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    • #2038
      Forgiving Victim
      Participant

      2.2 Prophecy and interpretation

      This module culminates in an insight about the connection between our interpretative key and prophecy.

      Receiving a new story

      Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.

      Reading the mysteries backwards

      Share a favorite mystery or detective story. Describe what effect learning “who done it” at the end had on how you viewed certain characters or events from earlier in the story.

      Food for thought

      • Have you read, or do you know someone who reads, Scripture from a Marcionite perspective?
        What question does a Marcionite reading attempt to answer?

        • Why does James say a Marcionite reading of Scriptures is a mistake?
      • Have you read, or do you know someone who reads, Scripture from a fundamentalist perspective?
        What question does a fundamentalist reading attempt to answer?

        • Why does James say a fundamentalist reading of Scriptures is a mistake?
      • James explains that reading the texts through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim is a particular option for interpretation.
        • What difference does this option make to how we interpret Scriptures?
        • What unheard voices might emerge using this option?

      Wrap-up question

      How does reading Scripture as progressive revelation help us discover new and more true things about God and ourselves?

    • #5280
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I have definitely been able to see the dynamics presented in the story of Achan in my own life experience – in my family growing up choosing scapegoats as needed between siblings; in my former religious community this was done constantly by the superior and it is freeing to understand that this is something humans do universally and that we do NOT have to attribute the source of our monstrous behaviors to God because if we did then God would not be safe. I also recognize that I have played the game zealously myself to give myself a boost many times. I also have been reflecting on James’ talk at a retreat after 9/11 and this is a great example of how quickly we allow ourselves to be sucked in as a nation given the right conditions and I want to be on my guard because it is a tremendous temptation and so destructive.

    • #5286
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I’ve not read a lot of detective stories or mysteries and can’t recall one now so I am going to skip this for now and hopefully come back to it.

    • #5293
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      The Marcionite reading attempts to answer the question of why there are so many awful stories in the Old Testament by concluding there must be another god other than the God of Jesus. James considers this a mistake because it fails to allow for progressive revelation and to see that in reality even the very ugly stories like the stoning of Achan are a great advance over mythology in the light of the Forgiving Victim whom they prophetically glimpse.
      I have been exposed to various people who use a Fundamentalist viewpoint to read Scripture. They want to answer the question how can God be the same at the beginning, middle, end of Scripture.Unfortunately demanding this requires rigorous mental gymnastics to explain the nastiness of God’s behavior, denies at times what is written and leads to a twisted view of atonement. For me it instills fear and paralysis.
      If we can take the option of reading the text through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim, in one “Building Up to Now” Testament and interpretative key then many things begin to make sense and reading Scripture becomes freer and richer. The voice of the victims finally emerges.

    • #5298
      Sheelah
      Moderator

      You are absolutely right, Maginel, revelation is a constant and ongoing process away from the capricious and wrathful gods of the ancient world. The Forgiving Victim as interpretative key permits us to see the violence in the Scriptures as man’s violence projected onto the one true God who is over and above all human action and who is, at the same time, both God and Victim.

    • #5300
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I am really enjoying the horizons opened up by reading the Scriptures as progressive revelation since I have struggled more and more over the years to not approach this Book with fear after being instructed by others who treat it so high-handedly and rigidly with the ensuing mental gymnastics. We begin to hear more true things as we realize that it says nothing without choosing an interpretative key; as we discover that the various writers were themselves wrestling and playing with new and varied interpretations of Israel’s history, groping to make sense out of the story and find out where God was acting within so many ever-shifting cultural limitations. It will take me a long time yet to rid myself of filters and play around but a good starting place is looking for the victims that prepare the way…in their silence and exploring what lies beneath the stories of violence supposedly “sanctioned” by God as the stories are told.

    • #5306
      Sheelah
      Moderator

      Yes, it truly is something of a shock to the system to learn how we have for so long missed the point! It is so good that you are enjoying new horizons Maginel, as it really is liberating, isn’t it?

    • #5906
      Charles Hill
      Participant

      Reading the Bible as a progressive revelation makes sense to me. Most of the biggest changes in my life have come through steps, which if I had missed, might have missed the whole point. So I understand and can begin to relax a bit about what I may not fully comprehend yet.

      It was a big step for me to watch the prophecy video and then while thinking about it, realizing that it is not about me, as per the Emmaus story. I am not the host here, Jesus is. I am not the victim, I am the one with a rock in one hand and a hammer in the other.

      • #5911
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        That is very insightful Charles, and yes, it is daunting to realise that we are doing this. But at the same time this knowledge frees us, as James teaches, from the idea that the Scriptures are all about ‘being good’. I believe that this progressive revelation is our life’s journey in a certain sense and that we are all witnesses to the Gospel working in history.

