3) FROM GREEK TO LATIN: SENECA'S EPISTLE 58 ("THE LETTER ON BEING")

"How scant of words our language is, nay, how poverty-stricken, I have not fully understood until today. We happened to be speaking of Plato, and a thousand subjects came up for discussion, which needed names and yet possessed none; and there were certain others which once possessed, but have since lost, their words because we were too nice about their use.
(...)
You will say, I suppose: 'What is the purpose and meaning of this preamble?' I shall not keep you in the dark; I desire, if possible, to say the word essentia to you and obtain a favourable hearing. If I cannot do. this, I shall risk it even though it put you out of humour. I have Cicero as authority for the use of this word, and I regard him as a powerful authority. If you desire testimony of a later date, I shall cite Fabianus, careful of speech, cultivated, and so polished in style that lie will suit even our nice tastes. For what can we do, my dear Lucilius? How otherwise call we find a word for that, which the Greeks call ousia, something that is indispensable, something that is the natural substratum of everything? I beg you accordingly to allow me to use this word essentia. I shall nevertheless take pains to exercise the privilege, which you have granted me, with as sparing a hand as possible; perhaps I shall be content with the mere right. Yet what good will your indulgence do me, if, lo and behold, I can in no wise express in Latin the meaning of the word which gave me the opportunity to rail at the poverty of our language? And you will condemn our narrow Roman limits even more, when you find out that there is a word of one syllable which I cannot translate. 'What is this ?' you ask. It is the word on. You think me lacking in facility; you believe that the word is ready to hand, that it might be translated by quod est. I notice, however, a great difference; you are forcing me to render a noun by a verb. But if I must do so, I shall render it by quod est. There are six ways in which Plato expresses this idea, according to a friend of ours, a man of great learning, who mentioned the fact today. And I shall explain all of them to you, if I may first point out that there is something called genus and something called species."
From: Seneca - Ad Lucilium. Epistulae morales - With an English translation by Richard M. Gummere - London - William Heinemann, 1953 ( Loeb Classical Library) pp. 387; 389-391).

________________________________________

Veni Creator Spiritus

2008-05-11T08:17:00.001+02:00

Een kerkelijk pinkster hymne

(vermoedelijk van de benedictijner monnik Hrabanus Maurus - 780-856)

Veni, Creator Spiritus
mentes tuorum visita
Imple superna gratia
quae tu creasti pectora.
Qui Paraclitus diceris,
Donum Dei Altissimi,
fons vivus, ignis, caritas,
et spiritalis unctio.
Tu septiformis munere,
dextrae Dei tu digitus;
tu rite promissum Patris,
sermone ditans guttura.
Accende lumen sensibus,
infunde amorem cordibus,
infirma nostri corporis,
virtute firmans perpeti.
Hostem repellas longius,
pacemque duces protinus,
ductore sic te praevio,
vitemus omne noxium.
Per te sciamus da Patrem,
noscamus atque Filium,
te utriusque Spiritum
credamus omni tempore.
Sit laus Patri cum Filio,
Sancto simul Paraclito:
nobisque mittat Filius
charisma Sancti Spiritus.
Amen.

Kom Schepper, Geest, daal tot ons neer,
houd Gij bij ons uw intocht, Heer;
vervul het hart dat U verbeidt,
met hemelse barmhartigheid.
Gij zijt de gave Gods, Gij zijt
de grote Trooster in de tijd,
de bron waaruit het leven springt,
het liefdevuur dat ons doordringt.
Gij schenkt uw gaven zevenvoud,
O hand die God ten zegen houdt,
O taal waarin wij God verstaan,
wij heffen onze lofzang aan.
Verlicht ons duistere verstand,
geef dat ons hart van liefde brandt,
en dat ons zwakke lichaam leeft
vanuit de kracht die Gij het geeft.
Verlos ons als de vijand woedt,
geef ons de vrede weer voorgoed,
Leid Gij ons voort, opdat geen kwaad,
geen ongeval ons leven schaadt.
Doe ons de Vader en de Zoon
aanschouwen in de hoge troon,
O Geest van beiden uitgegaan,
wij bidden U gelovig aan.
Aan God de Vader zij de eer
en aan de opgestane Heer
en aan de Geest die troost en leidt
van eeuwigheid tot eeuwigheid.
Amen

Veni Creator Spiritus

2008-05-11T08:04:00.002+02:00

Het kerklied als vertolking van het evangelie

(door A. Noordegraaf)

De feestloze helft van het kerkelijk jaar... zo wordt de periode na Pinksteren in de kerk soms wel aangeduid. Ik vind het altijd een merkwaardige uitdrukking, sterker nog, ik heb het gevoel dat de woorden volstrekt misplaatst zijn. Is elke zondag niet een herinnering en verwijzing naar het paasgebeuren, de opstanding van Christus? In die zin gaan we van zondag tot zondag van feest tot feest. Dat danken we aan Pinksteren. De uitstorting van de Geest is een heilsfeit, even eenmalig als de
geboorte van Christus of de opstanding. Wij leven van de wind. Ook en juist na

Pinksteren.

Cultuurfilosofen mogen onze tijd dan betitelen als post-christelijk - en je kunt je daar best iets bij voorstellen -, toch is het goed om elkaar er aan te herinneren dat wij sinds Pinksteren niet in een lege tijd leven. God heeft zijn Geest uitgestort en nog nooit teruggenomen. Daaraan danken wij het Leven.
In deze bijdrage die de lezer zo omstreeks september bereikt, wil ik daarom een pinksterlied aan de orde stellen. Mijn keus viel op de klassieke hymne ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’. In het Liedboek voor de kerken staan vier versies van dit kernlied voor Pinksteren bij uitnemendheid (Gez. 237-240), waaronder twee bewerkingen van Maarten Luther. Luther was bijzonder gesteld op deze hymne op de Geest, omdat deze hymne zo strak en orthodox en helder spreekt over de Heilige Geest zonder te vervallen in dwepen en dromen.

Karolingische renaissance

Ik beperk me voornamelijk tot de middeleeuwse versie die u als gezang 237 in het Liedboek aantreft [1]. Schulte Nordholt schrijft in het Compendium bij het Liedboek dat het zingen van dit lied in de Middeleeuwen omgeven werd met een bijzonder ontzag en met een plechtige toewijding, door het luiden van klokken, het branden van wierook en het ontsteken van kaarsen.
Het stamt vermoedelijk uit de tijd van de zogenoemde Karolingische renaissance. Daarmee duiden we de periode aan, waarin Karel de Grote (768-814) zich inzette voor de bevordering van onderwijs, wetenschap en cultuur naar het voorbeeld van de klassieken en tegelijk grote aandacht gaf aan de organisatie van het kerkelijk leven en de hervorming van de liturgie. Enkele bouwwerken, zoals Karels paleiskapel in Aken vormen nog altijd een zichtbare erfenis van deze karolingische aandacht voor kerk en cultuur.
Geloof en theologie gingen hem zeer ter harte. Onder zijn invloed en op zijn aandrang werd op een rijkssynode in Aken bepaald en vastgelegd dat de Heilige Geest niet alleen aan de Vader zijn oorsprong dankte, zoals de Oosterse kerk beleed, maar uitging van de Vader en de Zoon.

Hrabanus Maurus

In de door Karel de Grote gestichte scholen kwam vooral de dichtkunst tot grote bloei. Maar, zo is opgemerkt, voor de kerk leverde dat niet zoveel op. De hoftheoloog, Alcuinus, een middelmatig dichter, schreef enkele hymnen die nauwelijks bekendheid kregen. De meeste bekendheid kreeg het lied dat we hier bespreken, de hymne over de Heilige Geest. De dichter van dit lied is vermoedelijk Hrabanus Maurus (780-856), een bekwaam theoloog, opgeleid aan de kloosterschool in Fulda. Later werd hij abt van dit klooster, terwijl hij als ruim zeventigjarige verkozen werd tot bisschop van Mainz.
Hymnologen wijzen er op dat het lied in zijn opbouw en strofenvorm invloed verraadt van de beroemde hymnendichter Ambrosius van Milaan, wiens betekenis voor het kerklied we nauwelijks kunnen overschatten. Vanaf de tiende eeuw raakt het lied hoe langer hoe meer ingeburgerd. Niet alleen was het het Pinksterlied bij uitstek, maar ook werd het gezongen bij bijzondere gelegenheden zoals de wijding van priesters en de zalving van koningen.
Wat maakt dit lied nu zo indrukwekkend, zodat het ook na zoveel eeuwen nog altijd aanspreekt? G. van der Leeuw verwoordt dat mijns inziens trefzeker, als hij opmerkt: ‘Zijn kracht ligt in de volstrekte afwezigheid van alle bespiegeling, in de directe aanroeping van de Geest, Wiens tegenwoordigheid als realiteit wordt ervaren.’ Ongetwijfeld geeft dit lied vele leermomenten die ons helpen de betekenis van de persoon en het werk van de Geest te verstaan. Maar het dogma is lied geworden, gezongen evangelie. Wij leren zingend geloven. De leer krijgt in deze hymnische vorm geen kans om te verstarren. Temeer, omdat het lied direct terugkoppelt op de taal van de Schrift.

Kom Schepper, Geest

De inzet is een smeekbede. En dit gebed om de komst van de Geest zet de toon.

Kom Schepper, Geest, daal tot ons neer,
houd Gij bij ons uw intocht, Heer;
vervul het hart, dat U verbeidt,
met hemelse barmhartigheid.

Dat gebedswoord ‘kom’ past echt bij Pinksteren. Heilsfeiten zijn immers van een andere orde dan de feiten van elke dag. Heilsfeiten getuigen van de daden van God die ons vandaag aanspreekt. Je kunt geen Pinksteren vieren en dan overgaan tot de orde van de dag. Het pinksterevangelie wil resoneren in ons leven. En de resonans is de roep om de Geest, even dringend en verwachtend als de eerste leerlingen van Jezus volgens Handelingen 1:14 geroepen hebben.
Roepen om de Geest: dat impliceert dat we ons nooit kunnen opwerpen als gelukzalige bezitters, die over de Geest beschikken. Wie de geschiedenis van kerk en christendom nagaat, weet dat het altijd weer de grote verzoeking is om de Geest te binden aan het sacrament, een kerkinstituut, het innerlijk licht, de leer. In de kortste keren wordt dan de Heilige Geest van de Heere God ingewisseld voor de geest van de heren. Geloofszekerheid en geloofsblijdschap verworden dan tot parmantige zelfverzekerdheid. We behoeven daarbij niet alleen te denken aan het massieve katholicisme van het rijke Roomse leven. Ook reformatorische bewegingen zijn nogal eens in de valkuil van de ‘gelukzalige bezitters’ gevallen die het roepen verleerd hebben.
Vernieuwing of hervorming van de kerk betekenen altijd dat we weer opnieuw leren roepen om de Geest. Zo juist, als bedelaars om licht, ontdekken we de rijkdom van Pinksteren. In de beste uitingen van gereformeerde vroomheid klinkt de toon van deze katholieke gebedsroep ‘kom’ door. In de gereformeerde liturgie neemt het gebed om de verlichting door de Geest een grote plaats in. Het sursum corda uit de avondmaalsliturgie herinnert ons er aan, dat de verhoogde Christus present is door de kracht en de werking van zijn Geest. Er is een diepe samenhang tussen de voor de gereformeerde spiritualiteit zo kenmerkende notie van de ‘vreze des Heeren’ en de gebedsroep ‘kom’. Vreekamp schrijft naar aanleiding van het komen van Christus in de Geest: ’Wanneer Hij op de wijze van Woord en Geest zo verborgen nabij is, zullen we Hem slechts kunnen ontmoeten in de vreze des Heeren.’

Gaven zevenvoud

Gevoed door de beeldenrijkdom van de bijbel vertolkt de hymne de betekenis van de persoon en het werk van de Geest: De Gave Gods, de Trooster - Paraclitus staat er in de latijnse tekst, de erbij geroepene, de voorspraak -, levende bron, liefde, gloed, vinger van Gods rechterhand, geestelijke zalving. Ook dat laatste. De Geest zalft ons met zijn vuur om ons toe te rusten, te vormen tot een messiaanse gemeenschap, die profetisch, priesterlijk en koninklijk in de wereld staat. De Geest en zijn gaven zijn onlosmakelijk met elkaar verbonden.

Gij schenkt uw gaven zevenvoud.
o, hand die God ten zegen houdt,
o, taal waarin wij God verstaan,
wij heffen onze lofzang aan.

Dat zevenvoud aan gaven en vruchten herinnert aan en is terug te voeren op de messiaanse profetie van Jesaja 11:2, waar van de Messias gezegd wordt: ‘En op Hem zal de Geest des HEREN rusten, de Geest van wijsheid en verstand, de Geest van raad en sterkte, de Geest van kennis en vreze des Heren...’.
Maar er is meer. We worden onwillekeurig herinnerd aan de betekenis die de bijbel toekent aan het getal zeven als het getal van de volheid. Ik denk aan de zevenarmige menora, de kandelaar in tabernakel en tempel. In één van de nachtgezichten van Zacharja wordt dit licht van de kandelaar betrokken op het werk van de Geest. Over de vaak moeilijke situatie van de teruggekeerde ballingen valt dit licht als een straal van hoop: ‘Niet door kracht, noch door geweld, door mijn Geest zal het geschieden’ (Zach. 4:6).
Ik denk ook de visioenen uit de Openbaring van Johannes als een bron van troost voor een vervolgde gemeente: de verhoogde Christus temidden van de zeven gouden kandelaren (Op. 1:12,20), de zeven Geesten Gods als de zevenkleurige regenboog rondom de troon van God (Op. 3:1;4:3,5). ‘In het zevenvoud van gaven aan de mensen door de ene Geest is de volkomen sabbatsvrede uitgedrukt, tot oprichting en herleving van de mens’ (Beker-Hasselaar).

Heelheid

Pinksteren is bepaald geen karig gebeuren. Pinksteren is het feest van de royaliteit van God. Het is ook geen wazig gebeuren. De Geest is concreet in zijn gaven. Dat is in de de gereformeerde orthodoxie lang niet altijd begrepen. Het werk van de Geest werd dan versmald tot een puur innerlijke zaak. Soms kreeg je de indruk dat het zich beperkte tot de wedergeboorte van het verdorven hart. Hoe wezenlijk ook, dat is toch te smal. Wij mogen de charismatische beweging dankbaar zijn, dat ze ons attendeert op aspecten van Pinksteren die we onderweg kwijtgeraakt zijn.
De gave van de Spiritus septiformis geeft verlof om te bidden:

Verlicht ons duistere verstand
geef dat ons hart van liefde brandt,
en dat ons zwakke lichaam leeft
vanuit de kracht, die Gij het geeft.

De creativiteit van de Pinkstergeest wil ons helemaal doordringen. Hij raakt ons hele bestaan: verstand, hart, lichaam.
In onze gefragmentariseerde cultuur, waar vertechnisering en een verrationaliseerde wetenschap gezorgd hebben voor de kaalslag van het leven, hebben New Age-propagandisten de wind in de zeilen, omdat ze opkomen voor de heelheid van het leven en mensen willen begeleiden naar de ervaring van een geheeld bestaan. Kerken weten daar vaak niet zo goed raad mee. Sommigen omhelzen dit denken als het antwoord op de crisis van onze tijd. Anderen bestoken het vanuit de luwte van een stoere orthodoxie.
Ik denk dat we deze pantheïserende stromingen alleen dan de wind uit de zeilen nemen, als we ons in ons individuele bestaan, in ons kerkelijk leven, in onze omgang met de cultuur laten sturen door de wind van de Heilige Geest. Pastoraat en diaconaat zullen daar wel bij varen.

Taal waarin wij God verstaan

Dr. J. Koopmans maakt ergens de opmerking: ‘Op de Pinksterdag valt er het minst te zien, maar van alle dagen des heils valt er wellicht het meest te horen’. Als de Geest wordt uitgestort, komt het Woord aan het woord. In alle talen worden de grote daden van God vertolkt en gehoord. In de herdichting van Schulte Nordholt van het Veni Creator wordt dat wat vrij vertaald weergegeven in die prachtige regel: ‘o taal, waarin wij God verstaan...’. Dat betekent, zegt J.T. Bakker, dat God weer een woord wordt in de gewone mensentaal.
De Geest bindt zich niet aan één taal, laat staan aan één vertaling. Hij spreekt ons aan in onze moedertaal (Hand. 2:8).
En wat klinkt er nu vertrouwder dan je moedertaal. De grote geleerde Erasmus was gewoon zich in het Latijn uit te drukken, Vrienden die om zijn sterfbed stonden hoorden hem voortdurend steunen: ‘O, Jesu, misericordia; Domine libera me; Domine, miserere mei!. Maar zijn allerlaatste woord was een woord in zijn moedertaal: ’Lieve God’.
Taal, waarin wij God verstaan. De Heilige Geest als tolk (O. Noordmans). De taalbrug van Pinksteren bewerkt communicatie: een nieuwe gemeenschap van mensen die in een vaak vervreemdende wereld rondom het getuigenis van de Geest de weg tot God en tot elkaar vinden.
In onze cultuur is er met de taal van alles en nog wat aan de gang. We spreken in verschillende taalvelden. Soms schrik je van de wijze waarop de taal afgeplat wordt. Van de weeromstuit houden anderen het dan maar bij de geijkte taal van onze vaderen die gekoesterd en gecultiveerd wordt als een heilige taal. In beide gevallen raakt de communicatie zoek. Het is binnen de kerk vaak moeilijk om elkaar te verstaan. En we tillen terecht zwaar aan de vraag hoe we in de preken de kloof met onze cultuur kunnen overbruggen, hoe we God ter sprake kunnen brengen.
Die vragen worden ons niet bespaard. Want als God een woord wordt in gewone mensentaal, betekent het, dat de Geest zich van gewone mensen bedient. Dan gaan de vragen van vertaling en vertolking met ons mee. We zijn permanent bezig met spraakoefeningen. Maar dat houd je alleen maar vol binnen de ruimte van de Geest.
Geest en Woord
Leggen we naast de middeleeuwse hymne de herdichting van Luther dan valt je op dat Luther de verbinding tussen de Geest en het Woord accentueert. Het is de Geest, ‘Die ’s Vaders woord ons toevertrouwt, zodat het klinkt in ieders land’ (Gez. 239:4). De heldere melodie van de oude hymne aldus Beker-Hasselaar, wordt overgezet in de reformatorische toonsleutel: de Geest draagt de verkondiging van het Woord Gods en maakt haar effectief. Tegenover een dopers beroep op geestelijke ervaringen, los van de Schrift - en juist onze tijd is daar gevoelig voor - is het goed met de reformatoren te bedenken dat de Geest zich paart aan het Woord en tegelijk dat het diezelfde Geest is die de Schrift voor mensen tot een open boek maakt, een gids voor onderweg in ons aangevochten bestaan.
Want leven op de adem van de Geest is een onrustig bestaan. De gelovige is verwikkeld in een gevecht met de macht van de boze.

Verlos ons, als de vijand woedt,
geef, Heer, de vrede ons voorgoed,
Leid Gij ons voort, opdat geen kwaad,
geen ongeval ons leven schaadt.

Ook zulke regels moeten Luther zeer aangesproken hebben. Want als er iemand van aanvechting wist dan hij. Maar met de kerk der eeuwen wist hij ook van de troost van de Geest die ons bewaart in de strijd en ons de wapenrusting van het Woord geeft.
Daarom is er temidden van alle strijd uitzicht op de volle vrede, de vreugde van het rijk dat komt. De laatste strofe verwoordt dit eschatologische uitzicht:

Doe ons de Vader en de Zoon
aanschouwen in de hoge troon,
o Geest, van beiden uitgegaan,
wij bidden U gelovig aan.

Het smeekgebed heeft iets van een lofzang. Het verlangen wordt vervoegd in de modus van de aanbidding. Want de Geest is uitgestort als eersteling en onderpand van Gods grote toekomst.

Literatuur
Compendium bij de gezangen voor het liedboek, Amsterdam 1977.
C.P. van Andel, Tussen de regels. De samenhang van kerkgeschiedenis en kerklied, ’s Gravenhage 1977.
J.T. Bakker, Gezongen evangelie, Kampen 1990.
E.J. Beker-J.M. Hasselaar, Wegen en kruispunten in de dogmatiek, deel 4, Kampen 1987.
J. Koopmans, Nieuwe Postille, Nijkerk 1940.
G. van der Leeuw, Beknopte geschiedenis van het kerklied, Groningen 1939.
H. Vreekamp, Eerbied. De vreze des Heeren als bron van leven, Kampen 1984; genoemd citaat op blz 40.
[1] Gezang 237 is deze keer niet in z’n geheel afgedrukt omdat het vrijwel volledig in de tekst van dit artikel voorkomt.

Language of the Soul

2008-04-29T19:25:00.001+02:00

Communicating with children is a challenge under the best of circumstances. And when we attempt to speak about the things that are the most important -- the inner feelings and character traits of our children -- the task seems almost overwhelming. How do we talk to our kids about things like love and kindness, faith and courage, honesty and trust? Though these are the things we most want to communicate to them, they are the most difficult to speak about.

The task becomes even more difficult because these virtues and character traits are not consistent. They tend to be fluid and abstract. They don't behave the same in every situation. Unrestrained kindness, while generous and flowing, is not always wise. Loyalty, while an exquisite quality, can lead our children astray when applied blindly.

But how to understand these subtleties clearly enough to begin to talk about them with our children? How, for example, to distinguish between the horror of violence and the necessity of war, the purity of honesty and the cruelty contained in speaking unnecessary truths, productive assertiveness and hostile aggressiveness?

To do so wisely requires an understanding of these qualities. And a language, a vocabulary for expressing their subtleties.

But where to find this language? How to explain these nuances?

There is a source that reveals itself to us specifically at this time of year. It is a language contained in "the counting of the omer", a mitzvah we perform in the forty-nine days between Passover and Shavuot.

After the Children of Israel left Egypt, forty-nine days passed before they received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Tradition teaches that each of these days was necessary for the Children of Israel to refine themselves and be worthy of this gift. On each day they examined and corrected another of their inner traits and qualities. There were forty-nine in all.

These forty-nine traits were comprised of seven basic attributes. Each of the seven contained all of the other seven, thus comprising forty-nine.

The Kabbalists tell us that the soul of man includes these seven basic Attributes:

* Love/Kindness (Chessed)

* Vigor/Discipline (Gevurah)

* Beauty/Harmony/Compassion (Tiferet)

* Victory/Endurance/Determination (Netzach)

* Humility/Devotion (Hod)

* Foundation/Bonding/Connection (Yesod)

* Majesty/Dignity (Malchut)

As we fulfill the mitzvah of counting the days and weeks from Passover to Shavuot, each of the seven weeks is devoted to a different attribute -- one week for Kindness, another week for Discipline, another for Compassion, etc. On each of the seven days of the week we refine another of the seven aspects of the week's attribute. For example, on the week devoted to kindness we will devote one day to refining that aspect of kindness that requires discipline and another day to refining that aspect of kindness that requires compassion, and so forth. During the week we are refining beauty, we spend one day refining that aspect of beauty that requires dignity and another day on that aspect of beauty that requires humility, until we have refined all seven aspects of beauty.

Ultimately, all character traits derive from combinations of these seven basic ones. Each quality continually interacts with the others, and in so doing has the capacity to modify its expression and effect. To be whole, a character trait must incorporate all seven; a lack or overabundance of even one of the seven renders it corrupt and, in some cases, damaging. Discipline, for example, can easily become cruelty with but a slight exaggeration.

Knowing this, we can use these attributes to begin to distinguish and explain the characters and behaviors of our children and our selves. These attributes, which we count and refine in our forty-nine day journey, can be used as the foundation of a new language, a Language of the Soul.

This language will provide a vocabulary that allows us to both name, identify and then speak with our children about qualities that are non-tangible -- that cannot be touched nor seen -- but can be expressed in action.

