By Alexander Carpenter
I just read this review in the New Yorker on a new Robert Alter translation of Psalms. Anyone using the that book of scripture in a sermon or theological argument will want to consult article and then Robert Alter's new translation of that long book of storms.
James Wood reviews:
Psalm 90, like many others, belongs to a theological landscape quite remote from our own. Its wisdom is spacious and fortifying, but while we all feel the brevity and smallness of human life—perhaps especially so now, with our new, borderless knowledge of the cosmos—most of us no longer use an angry and capricious deity as the means of our measurement. This is what the Biblical scholar James Kugel refers to as the “starkness” of the Hebrew Bible, a bare, hard world in which a desert landscape of rocks and rare streams is briefly lit up by columns of fire. For the Psalms, as well as being prayers, are also a people’s military songs, with martial values very different from those we nowadays cherish. How many people, dabbing at tears at some memorial service, actually listen to the words of Psalm 23, in which an archaic satisfaction is taken in the fact that God, now more of a captain or a warlord than a shepherd, will set out a table for me in front of mine enemies? Look, I’ll stuff myself while you just watch! (I suppose it might bring to mind the reception afterward.) In his commentary for the Anchor Bible text on the Psalms, Mitchell Dahood finds a useful analogue for this attitude in an ancient Akkadian text: “A petty ruler of the fourteenth century B.C. addressed the following request to the Pharaoh: ‘May he give gifts to his servants while our enemies look on.’ ”
The Psalms, like the rest of the Hebrew Bible, are haunted by the traces of the paganism that Judaism must refute. God is merciful and just but is also seen as what Alter calls “a warrior god on the model of the Canaanite Baal riding through the skies with clouds as his chariot, brandishing lightning bolts as his weapons.” Throughout the Old Testament, one is aware of the unnaturalness, in ancient terms, of choosing only one God and sticking with him. A bargain has been struck, in which Yahweh says, in effect, “If you choose only me I will choose only you.” But both sides find it hard to honor their pledges. How much more consoling, really, to worship lots of gods—to make grateful images of them, to have certain gods work for you as personal helpers and aides—than to be rescued from such comfiness by the irascible and nearinvisible singularity that is Yahweh. The Israelites waver, and thus, in the Book of Exodus, after the parting of the Red Sea, they give thanks to God in a psalmlike hymn in which, as in a kind of straw poll, Yahweh has beaten various contenders. . .
The Desert Storm: Understanding the Capricious God of the Psalms
By Daneen Akers
Friday night finds me a bit melancholy. As I’m sitting here in our apartment that opens onto a picturesque French courtyard, listening to the concierge and some friends chat over an evening aperitif, I am overcome with emotion, with an ache in the depths of my heart.
SPOILER ALERT in this paragraph: It’s a homesickness of sorts, but not the type you’d expect from an American living in Paris for the summer. I’m not missing home (although, I do). I’m not missing my friends or family (although, I do). I know I will see all of the above soon, next week, in fact. What I’m homesick for is a story, a story that I’ve followed for almost a decade, and that is now complete, the last page read. I’m homesick for Harry. For Hogwarts. For Dumbledore. And for Dobby—especially Dobby, the little house-elf who spent most of the series providing laugh track moments and ended up being the ultimate hero whose sacrifice foreshadows Harry’s and indeed gives Harry the strength to believe once more and to walk forward into his own destiny with courage.
There’s a core, fundamental part of my soul that is built for story, for myth, and for magic. Given the success of the Harry Potter series, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia and other quest epics, I think it’s a fair guess that we are all built for story (thank you Joseph Campbell). These stories speak to me in the way that good music does, bypassing the cynical, doubting voices in my mind and going straight to my heart, whispering that there is meaning, there is a bigger plan, there is a reason to believe. Even now, as an adult, I often find peace in difficult theological quandaries by remembering a moment or a conversation from one of these books—for some reason when I can’t find (or listen to) answers in the Bible, I can find (and listen to) answers from Aslan or Dumbledore. (FYI, J.K. Rowling says she can hardly pass by a book from The Chronicles of Narnia without stopping to read it cover to cover.)
When I first started reading the Harry Potter series, I was an 8th grade language arts teacher at an SDA school. One day I noticed several students sitting through all of their breaks—including their lunch breaks—reading the same book. I asked what could possibly be keeping them in the classroom over break, and, voilà, I met Harry and quickly became a fan.
The controversy over the books started quickly at our school. While I read the book with my students over lunch, the six grade teacher banned the book, citing arguments that are by now familiar: the books glorify witchcraft, tempt children to break the rules, and might tempt impressionable minds to dabble in the occult, or, at the very least, New Age philosophy. This was my introduction into the argument that has simmered among Christians about the merits (or dangers) of these books, flaring every time a new book or film is released.