    • #6103
      Rich Paxson
      Participant

      My brother John told me recently that Mike, a friend of ours from high school days, self-published a book that’s available at Amazon. I bought and am reading Mike’s book: Outfrom: The Northland Canoeist. I had a tough time getting through all the adjectives filling the first thirty or so pages, but as the forest of plot and character development began appearing, I got hooked.

      At some point I began wondering whether Mike’s book might not offer a ‘hermeneutical key’ for re-interpreting my relationship with my brother. This may prove to be the case; but most likely not. Regardless of that, the connection I find here with The Forgiving Victim is re-interpretation. For the first time in many years I feel not only open to reinterpreting our relationship, but also eager to get on with meeting my brother anew. I relax into this forgiveness, as I am given new ways of seeing and understanding a previously frozen reality.

      • #6111
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        Yes Rich, James makes us aware of how we must approach scriptural tests as a progressive revelation. No doubt in reading this book it possibly awakened in you what James had been saying, so in this sense if could indeed be a ‘hermeneutical key’, in that it made you reflect on things that perhaps you would not previously have done.

    • #6104
      Rich Paxson
      Participant

      I’ve been watching Foyle’s War on Netflix. Although the series is a little over ten years old, I’m viewing it for the first time; and thoroughly enjoying each episode. The last episode I watched was “A War of Nerves,” which reflects several coincident subplots. I’ll write about just one, which resulted not in a “who done it,” but in a “why he done it” revelation.

      Asst. Commissioner Rose shows up in Detective Foyle’s office early in the show, ordering Foyle to drop everything to work on a new investigation personally ordered by Rose. Foyle must investigate the activities of Raymond Carter and Lucinda Sheridan, ostensibly because they were publicly avowed Communists in wartime England. It turns out though that Lucinda Sheridan is Rose’s daughter, who had changed her name, and was no longer speaking with her father, presumably for political reasons. Foyle resolves Rose’s indiscretion through sharing the facts of his investigation with Rose, who owns up to his motives and withdraws his illicit orders.

      I felt sorry for Rose when his duplicity was uncovered. Rose made a wrong turn at the intersection of personal angst and official duty; and Foyle gave him the opportunity to retrace his steps. As I write this, I recognize similarities between Foyle’s solution, which I think of as ‘pragmatic equity,’ and an earlier one in the show involving another character.

      Pragmatic equity was something I tried to keep in mind as a tax auditor. I remember a time when a red-faced, by-the-book reviewer confronted me about my resolution of a particular case. How could you have let this man off like that, he asked. I reflected his energized concerns back to him, and then explained some specifics I had not written in my report; and this time my reviewer relented.

      Sometimes pragmatic equity is warranted, but judgement calls like this can be mine fields. They require the sound reasoning and deft handling portrayed so expertly by Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle.

      [ I’m no genius at remembering dates and character names, but require the resources of a website like this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0582092/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt ]

      • #6112
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        You have chosen an excellent example here Rich of a man who is seemingly detached from the mimetic tensions that surround him. Foyle, so expertly and subtly played by Michael Kitchen, has extraordinary instinct about human nature but also great compassion. He resists the temptation to be drawn into the paranoia concerning suspected communists, who would have been seen as fifth columnists at that time in the war, as well as the neurotic behaviour of Ass Commissioner Rose. In fact he resists all of the excesses of that time by steering a middle course that usually results in justice without revenge. And all this without any obsequious attitude to authority. The character of Foyle would make a very interesting study for students of Girard’s mimetic theory.

    • #6105
      Rich Paxson
      Participant

      I forget to include the ‘assignment’ for my comments above:

      “This module culminates in an insight about the connection between our interpretative key and prophecy.

      “To begin to get a sense of that connection, use the Discussion Forum for this module to share a favorite mystery or detective story. Describe what effect learning “who done it” at the end had on how you viewed certain characters or events from earlier in the story.”

      • #6113
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        You have done that extremely well!

    • #6107
      Rich Paxson
      Participant

      James explains that reading the texts through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim is a particular option for interpretation. What difference does this option make to how we interpret Scriptures? What unheard voices might emerge using this option?

      For me, these discussion questions are best answered through writing about World War II television drama: Foyle’s War. Because I’m seeing elements of Forgiving Victim interpretation played out in each episode, I see this show as a jumping off point for deeper understanding as I apply Forgiving Victim interpretation to Holy Scripture.

      Foyle’s War shows how the violent struggle for economic supremacy between Nazi Germany and The Allies plays out in the lives of ordinary people in and around Hastings, England. Deputy Chief Superintendent Foyle, who worked as a Hastings area chief police detective, resigned in the episode (http://bit.ly/1QhYmmr) I watched earlier this week; but only after bluntly sharing his reasons in a face to face encounter with the new Assistant Commissioner:

      “… a man guilty of coercion and sabotage can’t be touched while two boys guilty of nothing more than slipping off the rails because of a lack of parental control will get several years with hard labor. Assistant Commissioners doing their very best to undermine me in front of my staff. Yep. I’d say I’ve had enough.”