If we learn to talk about these inner qualities with our children in clear, specific, and concrete ways, we have the possibility of penetrating their hearts and minds and opening their own ability to communicate with us from a deeper part of themselves.

Using the seven attributes as a guide we can speak to our children not only about what something is, but how it is that way. We cannot only define kindness, we can also describe what it looks like in action. Does it always look the same? Can the same act be kind in one situation and cruel in another? Can an act appear cruel and yet still be kind? How and why?

The expression of any of these seven attributes requires modification depending on circumstances and results in a variety of ways in which a particular quality might be expressed differently to meet a specific situation.

If being helpful is good, then why is helping someone steal not good? If being courageous is important, then why is doing something dangerous wrong? If being loyal is meritorious, then why not go along with the crowd even when I think they are doing something harmful? If tolerance results in a more peaceful world, then why must I sometimes stand against what someone does, or make a distinction between right and wrong?

As you explore each of these seven qualities and understand how they affect each other, you begin to see that the lack or addition of any of them dramatically shifts the meaning or expression of the others.

Though the essence of "love" is "giving," would a child be loving if he gave a book of matches to a young seven-year-old friend, or if she gave away without asking a toy that belongs to the child's brother or sister, or if he or she told a lie in order to prevent a friend from getting into trouble?

If you spend time reflecting on each of these seven -- kindness, discipline, compassion, endurance, humility, connection, and dignity -- and how they interact with each other you can use them like a check list to see which, if any, of these qualities is missing or in overabundance in any given situation. This will allow you to more easily talk about them with your children.

Let's look at assertiveness as an example. Many of us wish to encourage this trait in our children. It is an inner quality necessary for accomplishment and for independence (going against the crowd). Yet, we know that assertiveness borders on aggressiveness and can easily become a quality that is mis- or over-used resulting in some potentially nasty character traits. But how to explain this distinction to our children? Let's try to apply our seven attribute check list.

For example, what would assertiveness look like if it lacked the attribute of love or discipline? How often have you met someone who proclaims to be assertive, yet reeks of hostility? Can your child be both assertive and compassionate (understanding and considerate of the needs of others) at the same time?

On the one hand, being assertive can help your child to be independent and not follow the crowd. It may prevent him or her from being bullied. But without instilling humility and compassion in your child, how can you be assured that he or she will not become the next bully on the block? Without humility, even though your child's assertiveness may bring him success, might it also result in arrogance and pridefulness?

How effective will your child's assertiveness be if it lacks endurance? Why do some very assertive people -- passionately dedicated to their very worthwhile goal -- still lack the ability to accomplish much? Could it be that with all their strength and enthusiasm they lack endurance and discipline?

And how often have we met assertive, disciplined, committed people who lack openness to new ideas or the flexibility to respond to changing situations? Could it be that they lack a sense of connectedness to a large and ever-changing world? Do they fail to see that their actions effect this world in ways larger than themselves and that the world to which they are connected is constantly affecting them and their goals? Or, lacking this quality, do they tend towards a self-centered approach to life that may move them towards their individual goals at the expense of others and without a positive effect on the world around them.

And finally, upon acquiring assertiveness, your child should have a sense of dignity -- a sense of self-respect and of being worthy of the respect of others. When you think about it, would not this only be achieved if your child was able to be assertive in a loving, disciplined and compassionate manner, exercising endurance and humility, and realizing the consequences of his/her actions to both himself and others? Don't we all know assertive people who lack one of these qualities and consequently don't engender our respect? Doesn't your child have a schoolmate who seems to always get what he/she wants, yet is neither liked nor respected by the other children? Could you identify one or more of the seven attributes that this child is lacking? Can you see how a lack in any one of the basic seven attributes can quickly turn a positive quality into a negative one? Can you explain this to your child?

After reading the above paragraph, can you now imagine a discussion with your child in which you try to explain to him or her the difference between assertive and aggressive behavior using the seven attributes as your vocabulary?

If the above description has helped you understand assertiveness better, or has given you some insight into yourself or someone you know, then you have begun to see Language of the Soul in action.

References:

A Spiritual Guide to Counting the Omer by Simon Jacobson

Ten Keys for Understanding Human Nature by Mattis Kantor

Mystical Concepts in Chassidism by Rabbi Jacob Immanuel Shochet

The author wishes to acknowledge the contribution of the work of Rabbi Simon Jacobson to this article.

GilGal !

2008-03-14T14:21:00.003+01:00

De betekenis van het gebeuren te Gilgal...

Bijbeltekst: Jozua 5:12

Inleiding

De spectaculaire en dramatische gebeurtenissen van de woestijntocht van het volk Israël, zoals beschreven in de boeken van Mozes, zijn voor velen bekende verhalen. Ik noem, bijvoorbeeld, te gebeuren te Mara, waar het bittere water zoet werd, de oase Elim met palmbomen en waterbronnen, de wetgeving op de Sinaï, de bouw van de tabernakel, de plaag van slangen, die aan duizenden het leven kostte en de opstand van Miriam, die melaats werd. Het voorval te Gilgal is minder bekend en de verstrekkende betekenis ervan ontgaat veel gelovigen. Het gebeuren te Gilgal was echter zeer belangrijk, want het was een laatste voorwaarde voor een succesvolle
verovering van het land Kanaän en de vervulling van Gods beloften. Voordat we kijken naar hetgeen er te Gilgal gebeurde en de betekenis ervan, geef ik eerst een kort overzicht van wat er was gebeurd voordat het volk zich in Gilgal legerde.

De overtocht en de aankomst te Gilgal

Na een lange reis en veel moeilijkheden waren de Israëlieten eindelijk aangekomen bij het hun toegezegde land. Zij legerden zich aan de oostelijke oever van de Jordaan, die de natuurlijke grens van Kanaän vormt. Aan de overzijde zagen zij het heuvelachtige en hogere Kanaän liggen en de stad Jericho in de westelijke Jordaanvlakte.

Maar hoe kom je met een volk, compleet met kinderen en dieren en veel goederen, zonder boot of iets anders de rivier over - probleem nummer zoveel. Op het juiste moment vond er echter stroomopwaarts in de Jordaan plotseling een zeer grote instorting van de oever plaats; zie Jozua 3:16, waardoor de benedenloop droog kwam te liggen. God sprak tot Jozua; wij lezen Jozua 3:7, "En de HERE zeide tot Jozua: Op deze dag zal Ik beginnen u groot te maken in de ogen van geheel Israël.... Beveel dat de priesters, die de ark van het verbond dragen, zodra gij gekomen zijt aan de oever van het water van de Jordaan, zult gij in de Jordaan blijven staan.... - vers 13b. Zodra dan de voetzolen van de priesters, die de ark van het verbond dragen, in het water van de Jordaan rusten, zal het water van de Jordaan afgesneden worden, het water, dat van boven afkomt, zal als een dam blijven staan." Vers 16, "Het water... bleef staan, het rees op als een dam, zeer ver weg bij Adam."

Het was een wonder van timing. De Jordaan kwam geheel droog te liggen en zonder enig probleem kon het gehele volk aan de overkant komen. Toen het bericht hierover tot de stammen doordrong waren zij volkomen verrast en ontzet. Wij lezen in Jozua 5:1, "Zodra alle Kanaänieten hoorden dat de HEER de wateren van de Jordaan voor het aangezicht van de Israëlieten had doen opdrogen, totdat zij erdoor waren getrokken, versmolt hun hart en zij hadden geen moed meer vanwege de Israëlieten." Als bewijs van deze overtocht werd er midden in de Jordaanbedding een grote hoop stenen opgericht, die nog lang na dit gebeuren zichtbaar moet zijn geweest.
Aan de overkant, in het Westjordaanse land, maakten de Israëlieten een nieuw kampement en noemden het Gilgal, dat waarschijnlijk 'rollen' of 'afwentelen' betekent. Zie vers 9, waar God verklaart dat de 'smaad van Egypte' van haar afgewenteld is.

De overtocht over de Jordaan was een machtige demonstratie van Gods kracht en timing geweest; zie Jozua 3 en 4. De stammen in en rondom Kanaän moeten hebben gedacht: "Wij zijn veilig hier in het land aan de westzijde van de Jordaan, want dit nomadenvolkje Israël komt er nooit over. Het water is te diep, er is geen brug, er is geen veerdienst, er is geen hout aanwezig waarmee zij vlotten kunnen maken, zij hebben geen middelen waardoor het mogelijk is over die rivier te komen met hun vrouwen, kinderen, dieren en al hun goederen. "Israël, vergeet het maar, je komt er nooit over. Wij zijn veilig hier in Kanaän." Deze heidense volkeren kenden echter nog niet voldoende de kracht en de mogelijkheden van de God van Israël.

Te Gilgal....

De Israëlieten waren ongetwijfeld in een opperbeste stemming na die succesvolle en gemakkelijke overtocht door de droog gevallen bedding van de Jordaan. Wie had durven dromen dat die rivier droog kwam te liggen op het moment dat Jozua door een profetisch woord van God het volk gereed maakte voor de overtocht? Zij erkenden dat dit het werk van hun machtige God moest zijn geweest - er was geen twijfel mogelijk. Nu keken zij naar het gebied dat zij moesten innemen, het was hun beloofd. Hun geloof in een gemakkelijke overwinning van de heidense stammen was ongetwijfeld tot recordhoogte geklommen, de mannen waren paraat voor de strijd en sommigen liepen waarschijnlijk al met hun wapenen rond.

Er stond echter iets totaal onverwachts te gebeuren, dat alle mannen enige tijd ongeschikt voor de strijd maakte, een pijnlijke ervaring, die hen enkele dagen op bed deed liggen, zij moesten besneden worden. U moet begrijpen dat we hier te maken hebben met de jonge generatie, waarvan de meesten in de woestijn waren geboren. In de woestijn was geen babyjongetje besneden. Nu waren er mannen tot de leeftijd van veertig jaar, die niet volgens het gebruik bij hun geboorte de besnijdenis hadden ondergaan, maar dat moest nu gaan gebeuren, zo wist Jozua van de HEER.
"Alle mensen, moet dat nu gebeuren," hoor ik de mannen verzuchten, "had dat nou niet aan de andere kant van de Jordaan kunnen plaats vinden, daar hebben we maanden gelegen en hadden we alle tijd. Nu willen we ertegen aan gaan en die goddeloze Kanaänieten verdrijven. Jozua, man, weet wat je ons aandoet. Straks komen die Kanaänieten hier, terwijl we met pijn op bed liggen en maken ons allen af." Maar Jozua was sterk en hield vol dat de Here het geboden had en dus ondergingen allen de pijnlijke ingreep.

Christenen behoeven zich niet te laten besnijden om de tegenwoordigheid en kracht van God te ervaren, dat wordt duidelijk in het Nieuwe Testament geleerd. Er zijn voor ons, Nieuw Testamentische gelovigen, kostbare, diepzinnige, heerlijke, maar ook pijnlijke lessen te leren uit dit verhaal. Ik noem er enkele en zal deze verkondigend en onderwijzend uitwerken. De besnijdenis zien we als een typebeeld van een geestelijke waarheid. Onthoud deze waarheid:
De Besnijdenis is een illustratie van de kruisiging van de oude, zondige natuur en van de voorwaarde voor een vernieuwd leven.

1. Besnijdenis

In Gilgal werden de mannen besneden en het volk moest er blijven tot zij hersteld waren van deze ingrijpende en pijnlijke chirurgische ingreep.
Israëlieten waren (en zijn het nog) er trots op dat zij besneden waren, want dat gaf hen de identiteit van het Verbondsvolk van God. Maar Joden die dieper nadachten wisten reeds onder het Oude Verbond dat de besnijdenis van het lichaam niets betekent als het hart niet besneden is. Ik lees uit Jeremia 4:4, "Besnijdt u voor de HEER en doet weg de voorhuid van uw hart, gij mannen van Juda en inwoners van Jeruzalem." En in Jeremia 9:25 schreef hij over hen, die besneden waren, maar toch de voorhuid nog hadden. Hiermee bedoelde hij de mannen, die een kwaad, vleselijk en ongehoorzaam hard hadden en de ware vrees voor God niet kenden.
Paulus werkte dit inzicht uit in de Romeinenbrief. Ik citeer 2:25, "Want besneden te zijn heeft wel betekenis, indien gij de wet volbrengt. Maar indien gij een overtreder van de wet zijt - en wie is dat niet - is uw besnijdenis tot onbesnedenheid geworden." Duidelijke taal, dacht ik, en dat nog wel van een rasechte Jood, zoals Paulus was!

De besnijdenis van de kinderen Israëls te Gilgal kan als typebeeld worden beschouwd van de besnijdenis van het hart van de kinderen Gods, de gelovigen in de gemeente van Jezus Christus; zie Colossenzen 2: 11-15, waar we lezen: "In Hem zijt gij ook met een besnijdenis, die geen werk van mensenhanden is, besneden door het afleggen van het lichaam van het vlees." Deze besnijdenis wordt gesymboliseerd door de doop, zie vers 12, "Daar gij met Hem begraven zijt in de doop."
U, jij en ik, dienen er ons ook op te bezinnen dat de doop, de onderdompeling, geen echte waarde heeft als ons hart onveranderd blijft, of zoals het onder het Oude Verbond met Israël heette, als wij onbesneden van hart blijven.

2. Herstel

Er mocht geen begin gemaakt worden met de verovering van het land, tot allen van de besnijdenis hersteld waren en in staat waren om keihard te strijden, niet gehinderd door `het vlees.' Jozua 5:8.
De tijd van herstel van deze mannen in het kamp was een tijd van rust. Wij, als Christenen, dienen ons ook regelmatig te bezinnen op onze identiteit als kind van God. Leef ik vanuit een gereinigd, geheiligd hart of ben ik vleselijk bezig? Leef ik als een onbesnedene? Heel veel Christenen, en echt niet alleen jongere, zijn ontrouw aan de doopbelofte. Wat hield die ook weer in? Zijn we dat vergeten, het lijkt er soms wel op. De doopbelofte was: Ik ga leven voor Christus en wil Hem volgen. Ik ga leven uit zijn kracht als een vernieuwd mens.' Wow - dat is nog al wat, en dat zal iedereen hier wel 'in de gaten' hebben gekregen. In Gilgal is er een tijd van rust, van bezinning, van vernieuwde oriëntatie op de betekenis en de gevolgen van onze doop, de besnijdenis van ons hart. Vanmorgen heeft de hemelse Leider, de Heilige Geest, ons te Gilgal gebracht. Hij zegt: Hé, blijf hier eventjes, denk na, bezin je op de betekenis van de doop en begrijp de consequenties ervan.

3. Smaad en vloek verwijderd

De schande en de schuld zowel overgedragen door vroegere generaties, als van de huidige, moest worden verwijderd; zie Jozua 5:9.
Kleefde hun nog smaad aan, terwijl zij toch Gods volk waren? Ja, zij waren niet volledig gehoorzaam geweest aan Gods instellingen. Let er op dat we hier te maken hebben met de tweede generatie van het volk. Toch kleefde ook deze generatie de smaad van ongehoorzaamheid en rebellie. Er moest nu, staande voor de laatste en belangrijkste opdracht: Het beloofde land in bezit te gaan nemen, een diepe verootmoediging, reiniging en bevrijding plaats vinden.

Gilgal was een prachtig nieuwe start voor de kinderen van Israël. De besnijdenis maakte dat de vloek en de smaad, de smet van afgoderij, occultisme, verkeerde leringen en slaafse intimidatie verbroken werden. De HEER wentelde alles van hen af. Ik zag de Israëlieten opstaan van hun bedden, de pijn van de besnijdenis was weg, alles was genezen en dat zonder moderne verband- en geneesmiddelen, tetanus injecties, antibiotica en weet ik wat nog meer. Zij stonden op, rekten zich uit en zeiden tot elkaar: "Ik voel me een stuk beter, ik voel me goed. Ik voel me vrij. De Heer is hier. Ik ervaar kracht en heb zin er tegenaan te gaan voor Hem. Het lijkt inderdaad alsof negatieve, duistere machten zijn verbroken!" Wow, wat een heerlijk besef. Wat een geweldig gevoel.

Let op: Om je zo te voelen, zo vrij en blij in Christus, dien je niet slechts gedoopt te zijn, maar ook met je gehele hart ernaar te leven. Heilig, rein, vervuld van de Geest van God. Het is de moeite waar om nog even in Gilgal te blijven, totdat je dit geheel door hebt en het wilt uitvoeren.

4. Het Manna kwam niet meer

Het manna hield op te komen. Het manna, de gemakkelijke voorziening van voedsel, bezorgde hen als het ware, het brood in de mond. Nu stopte deze voorziening. Zij moesten gaan leven van de opbrengst van het land en er dus voor werken; Jozua 5:12.
Er zijn in het geestelijk groeiproces van de gelovige ook opeenvolgende stadia. Er zijn velerlei voorzieningen van God voor onze geestelijke groei naar volwassenheid in het geloof. Wij moeten ons echter nooit op één aspect blijven fixeren. Wij dienen open te staan voor veranderingen, ook al zijn die soms voor ons vlees onaangenaam. Gilgal was en blijft voor het vlees onaangenaam, pijnlijk, maar het opent wel de deur naar een krachtige vernieuwing! Als Gods beloften in vervulling gaan moeten we paraat zijn voor nieuwe uitdagingen en voorzieningen. Dit is ook een belangrijk beginsel: God doet wonderen als niets anders ons kan helpen, als er geen andere mogelijkheid is. De woestijn was onvruchtbaar, dus kwam er manna. Het beloofde land is wel vruchtbaar, dus eet ervan! Dan moeten we niet om broodjes uit de hemel blijven vragen, maar aan de slag gaan en de belofte als het ware plukken! Het ophouden van het manna is een typebeeld van geestelijke groei naar een grotere mate van volwassenheid en bruikbaarheid. Tot op dit moment hadden zij in een meer kinderlijke afhankelijkheid geleefd, nu moesten zij als ontvangers van de belofte, nemen van de vrucht!

In welk geestelijk stadium bent u, ben jij? In het meer kinderlijke of in het volwassener? Pauilus schreef in 2 Cor. 1:20 dat al Gods beloften in Christus, 'Ja' en 'Amen' zijn. God roept u via de weg van het kruis van Christus in uw leven, dat is uw Gilgal, tot grotere bruikbaarheid en vruchtbaarheid. De uitdaging is: Benut de nieuwe mogelijkheden, die God u biedt!

5. Gilgal bleef centraal

Eenmaal besneden en hersteld, konden er voorbereidingen voor de inname van Jericho, een machtig bolwerk in die tijd, worden gemaakt. Elke dag keerde men naar Gilgal terug, waar het kamp was gelegerd en de tabernakel bleef staan met de continuatie van de priesterdiensten; zie Jozua 6:11. Telkens weer zal de gelovige zich dienen te bepalen bij en zich te bezinnen op de besnijdenis van zijn hart; opdat de gezindheid van Christus in hem zal regeren.

Gilgal bleef dan ook langere tijd het hoofdkwartier, van waaruit de verovering werd ondernomen.; zie Jozua 9:6, 10:6, 10:15, 14:6. Zij bleef het centrale hoofdkwartier totdat Silo was ingenomen; zie Jozua 18:1.
Zo zal er ook na de kruisiging van het vlees, dat is de besnijdenis van ons vlees en na de overwinning over alle zonde- en demonische machten, een nieuw centrum voor aanbidding van God in ons leven en in de gemeente ontstaan. Silo, waar rust is, waar aanbidding is, maar men God ervaart op een zeer ontspannen en verheven wijze.
Galaten 2:20 zal de centrale waarheid blijven ons gehele leven hier op aarde, terwijl we toeleven naar de vervulling van al Gods beloften: "Ik ben met Christus gekruisigd, en toch leef ik, dat is niet meer mijn ik, maar Christus leeft in mij. En voor zover ik nu nog in het vlees leef, leef ik door het geloof in de Zoon van God, die mij heeft liefgehad en Zich voor mij heeft overgegeven."

Toepassing, oproep

God wil ons allen, die geloven, eerst te Gilgal houden voor de besnijdenis van ons hart en dan kan Hij ons, bekrachtigd door zijn Geest, leiden van overwinning tot overwinning. Dan worden boosaardige, onreine machten vernietigd en Gods beloften gaan in vervulling. Als vanzelf, zou ik haast zeggen, komen we in de verheven plaats van lofprijs, aanbidding en genieten van Gods tegenwoordigheid. Kom dus telkens terug te Gilgal, de plaats van het sterven van het vlees, maar ook de plaats waar God woont en zijn heerlijkheid zichtbaar aanwezig is. Bezin u regelmatig op de waarheid van Galaten 2:20, "Met Christus ben ik gestorven, en toch leef, dat is Christus in mij."
Ik roep u op: Ontwijk Gilgal niet. Onderwerp u aan de geestelijke noodzakelijkheid van Gilgal en kom er regelmatig terug. Blijf enkele dagen in Gilgal totdat u weet dat uw hart vernieuwd is door de Geest van de Heer. Tijdens de strijd om de verovering van het land, was de Heer tegenwoordig in Gilgal; zijn Shekinah heerlijkheid vervulde zijn heiligdom. Dit mag u ook weten: Hij is aanwezig; Zijn heerlijkheid en genade rust op de mens, die zich besneden weet in de dood van Christus.

The Wood Offering

2008-03-14T14:15:00.002+01:00

(Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson)

In the commentary of Toras Kohanim on the Torah portion of Vayikra , our Sages note that a gift of wood for use upon the altar may constitute a valid sacrificial offering.

How can a mere adjunct to the actual offerings constitute a valid offering in itself?

The Ramban explains the significance of offerings in the following manner:
The person who brings an animal sacrifice must realize that all those things being done to the animal should by right have been done to him. It is only because of G-d's mercy that an animal is substituted.

Thus, the intent of one bringing an animal sacrifice should be to offer himself to G-d. This also serves to explain why every sacrifice had to be consumed together with the wood of the altar:

There are various types of sacrifices, each possessing its own laws as to the manner in which it is to be offered. According to the Ramban , we may understand the differences in the laws according to the effect the particular offering has upon the individual who brings it. This depends, of course, on the reason the offering is brought - whether it is an expiation offering, a free-will offering, etc.

On the other hand, the essence of every sacrifice is the offering of the person himself ; the person must be prepared to dedicate himself entirely to G-d. It is only then that each form of offering fulfills its purpose.

That all offerings share this attribute is symbolized by the wood that is consumed together with every sacrifice: the wood provides the constant subtext of every offering - that the person offers himself to G-d.

The Torah tells us that "Man is a tree of the field."3 Man's offering of himself to G-d is thus expressed by means of wood. One of the differences between man's "general offering" that finds expression in the consumption of wood upon the altar, and the "particular offering" of man's individual powers (symbolized by the various sacrifices) is the following:

When a person offers a particular part of himself, he cannot free himself entirely of his ego, for his self-abnegation and devotion to G-d refer only to this particular part of himself. The remaining components in every personality conceal and hinder a person's selfless devotion to G-d.

When a person realizes that, regardless of the particular nature of his sacrifice, he is offering himself totally to G-d, there is nothing left within him to act as a barrier. The person then can dedicate himself in a manner that transcends intellect or emotion - even holy intellect and emotion

A Dwelling Among Mortals

2008-02-28T12:03:00.000+01:00

1. A Contradiction in Terms

When dedicating the Beis Hamikdash, King Shlomo exclaimed in wonderment: “Will G-d indeed dwell on this earth? The heavens and the celestial heights cannot contain You, how much less this house!” For the Beis Hamikdash was not merely a centralized location for man’s worship of G-d, it was a place where G-d’s Presence was — and is — manifest. Although “the entire earth is full of His glory,” G-d’s Presence is not tangibly felt. He permeates all existence, but in a hidden way. The Beis Hamikdash, by contrast, was “the place where He chose to cause His name to dwell.” There was no concealment; His Presence was openly manifest.

