Engaged!

Well, I was right. Rebecca did not check my last post before we left, so she did not have any clue that I would propose. And, of course, I did. She did say yes and now we are excitedly planning for our wedding. I trust it will all work out, but already I see the challenges of school, work, and wedding planning--not to mention attending weddings galore (May through August). But the future is radiant with possibility and hope, and I am thankful for that.

In addition, the Hampu household welcomed a new addition: Ethan Douglas Einar Torgersen! He is a beautiful baby boy with two loving parents: Rebecca's sister Rachel and her husband Marc. They are so very happy to be parents and will do a magnificent job raising little Ethan. Oh, if you can't tell, I'm a little bit excited about being an uncle-to-be.

With all that taking place over the last few weeks the holidays have been a very exciting and joyful time. There has been much to celebrate and much to be thankful for. I will do my best to be thankful for the snow in Chicago that Rebecca and I must return to, but no promises. I hope everyone has had a blessed holiday season! Grace and Peace.

Holiday Thoughts

As the holidays approach, I've found myself with more time to reflect on the past quarter. It has been a wonderful experience thus far, although there have been many ups and downs. I eagerly await the challenges that await in the rest of the academic year, but for now, I am taking the opportunity to relax (and, yes, even get ahead!). I have been reading some for the upcoming New Testament course that will be taught by THE (once unknown to me) Margaret Mitchell. From what I've seen, heard, and witnessed, she is going to be amazing. In addition, the reading list that she has put together is tremendous and speaks to my interests directly.

In doing some of the reading and reflecting afterwards, I have come to realize that I am very interested in notions of hermeneutics. More specifically, I am interested in what we are doing when we are "meaning" and how we go about "meaning." In more general terms, I want to know how our conceptions of "meaning" affect our readings of sacred texts and the culminating implications for daily and ethical life. This is incredibly relevant to my parallel desire concerning parish ministry.

With all these thoughts swirling in my mind, I hope that these next few weeks will prove enlightening as I ponder my academic and professional direction. As great as a paycheck sounds in three years, I am feeling increasingly drawn toward further academic study and the pursuit of PhD work. The question remains, though, with whom? Who will I study with and under? My thoughts, as of now, are with William Schweiker, who, if you do not know, is an intellectual giant. I am excited to get to know and maybe study with him. But even if it isn't him, I rest assured that somebody here in this great big place will turn up with my interests in mind.

Oh, yeah, and I go on a cruise in a few days. That will be nice. And by nice I mean pretty much incredible as I've never done anything like this in my life. So, you could say, I'm stoked. To top it off, my girlfriend has a big surprise coming to her, and since she never reads my blog, I can safely make this hint here and now. If you catch this before Wednesday, December 19th, please don't make her aware of this little confession. I want it to be a surprise. But of course, I want to show her this public information afterwards. Oh her reaction will be priceless. 'Til then!

Experience Made Text: Text Made Experience

In thinking theologically, we can utilize a vast array of sources for our considerations, speculations, and reflections. In my own life, I have a remembered history: written, oral, and undisclosed; a present circumstance: immediate contact with the external world ; accumulated knowledge; a collection of read material, including sacred Scripture; and thoughts, both expressed and unrevealed. When reflecting on these very categories, I am made aware of the structures which inform my perception of the world and my operation within that world. I believe such a recognition is the starting point for conceiving of “experience” in relation to and a constituent of “text.” Moreover, theological thinking can reflexively draw on this relationship to reorient itself.

The term “experience,” used in our contemporary world in many ways, is filled with layers of meaning. The same phenomena can be observed in our use of “text.” To begin a reflection on experience as it relates to text, we must first identify what “experience” might mean, what “text” might refer to, and how these concepts are inter-related and inter-situated. Doing this in relation to the gospel accounts serves to place such reflections in a theological location within a Christian context. And it is out of this situation that we can self-consciously comment on the happenings of our world.

“Experience” is a term which can be considered an interaction with the world for an individual or group. What makes this term all the more interesting for theological reflection is integrating the notions of time and commonality. Many questions are generated from the conception of time and experience, and the commonality of experience between individuals and groups. If experience has a temporal dimension, what are its limits? Is experience instantaneous or prolonged? Can individuals share similar experience, the same experience, or no experience at all? Can groups do likewise or also not at all? How do the transmitted experiences of others affect or inform my experience? How does my experience affect or inform my group's experience?

