Why I asked about Pentecost

Just a note to explain what I was thinking when I raised the question of what Pentecost might bring to bear for our conversation in class this past week:

Pentecost is often used as an example of the church's catholicity (note lower-case 'c'): unity amid diversity without uniformity. For me, this is an interesting contrast to the chaos at Babel for precisely this reason; as Yves Congar writes, “Through the mission and gift of the Spirit, the church was born universally by being born manifold and particular. The church is catholic because it is particular and it has the fullness of gifts because each person has their own gift.”

I’m not arguing for an absolute contrast between Babel/Pentecost (or that Pentecost solves the problem of Babel), but I do find it intriguing to consider how Pentecost might be a model for coming together amid diversity/plurality to authentically share something in common. In that way, Pentecost is not just an eschatological ideal. Pope John XXIII, calling for the Second Vatican Council in January 1959, described it as a “new Pentecost.” During Vatican II, in the decree Ad Gentes (On the Mission Activity of the Church), the council affirmed that Pentecost represents the birth of the church: “The Church was publicly displayed to the multitude, the Gospel began to spread among the nations by means of preaching, and there was presaged that union of all peoples in the catholicity of the faith by means of the Church of the New Covenant, a Church which speaks all tongues, understands and accepts all tongues in her love, and so supersedes the divisiveness of Babel” (§4).

Obviously this is much more theological than philosophical, but the point of my question was to suggest that there are alternatives to the chaotic paradigm of Babel. I’m not sure that Pentecost has practically superseded Babel (as Ad Gentes asserts), but with the gracious guidance of the Holy Spirit, we might construct wider communion and share clearer (and linguistically faithful) communication than simply accepting the “scattering-confounding” state of affairs following Babel (this is Steiner’s view, not Ricoeur’s; On Translation, 12). I was curious what the class might think of considering the value of Pentecost in this light and was grateful for the conversation on Tuesday night and anything that follows …

peace and all good,
marc

Sodom Revisited Part II

This story of Lot continues on a for a few more verses than what we’ve concentrated on so far. The Sodomites reject Lot’s offer of his daughters, demanding the men. As the Sodomites move to attack Lot & break into his house, Lot’s two guests ‘reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.’ They then strike the Sodomites blind.

Interestingly the Sodomites’ response to Lot’s daughters is ‘You, Lot, came here as a foreigner, and now he would play judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.’ – the Sodomites, the strangers, accuse Lot of setting them in his ethical system (to their detriment). The Sodomites (as strangeness) are so offended by Lot’s imposition of his worldview on them (as Lot did to the two men) that their hostility is increased dramatically. The Sodomites move to assault Lot (thereby destroying the totalizing worldview) – they reject Lot’s hierarchy in which he is willing to give them his daughters, & they will accept nothing less than the highest, the two men (& in the two men, Lot’s entire hierarchical system of hospitality).

At this point of Lot’s destruction, however, his two guests take a new role in the story. They take Lot into the house; a reversal of the first part of the story in which Lot takes them into the house. Now, finally, the two men have the opportunity to approach Lot. They can finally interact with Lot while retaining their strangeness, but only because Lot’s hierarchy has been undermined. Not only have the Sodomites pushed Lot to the edge of his system by rejecting anything less than everything, but Lot is no longer master of his house; it is not for Lot to shut the door & ward off the attackers, but he must allow the two men to save him, to host him.

Similarly to Mary, maybe Lot could have rejected the divine strangers, could have sent them away; but by allowing the divine to work, salvation comes. So the stranger can be preserved, but only when the stranger chooses to come; the stranger cannot be forced to be hosted & still remain a stranger. By taking Lot’s place as masters of the house, the two men undermine Lot’s hierarchical ethic just as much as the Sodomite could have by their force; but with the two men the loss of ethics leads to Lot’s salvation not destruction.

This leaves open the original question of whether there can be an ethical system for the stranger. I tend to think that it is impossible, but ethics really is not my forte. Lot’s story continues with the devastation of Sodom & the infamous episode of incest, which may be signs of the horrour that comes with the complete loss of an ethic of strangeness. But I’ll leave this to be worked out by someone with more intelligence than myself.