This seems impossible; there is no apparent way that spirituality can be openly manifest in our material world. For material existence to come into being, G-d condensed and contracted His light and life-energy so that it could become enclothed in material entities. This is absolutely necessary; were G-dly light to be revealed without restraint, it would nullify all matter.

To allow for our world to continue in a stable manner, G-d structured this process of self-containment with laws and principles as binding as those governing nature. He brought into being an entire framework of spiritual worlds whose purpose is to convey Divine energy from level to level until it undergoes the degree of contraction necessary to be enclothed in material form. An open revelation of G-dliness runs contrary to this entire pattern, defying the limits which He Himself established.

Nevertheless, although G-d limited the extent of His revelation when structuring the world, He did not limit Himself. He created a world with set bounds, but He Himself is not bound by them, and can alter them at will. He can invest His Presence in our material realm, and did so in the Sanctuary and in the Beis HaMikdash.

2. In G-d’s Inner Chamber

The Divine Presence was revealed in the Holy of Holies, where an ongoing miracle reflected the nature of the revelation in the Beis HaMikdash. The width of the Holy of Holies was 20 cubits. The Ark of the Covenant, positioned lengthwise in the chamber, was two and one half cubits long, yet there were ten cubits from either edge of the ark to the wall. In other words, the physical ark occupied no space!

In the Beis HaMikdash, precise measurement was a necessity. Even a slight deviation from the required dimensions would render an article or building invalid. The fact that the place of the ark transcended the limits of space thus represents a fusion of finiteness and infinity. This communicates the nature of G-d’s Being. He transcends both finiteness and infinity, and yet manifests Himself in both.

This is the Torah’s intent when speaking of G-d “choos[ing] a place for His name to dwell”: the physical limits of our world will not be negated, yet the spiritual will be revealed. And this fusion of opposites will enable us to become conscious of His essence, which transcends — and encompasses — both the physical and the spiritual.

3. What Man Contributes

G-d did not want this revelation to be dependent on His influence alone. As reflected in the verse: “And you shall make Me a Sanctuary and I will dwell within,” He chose to make the revelation of His Presence dependent on man’s activity. Since any revelation of G-d’s Presence transcends the limits of our existence, the initiative must come from Him. Nevertheless, “G-d did not have His Presence rest upon Israel until they performed labor” — building the Sanctuary where His Presence would dwell.

Why was man’s activity necessary? Because G-d’s intent is that the revelation of His Presence be internalized within the world, becoming part of the fabric of its existence. Were the revelation to come only from above, it would merely nullify worldliness. To cite a parallel: when G-d revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, the world ground to a standstill. “No bird chirped... nor did an ox bellow, nor the sea roar.” Although G-dliness was revealed within the world, material existence did not play a contributory role.

When, by contrast, the dwelling for G-d is built by man — himself part of the material world — the nature of the materials used is elevated. This enables G-d’s Presence to be revealed within these entities while they continue to exist within their own context.

When a revelation of G-dliness comes from above, it is dependent on His influence, and is therefore temporary. For example, when G-d descended on Mount Sinai, the mountain became holy and therefore, “all that ascend the mountain must die.” When, however, G-d’s Presence was withdrawn from the mountain, the Jews were allowed to ascend it, for the fundamental nature of the mountain had not changed; it remained an ordinary mountain.

With regard to the Sanctuary — and to a greater extent the Beis HaMikdash — holiness became a permanent part of their own being. And thus on the verse: “I will lay waste to your Sanctuaries,” our Sages commented: “Even though they have been devastated, their sanctity remains.” And therefore, it is forbidden to ascend to the site of the Beis HaMikdash in the present age.

4. Two Phases

The above concepts are highlighted by the name of the Torah reading. Terumah, meaning “lifting up” or “separation,” puts the focus on man’s attempts to establish a dwelling for G-d. The Torah proceeds to state that this terumah must involve 13 different articles: gold, silver, brass.... This indicates that man’s task is to incorporate the various elements of worldly existence into G-d’s dwelling.

More particularly, the double interpretation of the name Terumah reflects two factors necessary in creating a dwelling for G-d. First, a person must designate his gift, separating it from his other worldly property. And then through its consecration, its nature becomes elevated above the ordinary material plane.

These two phases relate to the two services mentioned in the verse, “turn away from evil and do good.” When a person prepares a dwelling for a king, he must first clean it. Afterwards, he brings in attractive articles. Similarly, to make our world a dwelling for G-d, “separation” is necessary to purge the self-orientation encouraged by worldly existence. Only then is the world “elevated,” becoming a medium to draw down G-d’s light.

5. Not an Island

The Beis Hamikdash was not intended to be an isolated corner of holiness. Instead, its windows were designed to spread light outward. For the holiness of the Beis Hamikdash was intended to illuminate the world.

The most complete expression of this concept will come in the Era of the Redemption. From “the mountain of G-d’s house” will spread forth light and holiness, motivating all people to learn G-d’s ways and “walk in His paths.”

These revelations are dependent on our efforts to encourage the manifestation of the Divine Presence. Making our homes and our surroundings “sanctuaries in microcosm” will cause G-d to reveal His Presence in the world.

(Adapted from Likkutei Sichos, Vol. III, p. 902; Vol. XVI, p. 286ff; Vol. XXI, p. 146ff)

Towards A Purpose Beyond Our Conception

2008-02-28T11:59:00.000+01:00

For Man to Become More than Man

To answer this question, we must expand our conceptual framework, for the state to which G-d desires to bring mankind is above ordinary human conception. This is indicated by the very expression: “When you lift up the heads”; “the heads,” human intellect, must be elevated.

The essence of our souls is “an actual part of G-d from above,”4 and G-d desires that man transcend himself and experience this Divine potential. Moreover, the intent is not merely that we rise above our human intellect, but that we “lift up the heads” themselves, reshape our minds. Tasting a superrational connection to G-d is not sufficient; our very thoughts, the way we understand the world, must encompass a Truth which transcends intellect.

A Journey Charted by G-d

Intellect is a crossroads. On one hand, it is the faculty which enables humanity to grow and expand its horizons. On the other hand, a mortal’s intellect is by definition limited. Moreover, all intellect is rooted in self; the more one understands, the stronger one’s sense of selfhood becomes.

Following one’s own understanding can lead to seeing material existence or at least certain aspects of it as being apart from G-d. Our minds can understand how certain entities and experiences might serve as conduits for the expression of G-dliness. Other material entities and practices, however, appear to be foreign to that purpose, and we reject the possibility that they might also serve this function.

Taking this approach to the extreme, some modes of Divine service endeavor to avoid confronting material existence altogether, staying instead within the realm of the spiritual. Although there are certain virtues to this approach, it contains an inherent shortcoming: It encourages the notion that material reality exists apart from holiness.5

The ultimate truth the “heights” to which Jewish heads should be lifted is that every aspect of existence can express the truth of His Being.6 This is reflected in the Torah’s description of Avraham’s efforts to spread the awareness of G-d’s existence:7 “And he proclaimed there the name of G-d, eternal L-rd.” The verse does not state א-ל העולם “G-d of the world,”8 which would imply that G-d is an entity unto Himself and the world is a separate entity unto itself. Instead, it states א-ל עולם, implying that G-dliness and the world are one.

Even after this thrust is accepted, however, there exist certain aspects of being that appear separate from Him. Is there G-dliness in evil, for example? And if so, how can man cause this G-dliness to be revealed?

Although mortals cannot conceive of a meeting point between evil and sanctity, G-d can. Indeed, He charts paths leading each individual, and the world at large, to such an intersection. With Divine Providence, He creates situations into which no righteous man would enter voluntarily, forcing the righteous to become involved with (and thus elevate) the most base material concerns.

This is the intent of the command to “lift up the heads of the children of Israel”; that even within the realm characterized by separation, evil and self, there may flourish an awareness of G-d’s unbounded spiritual truth.

G-d’s Awesome Intrigue

In this vein, Chassidic thought describes sin as,9 “an awesome intrigue devised against man.” Jews by nature are above any connection with sin.10 If a person’s yetzer hora overcomes him and makes him sin, this is because the yetzer hora was prompted from Above to bring him to this act. This is purposeful, “an awesome intrigue” devised by G-d to bring about a higher and more complete unity between G-d, that individual, and the world at large.

In his explanation of our Sages’ statement11 that “In the place of baalei teshuvah, even the completely righteous cannot stand,” the Rambam states12 that baalei teshuvah are on a higher level because “they conquer their [evil] inclination more.” The righteous do not have to struggle so hard against their evil inclination; to the extent that they are righteous, their evil inclination is nullified.13 A baal teshuvah, by contrast, possesses a powerful evil inclination as evidenced by his sin and yet still desires to cling to G-d.

Moreover, our Sages teach14 that teshuvah transforms even sins which a person commits intentionally into merits. This elevates the lowest aspects of existence which derive sustenance from the realm of kelipah and brings them into a bond with G-d.

Why does a baal teshuvah have the potential to elevate aspects of existence which are by nature distant from G-dliness? Because in order to strive for teshuvah, a person must tap his deepest spiritual resources, that soul which is “an actual part of G-d.” When he reaches this point, he is able to appreciate that nothing is apart from Him. And in his life, he is able to show how every element of existence expresses His Truth.

This process is an example of the pattern, “a descent for the purpose of an ascent.”15 Our climb to those peaks which our intellect cannot reach on its own involves a descent to levels which our intellect would normally reject.

Three Phases

Based on the above, we can appreciate the sequence of parshas Ki Sissa. The purpose the ascent of the Jewish people is stated in the opening verse. Afterwards, the reading continues with the final commands for the construction and dedication of the Sanctuary, the incense offering and the giving of the First Tablets. All these subjects reflect a connection to G-d above the limits of ordinary experience.

In order for that connection to penetrate the worldly realm, and to have it permeate even the lowest aspects of existence, follows the narrative of the Sin of the Golden Calf and the breaking of the Tablets. This terrible fall motivated the Jewish people to turn to G-d in teshuvah, evoking a third phase16 the revelation of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy a totally unbounded level of G-dliness that encompasses even the lowest levels.

This highest peak finds expression in the giving of the Second Tablets17 and the final event mentioned in this week’s Torah reading, the shining of Moshe’s countenance.18

The shining of Moshe’s face manifested the ultimate fusion of the physical and the spiritual. G-dly light shone from Moshe’s physical body.

And Ultimately, Ascents Without Descent

Similar cycles of descent and ascent have shaped the history of our people. The aim of this process is a final union between the spiritual and the material the Era of the Redemption, when “the world will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the waters cover the ocean bed.”19

When seen in this context, all the years of exile appear as merely “a fleeting moment.”20 For exile has no purpose in and of itself; it is merely a means by which to evoke a deeper connection to G-d, and a medium which enables that bond to permeate every aspect of experience. When this purpose is accomplished, the exile will conclude; to quote the Rambam:21 “The Torah has promised that ultimately, at the end of her exile, Israel will repent and immediately be redeemed.”

And then will begin a never-ending ascent, as it is written:22 “They will proceed from strength to strength, and appear before G-d in Zion.”

Vayakhel

2008-02-28T11:48:00.001+01:00

In collaboration with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks - From the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe

Vayakhel begins with Moses assembling the Israelites on the day after Yom Kippur, to repeat to them the commandment of Shabbat. The passage raises several questions, especially in its use of the passive in the phrase, "Six days shall work be done." In its explanations, the Sicha touches on one of the greatest paradoxes of the life of faith. If G-d is the source of all blessings, why work in order to live? And if we do work, how can we avoid the thought that it is our labor alone that produces material results? We seem torn between absolute passivity and the denial of G-d's involvement in the world. The Rebbe develops the important concept of "passive labor" in which this contradiction is resolved, and a new understanding of the inner meaning of Shabbat emerges.

1. The Assembly

The Sidra of Vayakhel begins in the following way: "And Moses assembled all the congregation of the children of Israel, and said unto them: 'These are the words which the L-rd has commanded, that you should do them. Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a sabbath of solemn rest to the L-rd..'"

This raises several questions and points of detail, some of which are mentioned by the commentators.

Firstly, why is the word "assembled" ( Vayakhel) used? The more usual expression would be, "And Moses spoke to all the congregation," as indeed we find several verses later, in the context of the donations for the Sanctuary.

Secondly, the passage says, "These are the words which the L-rd has commanded," but it does not specify what they are. Most commentators take it as referring to the offerings for the building of the Sanctuary, but this is difficult to maintain. For before these offerings are spoken of, the Torah repeats, "And Moses spoke to all the congregation," suggesting that this was the subject of a separate discourse. The implication would seem to be that the "words which the L-rd has commanded" refer to what immediately follows, namely the prohibition of work on the Shabbat. But this raises the further difficulty that the observance of the Shabbat had already been included amongst the Ten Commandments.

Thirdly, what is the significance of the repetitive phrase, shabbat shabbaton, translated in English as "a sabbath of solemn rest?"

Fourthly, Rashi, the Talmud, the Midrash1 and the Zohar2 all make the comment that this assembly took place on the morrow of Yom Kippur, when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai (with the second tablets of stone). This suggests that there is a connection between the assembly and Yom Kippur, whose essence is, as its name implies, kippur, or atonement. This was the day when G-d said to Moses, "I have forgiven according to your word," which was the atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf. What, then, is the connection?

2. Passive Labor

As a first step towards answering these questions, we must consider the remarks of the commentators about the passive form of the verb in the phrase, "Six days shall work be done." Had it been in the active, "Six days shall you work," it would suggest an involvement or preoccupation with the work. The passive suggests that the work will be done, as it were, by itself. The Mechilta comments on this verse: "When Israel performs the will of the Al-mighty, their work is done for them by others." Literally, this refers to a blessing conferred by Heaven, but the comment can also be taken to indicate an attitude that the Jew should adopt in the course of his service towards G-d. It means that during the six days of his work, he should be occupied, but not preoccupied by the secular.

In the Psalms3 it is written: "If you will eat the labor of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well with you." The Chassidic interpretation4 is that the labor in which man engages for his material needs (so that "you will eat") should be only "of your hands," an activity of the outer man, not an inward involvement. His thoughts and feelings must remain bound up with Torah and its commandments. Only then "will you be happy and it will be well with you." As the Sages say,5 "You will be happy-in this world-and it will be well for you-in the World to Come."

This interpretation can also be applied to the phrase, "Six days shall work be done." The passive form of the verb indicates that heart and mind are elsewhere-involved in the Torah-and only man's practical faculties are engaged in the work. And even they are concerned only to make the work a "vessel" for the blessings of G-d. This is what the Torah means when it says; "And the L-rd your G-d will bless you in all that you do." Man is not sustained by his own efforts, but through G-d's blessing. His work merely provides a natural channel for this blessing, and he must remember that it is no more than a channel. Though his hands prepare it, his eyes must remain focused on the source of the blessing.

Man should really not be allowed to work. For of G-d it is said, "I fill the heavens and the earth" and "The whole earth is full of His glory." The proper response to the ever-present nature of G-d would be to stand in absolute passivity. To do otherwise would be to be guilty of what the Rabbis called6 "making signs before the King," of the presumption of making one's presence felt. It is only because the Torah itself permits, indeed commands, us to work that it becomes legitimate; when it says, "Six days shall you work" and "The L-rd your G-d will bless you in all that you do."The Torah permits that which is necessary work. To go beyond that would be, in the first place, to show a lack of faith that human sustenance comes from G-d. And secondly, it would be to make one's presence felt in the face of G-d an act of rebellion.

3. The Meaning of "Labor"

In the light of this, it becomes difficult to understand the expression of the Psalms, "the labor of your hands." For the work of the Jew in the secular world is only as a preparation for G-d's blessing, and lacks an inner involvement. There is, however, a psychological principle7 that work which one enjoys is not tiring, whereas even a small effort towards what one does not enjoy is exhausting. The Jew, therefore, whose pleasures are spiritual, and whose engagement in the material world is forced upon him, finds it an exhaustion. Even though it is a positive command8 that "Six days you shall labor," the labor itself, however detached he is from it, distracts him from the spiritual, and is therefore felt to be a tiring labor.

4. The Double Shabbat

This, then, is the inner meaning of "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh there shall be to you a holy day, a sabbath of solemn rest,"-the six days are a necessary preface to the seventh. For the Shabbat to be a day of solemn rest, it must be preceded by work, and the work itself must be passive, with the true focus of one's attention elsewhere. It is written,9 "On the Shabbat, a man should regard himself as if all his work were complete." If, during the six days, he had been preoccupied with material concerns, on the seventh day anxieties will invade him and he will not be able to clear his mind to "gaze at the glory of the King" in Torah and prayer. He has opened the door to distractions, and they will intrude upon his will. But if he has given his work its proper place during the week, the light of Shabbat will illuminate him, and it will be shabbat shabbaton-a Shabbat twice over. For Shabbat will then permeate his whole week,10 and when the day itself arrives it will have a double sanctity.

Our third question is therefore answered. And the second is also solved: Even though the observance of Shabbat as such had been previously commanded, the opening verses of Vayakhel explain how the spirit of Shabbat is achieved.

5. The Origin of Idolatry

The connection between the assembly of the Israelites, and the day it took place, on the morrow of Yom Kippur, can also now be understood. The commandment about the Shabbat was in itself the rectification of the sin of the Golden Calf. Rambam11 traces the origins of idolatry to the fact that Divine providence is channeled through natural forces and objects: "Precious fruits (are) brought forth by the sun, and. precious things. by the moon.''12 Although their worshippers recognized them as merely intermediaries, they attached divine significance to them. Their error was to regard them as objects of worship, whereas they are no more than the instruments of G-d, like "an ax in the hands of the hewer." At another level, the excessive preoccupation with business and the material world is also a form of idolatry.13 In the same way, it involves the error of attaching significance to what is no more than an intermediary or the channel of Divine blessing. His mental preoccupation is a form of bowing the head, of misplaced worship. Only when he sees his work for what it is, a way of creating a natural channel for the blessings of G-d, will his work take the passive form and the focus of his thoughts be on G-d alone.

This is how idolatry-whether in its overt or its more subtle forms-is atoned. Six days of passive work, in the sense of mental detachment and the realization that human work is only an instrument of G-d, are the corrective for and the denial of the instincts of idolatry.

6. Passivity in the Spirit

This error and its correction exist on the spiritual as well as the material plane. In Pirkei Avot14 it is stated: "Do not be like servants who minister to their master on the condition of receiving a reward." It is possible to study and fulfill the Torah for the sake of the attendant spiritual pleasures. But this is to be motivated by reward. The highest service is to perform G-d's will for its own sake, unconditionally. And this is like the passive labor described above. It is labor because it is not done for the sake of pleasure. It is passive because such a man does not regard his spiritual achievements as the result of his own talents, but of the helping hand of Heaven. If he opens himself to G-d, however slightly, G-d responds and helps him along the way. This assistance comes even prior to the fulfillment of a command. Commenting on the verse in Job,15 "Who has come before Me that I should pay him?" the Rabbis say,16 "Who made Me a parapet without My making him the roof, who made Me a Mezuzah without My making him the house, who made Me Tzitzit without My making him the garment?" Passivity in the spiritual life means making oneself no more than a channel for the Divine response.

7. Assembly and Unity

Finally, we can now understand why our passage uses the verb "And Moses assembled" instead of "And Moses spoke."It was the day after Yom Kippur, when the sin of the Golden Calf, which had brought back into the world the spirit of impurity,17 was atoned for. The world was to be restored to its original state, as it was before the first sin. There was to be "one nation in the land," and the world was once again to become a private domain (reshut hayachid, literally, the "domain of the One") for the Unity of G-d. Therefore there had to be an "assembly" in which the people were gathered into a unity.

(Source: Likkutei Sichot, Vol. I pp. 187-192)

Vrede komt als Israël zich bekeert

2007-12-14T18:05:00.000+01:00

(door Rein Visscher)

Zal de terugtrekking door Israël uit de Gazastrook en enkele nederzettingen op de westelijke Jordaanoever de vrede dichterbij brengen? Als we in de Bijbel de geschiedenis vanaf het begin lezen, krijgen we oog voor de strijd die tot op de dag van vandaag wordt gevoerd.

Er bestond een familievete tussen Izaïk en Ismaël, de twee halfbroers. Als Esau met Machalat, de dochter van Isma‰l, trouwt (Genesis 28 vers 9), wordt deze vete een strijd tussen de twee broers. En dan zien we deze vete zich uitbreiden tot de nakomelingen van Iza„k en Isma‰l, Jacob en Esau. Het volk Israël en de Arabische volkeren.

Deze strijd duurt nog steeds voort. Daarom is het zeer de vraag of de huidige maatregelen werkelijk tot vrede kunnen leiden. We zien immers, als we de Bijbel lezen, steeds weer dat vrede voor het volk Israël ervan afhangt, of het volk de Here dient of niet.

Als Israël de weg die de Here aanwijst, verlaat, komt er een periode van onrust en oorlog en geeft God het volk over in handen van de vijand. Maar wee de vijand die Israël dan onder de voet loopt. God straft die vijand, omdat die zich richt tegen zijn volk. Als Israël dan berouw krijgt van z'n zonden en zich bekeert, geeft God weer vrede.

Hier zien we, dat hoe Israël ook zondigt en zich van God afkeert, God zijn volk niet verstoot. De apostel Paulus is hier heel duidelijk over. In de hoofdstukken 9 t/m 11 van zijn brief aan de Romeinen geeft hij duidelijk aan wat de positie van Israël ook nu nog is.

Wij als christenen zullen de positie van het volk Israël anders moeten beoordelen dan vanuit politiek oogpunt.

Hoe kan dan vrede worden bereikt? Dat hangt ervan af, wat we onder vrede verstaan. De shalom die in de Bijbel bedoeld wordt, is in de eerste plaats vrede met God. Dan volgt voor het volk van God ook de vrede met elkaar.

Wat moet Israël dan doen? Zich bekeren. Hoe wordt die vrede bereikt? Als het volk Isra‰l, het Joodse volk, de God der vaderen weer gaat zoeken en uitkomt bij Messias Jezus en diens verlossingswerk gaat zien en aanvaarden.

We zien dat het aantal Messiasbelijders onder het Joodse volk langzaam groeiende is. We danken God daarvoor. Ook zijn er gemeenten die contacten uitoefenen met christen-Palestijnen. Een voorbeeld is de Beith Asaph-gemeente van David Loden in Nethanya. Zij bidden voor elkaar en bellen elkaar op als er aan beide zijden weer doden vallen.

Dat is een prachtig voorbeeld, hoe geloof in de Messias Yeshua deze volken verbindt.

Heeft de kerk, hebben wij als christenen een taak in dit 'Vredesproces'? Jazeker! De kerk zal bewust moeten worden gemaakt van de positie van Israël (het Joodse volk) ‚n van haar eigen positie. We moeten ons er in toenemende mate bewust van worden, dat wij als wilde takken tussen de eigen takken op de edele stam zijn geënt. Dat wij als gelovigen uit de heidenen door genade alleen deel hebben gekregen aan de saprijke wortel. Niet wij dragen de wortel, maar de wortel draagt ons (Romeinen 11 vers 11-24)!

Paulus schrijft schrijft in de tegenwoordige tijd. Deze zaak is ook nu nog actueel. Wees niet hoogmoedig, maar vrees!, zegt Paulus, ook nu nog tegen ons.

Belofte
We moeten daarom wegdoen alles wat ook maar enigszins riekt naar de 'vervangingstheologie'. Ook binnen de gereformeerde gezindte was dat een gangbare theorie, die nog steeds voorkomt. De kerk is niet in de plaats van Israël gekomen, maar tussen hen geënt. God maakt geen gedane zaak met Israël. Voor £ is de belofte, en voor uw kinderen en voor allen die verre zijn. Dit zegt Petrus (Handelingen 2 vers 39) tegen de Joden!

