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Fills_the_Void
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| When my heart is aching (it's the right time, it's the right time)
And my soul is reaching (it's the right time, it's the right--)
Time to dive deep, to understand
That there is an Adam in every man
This was my garden and I made it die
It's asking me why
But I see tears in all things
Everything is broken
I hear them crying
Everything is broken
There was a time when the truth didn't have to be spoken
But now everything's broken
This is my confession (it's about time, it's about time)
Of the world's condition (it's about time, it's about--)
Time that you see
My glory and shame
This world fell through me
But out of the flames
Will rise a new earth
From death will come birth
A cure to the curse
But I see tears in all things
Everything is broken
I hear them crying
Everything is broken
There was a time when the truth didn't have to be spoken
But now everything's broken
I live in frustration (and it is mine, and it is mine)
Watch my garden dying (and it is mine, and it is--)
I gave it death
And I brought it hell
And there grew a cross to mark where I fell
A day will come when
Adam again
Will pay for my sins
But I see tears in all things
Everything is broken
I hear them crying
Everything is broken
There was a time when the truth didn't have to be spoken
But now everything's broken "Everything's Broken" by The OC Supertones | | |
| I got a car!  | | |
| Anyone care to talk about "At World's End"? I tell you, about half-way through that movie I could've used a bottle of rum.... I'll watch it again sometime and see how it goes- I hear it's better the second time around. So I'm in between summer classes at the moment... yay for me. Housestiing for my boss and his family- they go to Italy for two weeks, and I stay in South Carolina- and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. I've been reading Gone With the Wind for the last two days, and boy, does that ever provide some insights into southern culture. I hadn't really realized the kind of tradition and history I was getting myself into. And may I just say that, according to Miss Mitchell's description, Rhett Butler reads more like one of Louis L'Amour's "wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped" heroes than Hollywood halitosis-ridden playboy Clark Gable. I start teaching in August, and I don't mind saying I'm a little overwhelmed. Being a good teacher is not easy- it requires a great deal of wisdom and attention to detail...I just hope I'm up to the challenge. Add that to writing my thesis and prepping for the oral exam, and I'm going to have my hands pretty much overflowing. Trying to buy a car too- not so easy as one might think. Especially when you make about 25 cents a month. oi. But the GREAT news is that I'm moving to a new apartment in the beginning of August- one that is much closer to the bus stop, has a nice coffee shop within walking distance...the only thing within walking distance of my current apartment is a clump of pine trees serving and mosquito/spider central, and a graveyard. Think of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and you'll pretty much know how I feel cutting across a pre-civil war graveyard in the early, foggy hours of the morning. **Disclaimer- Southern version of a "bad word" approaching.** I had to catch a ride once from a local girl for a field trip down to Emory University in Atlanta. I told her I would meet her out on the main road and 6am. I came walking out the fog, through the graveyard and got into her car. She was sitting there, staring at me. Then she said, in her charming southern drawl: "hokay, Ahm sawry, but that wus just scairy as hay-al." (translation for people who use their vowels properly- "I'm sorry, but that was just scary as hell.) I've never heard someone cuss so cutely before. Ok kids, its bedtime. I'm old now.  | | |
| So I know that most of you really won't be interested in this, but I'd be happy to hear any feedback from anyone who can actually bear to read through this whole thing. I wrote it for a class last fall (at a secular university) and to my shock, they're still going to let me teach this year!
http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/compromise.jpg
The Mu Factor
“Truth traps are concerned with data…For the most part these data are properly handled by conventional dualistic logic and the scientific method…But there’s one trap that isn’t--the truth trap of yes-no logic.
Yes and no…this or that…one or zero.On the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up.The demonstration of this is the computer memory which stores all its knowledge in the form of binary information. It contains ones and zeros--that’s all.
Because we’re unaccustomed to it, we don’t usually see that there’s a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don’t even have a term for it, so I’ll have to use the Japanese mu. ‘Mu’ means ‘no thing.’Like ‘Quality’ it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says ‘no class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no.’ It states that the context of a question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. ‘Unask the question’ is what it says.
Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer…The dualistic mind tends to think of mu occurrences in nature as a kind of contextual cheating, or irrelevance, but mu is found throughout all scientific investigation, and nature doesn’t cheat, and nature’s answers are never irrelevant. It’s a great mistake, a kind of dishonesty, to sweep natures mu answers under the carpet. Recognition and valuation of these answers would do a lot to bring logical theory closer to experimental practice…The mu answer is an important one. It’s told the scientist that the context of his question is too small for nature’s answer and that he must enlarge the context of the question” (Pirsig 320).
Recently there has been a growing interest in discovering a classroom rhetoric that allows for the profitable inclusion of “fundamentalist” students. As a conservative Christian, graduate student, and potential instructor, I believe that my own experiences and observations are as relevant to this discussion as those of the anti-foundationalists who have begun exploring these classroom situations. Let me say at the outset that it is not my intention to assign blame to any particular group for the difficulties encountered in the classroom. I only hope to expand the understanding of instructors concerning their fundamentalist students and the nature of the belief system to which they/we so deliberately cling.
However, I think it important at the outset to distinguish between the fundamentalist and the Biblicist. I am using the term Biblicist here to refer to those who interpret the Bible in its literal, historical, grammatical context and desire to conform their lives to its doctrines. “Fundamentalist” is primarily a cultural term, designating a religious-political lunatic fringe, while “Biblicist” refers to religion sans politics. In my research the terms “fundamentalist,” “Christian,” and “believer” have all been used interchangeably. It is “Christian” that gives the most difficulty. While Biblicists are anxious to be associated with the name of Jesus Christ, the category of “Christian” has become so broad that it is tantamount to calling oneself “religious.” It does little to express the actual beliefs held by the individual.
In social terms, “fundamentalist” seems to refer to all those who believe in an objective reality and moral absolutes. These beliefs may or may not be accompanied by anything resembling biblical Christianity. As I cannot help but feel the term “fundamentalist” in some way a pejorative, and as I will be ranging beyond a political discussion, I will be using “foundationalist” as my general term. It encompasses all those who believe in a Judeo-Christian foundation for religious conviction or social values. “Believer” seems to denote a set of biblically fundamental beliefs—namely that there is a God and the Bible is true, but still does not necessarily communicate any particular theological convictions.
In an impersonal setting, the term “fundamentalist” or “foundationalist” may suffice; but within the intimate setting of the composition classroom—made more intimate through discussion—it is the first task of the instructor to determine the nature of her students’ beliefs. Biblicists are, especially at such a young age, at all levels of biblical knowledge. Some will be better prepared to explain their beliefs than others. On the other hand, the cultural fundamentalist has many opinions, but is often unprepared for a detailed argument. She clings to a few mantras for safety, but is overwhelmed by the complexity of many ethical and philosophical arguments. This leaves her in the position of feeling threatened or cornered, and results in an inability to explore ideas or texts because she simply does not understand her own convictions well enough to navigate the deep waters of socio-political literary interpretation.
The general social view of Christianity is dealt with quite thoroughly in “Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism.” While addressing the issues that make productive discourse between political fundamentalists and liberals so difficult, Sharon Crowley devotes an entire chapter to the topic of “Belief and Passionate Commitment.” (I believe it is fair to assign all of her vocabulary as pointing toward fundamentalism unless she expressly says otherwise, since this book is dedicated to the subject). After a brief translation of Christianity from religious terms and into cultural/philosophical terms, Crowley equates Christian belief with patriotism and any other ideology. She defines ideology as the following: “any system within which beliefs, symbols, and images are articulated in such a way that they assemble a more or less coherent depiction of reality and/or establish a hierarchy of values” (Crowley, 65). Crowley then outlines her beliefs as to the best explanation for the existence of these ideologies (which are essentially cosmological and epistemological in nature). Her choice of Bourdieu’s term habitus as the best description of belief serves as the perfect tool in presenting her view of Christianity as a religious stick-in-the-mud, as a culturally irrelevant system:
“Because Pierre Bourdieu focuses explicitly on the body and on practice, I adopt his notion of the habitus as a context for locating more precisely what I mean by belief. In Latin habitus signifies a stable condition or situation, but the word is also related to terms meaning ‘aptitude’ and ‘dwelling,’ both of which uses survive in English as ‘habit,’ ‘inhabit,’ and ‘habitation.’ For Bourdieu the habitus is ‘the system of structuring dispositions…which is constituted in practice’ (Logic 52). The habitus includes cultural representations such as history, memory, ideology, fantasy, myth, and lore, and it also includes culturally habituated practices, what Bourdieu refers to as ‘bodily hexis’—‘a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking’ (Logic 70). According to Bourdieu, the habitus is ‘a product of history’ (Logic 56). The habitus…provides templates for the production of buildings such as schools and churches; artifacts such as uniforms and Bibles; judicial, political, and ethical practices such as trials, elections, and giving to charity. Some habits endure over periods, while others emerge and disappear in a relatively brief period of time” (Crowley 62).