Turning to the term “text” makes things more complicated as the term itself appears fraught with ambiguity. Is a “text” a collection of words? Does it refer simply to written or printed signs which suggest something about the world? Does a “text” constitute the world with its signs? Are “texts” only visual? Can music, theater, cinema, conversations, lectures, or silence be “texts”? What, then, is the relationship between a “text” and the world; between a “text” and “experience.”

All of these questions are relevant for theological discourse as it considers human relationship with God, human inter-relationship, God's relationship with the natural world, and human relationship with the natural world. In theological terms, then, the questions become: how do we and how should we interact with the natural world, each other, and God? And, how do these interactions affect our very conceptions of these realities? I believe theological reflection upon the categories of experience and text, especially as they contribute to theological thinking itself, can offer important self-conscious opportunities for the assessment of personal beliefs and practices; and social, cultural and religious happenings.

A particular text, especially one considered “scripture” or writings that should be set apart, can provide a concrete opportunity to see how we relate ourselves to the world and how we conceive of the world relating itself to us. Thus, I will consider the canonical gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth to begin an inquiry into “experience” and “text” as it relates to a particular theological perspective: the Christian testimony of Jesus as Christ. Situating myself with a theological text for reflection will, I believe, allow for the reflexive theological thought which I find to be necessary for self-conscious assessment of the world and action within it.

Scriptural Text and Experience

Many religions have special, sacred texts. These are most often written words collected, preserved, and revisited. These texts are most always central, providing a rich source of symbols and formulas for religious practice and thought. From a Jewish point of view, Michael Fishbane writes that “the Bible is a religious teaching, recording moments of meeting between God and man...”1 This understanding of the Bible as scripture can be applied to the Christian canon and the event of Jesus. Thus, this event, presented in the Christian scriptures, is a special moment for religious teaching; a moment filled with the meeting of God and humanity. Dr. Fishbane continues with an important insight: “The received text of Scripture is, as Plato would say, the rescued speech of these meetings.”2

The “rescued speech” is, then, some kind of recording. A way of transmitting the moment of meeting between God and humanity to a new audience, one not initially present. What is being transmitted, it appears, is some kind of experience: a moment in time when humans encounter God in some capacity. This is theologically powerful. It is an engagement with a defining experience in the life of a community which has relation to that experience. For Christians who consider the event of Jesus, their identity is in some way grounded by the experience of the people who presented portions of his life, death, and resurrection in gospel accounts.

But what is the nature of that experience? What is the nature of recalling the experience of Jesus on earth? What is held within the speech that the gospel accounts rescue? Dr. Clark W. Gilpin, in his book A Preface to Theology, writes “the category experience connotes many things. It can refer to what everybody knows or what is intensely private and inaccessible to the public gaze. It may underscore the immediacy of the present by calling attention to a 'defining moment' in the life of a group, or it may instead call to mind the seasoned professional whose 'experience' qualifies her for the job.”3

Text as scripture, as a source of special symbols contributing to the identity of a religious community, seems to presuppose an accessibility. There is something about scripture which members of a community can absorb or ingest. The absorption or ingestion may require guidance and teaching, a hermeneutic peculiar to a particular community; but there is nevertheless a degree of accessibility. Thus, it would seem, the experience recalled by the rescuing speech contains some element which can be commonly shared and understood, especially over time. This is an element which makes theological symbols, as they are presented in scripture, powerful.

And yet, there is something more happening with scripture. There is something which is not accessible in its rescued speech. In some sense, the commonality of experience we presuppose in communication breaks down when we consider the particularity of humanity in the world: the individual nature of human perception located in a layered background of cultural, social, and historical meaning. The meeting of God and humanity in its historical location that scripture attempts to rescue seems, at least partially, inaccessible. There is a tension within scripture: a rescuing and a losing. But it is here that something entirely new emerges.

Experience Made Text

In the act of rendering experience into words, sentences, and scripture “each 'rescued' event is expressed by a dense blend of a particular historical moment and inherited or spontaneous style.”4 Most importantly, there is an inseparable connection between this style—or form—and the historical moment—or content. As a result, “every textual formulation of an event constructs a unique literary reality; to imagine a different formulation of it would be to construct a different reality.”5 The experience is made into text. The process involved transforms the brute content of experience into a literary reality. There is something of this logic inherent in the history of the term “text”:

"An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns -- but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice, their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the written page a textus, which means cloth."6

In this line of reasoning, the portrayal of Jesus in the gospels is a new reality woven together from experiences of his followers. Whether the authors had direct experience of Jesus' life, simply collected oral accounts and disparate written testimonies, or some combination of these; the experience which gave rise to the construction of the text has been transformed by the text into a new literary reality. This is an emergent quality inherent in conceptualizing and expressing our interaction with the world. Sacred scripture as text, then, presents its religious communities with a new reality.