Hoe moeten we deze taak uitvoeren? Hen jaloers maken, door te laten zien wie Jezus, de Messias, is en wat het geloof in Hem en het aanvaarden van zijn verlossingswerk tot gevolg heeft. Niet eigenwijs en hoogmoedig, maar in grote verwondering.

Door hun struikelen en vallen in ongeloof kwam de weg vrij voor de heidenen tot Christus en tot God.

We moeten in de gezinnen en in de kerk veel bidden, dat het Joodse volk dit met verwondering zal gaan zien en zich zal bekeren. Dit gebed ontbrak tot nu toe nog veel te veel.

Dan alleen komt er vrede met God, en dan kan Israël ook in vrede wonen. Dat zien we de hele bijbel door. God heeft dat immers beloofd!

Rein Visscher is voorzitter van de Stichting ter bevordering van de evangelieverkondiging aan het Joodse volk (Stevaj) en lid van de Bat Tsion Commissie, die namens de Gereformeerde Kerken (vrijgemaakt) de evangelieverkondiging onder het Joodse volk behartigt.

©Nederlands Dagblad

Vrede op aarde?

2007-12-14T17:57:00.000+01:00

Vrede op aarde?

Wat gebeuren er toch vreselijke dingen in de wereld. Misschien is dat altijd al zo geweest, maar met de moderne communicatie-middelen wordt je er wel met de neus bovenop gedrukt. En vaak vraag je je machteloos af waar dat toch allemaal goed voor is. Zal daar nu nooit eens een eind aan komen?

Natuurlijk zijn er nog steeds mensen die geloven dat dit allemaal nodig is voor de vooruitgang. Die gaan er vanuit dat er niet alleen een evolutie is in de natuur, maar ook in de maatschappij. En net als in de natuur de sterke dieren de zwakke op moeten ruimen, zijn al die conflicten en oorlogen in de wereld nodig om te groeien naar een ideale, klassenloze samenleving.
Maar na zo'n tachtig jaar ervaring met deze visie in het Oostblok, is het geloof in deze theorie wat op z'n retour. Toch zijn er nog heel wat die ondanks alles blijven vasthouden aan hun ideaal. Ze hebben nog steeds een sterk vertrouwen dat het ooit nog eens zo ver zal komen.

Maar weet je, eigenlijk is dat nog niets vergeleken bij al die mensen die tijdens de kerstdagen weer uit volle borst "vrede op aarde" zitten te zingen! Wat dacht je daarvan?! Die bakken het nog veel bruiner! Die geloven al tweeduizend jaar dat dat nog eens gaat gebeuren! Vrede op aarde! Nou, dan moet je wel oogkleppen voor hebben en je verstand op nul zetten om dat nog serieus te nemen! Na tweeduizend jaar christendom is die vrede op aarde nog steeds ver te zoeken! Je moet toch wel een bord voor je kop hebben om daar nog in te geloven.

Toch moeten we hier even een hardnekkig misverstand uit de weg ruimen. Kijk, het marxisme leerde dat de mens gebruik moest maken van de wetten van de evolutie in de maatschappij. Dan zou er binnen afzienbare tijd een klassenloze maatschappij ontstaan en zou er vrede zijn. Maar wist je dat Jezus precies het tegenovergestelde verkondigde? Hij had het helemaal niet over vrede! Ik zal je even voorlezen wat hij 2000 jaar geleden zei over de toekomst van de wereld en over de tijd waarin we nu leven.

"Pas op", zei Hij, "dat je je niet laat misleiden. Want velen zullen in mijn naam komen en zeggen: 'Ik ben het', en 'de tijd is nabij!'. Loopt hen niet na. En wanneer jullie horen spreken van oorlogen en omwentelingen, schrikt er niet van, want dit alles moet eerst gebeuren, maar het einde komt niet zo spoedig. Volk zal opstaan tegen volk, en koninkrijk tegen koninkrijk, en er zullen geweldige aardbevingen zijn, en op verschillende plaatsen pestziekten en hongersnoden en schrikwekkende dingen en grote tekenen vanuit de hemel. Ja, er zullen tekenen zijn aan zon, maan en sterren, en op de aarde doodsangst onder de volken, radeloos door het het gedruis van de zee en de branding.
En de mensen zullen vergaan van vrees voor wat er met de wereld gaat gebeuren, want de krachten der aarde zullen worden geschokt ……"

Ja, dat is wel even wat anders dan "Vrede op aarde!" Dat is precies het tegenovergestelde! Maar hoe komen ze er dan in hemelsnaam bij om elk jaar vrede op aarde te zingen met Kerst?! Dat slaat dan toch nergens op?

Ik weet ook niet precies hoe de maker van dat bekende kerstlied aan die woorden kwam: Vrede op aarde, in de mensen een welbehagen. Misschien was de wens de moeder van de gedachte. Vrede op aarde en in de mensen een welbehagen, dat was best fijn om over te zingen. Maar kloppen doet het niet helemaal.

Maar staat de tekst van dat lied dan niet in de Bijbel?! Daarin staat toch, dat er naar aanleiding van de geboorte van Jezus zoiets door de engelen werd gezongen? Nee hoor. Het lijkt er alleen een beetje op. Nee, volgens de Bijbel werd er het volgende gezongen: "Ere zij God in de hoge en vrede op aarde onder de mensen van goede wil!"

Vrede op aarde onder de mensen van goede wil. Daar ging het over: dat er vrede zou komen voor iedereen die van goede wil was. En die vrede is er al die eeuwen daarna geweest. Dat is een vrede die niet afhankelijk is van de omstandigheden. Een vrede in je hart. Als je die vrede hebt, dan ervaar je ook een diepe vrede met al die anderen die dat geheim ook hebben ontdekt. Ja, er is vrede op aarde onder de mensen van goede wil. En die vrede hebben ze ondanks de dingen die er om hen heen gebeuren.

Weet je, vaak geven we de omstandigheden de schuld als we in de problemen zitten en geen vrede hebben van binnen. Natuurlijk spelen de omstandigheden een grote rol. Maar als je geluk moet afhangen van de omstandigheden, wel, dan hangt je geluk wel aan een zijden draadje. Want de omstandigheden heb je niet in de hand. En die zullen er ook niet beter op worden volgens Jezus Christus.

Daarom is het zo belangrijk dat je het geheim ontdekt van een vrede van binnen die niet afhankelijk is van de dingen die om je heen gebeuren.

Maar al die oorlogen dan? Zal daar dan nooit een eind aan komen? Nee, zonder de vrede die Jezus geeft, komt daar nooit een eind aan. Want al die grote oorlogen en conflicten zijn een optelsom van alle kleine oorlogjes en conflicten bij iedereen van binnen. Als daar geen eind aan komt, dan blijft het dweilen met de kraan open.

Kijk maar naar wat er gebeurde nadat de muur viel. Eerst dachten we allemaal dat er nu wel een tijd van vrede zou aanbreken. Nou, mooi niet hoor. Toen begon het bloedvergieten pas.

Nee, echte vrede begint niet in het groot en aan de buitenkant. Echte vrede begint in je hart. Je wil moet veranderen, die moet goed worden, zodat je plezier krijgt in de dingen die goed zijn en een hekel krijgt aan de dingen die niet deugen. En dat gebeurt wanneer je Jezus Christus uitnodigt in je leven.

God heeft nog steeds geduld met de wereld. Hij hoopt om zo te zeggen nog steeds dat de mensen de mogelijkheid zullen aangrijpen om die echte vrede te ontvangen. Maar de prijs van zijn geduld is wel vreselijk hoog. Dat kunnen we dag in dag uit zien op TV en in de krant. Dat kan niet lang meer duren. Daarom zeggen we wel eens: Als er nu toch een God is van liefde hè, dan moet Hij toch eens een keer ingrijpen. Nou, dat gaat een keer gebeuren. Dan is de maat vol. Dan komt Jezus terug.

Dan komt er vrede op aarde omdat hij dan iedereen uit de wereld zal gaan verwijderen die die echte vrede niet wilde ……

Alleen zitten we nu nog met dat bekende kerstlied. Wat moeten we daarmee? Kunnen we dat nu niet meer zingen? Ja hoor. Als we dan maar bedenken dat die vrede alleen maar daar is waar Jezus de leiding heeft, hetzij nu in je hart, hetzij straks over de hele aarde als Hij teruggekomen is.

ON BEING A CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN

2007-08-28T18:43:00.000+02:00

"WHAT is bothering me is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today." So wrote the young Lutheran Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his Berlin prison cell in April 1944, one year before he was executed by the SS for complicity in the plots against Hitler's life. It is a question that today — for more complicated reasons — concerns countless thousands of churchgoers, who see about them a Christianity in the midst of change, confusion and disarray.
For Roman Catholics, the religious revolution set loose by the Second Vatican Council has changed many traditional patterns of worship and thought, and seemingly unleashed a legion of priests, nuns and laymen who feel free to cast doubt on every article of defined dogma. Protestants too have been stunned by the spectacle of an Episcopal bishop openly denying the Trinity and the Virgin Birth, and ordained ministers teaching in seminaries proclaiming the news that God is dead. On the theological right, evangelical preachers summon believers back to a strict Biblical orthodoxy; on the left, angry young activists insist that to be a Christian is to be a revolutionary, and propose to substitute picket lines for prayer.
It is not really surprising that the churches should be sounding uncertain trumpets, or that Christians should be insecure as to the meaning and direction of their spiritual commitment. Undeniably, one of the most telling events of modern history has been a revolution in the relationship of religion to Western civilization. The churchgoer could once take comfort in the fact that he belonged to what was essentially a Christian society, in which the existence of an omnipotent God was the focus of ultimate meaning. No such security exists today, in a secular-minded culture that suggests the eclipse rather than the presence of God.
Science and technology have long since made it unnecessary to posit a creative Deity as a hypothesis to explain anything in the universe. From Marxists, existentialists and assorted humanists has come the persistent message that the idea of God is an intellectual bogy that prevents man from claiming his mature heritage of freedom. In the U.S., which probably has a higher percentage of regular Sunday churchgoers than any other nation on earth, the impact of organized Christianity appears to be on the wane. One problem for the future of the churches is the indifference and even hostility toward them on the part of the young. Even those drawn to the person of Christ chafe against outmoded rules, irrelevant sermons, dogmas that apparently have no personal meaning to a generation struggling to understand themselves, to grapple with such concrete issues as sex and social injustice.
Also a Man
Undeniably, one major task of theology today is to define what it means to be a Christian in a secular society. For millions, of course, there is no real problem. Baptism and church membership are the external criteria of faith, and a true follower of Jesus is one who keeps his beliefs free from heresy and tries to live a decent, upright, moral life. Yet to the most thoughtful spokesmen of modern Christianity, these criteria are not only minimal, they are secondary and even somewhat irrelevant. Instead, they argue that faith is not an intellectual assent to a series of dogmatic propositions but a commitment of one's entire being; ethical concern is directed not primarily toward one's own life but toward one's neighbor and the world. The mortal sins, in this new morality, are not those of the flesh but those of society; more important than the evil man does to himself is the evil he does to his fellow man. "The Christian's role is to bear witness to God in man," says Jesuit Clinical Psychologist Carlo Weber. "Jesus Christ is the wedding of the divine and the human. Being a Christian for me means bearing witness to the wedding of divinity and humanity, to love God and man—to be involved, therefore, in human affairs."
Although the churches have always taught that Christ was both God and man, Christians have hardly ever seemed to accept his humanity. Historically, preaching has emphasized the Risen Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, and will come in glory to the Last Judgment. This is a basic premise of faith, but it is equally true that Jesus was emphatically a man — a lowly carpenter who walked the earth of Palestine at a specific moment in human history, and whose death fulfilled Isaiah's prophesy of the Suffering Servant. Jesus, as Bonhoeffer memorably put it, was "the man for others."
Summing up his message to man, Jesus asked his followers to love God, and "thy neighbor as thyself." For centuries, Christians have seemed to emphasize the first of those commands—and all too frequently, when there was a conflict between the two, it was love of man that went by the boards. But Biblical scholars point out that the New Testament is a very secular book, and there is an unmistakable social concern in Jesus' moral teachings. In Matthew 23, for example, Jesus condemns as hypocrites the scribes and Pharisees who ostentatiously tithe their possessions but neglect "the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith."
Christian & Atheist
There is nothing fundamentally new about the insight that Christian ethics are corporate rather than individualistic. The medieval monasteries, for example, were dedicated to serving their communities as well as to praising God in communal prayer; the Mennonites and Quakers have always emphasized brotherly love and peace rather than dogma. The difference is that theologians now take it for granted that Christian love is something that cannot be confined to the church but is directed toward all the world. The commitment of a man who follows Jesus is not to an institution, but to life itself.
Within the churches, there is considerably less agreement on how this commitment should be exercised. Christian radicals — such as the young firebrands who dominated the National Council of Churches' Conference on Church and Society in Detroit last fall — argue that the true follower of Jesus is the revolutionary, siding with forces and events that seek to overthrow established disorder. On the other hand, Protestant Theologian Hans-Joachim Margull of Hamburg University points out that it is not always so easy to identify the secular causes that Christians have a clear moral duty to support.
It is easy enough to argue that Christians have a God-given duty to work for racial equality, or for the eradication of hunger and disease in the world. The strategies to be followed in achieving these goals do not so easily acquire universal assent. For that reason, Dean Jerald Brauer of the University of Chicago Divinity School argues that churches should not necessarily be engaged in trying to hand down specific solutions to social and political problems from the pulpit. Christian creativity in trying to solve these questions, he says, "won't be a case of the churches poking their noses into areas where they have no right to be. Churches may have no special answers, although they certainly have a responsibility to sensitize their people to the questions. But the answers will have to be worked out by the body politic."
What this means, in essence, is that a commitment to love in worldly life cannot be separated from faith in Christ, who demanded that commitment. One argument against trying to build Christianity on moral action alone is that Jesus' teachings, unlike those of, say, Confucius, make sense only when understood as counsels of perfection in obedience to God rather than as workable guidelines of behavior. The Rev. David H. C. Read, pastor of Manhattan's Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, points out that in facing many problems of life the behavior of the Christian and the humanist might well be identical. Bertrand Russell and the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, could equably serve on the same committee to improve housing. "The distinction is not in their action," Read argues. "It is in their motivation and ultimate conviction on the meaning of life." This suggests that the committed Christian who is immersed in the secular world will also be to some extent an anonymous Christian; his light will still shine before the world, but it will not be so easily identified.
Since faith is the reason for commitment, most churchmen regard the idea of a "Christian atheist" or a "Christian agnostic" as something of a contradiction in terms. "I can't see how it is possible to be a Christian atheist," says Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who has been accused of being just that by some of his fellow clerics. "You cannot attack the idea of an ultimate and at the same time accept Jesus as an ultimate." Swiss Catholic Theologian Hans Kiing points out that "Jesus had no sense of himself without God. He made it clear that his radical commitment to men presupposed a radical commitment to God."
Nonetheless, theologians also acknowledge that only God is the final judge of who can rightly be considered a Christian. Austrian Jesuit Theologian Karl Rahner, for example, suggests that there is today "an invisible Christianity which does indeed possess the justification of sanctifying grace from God. A man belonging to this invisible Christianity may deny his Christianity or maintain that he does not know whether he is a Christian or not. Yet God may have chosen him in grace." Similarly, the late Protestant theologian Paul Tillich contrasted the "manifest church" of confessed believers with what he called the "latent church," whose membership included all men engaged with the ultimate realities of life.
The Decline of Dogma
Since faith is primarily a way of life rather than a creed to be so proclaimed, it is not something that can be reduced to an articulated set of principles. In an age of ecumenical breakthrough and doctrinal pluralism, sectarian particularities of belief seem largely irrelevant and even a little quaint. What is important is not the doctrine of predestination, for example, but the mystery of man's relationship to God that lies behind it. A Christian must accept the Incarnation — but there is room for differing interpretations of Jesus' unique relationship to God. The Resurrection is, as the Apostle Paul insisted, the cornerstone of faith; but how one defines this unique defiance of death is of less moment.
Even in the Roman Catholic Church, which has traditionally upheld the immutability of dogma, there is widespread recognition by theologians that all formulas of faith are man's frail and imperfect vessels for carrying God's truth, and are forever in need of reformulation. In the light of Christianity's need to respond to the human needs of the earth, many of these ancient formulas hardly seem worth rethinking. "The central axis of religious concern," notes Langdon Gilkey of the University of Chicago Divinity School, "has shifted from matters of ultimate 'salvation,' and of heaven or hell, to questions of the meaning, necessity, or usefulness of religion for this life." In other words, the theological task is to justify Christianity in this world — and let God take care of the next.
The faith commitment of the Christian also implies the need for allegiance to a church — or at least to some kind of community of faith. Theoretically, it may be possible for a Christian to survive without any institutional identity — but the majority of modern theologians would agree that to be "a man for others" there must be others to be with, and that faith is sustained by communal structure. Churchmen would also argue that there is nothing obsolete about the basic necessity for worship and prayer. "Liturgy must be an expression of something that is happening in the community," says the Rev. David Kirk, a Melchite Catholic priest who is founder of a unique interfaith center in Manhattan called Emmaus House. "Without worship, the community is a piece of rubbish." On the other hand, there is little doubt that the churches are in desperate need of new, this worldly liturgies that reflect present needs rather than past glories.
A Band of Soul Brothers
While a church — in the sense of a community — may be necessary for a viable Christian life, institutional or denominational churches are not. Today it would be hard to find an atheist whose criticism of religion is any more vociferous than the attack on the irrelevance, stagnation and non utility of organized christendom offered by its adherents. "Christianity is like a trip," muses Episcopal Bishop Edward Crowther, a Fellow of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara, Calif. "The church is like a travel agent with a lot of pictures in her office describing what it's like. But either she's never been there, or was there so long ago that she doesn't remember what it was all about."
Methodist Theologian Van Harvey suggests that the church should not be "a place where men come to be more pious. The church is a place of edification, where one comes to learn to be an honest-to-God person living in dialogue with others." Despite all the yearning for spirituality that may exist in the average Modern church, it is questionable how many churchgoers can and do live up to this ideal. The stratified irrelevance of the established parish, whether Catholic or Protestant, is a major reason for the growth of what Episcopal Chaplain Malcolm Boyd has dubbed "the underground church"—informal, ad hoc gatherings of Christians who cross over and above denominational lines to celebrate improvised Eucharists in each other's homes, and study Scripture or theology together.
To some theologians, the emergence of this underground church is a sign of spiritual health, a harbinger of renewal. To be sure, there is the possibility that these unstructured groups might coalesce into a new kind of gnostic sect — an elect that considers itself set apart from the erring mass of nominal believers. On the other hand, there is the far greater danger that institutional Christianity, without an extraordinary amount of reform, will end up as a monumental irrelevancy. Faced with a choice between the church in its present form and the underground cell, it is likely that a majority of Christian thinkers would opt for the small, unstructured community as a likely model for the future. Jesus never explicitly said that all men would be converted to believe in his word. Far more meaningful is his image of his followers as the "salt of the earth" and "the light of the world" — similes suggesting that the status of Christianity, until God's final reckoning, is properly that of a band of soul brothers rather than a numberless army.
Despite the visible health and prosperity of existing denominations, there is a considerable number of future oriented theologians who feel that the church, in large parts of the world, is entering a stage of Diaspora when, like Judaism, it will survive in the form of a scattered few, the hidden remnant. Strangely enough, there are any number of Christians who rejoice at this prospect rather than fear it. This is not because they want to see the fainthearted and the half convinced drift away into unbelief. Rather, they prefer that the choice of being Christian once again become openly, as Kierkegaard puts it, a leap of faith, an adult decision to serve as one of God's pilgrims on the road of life.
It is conceivable that Christianity is heading toward an era in which its status will be akin to that of the despised minority who proclaimed faith in the one God against the idolatry of the Roman Empire. To be sure, the Christian burden in the future will be different from that of the past: less to proclaim Jesus by word than to follow him in deed and loving service. It may prove a perilous course, but the opportunity is great: the courage and zeal of that first despised minority changed the history of the world.

2007-07-12T22:58:00.000+02:00

Semantic Encoding of the Hebrew Text

2007-03-08T23:12:00.000+01:00

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative Working Papers, no 96.4
revised draft no. 2

* * *

Contents

1. Introduction

Part I: Assignment of Semantic Functions
1. Source of Function Labels and Initial Characterizations
2. Lexical Rules (Verbal Case Frames)
3. Formal Rules

Part II: Critical Consideration of the Semantic Encoding Scheme
4. Adequacy of Scheme
5. Redundancy and Decomposition

* * *

1. Introduction

1.1 The working paper HSEIWP96.2, ""Theory-Neutral" Syntactic
Tagging of the Text," presents a brief outline of the encoding
scheme and indicates the theorizing behind it. This paper,
HSEIWP96.4, is the sister of HSEIWP96.3, "On the Syntactic
Encoding of the Text," which examines choices in implementation
of phrase-structure parsing and assignment of syntactic case. It
was thought useful to separate out the semantic case or
"functions" for independent consideration here in HSEIWP96.4.

1.2 These three working papers, together with the independent
work by Kirk Lowery, HSEIWP96.1, which introduces the Encoding
project and its goals, constitute a basic documentation package
to accompany the HSEI texts, initially of Jonah with the four
books of Samuel-Kings to follow.

Part I: Assignment of Semantic Functions

1. Source of Function Labels and Initial Characterizations

1.1 To date, the source of the semantic tags has been Kirk
Lowery's paper, "The Role of Semantics in the Adequacy of
Syntactic Models of Biblical Hebrew," pp. 101-128 in Bible and
Computer: Desk and Discipline: The Impact of Computers in Bible
Studies: Proceedings of the Fourth International Colloquium of
the Association Internationale Bible et Informatique (AIBI),
Amsterdam, 15-18 August 1994 (Travaux de Linguistique
Quantitative, no. 57; Paris: Honore Champion, 1995):

agent
benefactive
experiencer
goal
instrument
location
patient
percept (with experiencer)
recipient
source
theme

circumstance
comitative
direction
duration
frequency
cause
manner
path
purpose
quality
time
reason

1.2 This scheme appears to strike a balance between fine- and
coarse-grained approaches to Biblical Hebrew semantic functions.
The goal is to apply the labels in a consistent fashion so that
they can be easily manipulated by the discrimating functionalist
scholar.

1.3 In initial attempts to tag Jonah and fragments of other
texts, the semantic roles where the most difficult to assign
confidently and systematically. I have adopted a series of formal
rules to aid the encoder in this more difficult area of tagging,
which are now outlined. It is hoped that such rules might be
developed into lexical "features" of verbs; and that such a
lexicon could be invoked in the envisioned unification-based
parsing of the text.

2. Lexical Rules (Verbal Case Frames)

2.1 Verbs of Motion. The theme tag is reserved here
strictly for the constituent in motion; this may be the argument
of the verb, e.g., hlk, or independently motivated by
prepositions such as el "to." The theme may be the subject ;
or the object , in which case the subject is the agent .
There are therefore two schemas. Here as elsewhere the question
of the redundancy of the syntactic case assignment arises.

(a)
|

(b)
| |

2.2 Verbs of Cognition. The paired functions "experiencer"
and "percept" are reserved for verbs of cognition. It
is expected that typically will be associated with the
subject position .

2.3 Verbs of Speech. These verbs are not assigned semantic-
functional labels, only for speaker, for content, and
for the addressee.

2.4 Verbs of Exchange. Under the interpretation of "theme"
adopted, i.e., the constituent in motion, that which is exchanged
is analyzed as a theme. The subject will necessarily be an agent
. The goal is marked "recipient" and associated with
dative assignment . In summary, verbs of exchange pattern
similarly to verbs of motion.

3. Formal Rules

3.1 Purpose is automatically assigned to the headed by

l- "to" which in turn governs the .

3.2 Why/Reason is assigned to the ki- as default. The

9al "on" in 9al ken "therefore" automatically triggers .
The complex construction with be-$el-l-mi is assigned as
well.

3.3

s are assigned as a default.