-Gabriel

Sodom Revisited Part I

Fellow Hermenauts,

This morning I devoted a bit of time to rethinking my reading of the Lot story we've discussed over the past few weeks. Specifically, I wondered if there wasn't a space that could be cleared between the totalizing strangeness and familiarity of Lot's guests. Is there a way that Lot's guests can be inscribed within Lot's ethical framework without losing all their strangeness? The question formed as to whether there can ever be any kind of ethic of the stranger; can Lot ever have an understanding of how he should act towards the stranger qua stranger without neutralising strangeness?

It's an interesting question, both within the Lot narrative & in the larger philosophical discussion, but here I'm mainly interested in the narrative. After turning the issue around in my mind a good bit, I remain in the opinion that there is no possibility for a such a space in this story. Lot's 'because they have come under the shelter of my roof' still denies foreignness to the guests; i.e. the guests are still completely inscribed within Lot's worldview/selfhood.

My reasoning here is that Lot does not see the two men as strange, but as The Strange - i.e. as hypostasised strangeness which, by taking a form to fit within his worldview, loses its aspect of strangeness. This is apparent at their first meeting. The two men don't approach Lot, rather he approaches them; they do not ask hospitality, rather Lot offers it, in fact he insists (another circumscribing of the men's strangeness?). I have trouble reconciling the fact that Lot approaches the strangers with an ethic of strangeness. If the strangers were really strange, they would have to approach Lot (at least partially).

I think the Annunciation is a good picture of interaction with strangeness which allows the stranger to remain strange. Mary doesn't seek out or pursue the stranger, but is approached by the stranger. Regardless of how much freedom Mary has to say 'no' after being approached, there would be no chance for the 'no' without the initial approach by the stranger. This approach lets the stranger come as they are & bring what they have (viz. strangeness). Lot's approach to the stranger, as friendly as it is, lets him totalize the identity of the men as his guests. So the upshot is that Lot's initiative shows that he is inscribing the two men in his ethic & preventing any space of strangeness from being cleared.

-Gabriel

Pentecost

Here's a translation of Acts 2:1-13 and (not that anyone has to agree with them, but hopefully they will be helpful) a few words from Richard Pervo's new Hermeneia commentary:

On the day of Pentecost the entire group was together. A sudden noise from above, like the roar of a strong rushing wind, filled the house in which they were sitting. Phenomena resembling jagged fiery tongues appeared. One of these settled upon each person. All were filled with Holy Spirit and, all, directed by the Spirit to give utterance, began to speak in foreign tongues.

Among the residents of Jerusalem were devout persons from every country under the sun. In response to the noise a crowd flocked together, for each and every one of them heard these people speaking in their native languages. In absolute bewilderment they exclaimed: "Aren't all these people who are speaking Galileans?" How can it be that each of us is hearing our own language? There are Parthinans, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, [__], Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Egypt, residents of Cyrenean Libya, visiting Roman citizens, Jews by birth and Jews by choice, Cretans and Arabs. Yet we are hearing these Galileans glorifying God in our own languages! Al were bewildered and perplexed, constantly asking one another, "What is going on?" Although there were some who made fun of the whole business by announcing, "They're full of cheap wine."

Pentecost may be the most exciting and least comprehensible episode in Acts. The story collapses at the slightest breeze. It begins with a group gathered in a house, perhaps for a devotion... These (12? 120?) persons experience a complicated epiphany that issues in inspired speech, possibly glossolalia (vv 1-4). Somehow this noise within a house becomes loud enough to attract a crowd evidently composed entirely of non-native residents who somehow pervieve that the speakers are from Galilee, although they hear neither ecstatic speech nor Palestinian Aramaic (which may have betrayed a Galilean origin to the experienced ear), but, to their utter amazement, a religious message in their respective native tongues (5-12). In a logical narrative, each would have heard (a group?) speaking Latin, Egyptian, or the like, leading to a conversation in which on e participant says to another, "Do you know what language that is?" It's Phrygian." To which another replies, "Oh no. that's the indigenous language of rural Cyrene," and so forth. The narrative telescopes such conversation, reporting that all spoke these words in unison, somehow grasping the precise distribution of the ethnic origins among them. Some could not determine what all this meant, but others were clear: "they're drunk" (v. 13). That charge would fit glossolalia, and Peter assumes that it is the opinion held by the entire audience (vv. 14-15). Most amazingly - and quite revelatory from the narrative perspective - nothing specific is said about the content of the message they heard.