At first, I felt that the books were simply good fun, an amusing and epic tale with good morals. This is what Charles Colson, a leading evangelical voice said at first too. "The magic in these books is purely mechanical, as opposed to occultic," he said in 1999. "That is, Harry and his friends cast spells, read crystal balls, and turn themselves into animals—but they don't make contact with a supernatural world. ... The plots reinforce the theme that evil is real, and must be courageously opposed....[Harry and his friends] develop courage, loyalty, and a willingness to sacrifice for one another—even at the risk of their lives. Not bad lessons in a self-centered world" (Quoted on the Christianity Today website, July 2007). Colson and others have changed their tune though—he along with James Dobson now oppose the books (Christianity Today has continued to endorse them.)
On a personal note, family members of mine have discussed their worry about the books, feeling that we have been seduced by Satan as part of the last days resurgence of witchcraft. Just last week a friend forwarded an e-mail that I had to respond to—you know, the one about the throngs of children converting to Satanism as a result of these books? This e-mail is largely based on an article from The Onion, a satirical newspaper. I try to take these warnings with a smile, as I know they are offered in genuine love.
The biggest concern parents and others have is the “m” word: magic. As a teacher having to explain why I was allowing students at an Adventist school to read the books, I did have to think long and hard about the “m” word. I ended up citing the magic in Narnia as a predecessor and assuring parents that good and evil were very clear in the books. Now I refer people to John Granger’s Looking for God in Harry Potter where he differentiates between incantational magic—magic that works according to rules just like physics, gravity, and your car radio, and invocational magic—magic that calls upon the spirits of the dead, a practice condemned by all major world religions and not practiced by any character, good or evil, in the Potter books.
I’ve moved past feeling that the books are merely good, wholesome fun though and now believe them much deeper. Although I find several genres present throughout the series—Harry is as much an Everyman as a young King Arthur—they are also very clearly rich in Christian allegory and symbolism.
As I read Deathly Hallows with my husband, Stephen, I kept exclaiming at key moments, “I can’t believe how clear the Christian symbolism is in this book! How can people not see this?” The book spoke to me on a deeply Christian level.
In short, it’s a story about the difficulty of belief—how do we believe in God and that there is a bigger plan when we have so little to go on? When things seem such a mess?
As she’s done in every book, Rowling emphasized key points that seem to me, not just Christian, but down right Adventist: there is a “Great Controversy” happening that most people (muggle and wizard alike) want to deny; there is true evil that must be resisted; material wealth is insignificant, relationships are what matter; the right path is often difficult, dark, and full of opportunities for failure; death is certain, but there are things worth dying for and fates worse than death; we have a choice in our destiny, and, the most consistent theme of the series, self-sacrificing love is the most powerful force in the universe—Voldemort’s weakness was always that he underestimated the power of love because he could not feel it.
Rowling finally admitted a Christian bias in the series in a recent Dateline interview. She was asked by a child in the studio audience what the significance of her calling Harry Potter the “chosen one” might be.
J.K. Rowling: Well, there– there clearly is a religious– undertone. And– it’s always been difficult to talk about that because until we reached Book Seven, views of what happens after death and so on, it would give away a lot of what was coming. So … yes, my belief and my struggling with religious belief and so on I think is quite apparent in this book.
Meredith Vieira: And what is the struggle?
J.K. Rowling: Well my struggle really is to keep believing.
(Dateline/Today, 26 July 2007)
I’d like to hear your stories about Harry Potter. Do we have a strong Harry Potter contingent among the Spectrum Blog readers? What have been your experiences with the books? Do you find them not just Christian but even Adventist-friendly with the whole idea of a hidden world with good and evil forces fighting for our souls? Does it help you to know that Rowling did intentionally create religious symbolism in the series—we’re not just reading what we want in (or do you think we’re stretching it?) How about Harry’s sacrifice at the end of Book 7? What was your take on this? Did you find yourself understand the Garden of Gethsemane in a whole new way? Will you read these books with your children?
Is anyone else homesick for Harry?
By Alexander Carpenter
I found out about Richard Rorty's death while at Camp Coast Care after having spent almost a week viewing the ninth ward in New Orleans, driving for several hours though the rest of that wrecked city, listening to brilliant, increasingly effective activists, reconstructing a home of a very poor family on the Mississippi gulf coast, hearing an Episcopal priest call the dishonest and deadly insurance companies "Satan." Radical Rorty -- that grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch -- turned truth into tool for action for me and is part of the reason that I am sweaty, dirty, and tired today.
I first read Richard Rorty while riding a Greyhound bus down the California coast. I had picked up his Philosophy and Social Hope at the Notre Dame Hammes book store and had packed it along for some summer reading. What I read then and continued to read radicalized my epistemology, theology, metaphysics, and most directly my ethics. Here's Jurgen Habermas describing one of those essays in that book.
"One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth."
I read this quote in Scott McLemee's obituary and it articulated the kind of antifoundational hoping against hope that Rorty taught me turns truth into ethical action.
"My sense of the holy," wrote Rorty, "insofar as I have one, is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law. In such a society, communication would be domination-free, class and caste would be unknown, hierarchy would be a matter of temporary pragmatic convenience, and power would be entirely at the disposal of the free agreement of a literate and well-educated electorate."
In part, that holy and always contingent hope drives my commitment to change my faith community and my country.
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