3.4 A headed by ka'a$er triggers "manner."

3.5 The

9al triggers by stipulation in its sense of
"versus."

3.6 The

9im "with" is assigned .

Part II: Critical Consideration of the Semantic Encoding Scheme

4. Adequacy of Scheme

4.1 The scheme as applied to the text of Jonah does not present
any insurmountable difficulties. Nevertheless, scholars using the
database would be well advised to consider the slipperiness of
the semantics in working with the results of searches.

4.2 It seems unlikely that the full range of semantic tags would
be required for automated parsing. However, there is the question
of the relative order of verbal modifiers; and the more fine-
grained scheme here should facilitate testing hypotheses in this
domain.

5. Redundancy and Decomposition

5.1 Redundancy and the Lexicon. There appears to be a great deal
of redundancy at the lexical level. Individual

s appear to be
redundantly associated with semantic tags, e.g., the

9im
"with" and the function "comitative." Such observations
extend to the arguments of verbs as noted in section 2 above.
Given the verb is, e.g., yd9 "to know," the subject is
redundantly tagged "experiencer."

5.2 Such observations, however, hold out hope for automated
tagging. Lexical entries could in some fashion bear semantic
"features" that could be used in assigning semantic "functions."

5.3 Consideration of a lexicon and its structure suggests that
many of the semantic-function labels are not "primitives" but are
subject to decomposition. The label "purpose," e.g., appears
to be a function of a particular

, l- "to" as noted in section
3 above.

5.4 Such considerations suggest that groups might be related
systematically at a more primitive level. No doubt "time,"
"duration," and "frequency" could be so related;
indeed, may be the primitive, the others derived by
composition.

5.5 The basic suggestion is that individual heads introduce
semantic features into representations by virtue of their lexical
representations. These features can percolate and interact with
features and syntactic configurations to produce the ultimate
assignment of "function" to a given .

5.6 An example might be the assignment of "time" to bre$it
in Genesis 1:1. Under the null hypothesis, b- "in" might be
assigned by default, but otherwise remain unmarked. On the
other hand, re$it will bring with it the feature by virtue
of its semantic lexical entry. The proposal can be graphically
represented in (a) and (b).

(a) variables in < > (b) variables bound by

PP < > PP
/ \ / \
P NP < > --> P NP
| | | |
b- < > N b- N
| |
re$it re$it

De Mens - Metafoor

2007-02-26T21:36:00.000+01:00

(Beth HaMidrash)

In de discussie, Goddelijke relativiteit ten opzichte van het Universum, is de favoriete metafoor van de mystici (ook vele filosofen) de analogie tot de mens. Theologische concepten en de G`D-wereld verhouding, zijn vaak uitgelegd in termen van ziel-lichaam verhouding, en in het bijzonder met de vergelijking van de verschillende ziel-gaven, hun eigenschappen, functies en manifestaties. De ‘bewijstekst’ voor dit taalgebruik is het vers ‘Vanuit mijn vlees voorzie ik G`D’ (Job 19:26) en de Rabbijnse analogie “Juist zoals de ziel doordringt het hele lichaam. ziet maar is niet gezien……ondersteund het hele lichaam…..is zuiver…..verblijft in de binnenste omgeving……is uniek in het lichaam….doet niet eten noch drinken…..geen mens weet waar zijn plaats is…… Dat de Heilige die Een is, geprezen zij Hij…” Ook dit in bepaalde zin volgt het bovengenoemde principe van een ‘aards-bovennatuurlijke overeenkomst’.

Maar zelfs als tijdelijk begrippen van de ziel behulpzaam zijn om kwesties te begrijpen die gerelateerd zijn aan het Goddelijke, dan is dit maar een antropomorfistische benadering welke niet te ver mag gaan, zo nodig beperkt.

Het moet onthouden worden, zoals R. Schneur Zalman karakteriseert, dat in sommige opzichten de analogie instort en compleet ontoereikend is: “Deze parallel is alleen ter bevrediging van het oor. In werkelijk echter, heeft de analogie geen enkele overeenkomst tot het vergelijkbare oogmerk. Want de menselijke ziel… is geaffecteerd door de accidenten van het lichaam en zijn pijn. terwijl de Heilige die Een is, geprezen zij Hij, niet, de Hemel verbied, is geaffecteerd door de accidenten van de wereld en zijn veranderingen, noch door de wereld zelf; zij bewerkstelligen geen enkele verandering in HEM…..”. Evenzo, “De ziel en het lichaam zijn in werkelijkheid verschillend van elkaar, van uit hun absoluut bron gezien, want de bron van het lichaam en zijn essentie komen niet in tot– zijn–vanuit de ziel…”. Dus terwijl het lichaam volledig ondergeschikt mag zijn aan de ziel, zijn er, niettegenstaande, twee verschillende entiteiten. In contrast, “in relatie tot De Heilige die een is, geprezen zij Hij, die alles tot existentie brengt ex nihilo, is alles absoluut genullificeerd, net zoals het licht van de zon is genullificeerd in de zon zelf”. M.a.w. licht is niets vergeleken tot zijn bron.

Book Review: Writing Genres

2007-02-26T21:06:00.000+01:00

Writing Genres, by Amy J. Devitt. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.

Reviewed by Mary Buchinger Bodwell, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

***

Devitt examines the development of rhetorical genre theory over the past twenty years, illustrating the value of a user-based definition of genre. In her analysis, genres are dynamic and shaped by the tension between paired elements including multiplicity and standardization, variation and regularity, stability and flexibility, the individual and society.

***

In the first chapter of Writing Genres, Amy Devitt tells the reader that this work “examines, interprets, illustrates, elaborates, critiques, refines, and extends a rhetorical theory of genre” (2). This volume accomplishes all it promises, more or less. With a focus on the first half of this set of verbs, Writing Genres is more a concise and comprehensive synthesis of the work that has been done in genre theory in the last twenty years than it is a critique or extension of the theory.

Citing the seminal work of rhetorical theorists Karlyn Kohrs Cambell, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and Carolyn Miller, Devitt describes the shift from critic- and scholar-driven definitions of genres to user-based definitions. She argues against reducing genre to a classification system, which limits the pool of objects for analysis to fairly static forms. As she points out, not only does this discount the wide range of variation within genres but, more damagingly, it decontextualizes the text. Devitt maintains that regarding genre as a classification or a form entails circularity—the definition of a text’s genre depends on the text’s classification or formal features and the classification or form of the text depends on the genre’s definition. On the other hand, a rhetorical theory of genre focuses less on the features of a text and much more on its social context, rhetorical purposes, and themes; in other words, users define genres.

Devitt unpacks Miller’s definition of genre: “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations,” and explains that a situation is a social construct and is integrally bound up with genre in a dynamic, reciprocal relationship. Genre, essentially a functional activity, responds to the rhetorical demands of a situation, but it resists the determinism such an economy of supply and demand might impose. Devitt quotes Bakhtin’s observation that there is no first speaker; all texts are intertextual and, perhaps, intercontextual as well. Devitt asserts that genre is a nexus of situation, culture, and other genres which has an impact on the actions of writers and readers. Although the idea of meaningful human activity being both constituted and constitutive is certainly not new, Devitt more intriguingly suggests that “[g]enre allows us to particularize context while generalizing individual action” (30).

In her analysis of genres in social settings, Devitt proposes six principles: Genres are generated in and dependent upon the activity of people in groups; genres are ideological as well as situational, and function in multiple ways; the social functions of a genre may sometimes be recognizable only by members of the group in which the genre developed; genres interact with each other, and finally, a genre “reflects, constructs, and reinforces the values, epistemology, and power relationships of the group from which it developed and for which it functions…” (63-64). Devitt advocates for a view of discourse communities as both constructed by and generative of discourse practices. Furthermore, she wants to broaden the definitions of social groupings in relation to genres. In her discussion of Swales’ work, Devitt is critical of the limited range of social structures and communities he considers appropriate for study. For Devitt, commonalities in goals and purposes trump commonalities in discourses or genres. In examining individual participation in numerous communities, she focuses on the shifting of identity and motives as an individual moves through various communities; however, she fails to discuss the co-construction of groups and individuals and the ways in which communities differentially evoke individual potentialities or respond to individual participation.

Devitt illustrates the principles of the social nature of genres with her 1986 analysis of texts generated by tax accountants. These accountants self-identified a variety of different types of writing they do in their work. Devitt analyzed the texts for similarities in rhetorical situations and in linguistic features; not surprisingly, she found both differences and commonalities in the genres across individuals and across firms. Devitt also provides a number of examples of the dynamic nature of genres and how they reflect shifts in situational contexts and cultural and rhetorical purposes. Her discussion of Kitzhaber’s work on the history of composition is especially fascinating in light of current debate over the relevance and effectiveness of expository writing classes. Devitt uses this history to illustrate the tension between flexibility and stability—each is necessary for the survival of a genre but each is also capable of killing off a genre (i.e., a genre that is too loosely defined is as vulnerable as genre that is too rigidly defined). Each extreme has threatened the viability of composition courses in the academy. Her discussion of her own study, Standardizing Written English: Diffusion in the Case of Scotland, illustrates a number of the principles of genre change. However, penciled in the margin of my copy of Writing Genres are the questions “audience? purpose?” “education level?”—in this discussion, she has seemingly overlooked major elements of her own construction of genre.

Devitt also explores the ways in which genres provide authors with “creative boundaries” and describes artistic responses to generic constraints. Unfortunately, as is the case throughout the book, the emphasis is more on theory (in this case, creativity theory) than on practice. In another chapter, Devitt compares literary and rhetorical genres, identifying significant differences in who defines and who uses genres. Citing Rosmarin’s work, she notes that literary genre theorists tend to privilege the reader, particularly the critic, whereas rhetorical genre theorists privilege the writer. This tendency is reflected in the goals that drive their respective work. Literary genre theorists look for texts that break generic rules, focusing on the particularities of individual texts, whereas rhetorical genre theorists are more concerned with the ways in which texts bear generic similarities and conform to identifiable genre constraints. Yet, she notes both view genre as constructed and constructive; both are interested in questions of universality and persistence of relevance. In identifying similarities between the two, Devitt may be taking some chances, as well as opening doors for possible interchange.

The most provocative chapter in the book is Devitt’s proposal to raise students’ awareness of genre. Writing mostly in response to Freedman’s critique of explicit teaching of genre (which is focused on second language pedagogy), Devitt suggests that rather than being instructed in the particular features of specific genres, students should be taught the process of acquiring a new genre. She argues that strategies for acquiring a genre could serve students well in all linguistic contexts. Explicit teaching of genre, rather than implicit teaching through immersion, has the advantage of allowing students access to the construction of genres and, likewise, to their ideologies. Students should be instructed to consider the rhetorical form of a text and take into account the context, audience, and purpose. For example, Devitt’s students examine a variety of texts, such as newspaper wedding announcements and catalogue course descriptions, and determine who the audience is, what the author’s purposes might be, and what recurring features they notice. She also has students consider alternative ways of accomplishing the same purpose, or additional information that might have been included. Like awareness of differences in register, awareness of differences in genres can possibly lead to greater control and can position students to be more purposeful in their use of language. Devitt argues that students can begin to build a repertoire of genres along with a sense of the rhetorical demands of a particular situation. This argument serves both as her response to scholars who have called into question the transferability of writing skills from first year composition to disciplinary writing as well as her rationalization for the maintenance of first-year writing courses.

Devitt presents a theory of genre built on the tension between paired elements such as multiplicity and standardization, variation and regularity, stability and flexibility, the diachronic and synchronic, the individual and society. The tension along these various continua lends genres their dynamic character. Unfortunately, there are some gaps in the survey of the literature—Duranti, Gee, Goodwin, Gumperz, Ochs, and other key figures are missing from the discussion of genre in relation to context and discourse communities. However, Devitt does not claim to have written the ultimate volume on genre, and she issues calls for further research to validate and expand the theory. Most significantly for the further development of an interdisciplinary approach to genre analysis, she voices a strong and consistent call for the reintegration of content and form, text and context.

A literatura e o contemporâneo

2007-02-26T20:50:00.000+01:00

O que dizer da produção literária estabelecida em 1997 para que a partir dela se possa pensar o ano de 1998? Pensar o que, minimamente, tenha ou carregue caraterística própria para receber o nome de literatura; ou seja, originalidade. Mas pensar apenas assim pode ser pouco. Literatura, para a originalidade, vai sempre precisar de história, precisar de referência, precisar, principalmente, de uma dimensão formal do que ficou aparentemente pronto como ‘obra de arte literária’.

Em literatura - está em Tonio Kroeger, livro curto e um dos mais geniais de Thomas Mann, quando a personagem homônima afirma em uma conversa com sua amiga Lisavieta, e ensina: “A literatura não é profissão alguma, e sim uma maldição.” -, esta maldição maravilhosa, só se pode/deve discutir qualidade, formação de estética, preservação e registro. Literatura de verdade não vende, nunca deixou ninguém nadando em dinheiro e “é muito bom que não venda”, diz Leminski. Este nosso tempo é que quer pensar a literatura como comércio, como necessidade orçamentária, já que tudo ficou fácil, fácil demais até. Mas não pode ser comércio o que é apenas um sutil prazer para o diletante. Mais adiante Kroeger afirma: “Ah! sim, a literatura cansa, Lisavieta.”

O fato é que, cansada, a literatura tornou-se apenas mais uma entre tantas manifestações culturais. Perdeu a sua hegemonia, virou princípio participativo e foi aboca hando outra fatia deste pequeno bolo qualitativo através de um diálogo maior.Ponto normal se pensarmos isso diante da abertura pós-moderna, ou como queiram nomear essa reviravolta normativa. O outro ponto, anormal, seria pensar a literatura como resistência para a descompostura estética que vive a contemporaneidade.

A suposta abertura para o heterogêneo, chamada de pós-modernidade, não significa abastardamento. Logo, a verdadeira literatura não pode ser resistência. Esta abertura apenas permite que o diálogo intercontextual seja intensificado e estabeleça novas regras de andamento para qualquer predisposição de arte. A literatura, senhora de si, essencialmente, tenta manter os seus velhos leitores e trazer o anti-leitor - este, natural deste tempo, que é empiricamente fascinado pelo som e pela imagem -, para perto. Tudo muito tranqüilamente.

A narrativa que se pretende contemporânea, com total garantia do caráter literário, é feita sob a égide desse vulto heterogêneo que é a grande cidade. “O mundo é, hoje, todo, este oxímoro: uma ampliação reduzida: uma grande cidade.” Daí ficar impossibilitada qualquer pretensão criativa que traduza esta época e seja ao mesmo tempo voltada apenas para o regional, para uma literatura nacional, presa dentro de pequenas fronteiras, daqui ou de qualquer lugar. Pensar a literatura hoje, seria pensá-la de uma forma pós-nacional para que não seja tomada como entidade inexistente.

Outro fato é: por mais incalculável que seja a quantidade de livros que pipocam por aí sem contribuição nenhuma, sem valor de classificação, o que de melhor se produz em arte neste país ainda é no plano literário. Temos uma produção de poesia - que é qualitativamente muito boa - e uma outra de narrativas - menor, mas também interessante - que buscam exatamente o conceito estabelecido por Bhabha: “De muitos, um.” Do heterogêneo, a essencialidade. E hoje, é neste conceito de essencialidade múltipla que sustenta-se a literatura, na desleitura. E não dialogando com o que ainda quer ser nacional, cheio de penduricalhos tradicionais.

Semantic Minimalism and Nonindexical Contextualism

2007-02-26T20:39:00.000+01:00

John MacFarlane (University of California, Berkeley)

Abstract: According to Semantic Minimalism, every use of "Chiara is tall"

(fixing the girl and the time) semantically expresses the same proposition,

the proposition that Chiara is (just plain) tall. Given standard assumptions,

this proposition ought to have an intension (a function from possible worlds

to truth values). However, speakers tend to reject questions that

presuppose that it does. I suggest that semantic minimalists might address

this problem by adopting a form of "nonindexical contextualism," according

to which the proposition invariantly expressed by "Chiara is tall" does not

have a context-invariant intension. Nonindexical contextualism provides an

elegant explanation of what is wrong with "context-shifting arguments" and

can be seen as a synthesis of the (partial) insights of semantic minimalists

and radical contextualists.

1. Introduction

My niece is four and a half feet tall—significantly taller than the average

seven-year old. With this in mind, I might say "Chiara is tall," and, it seems,

I would be speaking truly. Yet it also seems that if her basketball coach

were to say "Chiara is tall" while discussing who should play which position

on the team, he would not be speaking truly. What can we conclude about

the meaning of "tall"?

Moderate Contextualists conclude that the sentence must be contextsensitive,

in a way that goes beyond the context sensitivity of "Chiara" and

"is" (which we may presume are being used in reference to the same girl

and time). They reason as follows: If I am speaking truly and the coach is

speaking falsely, we must be saying different things. Since we are using

the same sentence, and using it "literally," this sentence must be contextsensitive.

Used at my context, it expresses the proposition that Chiara has

significantly greater height than the average seven-year old; used at the

coach's context, it expresses the proposition that she has significantly

greater height than the average member of team he coaches.

Cappelen and Lepore (2005) reject this reasoning, but only at the last step.

They agree that different things are said in the two contexts I have

described, but they deny that anything interesting follows from this about

the meaning of "Chiara is tall." They can do this because they are Speech

Act Pluralists: they hold that indefinitely many different things can be said

in a single utterance. So, although I have said that Chiara is tall for a

seven-year old, and the coach has said that she is tall for a member of the

basketball team, that is consistent with there also being something that we

have both said—namely, that she is (just plain) tall. It is this that Cappelen

and Lepore take to be the invariant semantic content of the sentence we

have used. Thus they can concede to the Moderate Contextualist that

different things have been said in the two contexts, while resisting the

conclusion that the sentence used is context-sensitive.

This deployment of Speech Act Pluralism helps deflect one argument

against the view that there is a single proposition that is semantically

expressed by every use of "Chiara is tall" (fixing the girl and the time). But

it does nothing to make it plausible that there is such a proposition. Indeed,

most contextualists, including some who accept Speech Act Pluralism,

take it to be obvious that there cannot be any such proposition, on the

grounds that there is no such thing as being just plain tall (as opposed to

tall for a seven-year old, or tall for a team member, or tall compared to a

skyscraper, or …). That there is in fact such a proposition—a bona fide,

truth-evaluable proposition, not a "proposition radical" or anything

schematic—is the central tenet of what Cappelen and Lepore call

Semantic Minimalism. It is this, chiefly, that distinguishes them from the

philosophers they call Radical Contextualists. If it should turn out that there

is no such "minimal" or (borrowing a phrase from Ken Taylor)

"modificationally neutral" proposition, then Cappelen and Lepore will have

no choice but to embrace the Radical Contextualists' conclusion that there

is no hope for systematic theorizing about the propositions expressed by

sentences in contexts.1 After all, they accept all of the Radicals' arguments

against the Moderates.

Our first order of business, then, should be asking what might be thought

1 Note that this is not at all the same as the claim that systematic

semantics is impossible. What Radical Contextualists reject is only a

certain conception of what semantics must accomplish.

to be problematic about such propositions—since Moderate and Radical

Contextualists are united in rejecting them—and considering whether

Cappelen and Lepore have said enough to dispel these worries. I am

going to argue that although Cappelen and Lepore misidentify the real

source of resistance to minimal propositions, and so do not address it, this

worry can be addressed. However, the strategy I will describe for making

sense of Semantic Minimalism is not one that Cappelen and Lepore can

take on board without cost. For my way of "making sense" of Cappelen

and Lepore's view can, with a slight shift of perspective, be regarded as a

way of making sense of Radical Contextualism, a position they regard as

incompatible with their own (and indeed as hopeless).2

2. The intension problem

Let's call the proposition putatively expressed in every context of use by

the sentence "Chiara is tall" (fixing girl and time) the proposition that Chiara

is (just plain) tall (at time t—I will henceforth omit this qualification).

According to Cappelen and Lepore, "[t]his proposition is not a 'skeleton'; it

is not fragmentary; it's a full-blooded proposition with truth conditions and a

truth value" (181). What they mean, presumably, is that it has a truth value

at every circumstance of evaluation (since propositions may, in general,

have different truth values at different circumstances of evaluation).

I believe that most philosophers' worries about minimal propositions are

rooted in puzzlement over the question this claim naturally provokes: At

which circumstances of evaluation is the proposition that Chiara is (just

plain) tall true? Here I'm using the technical term "circumstance of

evaluation" the way David Kaplan taught us to use it in Demonstratives

(1989). A circumstance of evaluation includes all the parameters to which

propositional truth must be relativized for semantic purposes. Though

Kaplan himself included times in his circumstances of evaluation (and

contemplated other parameters as well), the current orthodoxy is that

2 Because my concern here is with the coherence of Semantic

Minimalism, I will not address the arguments Cappelen and Lepore

muster in favor of that doctrine (most of them arguments against the

contextualist alternative).

circumstances of evaluation are just possible worlds.3 In this setting, our

question becomes: At which possible worlds is the minimal proposition that

Chiara is (just plain) tall true? I'll call this the intension problem for minimal

propositions (using the term "intension" for a function from possible worlds

to truth values for propositions, or to extensions for properties and

relations).

It's easy to feel pressure to make this intension very, very weak. After all,

being tall for a seven year old does seem to be a way of being tall. So it is

natural to think that the proposition that Chiara is (just plain) tall must be

true at every world at which the proposition that Chiara is tall for a seven

year old is true. Similar reasoning will move us inexorably towards the

conclusion that, no matter what reference class F we pick, the proposition

that Chiara is (just plain) tall is weaker than the proposition that she is tall

for an F. After all, even being tall compared to an ant is a way of being tall.

We are left with the surprising conclusion that the minimal proposition that

Chiara is (just plain) tall is true at every world at which Chiara has any

degree of height at all.

That's odd enough. It gets even odder when we run the same argument

with "short" and conclude that the proposition that Chiara is (just plain)

short is true at every possible world in which she is not absolutely gigantic.

It follows that at all but a few very odd worlds, Chiara has both the property

of being (just plain) tall and the property of being (just plain) short. And that

does not sit well with our feeling that being tall and being short are

incompatible properties.

Cappelen and Lepore do not themselves embrace this view about the

3 Kaplan included times because he thought the tenses were best

understood as propositional operators, which need a parameter to shift

(1989: 502-3). This view of tenses is now rejected by most

semanticists, so there is no longer a compelling reason to include a

time parameter in circumstances of evaluation (see King 2003). But

everything I say in this paper about the orthodox framework could be

said (with minimal modifications) about a Kaplan-style framework as

well.

intension of tall. They do not reject it either. They present it as one of

several possible views one might adopt about the metaphysics of tallness

(171):

• A thing is tall if there is some comparison class with respect to which

it is tall.

• A thing is tall if it is tall with respect to its privileged comparison

class.

• A thing is tall (at time t) if it is tall with respect to the comparison

class that is appropriate to its situation (at t).

• A thing is tall if it is taller than the average of all objects with height.

All of these views are problematic; indeed, Cappelen and Lepore point out

many of the problems themselves. But they don't think that solving these

problems, or deciding between these options, is part of their job as

semanticists. Their charge is language, not the metaphysics of properties.

Having argued to their satisfaction that "tall" is not context sensitive, they

are content to leave it to the metaphysicians to sort out just what an object

has to be like in order to have the property that "tall" invariantly expresses.

This response is fine, as far as it goes. Semanticists should not be

required to be metaphysicians (or physicists or biologists or ethicists).

They need not give informative answers to questions about the intensions

of properties.4 However, in taking resistance to minimal propositions to be

grounded in a misguided demand for an informative specification of their

intensions, Cappelen and Lepore have missed what is most troubling

about their doctrine. Semantic Minimalism is problematic not because it

does not provide an answer to questions about the intensions of its

minimal properties and propositions, but because it requires that there be

answers to such questions.