This is a confusion worthy of babel. A redactional solution almost leaps from the page: Luke had a story about ecstatic speech that he transformed, either out of distaste for glossolia or to expound universalism, or both, into a linguistic miracle focusing on what was heard. This remedy recognizes the presence of conflicting elements and posits a likely source, but it is more of a description of the problem than an unraveling of it.

Some Commentary on Genesis

I though people might be interested in some of the commentary I found on the narratives in Genesis 18 and 19. I thought about quoting the passage as well, but that would make an already too long post even longer - and I think most people will be able to find a bible or an online link.

Here's what Robert Alter has to say about the opening of Genesis 19:

1. came into Sodom at evening, when Lot was sitting in the gate. The whole episode is framed in an elegant series of parallels and antitheses to Abraham's hospitality scene at the beginning of chapter 19. Both men are sitting at an entrance - the identical participial clause with the same verb - when the visitors appear. Lot's entrance is the city gate: he can sit "in" it because Canaanite cities had what amounted to a large chamber a the gateway; here people gathered to gossip, to do business, and above all to conduct justice; the gate would have given on the town square, the area referred to by the messengers in verse 2. There is an antipodal thematic distance from tent flap to city gate, as the narrative quickly makes clear. Abraham's visitors, moreover, arrive at midday, where as Lot's visitors come as darkness falls - a time when it is as dangerous to be out in the streets of Sodom as in those of any modern inner city.

2. turn aside. Lot resembles his uncle in the gesture of hospitality. He uses the verb "turn aside" (sur) instead of Abraham's "go on past" ('avar) because unlike the solitary tent in the desert, there are many habitations here, in addition to the public space of the square.

set off early. This may merely be merely to emphasize that he will not delay them unduly, but it could hint that they can depart at daybreak before running into trouble with any of the townsfolk.

3. a feast...flatbread. Perhaps an ellipsis is to be inferred, but this is a scanty looking "feast." In contrast to Abraham's sumptuous menu, the only item mentioned is the lowly unleavend bread (matsot) of everyday fare, not even the loaves from fine flour that Sarah prepares.

4-5 the men of the city, the men of Sodom...We are the men. Throughout this sequence there is an ironic interplay between the "men" of Sodom, whose manliness is expressed in the universal impulse to homosexual gang rape, and the divine visitors who only seem to be "men."

8. I have two daughters who have known no man. Lot's shocking offer, about which the narrator, characteristically, makes no explicit judgement, is too patly explained as the reflex of an ancient Near Eastern code in which the sacredness of the host-guest bond took precedence over all other obligations. Lot surely is inciting the lust of the would-be-rapists in using the same verb of sexual "knowledge" they had applied to the visitors in order to proffer the virginity of his daughters for their pleasure. The concluding episode of this chapter, in which the drunken Lot unwittingly takes the virginity of both his daughters, suggests measure-for-measure justice meted out for his rash offer.

for have they not come under the shadow of my roof beam? This looks like a proverbial expression for entering into someone's home and so into the bonds of the host-guest relationship. But "roof-beam" implies a fixed structure and so accords with the urban setting of Lot's effort at hospitality; Abraham, living in a tent, in the parallel expression in his hospitality scene, merely says, "for have you not come by your servant?"

9. came as a sojourner ... sets himself up to judge! The verb "to sojourn" [which, for what it's worth, in french is translated étranger] is the one technically used from resident aliens. "Judge," emphatically repeated in the infinitive absolute (wayishpot shafot), picks up the thematic words of judge and just from God's monologue and His dialogue with Abraham in Chapter 18.

That's as far as Derrida goes with the story ... he then jumps (deceptively, if you ask me) to Judges 19, which is it's own can of worms, and I can throw out some commentary on that, if we'd like. But I think these comments are interesting and would love to see what people hermeneutically do with them.