In Crowley’s opinion, the adoption of an ideology or foundation is an expression of fear and insecurity. Those who cannot adjust to difference within society and culture fall back upon a constructed foundation as a means of “belonging,” of protecting oneself from difference. She also associates the term “hegemony,” or the struggle for dominance between ideologies with these social constructs. Here are a few of her observations:
“…hegemony and ideology…create identity, to disguise or hide the flow of difference…functions to monitor the frequency and intensity of encounters with difference, seeing to it that the impact of such encounters does not threaten its hold on believers...When beliefs and ideologies are actually brought to consciousness, they become arguments. An argument is a statement or connected series of statements (what ancient rhetoricians called ‘premises’) forwarded in order to serve some interest” (Crowley 74-75).
With a few clever verbal machinations, all religious conviction is reduced to a traceable argument predicated upon on a few presuppositions. And while it may come as a surprise to some, I agree with that line of thought. I believe that a thing is only accepted as true if a person believes in the premises necessary to prove it so. I believe that this is the method by which humankind reasons his way to “truth.” However, while I know that first principles determine the outcome, I am a Christian because I believe that there are things which are True whether anyone believes in them or not, whether their first principles are acknowledged or not. The words of Cornelius Van Til (http://vantil.info/) express my belief almost perfectly:
“…we believe the facts of the universe are unaccounted for except upon the Christian-theistic basis. In other words, facts and interpretation of facts cannot be separated. It is impossible even to discuss any particular fact except in relation to some principles of interpretation. The real question about facts is, therefore, what kind of universal can give the best account of the facts. Or rather the real question is which universal can state or give meaning to any fact.
Are there, then, several universals that may possibly give meaning or statement to facts? We believe there are not. We hold that there is only one such universal, namely, the God of Christianity. Consequently, we hold that without the presupposition of the God of Christianity we cannot even interpret one fact correctly. Facts without God would be brute facts. They would have no intelligible relationship to one another. As such, they could not be known by man” (Bahnsen 38) . Note: Van Til uses “’universal’ here for any truth of a general or abstract nature… Such general truths are used to understand, organize, and interpret particular truths encountered in concrete experience… In a chance universe all particular facts would be random, have no classifiable identity, bear no predetermined order or relation, and thus be unintelligible to man’s mind” (Bahnsen 38). I believe this because I am convinced that it is ludicrous to propose that humankind, implacably committed to independence and autonomy while limited by language and perception, can be capable of anything resembling pure reason; mankind is determined to will into being a reality that most pleases itself.
Moreover, like many other Biblicists I believe that humankind’s ability to think is hopelessly limited; we are incapable of thinking without ourselves being the center of our thought. We base “truth” on the way we want things to be subjectively, and we are convinced we can one day manufacture a new cultural hegemony whether through politics or philanthropy. I do not mean to suggest that individuals are not capable of helping one another, or that we should abandon all efforts in aiding third-world countries. It is not difficult to spot the physical needs of individuals and societies. Those are apparent and immediate. It is in our first-principles as a race, that we ere. (Consider also: which civilization or political movement has been known for its compassion or mercy. The Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Roman Catholic papacy, Communism, the Third Reich, the tribes of Africa? None of these. The instinct of human compassion is a result both of being made in the image of God, and of living in a culture where the effects of a Judeo-Christian worldview remain.)