4 It is not difficult for the Semantic Minimalist to give uninformative

answers: for example, "a thing has the property of being tall (in some

world w) just in case it is tall in w."

Suppose that you are examining some ants on the sidewalk. Most of the

ants are tiny, but one is significantly bigger than the rest. "That's a big

one," you say. After a while, the ants begin to disappear though a barely

perceptible crack in the concrete. When the last ant, the bigger one,

squeezes through, you say, "Boy, that ant is small." At this point a

Semantic Minimalist appears and begins to question you in a most

annoying way:

"Wait a second. You just said that that ant was big. Now you say it's

small. I didn't notice it changing size. So which is it, big or small?"

"Well, it's big for an ant, but small compared to most of the other things

we can see."

"Fine, but I'm not asking about these properties; I'm asking about plain

old bigness and smallness. You said (among many other things) that the

ant was (just plain) big, and then that it was (just plain) small. Do you

suppose it could have had both properties, bigness and smallness?"

"No..."

"So which is it, then? Or don't you know?"

The question seems completely inappropriate. But why should it, if the

Semantic Minimalist is right that there is a property of being (just plain) big

which is always expressed by "big", and a property of being (just plain)

small which is always expressed by "small"? Why shouldn't we be able to

entertain questions about which things have these properties? It is not

enough to point out that semanticists need not answer metaphysical

questions. For even the answer "I have no idea" seems out of place here.5

5 It should be clear that the problem does not stem from the vagueness

of "big" and "small". It would not help the Semantic Minimalist here if

we allowed the intensions of bigness and smallness to be functions

from possible worlds to fuzzy extensions (mappings of objects to

degrees of truth) or partial functions from possible worlds to

extensions.

It might be suggested that we reject such questions because we aren't

aware of the minimal propositions that are semantically expressed by our

sentences, but only of the more determinate contents of our speech acts.

But such a line would be incompatible with what Cappelen and Lepore say

about the cognitive role of the minimal content. They say that "the

proposition semantically expressed is that content the audience can expect

the speaker to grasp (and expect the speaker to expect the audience to

grasp, etc.) even if she has such mistaken or incomplete information"

about the context (184-5). Explaining how a speaker could use the

(presumably quite weak) proposition that A is red in order to make a much

more determinate claim about A's color, they say: "The audience can

assume that the speaker knew that this [the proposition semantically

expressed] was trivial and was not interested in conveying such trivialities

with his utterance and can, therefore, infer that there's work to be done in

order to figure out exactly what the speaker was trying to communicate"

(185-6). All of this assumes that both speaker and audience are aware of

the proposition semantically expressed. (Indeed, the second claim

assumes some mutual knowledge about the intension of this proposition.)

If Cappelen and Lepore were to abandon this assumption, they would

open themselves up to the objection that their minimal propositions play no

real cognitive role in communication.

Alternatively, the Minimalist might say that the reason speakers find the

question in our dialogue inappropriate is that they have mistaken views

about the semantics of terms like "big" and "small." They implicitly take

these words to be context sensitive, when in fact they invariantly express

the properties of being (just plain) big and (just plain) small.

It should be obvious, however, that this response would completely

undermine the positive case for Semantic Minimalism. For the contextualist

can use exactly the same trick—attributing confusion or error about the

semantics of these terms to ordinary speakers—to dismiss the evidence

Cappelen and Lepore have mustered that terms like "red," "tall," and

"know" do not behave like context-sensitive expressions. For example,

Cappelen and Lepore make much of the fact that we report others who

utter the sentence "Chiara is tall" as having said that Chiara is tall, without

much regard to differences in our contexts. The practice of making such

"intercontextual disquotational indirect reports" only makes sense, they

say, if "tall" semantically expresses the same property in every context. But

the contextualist can accept this conditional and conclude that the practice

doesn't make sense—that it embodies a fundamental mistake people

implicitly make about the semantics of their own terms, a mistake that the

contextualist hopes to correct. (This is, in fact, a common line for

contextualists to take, although they sometimes also question the

uniformity or the relevance of the data about intercontextual indirect

reports: see DeRose, forthcoming.) Cappelen and Lepore need to say

something to block this kind of move. Whatever they say, it will presumably

also block them from appealing to massive speaker error or confusion in

explaining our rejection of the question in the dialogue above as somehow

absurd or inappropriate.

To recap: The intension problem is the problem of saying just what a world

must be like if the proposition that Chiara is (just plain) tall is to be true at

that world. Cappelen and Lepore rightly put this aside as a metaphysical

question, not a semantic one. But they fail to see that there is a semantic

problem lurking in the immediate vicinity. If Semantic Minimalism is true,

then the intension problem should have a solution (even if the solution is

not known to us). But we do not treat it as having a solution at all. We

reject as inappropriate questions that ought to have perfectly definite

answers if there is such a property as being (just plain) tall and that

property has an intension.

3. Minimal propositions without intensions?

In view of this problem, it is worth asking whether a Semantic Minimalist

can coherently deny that minimal propositions, like the proposition that

Chiara is (just plain) tall, have intensions.

In orthodox frameworks of the kind favored by most Moderate

Contextualists, this option is not open. For propositions have truth values

relative to circumstances of evaluation. If circumstances of evaluation are

just possible worlds, then propositions have truth values relative to worlds:

in other words, they have intensions. So if there is a proposition that is

semantically expressed by "Chiara is tall" at every context of use, it must

have an intension. At this point, contextualists conclude modo tollente that

there is no such proposition, while Cappelen and Lepore conclude modo

ponente that, since there is such a proposition, it must have an intension.

We can go beyond these two alternatives by thinking a bit differently about

circumstances of evaluation. Possible worlds will presumably be one

component of our circumstances of evaluation (otherwise, what will our

modal operators shift?), but nothing stops us from introducing other

components as well. (Indeed, semanticists have for various reasons

suggested adding times, "standards of precision," and other parameters.)

So let's think of a circumstance of evaluation as an ordered pair consisting

of a world and a "counts-as" parameter, which we can model as a function

from properties to intensions (functions from worlds to extensions). The

"counts-as" parameter is so called because it fixes what things have to be

like in order to count as having the property of tallness (or any other

property) at a circumstance of evaluation.6

As before, we say that propositions have truth values at circumstances of

evaluation. But now our circumstances are not just worlds, so it no longer

follows that propositions have truth values at worlds. This is why it is not

appropriate to ask about the truth value of the proposition that Chiara is

(just plain) tall at a possible world (including the actual world). For there will

in general be many circumstances of evaluation that have a given world as

their world parameter but differ in their "counts-as" parameter. Our

proposition will be true at some of these circumstances and false at others.

So it does not have an intension (a function from possible worlds to truth

values).7 This should be a welcome result for the Semantic Minimalist, who

no longer has to say that there is a (context-invariant) answer to the

question: Does Chiara have the property of being (just plain) tall, in the

actual world, or not?

Following Kaplan, we say that an occurrence of a sentence is true just in

6 Note that the function assigns an intension to every property, not just

"minimal" properties. This is important because, as Cappelen and

Lepore point out (172-5), the same kinds of arguments that may lead

one to doubt that the property of being tall has an intension can also be

run for the property of being tall for a giraffe.

7 Of course it has an "intension" in a broader sense: a function from

circumstances of evaluation to truth values.

case the proposition expressed is true at the circumstance of the context.8

Which circumstance of evaluation is the "circumstance of the context," in

this framework? The world parameter of the circumstance of the context is,

of course, just the world of the context. But the counts-as parameter will be

determined in complex ways by other features of the context, including the

topic of conversation and the speaker's intentions. In a context C1 where

I'm talking about seven-year olds, the counts-as function might assign to

the property of being (just plain) tall the same intension it assigns to the

property of being tall-for-a-seven-year-old. In a context C2 where I'm

talking about members of the basketball team, the counts-as function

might assign to the property of being tall the same intension it assigns to

the property of being tall-for-team-member. Thus the circumstance of C1

can differ from the circumstance of C2 even if the two contexts are situated

in the same world (say, the actual world). And as a result, an occurrence of

"Chiara is tall" in C1 can differ in truth value from an occurrence of "Chiara

is tall" in C2, even if the same proposition is expressed by both.

We can now say precisely what goes wrong in the story about the ants

(above). The problem is not that there is no such proposition as the

proposition that the ant is (just plain) big. The present view concedes that

there is such a proposition, and that this proposition is perfectly suitable, in

general, for use in questions and answers. In general, we look to

contextual factors to determine a counts-as parameter that (together with

the world of utterance) can settle a truth value for the proposition in

8 "If c is a context, then an occurrence of in c is true iff the content

expressed by in this context is true when evaluated with respect to

the circumstance of the context" (Kaplan 1989: 522). Semanticists

sometimes ascribe truth to utterances rather than to occurrences of

sentences in contexts, but as Kaplan notes, the notion of an utterance

is proper to pragmatics, not semantics. It is especially odd to find

Speech Act Pluralists like Cappelen and Lepore ascribing truth and

falsity to utterances (e.g. in their "intercontextual disquotational test,"

105), since on their view an utterance can express indefinitely many

propositions, which (one assumes) need not all have the same truth

value at the circumstance of the context.

context. In the ant story, however, the context fails to determine a single

counts-as parameter, because the questioner has deliberately made

salient two incompatible counts-as parameters: the one that was in play

when the ant was first described as big and the one that was in play when

it was later described as small. The question "which is it, big or small?"

presupposes that the context determines sufficiently what counts as having

the properties of bigness and smallness. But the questioner in this case

has ensured that this presupposition cannot be met. That is why we

(rightly) reject the question and find every answer (even "I don’t know") to

be inappropriate.

As far as I can see, the view I have just described is consistent with

Semantic Minimalism, as Cappelen and Lepore describe it. It allows that

"Chiara is tall" expresses the same proposition at every context of use

(fixing girl and time). This proposition is not a "schema," but "a full-blooded

proposition with truth conditions and a truth value," that is, a truth value at

each circumstance of evaluation. Granted, the proposition does not have a

truth value at each possible world, but that is just what we should expect in

a framework where there is more to circumstances of evaluation than just

worlds.9

On this picture, the sentence "Chiara is tall" is not context-sensitive in the

sense that it expresses different propositions at different contexts. But it is

context-sensitive in the sense that the truth of an occurrence of it depends

on features of the context—not just the world of the context, but the

speaker's intentions, the conversational common ground, and other such

things.10 Accordingly, this brand of Semantic Minimalism might also be

9 "Temporalists" who take circumstances of evaluation to be world/time

pairs do not think that propositions have truth values relative to worlds,

either.

10 Interestingly, Cappelen and Lepore give two distinct definitions of

"context-sensitive," corresponding roughly to these two senses (146).

According to the first, "To say that e is context sensitive is to say that

its contribution to the proposition expressed by utterances of sentences

containing e varies from context to context." According to the second,

"To say that e is context sensitive is to say that its contribution to the

described as a kind of contextualism: what I have elsewhere called

Nonindexical Contextualism.11 This way of describing it brings out how

close it is to Radical Contextualism. Too close, Cappelen and Lepore may

feel! However, it is immune to their best arguments against Radical

Contextualism, so if they are going to reject it, they need fresh reasons.

truth conditions of utterances u of a sentence S containing e (in some

way or other) references various aspects of the context of u." In the

framework I have described, these two definitions are not equivalent.

11 See my "Nonindexical Contextualism" (in preparation). See also

MacFarlane 2005a and 2005b, where I describe nonindexical

contextualist views in order to distinguish them from views I regard as

genuinely "relativist." I take it that the account developed by Predelli

2005, to which I am much indebted, is also a form of nonindexical

contextualism. Instead of countenancing an extra parameter of

circumstances of evaluation, as I do here, Predelli conceives of points

of evaluation as something like state descriptions (which fix the

extension of every property and relation expressible in the language).

There are state descriptions according to which Chiara falls into the

extension of both "four and a half feet tall" and "tall", and others

according to which she falls into the extension of the former but not the

latter. Which state description is "the circumstance of the context" will

depend not just on the world of the context, but on other features of

context as well. I think that the differences between these two versions

of nonindexical contextualism are largely notational. I prefer to "factor

out" my circumstances of evaluation into a world component and a

catch-all counts-as parameter, because it is convenient to have a

separate "world" parameter of circumstances for modal operators to

shift. If we let them shift state descriptions wholesale, then "That could

have been red" could come out true just because what counts as red

might have been different, even if the color of the object demonstrated

could not have been different—surely an undesirable result. But this is

not a fatal objection to Predelli's approach: as Kenny Easwaran has

pointed out to me, Predelli could allow his modal operators to shift

state descriptions "retail," the way quantifiers shift assignments.

4. Context Shifting Arguments reconsidered

An advantage of the framework I have just sketched is that it offers a

different (and perhaps deeper) diagnosis than Cappelen and Lepore's of

what goes wrong in Moderate Contextualists' uses of Context Shifting

Arguments (CSAs). Unlike Cappelen and Lepore's diagnosis, this one

does not require Speech Act Pluralism, though it is consistent with it.

Let's consider again the general form of a Context Shifting Argument. We

describe two occurrences of the same sentence, S, one in context C1, the

other in context C2. We then observe that intuitively the former is true,

while the latter is false. Assuming these intuitions are accurate, we can

conclude the following:

(1) At C1, S expresses a proposition that is true at the circumstance of

C1.

(2) At C2, S expresses a proposition that is false at the circumstance of

C2.

We cannot conclude, however, that the proposition S expresses at C1 is

different from the proposition S expresses at C2. For if the circumstance of

C1 is different from the circumstance of C2, our two occurrences of S can

diverge in truth value even while expressing the same proposition.

Nothing about the general point I am making here depends on

circumstances of evaluations being anything other than just worlds.

Suppose S is the sentence "Bush won the US Presidential election in

2000," and suppose that the world of C1 is different from the world of C2.

Then an occurrence of S in C1 could diverge in truth value from an

occurrence of S in C2, not because different propositions are expressed,

but simply because the circumstances of the two contexts are different.

(Say, Bush won in the world of C1, but lost in the world of C2.)

Thus, a CSA establishes that the propositions expressed are different only

given an additional premise:

(3) The circumstance of C1 = the circumstance of C2.

Normally users of CSAs do not even mention (or perhaps see the need for)

this premise, because in orthodox frameworks it is relatively easy to

secure. In these frameworks, a circumstance of evaluation is just a

possible world, so (3) amounts to

(4) The world of C1 = the world of C2.

So the user of a CSA has only to describe contexts that take place at the

same world and differ only in other ways—in the topic of conversation, for

example—and the CSA will establish that what is said at C1 is different

from what is said at C2.

Cappelen and Lepore seem to accept all of this reasoning. They accept

that the CSAs used by contextualists show that something different is said

at the two contexts described. Their point is that this does not show that

the proposition semantically expressed is different, because (given Speech

Act Pluralism) the proposition semantically expressed is only one of many

things said.

If we adopt the framework described in the last section, however, we can

reject the contextualists' reasoning in a more fundamental way. For in this

framework it is no longer true that a circumstance of evaluation is just a

world. This makes it much more difficult to construct a CSA for which (3)

holds. It is no longer sufficient to ensure that C1 and C2 are situated at the

same world; we must also make sure that these contexts determine the

same counts-as function. This is relatively easy to do when we are making

up CSAs to demonstrate the indexicality of "I", "here", or "now", but difficult

or impossible when we are making up CSAs to demonstrate the

indexicality of "knows", "tall", and other such terms. That is why CSAs work

in the former cases but not in the latter.

5. Conclusion

I have offered up this version of Nonindexical Contextualism as a way of

making sense of Semantic Minimalism. If Cappelen and Lepore accept my

exegesis, then they can block Context Shifting Arguments in a different

way than they do in Insensitive Semantics, and without invoking Speech

Act Pluralism. If they do not accept it, then they must find another way to

explain why speakers reject questions that should admit of answers (if only

"I don't know") if minimal propositions have determinate intensions.

In closing, a Hegelian thought. In a recent paper, Stefano Predelli (2005)

has offered up his own version of Nonindexical Contextualism as a way of

making sense of Radical Contextualism. It is striking, I think, that a

plausible interpretation of Semantic Minimalism and a plausible

interpretation of Radical Contextualism should come out looking very

similar! This suggests that, far from being fundamentally opposed, the two

positions are just the two one-sided ways of grasping the truth about

context sensitivity that are available when one supposes that propositions

have truth values at possible worlds. Thesis: Semantic Minimalism.

Antithesis: Radical Contextualism. Synthesis: Nonindexical Contextualism.

References

Cappelen, H. and E. Lepore 2005. Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of

Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kaplan, D. 1989. "Demonstratives." In Themes from Kaplan, ed. J. Almog,

J. Perry, and H. Wettstein, 481-564. New York: Oxford University Press.

King, J. 2003. "Tense, Modality, and Semantic Value." In Philosophical

Perspectives 17, Philosophy of Language, ed. J. Hawthorne, 195-245.

DeRose, K. (forthcoming). "'Bamboozled by Our Own Words': Semantic

Blindness and Some Objections to Contextualism." Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research.

MacFarlane 2005a. "Making Sense of Relative Truth." Proceedings of the

Aristotelian Society 105 (2005), 321-39.

MacFarlane 2005b. "The Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge

Attributions." Oxford Studies in Epistemology 1, ed. T. Szabo-Gendler and

J. Hawthorne.

Predelli, S. 2005. "Painted Leaves, Context, and Semantic Analysis."

Linguistics and Philosophy 28, 351-74.

Wat zegt de Bijbel over homosexualiteit

2007-02-26T20:15:00.001+01:00

Soms komt een antwoord op de vraag ‘Wat zegt de Bijbel over homoseksualiteit?’ niet verder dan een bespreking van een aantal teksten uit Leviticus en Paulus’ brief aan de Romeinen, en misschien nog enkele teksten die afwijzend staan tegenover homoseksualiteit. Zo’n antwoord voedt de gedachte dat het bij christenen in de eerste plaats - of misschien wel uitsluitend - om de ethiek gaat: een hardnekkig misverstand dat telkens weer de wereld (en de kerk) uit geholpen moet worden.

Ik ben blij dat ik ontdekt heb dat de Bijbel meer te bieden heeft dan ethiek. Dat begint al bij de rode draad die door de Bijbel loopt: het Evangelie en de betekenis van het Evangelie voor het alledaagse leven van iedere christen, ongeacht zijn seksuele geaardheid of voorkeur. Dat zet je stil bij het feit dat niet wat wij mensen doen zaligmakend is, maar wat God doet. Het Evangelie vertelt hoe God geschiedenis heeft gemaakt in de persoon van Jezus Christus en wat dat voor mensen vandaag betekent. In het Evangelie zegt God twee dingen tegen iemand: je bent een veel ergere zondaar dan je ooit wilt weten, en tegelijk: je bent meer geliefd dan je je ooit kunt voorstellen. Wanneer je een van de twee delen van deze dubbele boodschap er uitlicht ten koste van het andere deel, dan ben je het Evangelie kwijt.

Het evangelie gebruiken

Het Evangelie is een geschenk. Een christen heeft er een leven lang werk aan dat geschenk uit te pakken en het te gebruiken. Het geschenk bestaat eigenlijk uit drie delen. Een van de drie delen ongebruikt laten liggen, betekent dat je ook van de andere delen minder zult genieten. Daarom is voortdurende oefening in het gebruik van het Evangelie van levensbelang voor iedere christen. Het Evangelie gebruiken betekent je leven en je omgang met God en mensen tegen het licht van het Evangelie houden.

Het eerste deel van het Evangelie gaat over vergeving. Je zonden zijn je vergeven. Zonden die te maken hebben met seksualiteit zijn niet erger dan andere zonden (als je de neiging niet kunt weerstaan zonden in graden van ernstigheid in te delen, doe het dan zoals C.S. Lewis het deed: hij maakte onderscheid tussen zonden die mensen op dieren doen lijken, bijvoorbeeld seksuele zonden, en zonden die mensen op de duivel doen lijken, bijvoorbeeld hoogmoed).

Het tweede deel van het Evangelie gaat over identiteit. Identiteit is van groot belang voor een mens: wie ben ik, wat maakt mij nu tot de persoon die ik ben? Het Evangelie geeft je een nieuwe identiteit. Een van de meest sprekende beelden die in het Nieuwe Testament hiervoor gebruikt wordt, is die van het krijgen van een nieuwe status: je was een slaaf (een zakenrelatie, waarbij het voortbestaan afhangt van jouw prestatie), nu ben je een kind (een familierelatie, waarbij het voortbestaan niet afhangt van wat jij doet, maar van wat iemand anders voor jou gedaan heeft).

Het derde deel van het Evangelie heeft te maken met het nieuwe leven als christen. Het Evangelie is een geschenk, en het nieuwe leven is onderdeel van dat geschenk (en dus niet terugbetaling). Het Evangelie bevrijdt je van de kramp om te scoren voor God om zo zeker te zijn van Zijn aanvaarding en liefde. Die aanvaarding en liefde hangt niet af van jouw prestatie, maar van wat Iemand anders voor jou gedaan heeft: Jezus Christus. Jij moet inderdaad aan het werk in het nieuwe leven, maar in feite is Hij de handelende persoon.

En om alle twijfel overbodig te maken zet Christus er nog eens een streep onder, door in de Persoon van Zijn Geest in je te wonen, zodat je er niet alleen voorstaat in het nieuwe leven. De Heilige Geest bepaalt je telkens weer bij de wortels van je bestaan: je hoeft niets terug te betalen (een geschenk is iets anders dan een lening), en je hoeft niet te scoren: kijk naar Christus, Hij heeft het met God in orde gemaakt, houd Hem in beeld. Het nieuwe leven draait telkens weer uit op een gevecht met de duivel, de wereld, en je eigen vlees. Met menselijke wilskracht red je het niet. De Heilige Geest is je persoonlijke coach, die je leert vechten met de kracht regelrecht uit het hart van Evangelie: de genade van Jezus Christus.

Christus liefhebben

Tot nu toe heb ik nog weinig specifieks gezegd over homofiele christenen. En toch is het mijn ervaring van elke dag dat wat ik tot nu toe gezegd heb, onmisbaar is in een antwoord op de vraag ‘Wat zegt de Bijbel over homoseksualiteit?’. En het belangrijkste heb ik nog niet eens genoemd. Dat is dat het Evangelie een verbinding legt tussen jouw leven en het leven van Christus. Hij was de enige mens in de wereldgeschiedenis die niet hoefde te sterven, maar Hij koos ervoor de dood te ondergaan. Op die manier realiseerde Hij het reddingsplan dat Vader en Zoon God samen hadden gemaakt.

Het Evangelie zegt: Hij leefde het leven dat jij had moeten leven, Hij stierf de dood die jij had moeten sterven. Hij stapte binnen in het niemandsland van de godverlatenheid. Hij kreeg de volle ontlading van de rechtvaardige toorn van de heilige God over Zich. Hij deed het omdat Hij jou liefhad. Deze Christus verbindt Zijn leven aan jouw leven en zegt: ‘Inderdaad, Ik ben de Zoon van God, de Koning boven alle koningen, oneindig ver verheven boven wie dan ook, maar jij mag Me jouw broer noemen, je vriend’.

Christus liefhebben begint met Hem aanvaarden zoals Hij is (zoals je dat ook van Hem verwacht), ook wanneer Hij dingen doet of zegt die je tegenstaan (en wanneer je met de echte Jezus in aanraking komt, loop je onvermijdelijk tegen zulke dingen aan). Het betekent steeds meer onder de indruk raken van Zijn bijzondere persoonlijkheid waarin zoveel voor ons besef elkaar uitsluitende trekken zitten: Hij is moreel onkreukbaar, en tegelijk heel toegankelijk; Hij is zich bewust van Zijn bijzondere identiteit als Zoon van God en tegelijk nederig en dienstbaar; Hij is geduldig met zondige mensen en vaart uit tegen mensen die denken dat ze het moreel wel voor elkaar hebben.