Text Made Experience

This new reality is a world; a world within the text. As such, it can be “experienced.” Here we see one aspect of the power of text, and, thus, one aspect of the power of scripture. Scriptural texts present their readers with an opportunity for a new experience. This experience takes place within a literary world of characters, values, events, behaviors, and objects which are imbued with peculiar meanings. This is a world which a community can enter into, whether in separate locations over time or when assembled together. The community seems to share something of the experience which gave rise to the literary world, but this is layered with the new reality presented in the text itself.

Thus, scripture comes alive through this new experience. Scripture as text not only presents an interpretation of the world, but presents itself for interpretation. Dr. Fishbane writes “As a literary artifact, the words of the Bible require an interpreter for renewed life... For it is the reader who performs the text in his mind, lingers in its silences and suggestions, and so serves as its midwife and voice.”7 The text is voiced by its reader, in mind and out loud, and is experienced by its reader. There is, as a result, a layering of experience mediated by layers of interpretation.

In addition, the emergent literary reality of the text, which presents itself to be newly experienced, in some sense, has a constancy. This constancy is the solidification of the content in a particular formulation: The text as such. Yet, there is the revisitation of the text by the reader. In this process of revisitation, the text is imbued with new life through the accumulation of a broader network of meanings. These are produced in the time between readings with the addition of outside interactions with the world. Thus, the life of Jesus presented in the gospel accounts are living sources for experience, capable of new life in each new reading; rediscovered, reconsidered, and reapplied. In my own autobiographical theological reflections, I noted that “My spiritual story is not a closed remnant of the past. It is a living rough draft: edited in each moment; re-layered by each new experience; reshaped by new people, old friends, and anonymous strangers; re-reflected, re-remembered, and re-lived; endlessly rewritten, reworked, and rediscovered.”8 It is this recognition of newness in a text which brings it to life.

However, sacred scriptures are not often changed, at least to the degree that autobiographical reflections are rewritten and reconfigured over a life time. Thus, when only this material constancy is considered there is a danger in thinking that scripture is “dead,” unable to be read again without finding something new. Yet, when we recognize that just as experience is transformed by the literary world where it is expressed, so too the literary world is re-entered by its reader with the accumulation of meanings gained from the compilation of experiences over time. Consequently, scripture is made alive by the passing time. Although human life seems to move endlessly toward death, texts have the peculiar potential to live into the future with abundant life.

Through this awareness, theology can reflexively consider its own constructiveness by noting the interactive production between text and experience which moves from experience to text, text to experience, and experience to new experience. Theology, as it is grounded in the symbolic universe of sacred texts, can, in a way, reorient itself by reapproaching a central text and rearticulating a new cultural, social, or religious direction through the reinterpretation and reuse of the sacred text. The self-awareness necessary for this conscious reorientation takes place within the reflective practice of encountering “text” and “experience.”

Within the re-experience of scripture the reinterpretation of the gospel accounts of Jesus as Christ occur, yet the theologian must both recognize that this is happening and consider the implications of this constructive process. Foreseeing the consequences of these theological reformulations of Jesus as Christ is an integral component to theological responsibility. And through this scripture not only lives, but, in a way, gives new life to a culture, society, and religious community. This, then, is yet another powerful result of scripture as text. For where there is text, there is experience, where there is experience there is interpretation, and where there is self-recognized interpretation, there is the possibility for new interpretations to carry out transformation.
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1Michael Fishbane. Text and Texture: A literary reading of selected texts. (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1998), xi.
2Fishbane, xi
3Clark Gilpin. A Preface to Theology. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 173.
4Fishbane, xi.
5Fishbane, xi.
6Robert Bringhurst. The Elements of Typographical Style. (Vancouver: Hartley and Marks Publishers, 2002). Quoted in Doug Harper. “Text.” Online Etymology Dictionary. November 2001. (6 December 2007).
7Fishbane, xi – xii.
8This quotation was taken from an autobiographical reflection presented in written and oral form to the 1st year Master of Divinity Colloquium at the University of Chicago, September 2007.