Sharon Crowley spends a great deal of time and fluent energy in demonstrating the debilitating effects of fundamentalist belief as a closed system, as an example of a “mistaken or useless belief(s) (held onto) long past (it’s) recommended expiration date” (Crowley 69). Her entire argument is based on one presupposition: that humankind can possess with enough education and the proper influences, the ability to deductively reason its way to truth. This is an especially convenient way of looking at the world when it allows us to “reason” that “depth of feeling is increasingly important as evidence of truth” (Crowley 86). This exaltation of emotion is a two-edged sword; both fundamentalists and in the context of Crowley’s book, liberals, are very emotionally attached to their positions. The difference is one of empathy, I think. While the liberals express concern for the current plight of society, fundamentalist concerns appear limited to concern for the future and eternity at the expense of the present.
I will be the first to admit that America is full of strident, uninformed, uncompassionate people associating themselves with Christianity. These make most Biblicists cringe; as with any group, there are those who want to stand up and say: “Those people (the fundamentalists) don’t speak for all of us.” Ironically, these are usually the same people who believe that the political arena is not the most appropriate or effective place for believers to expend their efforts. All that to say, this difference between fundamentalists is true in the classroom as well.
I am no stranger to the frustrations a Bible-embracing student may face in the classroom. In my opinion, sermonizing does not belong in the middle of class discussions or even in papers for that matter. Consequently, I am careful to avoid dragging theological issues into the conversation when not relevant to the discussion. If a topic is epistemological in nature, it is legitimate to bring up my beliefs as propositional truth. And I will of course state my personal belief honestly, and I hope graciously, when the question is one of personal convictions, or when it is requested. This was the case during my most memorable encounter with an instructor. Out of curiosity I was taking a course in intercultural and women’s film. The instructor was a film director who was between projects and whose dwindling bank account dictated his return in the classroom.
We watched films such as "Run Lola Run," "Smoke Signals," "Girlfight," "Do the Right Thing," and "Boys Don’t Cry." Primarily for the purposes of social critique and ethics, we wrote responses to the films. The instructor and I always enjoyed very positive and friendly interaction both on paper and during class discussions. In an area populated by military families, it was no surprise that toward the end of the course Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry provoked the strongest reactions during the class discussion. With the film students staunchly defending Peirce’s “progressive” and “bold” portrayal of homosexuality as an “honest and thought-provoking work of art,” a line was drawn between the artists and those who were taking the class almost under duress to fill a cross-cultural requirement. In the midst of a heated discussion during which words like “abomination”, “bigot”, “sin”, “intolerant” and “perversion” were tossed back and forth without much semblance of reasoned argument behind either side, the instructor called everything to a halt. He asked if anyone knew what the Bible actually says about homosexuality. It was a request for data that no one appeared able to provide.
After a moment’s hesitation I entered the discussion with the answer to his question, briefly trying to set the Bible’s discussion of homosexuality in the larger context of the Bible’s teachings concerning sin in general. Although I tried not to personalize my answer, wanting to be as anodyne as possible, it was obvious that I was more than casually familiar with the biblical text. After a moment’s silence the instructor abandoned the discussion of the film and instead turned everyone’s attention on me. He asked if I believed everything the Bible said, and I responded in the affirmative. Then, with great deliberation, he questioned me—not about theological presuppositions as I would have expected, but about several events recorded in scripture.
“Do you believe the story of Noah’s ark?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Do you believe that the world was created in six days and ruined by a piece of fruit?”
“Well, not exactly by a piece of fruit, but I do believe the biblical account of creation and the repercussions of the choices made by Adam and Eve.”
After about five minutes of questioning, the instructor leaned back against his desk, crossed his arms, shook his head, and said with a sigh of great disappointment and condescension:
“What a shame. You seemed so much more intelligent than that.”