En in dat verband laat Christus ook het woord ‘gebod’ vallen: als je Mij liefhebt, dan houd je je aan Mijn geboden. Op dat punt zit er in de vriendschap iets onvermijdelijk onomkeerbaars. Dat krijg je wanneer een koning vriendschap met je sluit. Liefde en gebod komen niet van twee verschillende planeten. Als wat jij doet niet zaligmakend is, en als je niet hoeft te scoren om door God aanvaard te worden, wat blijft er dan nog over als motivering om te leven zoals Hij het wil? Er is maar een antwoord, dat in zijn eenvoud omgekeerd evenredig is aan de moeite die wij mensen hebben om het in praktijk te brengen: liefde.

De liefde maakt de gehoorzaamheid mogelijk en dragelijk, ook wanneer het zwaar valt. Hoe meer je Christus liefhebt, hoe meer je onder de indruk bent van Zijn bijzondere persoonlijkheid, hoe meer je Hem aanbidt, des te minder zwaar zal het je vallen je aan Zijn geboden te houden, belooft Hij. Je doet het voor Iemand die je zeer dierbaar is geworden. Dat is het best bewaarde geheim van het nieuwe leven. Daarvoor woont Hij met Zijn Geest in je, zodat je Hem nooit uit het oog en uit het hart hoeft te verliezen. Daarom staan er in het Nieuwe Testament maar liefst vier levensbeschrijvingen van Christus (Evangeliën), die je ieder voor zich kunnen helpen je kennis van Hem te verdiepen.

In de gedeelten in de Bijbel waar het gebod de toon zet, kom je - als je goed kijkt - telkens een vlag van het Evangelie tegen. Soms bestaat die vlag uit niet meer dan een paar woorden, zoals ‘Ik ben de Heer’ (in het Oude Testament), of ‘in Christus’ (in het Nieuwe Testament). In andere gevallen worden meer woorden gebruikt om het Evangelie voor de geest te halen, in het Oude Testament bijvoorbeeld het verhaal van de bevrijding uit Egypte (een korte versie helemaal aan het begin van de Tien Geboden, een langere versie aan het slot van Deuteronomium 6), in het Nieuwe Testament een aspect of moment uit het leven van Christus (bij de nieuwe versie van het liefdegebod: ‘heb elkaar lief, zoals ik jullie heb liefgehad’).

Leven in een tegencultuur

Het Koninkrijk waar Christus het voor het zeggen heeft, schept een eigen cultuur, met eigen normen en waarden. Op sommige punten lijkt die cultuur op andere culturen, op andere punten staat ze er dwars op. Zo’n gebied waar de cultuur van het Koninkrijk dwars staat op veel andere culturen, is dat van de seksualiteit. Dat was al zo in het Oude Testament. De viering van de menselijke seksualiteit is ingebed in de relatie tussen een man en een vrouw, al vanaf het begin van de schepping, en daarmee zijn allerlei andere vormen van de viering van seksualiteit niet toegestaan. Ook vormen die in omringende culturen toegestaan waren (soms wel onder beperkende voorwaarden), zoals homoseksualiteit.

Christus en de apostelen trekken in het Nieuwe Testament die lijnen door. Soms worden dingen anders in dat proces. Polygamie wordt niet langer gedoogd. Je maakt je al schuldig aan een vorm van echtbreuk wanneer je met begeerte naar iemand kijkt. Maar ook: ongetrouwd zijn krijgt een veel positievere status dan in vele andere godsdiensten of culturen; je kunt zelfs ongetrouwd blijven ‘met het oog op het Koninkrijk’. In andere gevallen worden lijnen doorgetrokken zonder dat er iets verandert. In de Grieks-Romeinse cultuur kwamen eerbiedwaardige vormen van homoseksuele relaties voor die het moderne ideaal van gelijkwaardigheid en stabiliteit benaderden. Maar in de cultuur van het Koninkrijk is er voor zulke vormen van viering van de menselijke seksualiteit geen plaats.

Leven met perspectief

Het Koninkrijk van Christus zet de werkelijkheid van het mensenbestaan in een eigen perspectief, ook als je homofiel bent. Je bent onderweg, met als eindbestemming: de ontmoeting met God in Zijn volle heerlijkheid. Als je de sprekers en schrijvers in het Nieuwe Testament mag geloven, wordt dat een ervaring die wat betreft schoonheid en intensiteit alles overtreft. Verwondering, aanbidding, lofprijzing, dat zijn woorden die de beleving van die ontmoeting beschrijven.

Christus is al voor je uit gegaan. Zijn eigen leven wijst de weg. Wanneer je je in het leven van Christus verdiept, dan zie je een patroon: de weg naar de heerlijkheid gaat dwars door lijden heen. Het lijden was in het leven van Christus onvermijdelijk, en zo is het ook in het leven van wie achter Hem aan gaat. Achter Christus aan gaan betekent je kruis op je nemen, afzien, zelfverloochening, pijn.

Het Evangelie leert je dat te benoemen als ‘delen in het lijden’. Een christen lijdt niet in een vacuüm. Je lijdt met Christus, met je medechristenen, en ook met je medemensen in de wereld. Het lijden blijft lijden, maar het staat in een perspectief. Christenen door de eeuwen heen hebben vanwege dat perspectief ervoor gekozen het vermijden van lijden niet tot het hoogste doel te verklaren. Ook dat hoort bij de tegencultuur van het Koninkrijk van de Koning die vanwege de vreugde die Hem in het vooruitzicht was gezet het kruis doorstaan heeft.
Lijden is niet het eind van het verhaal. Vreugde heeft het laatste woord. Niet alleen in een toekomst ver weg. Ook onderweg zijn er al momenten waarop een christen iets van die vreugde proeft. Omdat hij Iemand kent die Zijn leven voor hem over had. De Koning die je vriend wil zijn.

Ideaal en werkelijkheid

Een ideaalbeeld dat mijlenver van de werkelijkheid afstaat. Die indruk kan ontstaan bij lezing van het bovenstaande. Het Evangelie gebruiken - wordt dat nu een soort wondermiddel voor homofiele christenen? En met Jezus als je vriend, zijn dan ineens alle problemen opgelost? Zo is het natuurlijk niet. Het gaat ook over een telkens weer oplaaiend gevecht, de moeite die iemand kan hebben met het aanvaarden van Christus, en met het liefhebben van Christus, de onvermijdelijkheid van lijden, afzien, zelfverloochening, pijn.

En op dat punt kan de christelijke gemeente helpen. In de eerste plaats door het gemak waarmee wij met zijn allen ons tevreden stellen met halfslachtigheid in het navolgen van Christus, tegen het licht van het Evangelie te houden. We sluiten zo gemakkelijk compromissen, de een op het gebied van geld en spullen, een ander waar het gaat om idealen als dienstbaarheid en naastenliefde, of de roeping van een christen met het Evangelie de wereld in te gaan, en ook op het punt van seksualiteit en huwelijk.

In zo’n getemd christendom komt het ongeloofwaardig over wanneer op bepaalde punten opeens wel radicaliteit gevraagd wordt. Dan gaan mensen zich afvragen waarom homoseksualiteit een uitzonderingspositie krijgt, terwijl er op andere punten wel rek blijkt te zitten en comprommissen in de christelijke gemeente gedoogd worden. Is het dan zo vreemd dat het christendom zijn aantrekkingskracht en uitstraling verliest, en homofiele mensen weglopen?

Samen het Evangelie gebruiken kan ook voorkomen dat homofilie een ‘wij-zij’-kwestie wordt: wij hetero’s tegenover zij homo’s, of wij homo’s tegenover zij hetero’s, waarbij de een zich anders of superieur voelt ten opzichte van de ander. Het meest bepalende voor de identiteit van iedere christen, is dat je een door God aanvaard en geliefd kind bent. Dat is iets wat je deelt met alle broeders en zusters in de gemeente, homo of hetero.

Binnen de gemeente hebben we elkaar nodig om te leren het Evangelie te gebruiken in het gevecht tegen de de wereld, de duivel en ons eigen vlees. Anders komen we niet verder dan elkaar de geboden en verboden voor te houden. Samen het Evangelie gebruiken kan op verschillende manieren ingevuld worden. In mijn geval betekent dat ondermeer dat ik zo'n twee keer per maand met twee broeders bijeenkom om te bidden. Ze weten van mijn homoseksuele geaardheid, soms komt het ter sprake, maar er kunnen ook probleemloos maanden voorbijgaan waarin we voor elkaar, kerk en wereld bidden, zonder dat het aan de orde komt. Ik heb mij aan een van die twee verplicht te melden wanneer er dingen gebeuren die mij in een hogere alarmfase brengen, en hem de vrijheid gegeven alle vragen te stellen rond mijn homofilie die hij op een bepaald moment goed vindt.
Sommigen vinden zoiets misschien een vorm van geestelijke curatele, ikzelf zie het als priesterschap van alle gelovigen.

Zo heeft God het gewild: wij moeten Zijn levend Woord zoeken en vinden in het getuigenis van de broeders en uit de mond van mensen. Daarom heeft de ene christen de ander nodig, die hem het Woord van God brengt. En steeds weer heeft hij de ander nodig, als hij onzeker wordt en de moed verliest. Want uit zichzelf kan hij zichzelf niet helpen, zonder zich in de waarheid te vergissen. Hij heeft de broeder nodig als de drager en verkondiger van het goddelijk heilswoord, en hij heeft hem alleen nodig om Christus’ wil. Christus in het eigen hart is zwakker dan Christus in het hart van de broeder; het eerste is onzeker, het tweede is zeker.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in: ‘Verborgen omgang [Gemeenschapsleven]’.

The Geo-Communication Model

2007-02-24T20:05:00.000+01:00

A Model for Literary Communication

2007-02-24T19:31:00.000+01:00

In analogy to the communication model applied in linguistics to face-to-face interaction (sender – message – receiver), literary scholars have come up with a model for literary communication. (For a schematised representation of this model see the animation).

According to this model, literary production and reception obviously require at least two participants: someone who writes a literary text and someone who reads it. The literary text itself functions as message between author and reader. Of course, the term message must not be taken literally. It would be absurd to imagine that an author two hundred years ago, for example, sent a message to me, the present-day reader. However, literary texts are usually created for an audience, and by the same token literary texts only come to life when they are actually received by a readership. That author and reader are spatially and temporally deferred from one another in most cases must of course be kept in mind.

The message is conveyed in a specific material shape, e.g., as a book, a stage script, a screenplay, an audio tape, video or nowadays on the internet or CD-Rom. In other words: The channel or medium through which the literary text is presented can vary significantly. Nevertheless, literary texts depend on certain conventions of both producing and receiving literature. I always apply certain strategies when reading a novel, for example, such as accepting its fictionality or perhaps special uses of language, while I also bring to bear predefined expectations on literary texts. For example, we usually set our 'autopilot' on poetry-reading mode if we see a text which presents itself in the shape of a poem. Likewise, authors follow literary conventions when they create a piece of literature or they deliberately defy these conventions to create something new and innovative. At any rate, there is always some reference to what we might call the code of literary production and reception, i.e., rules for writing and reading texts. A banal and yet extremely important aspect is the fact that author and reader must share a language for communication to work at all. Another part of the literary code would be the way we classify literary texts in terms of genre. Needless to say that literary codes can change over time (as languages and cultures generally do) and that different periods have used different classificatory systems. This is also one of the reasons why literary texts themselves change: They accommodate in some way or another to the existing literary code, even if they ostensibly move away from it.

The context of literary production and reception thus becomes very important. Both readers and authors are situated in a specific place, historical time and cultural context, which of course influence the way they read and write. At the same time, the literary text also refers to the external world either by imitating what can be found there or by creating an alternative world. Reference is a term used in linguistics to denote the relationship between a sign and the object it signifies. While this narrow concept is problematic for literary studies because objects and persons in a story-world, for example, do not strictly speaking refer to ‘real’ objects or people, the concept is useful if one allows for relationships between signs and mental models, concepts, ideas, etc. The reference of a literary text to the world is thus never direct but is always aesthetically mediated, i.e., it is embedded in certain literary conventions and makes use of special linguistic codes. Michael Ondaatje’s bestseller, The English Patient, for example, undoubtedly depicts circumstances and events related to World War II but it does it in such a way as to leave enough room for poetic renditions of the characters’ emotions and experiences.

Literary studies investigate various aspects of the processes shown in the communication model. Thus, one can look at the relationship between author and text or reader and text, one can focus on the text itself or on how it is embedded in its socio-historical and cultural contexts. Scholars have also considered the literary code and what it entails. In sum, one can say that literary studies offer a wide range of topic areas for research activities, and this introductory course can only provide a very first glimpse of what is actually out there. The next section gives a preliminary overview of some of the study areas within literary studies.

Topic Areas of Literary Studies

This online course aims to provide an introduction to the tools for the analysis of literary texts. Like any other academic discipline, literary studies also have a set of clearly defined terms which can be applied when reading and discussing literary texts. These terms are often genre-specific, i.e., they are used particularly in the context of drama or narrative analysis or the analysis of poetic texts. Examples would be 'stage conventions', 'narrative voice' and 'prosody'. There are also a number of terms and analytical categories, however, which can be equally applied to various genres, e.g., 'character', 'setting', 'time', 'plot', etc.

Apart from such analytical tools, students of English literature should be familiar with some other major concepts:

• Literary History
• Poetics and Genre
• Literary Theory

Literary History

Names of literary epochs or periods have mostly been ‘invented’ in retrospect. The underlying assumptions are based on certain common features, not merely of texts but of socio-cultural developments and phases in the history of literary production. In English literature, historians for convenience often use the name of the sovereign in power at a certain time. Thus, they speak about the Elizabethan Age or the Victorian Period. Sometimes, approximately the same period of time can have various names, depending on the perspective adopted by the historian. The Elizabethan Age, for example, is also referred to as the Early Modern Period or the Renaissance. While the term 'Early Modern' focuses on the historical process of modernisation, 'Renaissance' is a term borrowed from art history and captures the idea of the ‘re-birth’ of antiquity in various art forms of the sixteenth century. Labels can also vary across nationalities. While in English, for example, 'Victorian Period' is a widely-used general label for the time between 1832 and the late nineteenth century, scholars of German literature have focused more on people’s attitudes, political developments and modes of writing in their classifications and therefore use different labels to denote shorter time spans of roughly the same period, e.g., Biedermeier, Vormärz, Realismus, Naturalismus. This example shows that labelling a literary period is often at the discretion of the literary historian and largely depends on which aspects a scholar considers important. Nonetheless, even though exact numbers, names and dates vary in books of literary history, one can come up with a general list of periods which underlies common practice (from Abrams 1999: 210):

450-1066 Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period
1066-1500 Middle English Period
1500-1660 The Renaissance (or Early Modern Period)
1558-1603 Elizabethan Age
1603-1625 Jacobean Age
1625-1649 Caroline Age
1649-1660 Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum)
1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period
1660-1700 The Restoration
1700-1745 The Augustan Age (or Age of Pope)
1745-1785 The Age of Sensibility (or Age of Johnson)
1785-1830 The Romantic Period
1832-1901 The Victorian Period
1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites
1880-1901 Aestheticism and Decadence
1901-1914 The Edwardian Period
1910-1936 The Georgian Period
1914- The Modern Period
1945- Postmodernism

One must not forget that periods are categories which do not necessarily encompass clearly demarcated time spans. Since literary developments evolve gradually and are often based on the co-existence of diverse movements, periods inevitably also overlap. As their names suggest, periods derive their labels from divergent sources. Frequently, they are analogous to philosophical movements such as the Age of Sensibility. Sometimes periods are named after artistic avantgarde movements which also express the predominant mood of the time, e.g., Aestheticism and Decadence. The Romantic Period derives its name from a genre, the medieval romance or chivalric romance, which was popular at the time and set an example with its fantastic and exaggerated subject matters. Postmodernism is given its name because it succeeds and goes beyond Modernism in terms of literary conventions, philosophical assumptions, etc. No matter which names literary periods are given, they are selected according to shared criteria and features which are considered characteristic of the time. A division into literary periods is useful for our understanding and discussion of connections between literary and socio-historical developments. They help us compare texts within one period and also across periods. Nevertheless, they should not become coathangers for simplistic assumptions or even clichés. Therefore, good books on literary history set out very clearly right from the beginning what their motivating force is and why they arrived at a certain form of periodisation.

One study area which is influenced by historical developments is the area of poetics and genres since the conventions for writing literary texts and for setting up individual genre categories and genre systems depend on their socio-cultural context and thus change over time.

Poetics and Genre

Ever since Aristotle’s Poetics, if not before, scholars have been concerned with classifying literary texts according to predefined categories. The groups or classes of texts have been labelled by means of group-specific names. Thus, Aristotle already divided ancient plays into tragedies and comedies and attributed certain features to each type of drama. The labels we attach to groups of texts with similar or correlated features can be summarised under the heading genre. The three major generic groups are prose fiction, drama and poetry. One must of course bear in mind that genres and genre systems are subject to historical changes and by no means closed categories.

Genres are defined by certain conventions, common recurring features which texts display. These features can be formal or structural or they can relate to themes and topics or forms of presentation. Thus, prose fiction is generally defined by the fact that it is not written in verse like poetry, for example, and that it is narrative while drama normally includes the direct presentation of a scene on stage. If one starts collecting features for each genre, one will soon find exceptions and it becomes clear that the boundaries of genres are blurred. In certain periods, people were not very strict about the limitations of different genres, as can be seen in the following quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where Polonius introduces the actors who have just arrived at the Danish court:

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. (Hamlet, II, 2: 392-396)

Although plays in the Early Modern Period seemingly crossed generic boundaries, the basic major categories are still valid and are used as frames of reference. This is one of the main functions of genres: Genres allow us to talk about groups of texts rather than just listing individual examples. They help us communicate about structural and thematic features and enable us to state similarities as well as differences between texts. We can discuss the diachronic development of genres, i.e., throughout history, and see how the individual historical contexts shaped forms of drama, prose fiction and poetry. Put another way, the concept of genre helps us approach literary texts. Authors usually construct their texts within certain genre conventions. By labelling a text a 'tragedy' for example, they raise certain expectations in readers or spectators. These expectations can then be met or disappointed. Keeping generic features in mind, one should therefore always also look for deviations from standard patterns because this is often where a literary text is particularly innovative and interesting and where interpretations can yield fascinating results.

Over the centuries, analysis has become more and more fine-grained and consequently numerous sub-genres have been identified for each main category. Again, historical developments play an important role. Some sub-genres, like the romance for example, have become less popular, while there is always a possibility for new sub-genres to emerge. The following tree diagram shows prose fiction and some of its sub-genres:

		Prose Fiction

Romance	Novel		Novella	Short Story	etc.

Historical Novel	Bildungsroman (Novel of Education)	Social Novel	Gothic Novel	Epistolary Novel	etc

The other two main generic groups, poetry and drama, can of course also be subdivided into numerous sub-genres: ballad, sonnet, ode, or comedy, tragedy, satire, tragicomedy, epic theatre, etc. What one ought to bear in mind is that, although genres are defined according to common characteristic features, the allocation of texts to certain genres is still ultimately our decision.

Sometimes, texts pose difficulties because they cannot be classified as belonging to one definite category. Where does one place 'long narratives' such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, for example: novella, novel or short story? For this reason, one also has to be careful not to oversimplify generic terms. In everyday parlance, people often use words like these in an undifferentiated way: “Oh, that accident was so tragic!” or “They had quite a little romance going on”. Nonetheless, generic terms in literary studies are very useful since genres form part of readers' and writers' literary competence at a given time. Literary competence encompasses people's ability to produce and understand literary texts and their knowledge about literary texts in general.

The classification of genres is of course guided by theoretical considerations, and it is not only for this reason that literary theory must hold a place in an introduction.

Dramatic approach to the personal story:

2007-02-24T18:58:00.000+01:00

AN INTERCULTURAL APPLICATION

Daniel Feldhendler, J.W. Goethe University (Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

When setting up training structures, we are confronted with the question of the appropriate methods to use for dealing with the complex dynamics of intercultural phenomena. It is becoming evident that the use of transversal practices is as much a necessity as a challenge for educational systems. Certain practices used in training in intercultural relations propose establishing a balance between cognitive and emotional learning and giving greater weight to experiential processes. Relational approaches and psycho-theatrical practices can be valuable training tools. They borrow from psychodrama and sociodrama (method of J.L. Moreno) and theatrical practices (the methods of Augusto Boal and Jonathon Fox, expression and dramatic enactment). We will first highlight the importance of these processes in intercultural training work, before focusing more particularly on the dramatic approach to personal stories.

1. Psychodramatic and theatrical approaches in training

The theoretical and practical framework for applications suitable for integration into the practice of action research and intercultural training was originally developed in the social psychology work of J.L. Moreno (1889 - 1974).

Moreno, physician, psychiatrist, sociologist and philosopher, better known as theoretician and practitioner of sociometry and psychodrama, developed a method whose aims were to:
- improve understanding of the dynamics of interpersonal relations
- help resolve inter- and intra-personal conflicts (individuals in their relationship to themselves and to the group)
- increase awareness of the socio-emotional structure of individuals and groups
- improve relations with others, where necessary.

J.L. Moreno's approach found its origins in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century and developed in the United States from 1925. His method came into use in Europe after the Second World War, when it was used primarily in therapeutic applications. From the 1970s, it began to spread to many other fields: social work, socio-cultural work, teaching, professional training (Cf. Schützenberger, 1981; Bosselmann et alia, 1993) and even the teaching of foreign languages (Dufeu and Feldhendler, 1991; Dufeu 1992).

Today, in the English and German-speaking world, the term psychodrama covers a very wide field of activities and its applications are both therapeutic and pedagogical. Its origins can be traced back to work on spontaneous play-acting and experimental theatre around 1920. Influenced by these practices, Moreno went on to develop, in turn, the theatre of spontaneity, the living newspaper, sociodrama, axiodrama, ethnodrama, sociometry, action research, role playing, group psychotherapy and psychodrama.

For Schützenberger: "Pyschodrama is a tool for exploring and modifying one's own attitude faced with that of the Other, training in spontaneity and creativity, a means of liberating conflicts". (1970, p. 88)
These practices are based on the philosophy of encounter and dialogue as an antidote to alienation and its attendant evils. A theory and practice of action were developed to this end, a praxeology of qualitative development of human relations. This approach aims to encourage what Moreno calls the encounter and which "expresses that two people are not only together but that they experience each other, apprehend each other, each with their entire being". (Ibid., p. 161 ).

The qualities that facilitate this encounter with the Other in congruent and authentic relations are:
- empathy ("Einfühlung") to develop an aptitude to communicate
- greater awareness of the Self and the Other
- role flexibility (through the experience of changing or reversing roles)
- handling and resolving conflicts
- developing attitudes that allow openness to the unknown and the foreign.

The philosophy of the encounter is based on the principle of man as an actor in situation: by definition, a relational being in constant evolution. The central concept of Moreno's work is that of creative spontaneity, where spontaneity is understood as "this response of an individual to a new situation - and the new response to an old situation". (1987, p. 93)

We took these concepts and practices developed by Moreno to build the foundations of a relational pedagogy for use in training work (Dufeu, Feldhendler, 1991).

This pedagogy emphasises more particularly:
- the development of the person in the group
- empathy, listening to and awareness of oneself and others
- harnessing creative potential by recourse to the imaginary
- play-acting, spontaneous expression and involvement of the self
- the concept of role as a basis for interaction
- the idea of congruent encounter in the action
- metacommunication processes.

Psychodramatic approaches also encourage active observation of group phenomena. Metacommunication processes (feed-back/retroaction, verbalization of lived experience, the work of integration and perlaboration) develop the attitude and faculties of the observer in a situation of active participation. These processes are effective tools in training work.

We can show very clearly that psychodramatic approaches can help illuminate intercultural phenomena, in situation, and meet the objectives of training in intercultural learning processes in the field of international relations.

