Loading...In yesterday’s post I questioned whether words, sentences, ideas, teachings can simply be transferred from one context to another, if, in fact, it is precisely the context that is the determining factor for what the words mean. Here I’ll try to illustrate that “if.” My argument here is that words do not have some kind of inherent meaning but mean what they do depending on their social, historical, cultural, and literary context.
I think this can be illustrated just on the level of words themselves, in fact, of any word itself. I’ll illustrate with the example that I give to my undergraduate students at Chapel Hill. Take the word “dude.” Like all words, you might think that this word simply *means* something (it must mean *some* thing! No?), even if the meaning gets adopted in different contexts. Right?
Well, I’m not so sure it’s right. Dude in its early usage referred to a dandy – that is a city dweller who was cultured and dressed to the nines and went to the opera, and so on. That was a dude. Eventually the word came to refer to a man who was from the city, as opposed to one from the country, and who, as a result, had a city-person’s views, assumptions, lifestyle, culture, etc. And so country folk started having “dude ranches” where dudes – that is, city guys not used to country life – could come and learn how to ride horses and lasso cattle and chew straw and do whatever else country people did.
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Excellent. Context is all there is to any meaning.
What about the book of duderonomy?
What about the book of duderonomy?
If we can know what one specific word or idea meant in their original context, we might be able to transplant that word or idea to our own context; but I wonder if it’s possible transfer numerous inter-connected ideas with refined contextual meanings to our context. I’m not sure if one can truly transfer all of them in their complexity and purity to our time.
My little dog is named Dude !!! I see your point.
I’ve often maintained that our problem understanding scripture, or anything verbal, is one of vocabulary…ancient or modern or a translation.
A couple years ago I made photo cards for Spanish speaking orphans in Nicaragua. I wanted to translate “He ha His eye on the sparrow and…..” but the children never saw a sparrow so we used “parajito” (little bird). Or using father as in “Our Father” is a major negative to a young girl whose father draped and beat her.
I agree.
Pardon my typos…I’m writing on a mobile unit with a stylus…wish we had an edit function for our comments.
As I understand it, Bultmannian demythologization does alter the intended meaning of the biblical authors – be it about theology, miraculous accounts, ethics or anything else. So the first questions should be: is demythologization possible in the first place, and whether it invariably alters the original meaning, and whether demythologization is a form of hermeneutics. I think ancient ethics can be transposed onto new contexts. Consider for example the US Constitutions (laws invariably have an underlying ethical dimension) were designed in a very different historical context – for example, the Second Amendment was designed when it was necessary to bear arms to gain independence, when there were no automatic high-capacity machine guns, when there was no efficient police force, and so forth. Today, there are voices calling for the Amendment to be reinterpreted in light of contemporary realities. This does not mean the Amendment is deemed void.
Sometimes people hold the right ethical conclusions, but the justification or reason for the conclusions may be incorrect. Jesus’ apocalyptic premises were wrong, but that doesn’t make his conclusions wrong. If modern day people can find great inspiration in his conclusions, then in this sense his ethics is applicable today – even if our justification for the same conclusions must be different.
Moreover, suppose Jesus did not think the world was going to end soon, is it likely that he would not have urged people to “love your enemies”? It is possible he could have maintained the same conclusion, albeit for different reasons.
Good points! And the issue with the Constitution is especially apt!
When I was reading Obama’s “Audacity Hope” regarding his discussion on the political conservatives versus liberals reading of the Constitution, it struck me there is a parallel with the religious conservatives versus religious liberals regarding the Bible:
“And so, when we get in a tussle about abortion or flag burning, we appeal to a higher authority—the Founding Fathers and the Constitution’s ratifiers—to give us more direction. Some, like Justice Scalia, conclude that the original understanding must be followed and that if we strictly obey this rule, then democracy is respected.
Others, like Justice Breyer, don’t dispute that the original meaning of constitutional provisions matters. But they insist that sometimes the original understanding can take you only so far—that on the truly hard cases, the truly big arguments, we have to take context, history, and the practical outcomes of a decision into account. According to this view, the Founding Fathers and original ratifiers have told us how to think but are no longer around to tell us what to think. We are on our own, and have only our own reason and our judgment to rely on.
Who’s right? I’m not unsympathetic to Justice Scalia’s position; after all, in many cases the language of the Constitution is perfectly clear and can be strictly applied. We don’t have to interpret how often elections are held, for example, or how old a president must be, and whenever possible judges should hew as closely as possible to the clear meaning of the text…
So I appreciate the temptation on the part of Justice Scalia and others to assume our democracy should be treated as fixed and unwavering; the fundamentalist faith that if the original understanding of the Constitution is followed without question or deviation, and if we remain true to the rules that the Founders set forth, as they intended, then we will be rewarded and all good will flow.
Ultimately, though, I have to side with Justice Breyer’s view of the Constitution—that it is not a static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world…
Finally, anyone looking to resolve our modern constitutional dispute through strict construction has one more problem: The Founders and ratifiers themselves disagreed profoundly, vehemently, on the meaning of their masterpiece…
Some historians and legal theorists take the argument against strict construction one step further. They conclude that the Constitution itself was largely a happy accident, a document cobbled together not as the result of principle but as the result of power and passion; that we can never hope to discern the Founders’ “original intentions” since the intentions of Jefferson were never those of Hamilton, and those of Hamilton differed greatly from those of Adams; that because the “rules” of the Constitution were contingent on time and place and the ambitions of the men who drafted them, our interpretation of the rules will necessarily reflect the same contingency, the same raw competition, the same imperatives—cloaked in high-minded phrasing—of those factions that ultimately prevail.”
(Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope, 2008)
After sleeping on it, I do not think the argument has to be on one side of the other, but it might be that both sides are correct. I think some of the ethical teachings of Jesus are so clear that they do not need to be demythologized to be understood. An example would be “Feed the Hungry.” Other ethical teachings might be best understood if they are demythologized and placed in context, such as “Blessed are the poor ….” Still other teachings might be impossible to understand even if they are demythologized and placed in context. An example might be “I have come not to bring peace, but a sword…..”
I have to give some further thought to your “dude’ post and how that might change my view.
It does seem, however, that if God is about to come any minute that long-term ethics are irrelevant so why did Jesus even bother teaching them?
Principally so you’d be on the right side when He did come!