I know that I am not alone in this type of experience. The instructor’s immediate reaction to my belief that the Bible was an authoritative text in all realms of knowledge was to assume that I was an intellectual fraud. In spite of my previously valued and seemingly intelligent opinion, I was actually naïve and simple minded. Of course, the more exposure I have to the world of ideas, the more I understand his point of view. Ideologically, Christianity certainly appears to be the perfect tautology. What concerns me for the purposes of this discussion is not the personal response that instructors have toward the Bible and the people who believe in it, but the response that they have as professors who are respected as figureheads, if not fountainheads, of knowledge. In view of my own experiences with instructors in the humanities, I am encouraged to see an interest in this topic.
The writing classroom is no longer a temple to grammar and sentence structure. It has become a place of self-discovery and definition. In her essay “It’s a Question of Faith: Discourses of Fundamentalism and Critical Pedagogy in the Writing Classroom” Amy Goodburn describes the course she chose to use as a lab of sorts, as an environment for observing the attitudes and reactions of her students. She writes: “…it fulfilled this university’s diversity requirement by asking students to read and write about nonfiction texts in terms of race, gender, and other social differences” (Goodburn 334).
These are not simple writing assignments for the demonstration of composing ability; these are formative, ontological issues. If the student is sincere in the task, she is forced make decisions about these issues and in some way, to intentionally become a person of thoughtful, substantive opinions. If students came into the classroom tabula rasa the instructor might see her task as a simpler one. This is rarely the case. Many writing instructors believe that their task centers upon the “enlightenment” of those students who enter their classrooms with religious convictions. As Goodburn points out, “when a student’s religious identities are discussed within the literature of critical pedagogy, it is usually described negatively, oftentimes as an impediment to be overcome (Goodburn 333). Priscilla Perkins, in spite of her championing the cause of fundamentalist students and her defense of their right to learn critical thought, asserts that “aspects of their conservative Christian belief were crippling both the students’ intellectual potential and the development of the community” (Perkins 588).
While these and other authors on this topic vary in their tone towards those who hold the Christian position, and while most of them express a concern for the preservation of the students’ religious identities, they are unified in one thing: they want to change the presuppositions of their students. Consider the apologist Cornelius Van Til’s description of a perspective unintentionally taken up by Nietzsche when he proclaimed the death of the Absolute:
“Our presupposition of God as the absolute, self-conscious Being, who is the source of all finite being and knowledge, makes it imperative that we distinguish the Christian (Biblicist) theistic method from all non-Christian methods…From this discussion of idealistic logic, it appears how intimately one’s theory of being and one’s theory of method are interrelated…”
“There are two mutually exclusive methodologies. The one of the natural man assumes the ultimacy of the human mind. On this basis man, making himself the ultimate reference point, virtually reduces all reality to one level and denies the counsel of God as determinative of the possible and the impossible. Instead of the plan of God, it assumes an abstract notion of possibility or probability, of being and rationality…”
“On the other hand, there is the Christian (Biblicist) position. When consistently expressed it posits God’s self existence and plan, as well as self-contained self-knowledge, as the presupposition of all created existence and knowledge. In that case, all facts show forth and thus prove the existence of God and his plan. In that case, too, all human knowledge should be self-consciously subordinated to that plan…. It is therefore of the utmost importance to point out that there is a distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian conception of the place of human reason” (Bahnsen 62-63).
Van Til clearly demonstrates the impossibility of teaching the foundationalist to both embrace “mainstream cultural literacies” (Perkins 586) and retain their religious identities. They cannot accept the legitimacy of relative thought while maintaining the very presuppositions that mark them as “believers.” To change their minds concerning modern social “commonplaces,” as Sharon Crowley terms them, is to transfer them from one methodology to another. I make this point to demonstrate the ridiculous nature of an argument that proposes teaching students to treat the Bible as an “esteemed given” (Perkins 592) without changing their religious identity. As an aside, I would challenge all instructors to gain their knowledge of fundamentalism and Christianity by reading the Bible; not by reading the essays of eighteen year-old amateur theologians or by joining internet blog groups. While there are some beneficial resources online and the some very talented young theologians, it is important to know what the Bible itself says when you are dealing with a group of people who claim to source all of their beliefs in that text. If an instructor really wanted to know what her Biblicist students believe, the book of Romans would be a good starting place.