After undergoing psychodrama training in the Moreno Institutes in Germany (cf. Leutz, 1974, 1985), I then integrated these approaches in my work as teacher and trainer, supplemented by the theatre-based processes which, in one way or another are directly or indirectly related to the Moreno tradition (Feldhendler, 1991, 1992). I refer more particularly to the following methods and processes:

• the tradition of play-acting and dramatic expression
These practices encourage improvisation and creativity in a given situation (Ryngaert, 1985, 1991; Barret, 1992) and, by extension, spontaneous expression and personal development (Oberlé, 1989).

• the Theatre of the Oppressed
This dialogue-based and transitive method developed by Augusto Boal (1977, 1980, 1983, 1990), aims to encourage awareness, deal with societal themes through group experience and develop ways of resolving present or future conflicts.

• Playback Theatre
Developed by Jonathon Fox (1993, 1994) and Jo Salas (1993), this practice involves a tangible approach to everyday life, real experience and ambiguities/conflicts through the enactment of fragments, personal stories and histories. Fox, himself trained in psychodrama, is positioned directly in the Moreno tradition and his community theatre process constitutes a kind of renaissance, an adaptation and extension, of the traditions of oral transmission and collective creation.

In the work of training in intercultural relations (cf. Feldhendler, 1990, 1999), interdisciplinary approaches - which integrate the psychodramatic approach with specific theatrical forms - are used as instruments of analysis, intervention and change, acting as "cultural and social mirrors", as relational indicators and catalysts for people involved in intercultural exchanges. These processes suggest a different approach to training and tie up with other methods of intervention amalgamated under the term "techniques of involvement" in the Guide de l'interculturel en formation published under the direction of Demorgon/Lipiansky (1999).

These processes require use of interdisciplinary approaches that aim to increase awareness of the complexity of the field being tackled and integrate the affective and intersubjective dimension in experiential-type practices, i.e. practices that bring into play, in a more direct and spontaneous manner, the actual experience of individuals and groups.
We can identify a didactic progression in the different phases of this work of increasing sensitivity to transcultural relations.

We distinguish between:

• work on representations supported by images and photo techniques, along with recourse to imagology (dynamics of self- and other-representations)
• work on metacommunication (perception of the implicit and intersubjectivity)
• mediation as an approach to proxemia, ambiguity, polarity, tensions and conflict resolution
• work on lived experience.

In this last category, I would like to highlight applications using biographical and narrative identity approaches.

2. The use of personal stories and histories as a pedagogical approach

Literary genre, scientific research, social and cultural practices: personal stories and histories constitute a living and flourishing culture. Many books and reviews explore this approach and the great diversity of practices employed (Pineau and Le Grand, 1993 ; Lejeune, 1998 ; Gaulejac, 1999 ; Delory-Momberger 2000). This fascination with personal stories in their different forms is linked to feelings about and awareness of the changes taking place in industrial societies that have led to a crisis of meaning and the search for identity. The biographical approach directs attention to the everyday, the individual and the group. It tackles issues in our societies by providing a means of representing, shaping and structuring life trajectories. It also aims to give meaning to lived experience as a significant dimension of the search for identity.

Theoretical reflection around these personal history practices brings into play an interdisciplinary approach, and alongside history, sociology and linguistics, other disciplines, such as social psychology, anthropology and philosophy, are increasingly being integrated. On this point, Paul Ricoeur (1985) looks at the importance of the narrative function in constructing the identity of the human subject. He notes that both individuals and communities construct their identity through narratives which become their effective history. For Ricoeur, being the historian and narrator of one's own life introduces a particular dialectic: subjects are both reader and scriptwriter and recognise themselves in the story they tell themselves about themselves. In this way, the history of a life is continually refigured by the narration and this activity may induce qualitative changes. The constant refiguration of the subject's own story, along with its gradual transformation, results in a "narrative identity". The narration activates the awareness of Self and Others, and according to Ricoeur (1990), knowledge of Oneself as Another, i.e. of one's otherness. This should be considered as a dynamic and structuring factor in the search for identity.

A pedagogy of the personal history as an education in complexity is emerging, gradually, in training for intercultural applications: "The intercultural dimension is one of the salient points in implementation of this biographical approach and the themes that it uncovers in autobiographical itineraries act as a central 'hook' for individual and group work". (Delory-Momberger, 2001) Carlo (1998) proposes integrating the work of narrative identity as didactic activities with an intercultural purpose by referring back to Ricoeur (unpublished conference text – Rome, 1997) :

"We can speak of education in narrative coherence, education in narrative identity; learning to tell the same story in another way, learning to let it be told by people other than ourselves, submitting the personal story to the critique of documentary history: all these practices can be used to deal with the paradox of autonomy and fragility".

Carlo argues that "the becoming-aware of the subject and the dialogical nature of the process are the two aspects of narration which we feel are the most relevant to our situation as teachers and didacticians of language-culture".

Rémi Hess (1998, 1999) distinguishes between several forms of writing to explore intercultural lived experience: the personal history, keeping a diary, correspondence, the monograph. He lays particular emphasis on writing down intercultural moments as an ethnographic act, where this writing is organised around intercultural "moments" that can be synonymous with the here and now but may also signify something more complex: an intercultural space-time continuum as a sedimentation of lived situations over a longer period. The dialectical process and method of investigation which he suggests through the writing of personal histories reflects the need to go back in time to understand the present and imagine the future. The viewpoint he suggests is to see the autobiography as a work of regression-progression that can be taken up and worked on at different times in a person's life.

3. Theatrical approaches to the personal story

A novel approach to personal stories that can be used as an instrument for exploring intercultural phenomena is the method of improvisation known as Playback Theatre, created in 1975 in the United States. Its founder, Jonathon Fox, proposes a spontaneous enactment of the lived experience of members of an audience or group. Perceptions, moments, fragments, slices of life and personal stories narrated by spectators or members of a group are enacted, by turns, using a specific theatrical process. On the stage, a group of actors trained in these practices instantaneously reflects and plays back what the members of the public have expressed and shared (hence the name Playback).

In the course of a performance, a dialogue is established between actors and spectators. A channel of communication is opened up by the narration; invisible links are woven through the stories of the "tellers" (Fox prefers this expression to narrator) and the enactment of their respective stories by the actors. Collective themes emerge. Fox's goal is to give a social and personal dimension to our personal stories and histories.
An overall view of the different practices of this method shows its flexibility of use and the variety of its fields of application, whether in public performance or workshops aimed at specific groups of participants, from schoolchildren to retired people. Playback Theatre is at the meeting point of many fields: society, education, art, therapy. In the USA and in the English and German-speaking world, this process is attracting the attention of agencies involved in training for education and the social sciences. A training school was set up in 1993 in the state of New York; an international association bringing practitioners together in a network has been operative since 1990 and can now be consulted on the Internet. Every year, this form of community theatre attracts new enthusiasts -- today it is practised in more than 50 countries on five continents.

The method of Playback Theatre which we will refer to here by the term Théâtre-Récit (Story Theatre) (Feldhendler, 1997) operates on a model of constructive social dialogue. In a workshop situation, participants are by turns actors and spectators "on the alert", engaged in a process of dialogue and communication through telling and enacting their stories. In this way, the members of a group enact their lived experience; they express their feelings and emotions. Individuals are revealed in word and image, in the constant reflections sent back by the intersubjective mirror. There is a connection here to the philosophical hermeneutics of Ricoeur, whose work is guided by a central conviction: the shortest path from self to self is the word of the other. The philosophy of this form of improvisation resides in the challenge it sets itself: to translate in images, in a condensed and metaphoric form, the essence and quintessence of what the teller/narrator has expressed. In other words, the "receiver" must comprehend the literal and figurative meaning of a message and its connotations and re-enact it meaningfully, as authentically, congruently and empathetically as possible, to allow the "sender" of the story to receive it in turn. The process is very demanding, but the rewards are development of reciprocal listening and reflexive communication.

The concept of narrative identity is operative here and I believe it is applicable to the method of Théâtre Récit, in that it designates configuration of the action provided by the story as a "refoundation of the productive value (poïetics) of the story, re-presenting (mimesis) the action and transforming it by conferring order, meaning and complexity (muthos)" (cf. Pineau, Le Grand, 1993). Moreover, as Ricoeur notes, "the notion of narrative identity proves its fecundity in that it applies as well to the community as to the individual" (1985); it is "the sort of identity which the human subject attains by mediation of the narrative function" (1988). Specular (performance-as-mirror) mediation, as found in Fox's method, adds an appreciable dialectic to these considerations.

4. The forms and principles of the method

A Playback Theatre session (whether performance, workshop or training session) is traditionally structured around different theatrical forms. The principal forms are:

- Fluids (fluid sculptures)
These are short situations, tableaux vivants in the form of moving sculptures (hence the term fluid). They aim to represent all the facets of a feeling, an attitude or thought expressed by a spectator. This form establishes contact and breaks the ice of the traditional, static relationship between actor and spectator. It acts as a warm-up, gets the current flowing and blurs the symbolic boundaries between active and passive participant. The word takes form.

- Pairs (representation of polarities)
The actors divided into groups of two (pairs) and take turns to represent the opposing attitudes inherent to a real-life situation as expressed by a spectator. This form highlights certain relational arrangements present in any interaction, such as ambivalence of feeling, and reveals the dynamics of the relationship between these opposing feelings.

- Stories (personal story scenes)
Once an atmosphere of openness and exchange has been created, the conductor of a session, in his/her role of intermediary and catalyst, invites someone to sit down next to him/her in the teller's chair. Conductor and teller are seated in a space midway between actors and spectators.
The conductor then invites the teller to tell his/her story. This interview is organised according to a clear ritual structure:
* Where and when did the story take place?
* Who are the important people in the story?
* What happens?
* How does the story end?

As the interview unfolds, the teller is invited to choose the actors to interpret his/her story. The actors then "come into play" and improvise the story. During this phase, conductor, teller and spectators watch the enactment, in silence and without intervening. The story can be represented in a variety of ways. The actors may use words or tell the story in mime, with or without musical accompaniment (cf. Salas, 1992), and there may be one or several scenes. When the enactment is finished, the actors once again turn their attention to the conductor and the teller. The teller may comment on the way the story was played, correct or rectify certain aspects. The outcome of the story can be transformed. It then takes another course and the teller discovers how his/her story could have or might turn out differently.

The content of the stories told by the different tellers emerge from the "here and now". The themes are not generally determined in advance. However, depending on the circumstances of the performance or workshop, a particular theme may be chosen in advance and in this case, the theme will guide the course of the session.

Fox emphasizes that the spontaneous nature of the process and the constant switching between the reality of the situation and that of the dramatic transposition authorises use of many other forms of intervention and structuring. Depending on the situation and the context, forms that encourage exchange and sharing of common experiences, such as verbal sharing, arising from the psychodramatic tradition (cf. Leutz, 1985; Moreno 1987), can be integrated into the process.

5. Applications in intercultural training

Théâtre-Récit gives active encouragement to reflexive communication. It integrates different phases: listening, understanding, expression, action, interaction, retroaction and sharing. It encourages the emergence of relational attitudes between "sender" and "receiver". My practical experience of the method and its use in the university environment and in continuing education for teachers confirms this hypothesis.

Its specific forms foster:
- a capacity for listening and understanding
- receptivity and expressiveness
- spontaneity in speech and action
- making an adequate response
- using other registers to convey a message
- integration of verbal and non-verbal expression
- expression of affectivity and emotions
- perception of the self and others
- openness to new situations.

Since 1991, Romance language students have been offered regular workshops using the Théâtre-Récit method as a dynamic approach to intercultural situations. Their presentation in the study programme stresses development of global expression in an open and personalised working environment. In these classes, students are involved in different ways in encounter situations with others: they are, by turn, narrator, actor, spectator and conductor/presenter. Entering into the role of teller brings the foreign language to life through narration of one's own intercultural experience while at the same time allowing the student to appropriate the linguistic tools necessary for relational expression. It also involves entering into contact with oneself and seeing oneself in another way. The teller becomes an observer during the enactment of his/her story, which is mediated by the "observation" of others. In parallel, taking the role of actor means entering into sympathy with the teller, i.e. becoming closer to that Other. It also means respecting the Other and learning to use the imaginary sphere to represent an aspect of the teller's reality in a symbolic form.

The enactment of lived experiences or future experiences in intercultural situations encourages expression and perception of underlying feelings, what is unsaid, what is culturally implicit. It also raises awareness of different ways of managing time and space (e.g. proxemia or polychrony). The expression of ambiguity and affective polarities, likewise moments of conflict, opens up new perspectives for intercultural work. Through workshops and seminars which I have led in the university context and in continuing teacher training (Instituts Français, Goethe Institutes, Popular Universities and adult education in Germany, summer school at the International Centre for Pedagogical Studies at Caen University in France), I have discovered that the dramatic enactment of personal stories and histories brings a new dimension to intercultural communication: authenticity and relational involvement.

Since 1997, we have been carrying out work of experimentation and action research in the university framework, with the aim of contributing to emergence of the subject and narrative identity by bringing together written personal stories and dramatic enactment. The brochure of our Institute of Romance Languages and Literature presents this workshop in the following terms:
Practical work: Autobiography, writing about the self, life dramaturgies.
This workshop aims to train students in writing and enactment of personal stories and histories. The biographical approach is understood as a dynamic training process based on:
• writing a personal diary of stories and histories to encourage emergence of a "narrative identity"
• enactment of fragments of life using theatrical processes (in particular, the Théâtre-Récit method).

In 1999, the workshop encouraged students, more particularly, to:
- write about the "I" by keeping a diary or log book
- seek the "WE" by identifying thematic and collective connections
- undertake joint work on the texts written by participants using dynamic processes (creating images, modes of stage representation, theatrical and relational work).
Working with this group of students, we established a thematic web as a guiding thread bringing together individual and group trajectories. This web included the following concepts:
My life today and my key themes.
My life as student. How did I become a student?
My first experience at the Romance languages study institute.
My relations with the foreign language (French).
My underlying motivation in studying the French language (transgenerational influences).
My discovery of the Other and the other culture.
My experiences of the Other abroad (in France).
My first intercultural experience.
My experiences of socialisation at school.
My first moments in learning a foreign language.

At the summer school organised at Caen University in 1999 by the French language department of the CIEP (International Centre for Pedagogical Studies, Sèvres), we also presented a module entitled: Dramaturgy, personal stories and intercultural relations.
In this workshop, we focused more particularly on the following themes:
- the forms and principles of the Théâtre-Récit method
- the experiential approach to personal stories
- exploration of lived experiences in intercultural situations
- integration of written situations by keeping a diary of intercultural stories
- the practical arrangements for using this approach in language classes.

The presence of French teachers from all over the world revealed to me the complexity of the multicultural encounter (Demorgon, 1996, 1998) and the fundamental need to go further in developing active listening structures, based on reciprocity and creating connections between individual experiences. When these conditions are in place, expression becomes personal and significant for the participants and the themes tackled tend to organise themselves in a structured way. Here for example, is the thematic thread of this module as revealed at the end of the workshop:
Leaving the native country. Being homesick. Travelling for the first time without the family. Arriving alone, Being a foreigner. Being well or badly received. Being frustrated by certain aspects of the welcome given. Being confronted with racism or latent rejection. Feeling protected. Being able to express one's real feelings (such as sadness, stress and tiredness, fear, attraction). Discovering the deep-seated oral tradition and collective transmission culture of one's native country. Examining the role and position of man and woman in one's native culture. Experiencing, in situation, acknowledgement and respect of the Other. Recounting one's intercultural story using one's own first name.

The greater the affective involvement of participants, the greater the need for structure in framing the work. The trainer must develop new attitudes: flexibility, professional know-how and relational know-how to accompany this liberation of the word.
Very often, the only tool available at the place of training to allow the trainer to monitor and structure his/her attitude in an adequate manner is the log book. The practice of writing this training log book becomes a process of self-training, a work of deliberate self-reflection. In these situations, the log book becomes an effective tool, encouraging greater awareness of the trainer's own level of involvement and generating the necessary distancing and differentiation. After work in the field, the practice of individual or group supervision as professional follow-up gives the trainer the tools required to analyse his/her own practice and continue to progress in the future (Buer, 1999).

A field of research and application

The theatrical approach to personal stories opens up a wide field of investigation, as I can observe in my current fields of application, as practitioner of the method, co-founder of the German company Spiegelbühne (mirror theatre), and trainer at the School of Playback Theatre (N.Y.), as a teacher in continuing training institutes and the Moreno Institutes in Germany, likewise in teacher training and in the university context.

Restitution of fragments and personal stories through dramatic enactment opens up potentialities as a dialogical process and transversal approach. It contributes to understanding of "existentiality" and in this way can be seen as a self-creative (poïetic) practice, i.e. creating the self to serve the narrator. Likewise, actors and conductor are called on to practice formative methods, apply a "comprehensive" approach as "midwives" and "interpreters" (maieutics and hermeneutics) of the present moment. There is also an additional challenge: individual personal stories must be linked together in a collective story, or in the words of Bellah (1986) in a "community of memory".

Language, or the framing of reference

2007-02-24T18:27:00.000+01:00

LANGUAGE, OR THE FRAMING OF REFERENCE

Take *language* first. We consider it a medium of the dissemination of communication because, compared to mutual perception communication had to rely on before, it introduces arbitrary signs which take on a sort of life of their own. Noises begin to fill the social space, which are articulated and motivated and which signify while being signs distinct from the signified. Four million years ago, in Africa, people begin warning each other, singing for each other, and courting each other, as animals do as well, using the noises of what then became called called language, in order to attract, to attribute, and to govern, attention. While articulating these noises, they begin to notice, and to use and by countless means to fill, the gap between the sign and the signified.

Dissemination begins right here. Communication goes beyond mutual perception and begins to be aware of previous and next events, of other people's wording, and of similar, yet different signs and signifieds having their impact on the selection of every one social action. Temporization, i.e., reference to time and occasion, and socialization, i.e., reference to the other and his and her mind to be guessed upon, come in with the equivocal and the ambiguous right from the beginning, the latter indeed opening the space for dealing with the former, and vice versa.

If humans are the product of the co-evolution of communication and consciousness, both separated from, and reconnected to, each other by language, then there has never been paradise for human beings. That is why they think of inventing the idea of it, troubling further their difficult dealing with one another. Yet, the catastrophe of language is not to be undone. It consists in the introduction of reference. Reference means signification, and signification means distinction of sign from signified, calling upon articulation to deal with the distinction, and upon motivation to reconnect the sign and the signified depending on context, mood, and habit.

Indeed, what is sometimes been taken as language's original drama, its introduction of the possibility to not only say Yes, but also No, may already be a kind of secondary means to deal with the complexity of signification, coding by the means of a binary distinction what actually is far richer in structure and form. This may be one reason, why mathematics and logics never quite settled for just two values, the affirmative and the negative, to describe the scope and range of both affirmation and negation. The doubling of the meaning world into a Yes-world and a No-world may already be a simplification with respect to endless variations on "Yes, but…" and "No, however…."

Thus, the network synthesis brought about by language consists in the framing of reference by the means of drama, which is another word for conflict, and which is caused by double bind. Double binds may be considered to be inherent in language communication in that all of this communication can somehow mean Yes, while saying No, and vice versa, the most evident case of this being the communication of No itself, which says No while nevertheless pursuing the communication, thereby saying Yes to the communication. Any sound communication deals with double binds without even noticing, replacing, as it were, paradox by changing distinctions, thus moving the problem to places where it hurts less. But this leaves ample space for pathologies of communication to develop, which consist in taking double binds literally.

The feature enabling communication to deal with that kind of complexity, consisting of intricate knots of affirmation, negation, and ambivalence, is *metacommunication* as discovered by communication theory (notably Jurgen Ruesch, Gregory Bateson, and Paul Watzlawick). Metacommunication means to be able to communicate on the level of the content of the communication and on the level of the relationship between the social actors at the same time, thus enabling the communication to clarify on one level what is left obscure on the other, and to stay vague as to invite the very next, or some next, move of the communication to supplement what before had been deferred to further notice.

Metacommunication enables the verbal communication to select positively, or negatively, an ambiguous meaning whatsoever without having to explicitly enter into a wording of the Yes or the No. Metacommunication, thereby, is on a par with reference, in that it is able to signify without having to identify the sign with the signified. The criteria used to judge on the communication at hand can be hold separated from the communication itself. And that is what is important when the overall social purpose consists in to not forego the scope and range of communication opened by communication.

Now even lying is possible, both as a practice and as a knowledge of that practice. Indeed, lying is only possible when people know how to deal with it, thereby giving their communication further twists in its knots of affirmation and negation. Else, any lie, all deceit and betrayal would already mean the end to the communication. Instead, they just open different avenues to it, forcing it, or indeed inviting it, to explore different tracks of how to figure out what is going on.

We propose to call metacommunication the culture form of a society, which by its adoption enables it to survive the introduction of language. The surplus meaning produced by the emergence of reference, and by the difference between the sign and the signified, including knots of Yes and No, or folds of affirmation and negation (Gilles Deleuze), is both produced and handled by a metacommunication, which has learned not to confuse itself with the very situation at hand, but to look to previous and next events, to others observing the situation, to further possible meanings of the things being present, and to judge how to proceed, or how to defer any procedure, accordingly.

The culture of the oral society is its metacommunication. As long as we use any kind of language this culture of course is sure to stay with us. That also means that there is no need to complain about ambivalence, negation, drama, double bind, and conflict, since they do not just testify our fall from paradise but our ability to deal with the structural richness of language, and to extend on it with respect not only to our factual knowledge of the world but also to our behavior inside the social structure of this world.

*Tribes* come in when the oral society has to give itself a number form. Tribes define themselves by their ability to handle communication with respect to metacommunication. The boundaries of any one tribe delimit what kind of communication is possible either inside or outside the boundary, the scope of metacommunication inside the boundary being different from that outside it. It is interesting to note that the communication outside the boundary seems to be some kind of collective action, referring to social relationships between tribes rather than between individuals or families, thus combining the number of tribes outside the focal one, with the number of families or individuals inside it. That kind of collective action allows the oral society to define, and thereby ritualize, the rape of women, trade, and war, which of course necessitate metacommunication as well, albeit of a sort different from that inside a tribe.

Perhaps we should even say that it is tribes and the boundaries between them which constitute the number form of oral society, given that the boundaries are decisive in distinguishing the tribes, and given that the boundaries, being sorts of zero states of communication, allow to count and therefrom to order the people of a tribe. Remember that out structure forms consist of blanks, or of a kenogrammar, not defining who belongs where, but defining the places, as empty places, to be filled with people. That means, if there are no places, there is no possibility to belong, as to this day is exhibited by infanticide common in societies which still rely to a certain extent on the structure of tribes.

And *gods*, or *spirits*, are the form of the re-entry of oral society into itself. A re-entry lends affirmation and negation to the meaning form of a society by providing its communication with ways to refer to both the marked states and the unmarked state of the form. A re-entry manages to mark the unmarked by referring to transcendental units, which have an empirical impact on the society.

In oral society gods are both the masters of metacommunication, always giving signs which indeed are difficult to decipher, and more or less exhausting themselves in self-referentially signifying the gods themselves, not something else, and at the same time the masters of the most literal communication, saying what they mean, and meaning what they say, and passionately engaging in whatever action they are consuming themselves in. Gods, spirits, and, let us not forget them, demons and devils, thereby enact the many possibilities to deal with communication and metacommunication, engaging with their fascination, showing possible pitfalls, and giving dire warnings of what happens to those who may choose to neglect their warning. The stories told about them, and the words attributed to them, are exemplars of what, and how, to speak about, risking reference, and what not, staying clear and clean, yet unengaged.

Gods are both the end to, and the beginning of, any possibility to interpret what is going on in communication and action, such that their observation by religion, first, and theology, later, gives a reflective picture of what to affirm, and how to negate, the societies dealing with language, and metacommunication. Most importantly perhaps, with reference to gods secrets and taboos can be defined which tell what to talk about and what not.