There is much in Perkins’ essay “‘A Radical Conversion of the Mind’: Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, and the Metanoic Classroom” with which I wholeheartedly agree. However, I cannot help but notice that so many of the instructors addressing this issue fail to understand that while they are learning to treat foundationalist and Biblicist students with more political correct-ness they still refuse, through their carefully chosen language, to truly assign to Christian beliefs the “value” that they demand their fundamentalist students give to everything outside foundational beliefs. They seek to understand the foundationalist or Christian position without acknowledging it as “legitimate”. The entire discussion comes across in places as patronizing and condescending. As instructors who profess tolerance they cannot exclude or belittle any particular group of students, yet they still believe Patricia Bizzell’s statement to be true:
“We must help our students, and our fellow citizens, to engage in a rhetorical process that can collectively generate trustworthy knowledge and beliefs conducive to the common good- knowledge and beliefs to displace the repressive ideologies an unjust social order would inscribe in the skeptical void (Bizzell 671)” (Goodburn 350).
For any Biblicist reading this statement, it is now clear that academia views Biblical knowledge as untrustworthy, views believers as indifferent to the sufferings of others, and labels both foundationalist and Biblicist beliefs as oppressive and unjust. One gets the feeling that Goodburn is really saying: “adopt this methodology and we’ll be able to assimilate them all, eventually.” How can Goodburn, or any other instructor, wonder why it is so difficult for a Biblicist or a fundamentalist to blithely trust her instructor?
It is not only because of the biblicist’s basic distrust in humanity’s ability to reason its way to what Francis Schaeffer (http://www.francisschaefferfoundation.com/) called “true truth” that instructors find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Biblicists also believe that the nature of human knowledge is seductive, teaching humankind to believe what it wants to believe rather than what is consistent with God’s Reality. This circumstance reminds me of an observation made by Polly Perkins: “There is evidence to suggest that such seemingly ludicrous standoffs are more common, and perhaps even more pedagogically destructive, in secular educational settings than they are in religious classrooms. James Davidson Hunter, Neil White, and other investigators have concluded that conservative Christian students who attend public institutions tend to become more fundamentalist, more invested in ‘hyperrational’ reading practices, by the time they graduate, whereas those who attend religious colleges emerge considerably less so. Quentin Schultz argues that ‘the new fundamental schools, strongly influenced by broader movements within evangelicalism, increasingly distinguish between the non-negotiable fundamentals of the faith—a few doctrines and beliefs—and academic epistemologies’”(Perkins 594). While I believe this description of fundamental schools is an example of difference within foundationalism, I would like to add a thought to this explanation.
Foundationalist and Biblicist students enter the university as wide-eyed seventeen or eighteen year-olds, knowing much of what they believe or the principles they hold, but in most cases knowing much less of, on a defensive level, why they believe. Within a fundamental university those “whys” become a part of their education as they learn to interact with all manner of materials and ideas, as they practice discerning to what degree they agree or disagree with the ideas presented. Because they and their instructors share the same concerns within the realm of human knowledge, this is largely a non-threatening environment. It allows them the peace of mind to actually think through issues without feeling ignorant or diminished as a person for using the Bible as their guide in the thought process. They are able to learn from trusted individuals the difference between the Bible as an authoritative text and the non-authoritative nature of every other text. Once this distinction is made, the Biblicist is free to foray into all kinds of socio-political literary interpretations—not through the adoption of those social, psychological, or political views but as an exploratory and intellectual exercise.
Not all foundationalist institutions support the instruction of students in the “mainstream cultural literacies” (Perkins 586). Those who do engage in this valuable training of young Biblicists produce young people better equipped to understand and engage the world in which they live. In the public institution, a fundamentalist or Biblicist student presented with an instructor who is “committed to democratic values, to the goals of liberal education, and to the notion that knowledge is produced rather than found” (Perkins 595) will have a difficult time trusting that the instructor has not set out to brainwash them. Their reaction is usually to take up the offensive, or to emulate the turtle and just wait until it’s all over. Either way, in most cases the students fail not only to consider, but even to hear the instructors’ exhortations to new ideas, or to benefit from what the instructor may legitimately have to teach them.
Consider Priscilla Perkins chosen method:
“…it made sense to treat the Bible itself as a generative text: a culturally indispensable object that students could simultaneously use in order to evaluate non-biblical materials and phenomena, employ as a jumping-off point for explorations of their own lifeworlds, and, once they were confident that there really was room for this book in their academic work, hold at arms length in order to analyze its social power as text. Though students were used to seeing the Bible as the first and last textual authority, I began treating it as what I call an ‘esteemed given’: instead of focusing on its specifically textual power in their worlds, I tacitly approached it as though it were an explorer’s book of matches or jackknife. The Bible made the student’s academic journey’s possible—they could not leave home without it—but I did not treat it as though it were the point of their trips” (Perkins, 592).
There is no reason why foundationalist students cannot learn to apply different methods of interpretation and criticism to any text. But there is an essential difference between a biblical hermeneutic that finds meaning within the text, and schools of interpretation that lay various contexts over the text, finding meaning through the lens of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Queer or Feminist theory. Perkins’ attempt to include fundamentalists and Biblicists by teaching them to apply a biblical hermeneutic to classroom texts almost as an introduction to New Criticism would be a useful and innocuous method if it did not also serve the purpose of leveling the textual playing field.
Having students apply biblical hermeneutics to any other work and then compare it with the Bible reveals the real purpose—to teach the students subversively. Namely, the purpose is to get them to have a “radical conversion” and realize that rather than being an objectively or inspired authoritative text, the Bible has just been confined to one interpretive method. The instructor’s real hope is that the students’ eyes will be opened to the “truth” that the many possible interpretive methods available to all other texts apply to the Bible as well.
I chose the concept of Mu as the opening quote for this paper because of the statement “the context of the question is too small for the truth of the answer” (Pirsig 320). This is applicable from both perspectives. Anti-foundationalists believe that we cannot know anything outside ourselves and so from their point of view Biblicism, as an answer they must address before educating their students, is too large for the context of the writing classroom. For the Biblicist, the classroom is too small a context for their own convictions when asked to deal with texts from an a-religious perspective. What we really have in the writing classroom as a clashing of world-views, as Greg Bahnsen demonstrates:
“Everybody thinks and reasons in terms of a broad and fundamental understanding of the nature of reality, of how we know what we know, and of how we should live our lives. This philosophy is ‘presupposed’ by everything the believer (or unbeliever) says; it is the implicit background that gives meaning to the claims and inferences drawn by people. For this reason, every apologetical encounter (or argument) is ultimately a conflict of worldviews or fundamental perspectives (whether this is explicitly mentioned or not)” (Bahnsen 30).
This type of debate is profitable if it is an exercise and a means of broadening a foundationalists’ understanding of different beliefs. But in the same way that the instructor finds constant proselytizing in the classroom disruptive to the learning environment, the foundationalist or Biblicist student also finds constantly being on the defensive counter-productive. As long as the attitude of the instructor is one of trying to persuade the foundationalist student over to the anti-foundationalist side there will be little progress in developing their writing an analytical ability, but plenty of heel marks under the desks.
It seems to me that in teaching students the art of composition and of argument they are in fact learning to become rhetoricians. If instructors were faithful to their own policy of tolerance and were patient enough to win the trust of their foundationalist students, the success rate might greatly increase. An intrinsic part of achieving this success is to explain the postmodern theory of argument to the students. As Sharon Crowley notes:
“A postmodern rhetorical ethic does not associate the evaluation of arguments with the evaluation of a rhetor’s ‘self’” (Crowley 57).
Perhaps this is a case of casuistic stretching, but it seems to me that if instructors will take this postmodern commonplace and extend it within the classroom to include not just the evaluation of an argument but its creation as well, foundationalist students might more eagerly participate in the stretching of their analytical faculties. Seen as intellectual exercise, they would perhaps be more willing to experience a piece of literature from more than their own perspective.
Endnote: While some of Bahnsen’s positions on Old Testament law and its application are not widely accepted within evangelicalism, his work in Van Til’s apologetics is indispensable.
Works Cited
Bahnsen, Greg L. Van Til’s Apologetics: Readings & Analysis. Phillipsburg: P&R
Publishing, 1998.
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