      One theme in this episode considered a small boy traumatized into muteness by the horror of the bombing of his school. Only later on in the show, after a random explosion close to him, could he relive the horror of the original school bombing, and begin speaking again.

      Foyle’s War struggles to reveal unheard victims of violent human conflict just as did the Biblical redactors, and New Testament writers. Each episode interprets wartime England through the eyes and the words of victims of random and intentional violence. The show strips away cultural veneers of patriotic Marcionism; and the moral gymnastics of faux fundamentalism. A contemporary allegory of the unheard voice, this drama continually brings unheard voices onto its stage to connect real consequences with unexamined intentions.

      • #6114
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        I am entirely in agreement with you Rich as I said above.

    • #6109
      Rich Paxson
      Participant

      “How does reading Scripture as progressive revelation help us discover new and more true things about God and ourselves?”

      Towards the end of Essay One James wrote:

      “There has only really been teaching when there has been learning. The anthropological correlate to teaching is learning. The anthropological correlate to revelation is discovery.”

      The concept of progressive revelation gives me the space to grope, to discover, to learn the dimensions of the concavity of God’s presence in my life. The beginning point is not that of a good person seeking moral justification. No. The truth is I am essentially flawed, and yet a person who is free to accept God’s loving forgiveness.

      A self I have discovered, starting with Forgiving Victim resources, originates not within my head, but is given to me through negotiating with the “social other.” At first I could not integrate this concept into my practice of living. Then I encountered Matthew Crawford writing about “skilled practices” in his new book: ‘The World Beyond Your Head’ [http://bit.ly/1zPIzqR] :

      “Skilled practices serve as an anchor to the world beyond one’s head – a point of triangulation with objects and other people who have a reality of their own. The most surprising thing to emerge in this inquiry (for me, at least) is that through such triangulation we may achieve something like “individuality.” For it is an an achievement, especially in a mass society that speaks an idiom of individualism and thereby obscures the genuine article.”

      Reading scripture as progressive revelation where Jesus is our interpretive principle is a skilled practice. Honing analytical skills for reading progressive revelation triangulates a way forward as I continue to grope within the concavity that is God’s breaking into our human centric world. St. Paul in Acts 17:26-28 told the Athenians about this:

      “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.”
      [http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=298259403]

      • #6115
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        “There has only really been teaching when there has been learning. The anthropological correlate to teaching is learning. The anthropological correlate to revelation is discovery.”

        What James has to say here is extremely profound, and your reaction to it is so true. And I think it is a struggle for us all, where we have to truly link out heads to our hearts, which we have not really been encouraged to do over such a long time. WE have been taught to “keep the rules” and in so doing we will become “good”. This is why the inner resource of contemplation is such a vital tool.

        However I am intrigued by your quotation “or it is an an achievement, especially in a mass society that speaks an idiom of individualism and thereby obscures the genuine article.” How do you see individualism? What exactly is the genuine article?

        • #6117
          Rich Paxson
          Participant

          Matthew Crawford uses “individualism” and “individuality” in the quote above, which comes from the Preface. I think of Individual-ism in terms of a person’s rights, liberties and freedoms in relation to the power of the state. So, while this term is about human persons, it does not address the inner development of human individuality.

          Crawford begins the book by describing a world where humans increasingly lack the desire or ability to become present to themselves and to others due to our distracting, overly commercialized world encouraging us to flit quickly from one new thing to the next. Crawford wrote an entire chapter on Individuality describing the “genuine article” as an achievement “… a point of triangulation with objects and other people who have a reality of their own.”

          Triangulation is the process by which land surveyors use a third point’s relationship to two other known locations to determine the third point’s exact position on the earth’s surface. Perhaps we may best discover the place of our spiritual individuality upon the concavity of God’s presence through skillfully triangulating ‘with objects and other people who have a spiritual reality of their own.’

          • #6119
            Sheelah
            Moderator

            Interesting Rich, I wonder if Crawford means the ‘self? A recent book entitled “Inventing the Individual’ tells us that the individual is a ‘new social role which arose and gradually replaced the claims of family, tribe and caste as the basis of social organisation’. How does Crawford’s analysis mesh with the Girardian concept of the ‘interdividual’?

            • #6121
              Rich Paxson
              Participant

              Sheelah, I don’t know enough about the details of either Crawford’s or Girard’s analyses to respond objectively to your question. But intuitively, I’m thinking that Girard analyzes of ‘interdividual’ processes through an objective lens, whereas Crawford looks inside individuals, at interior states and reasons for particular responses to external stimuli. I don’t think the two concepts would necessarily fight with each other. More likely, I think they dovetail. Jung used concepts of ‘individuation’ and the self, which also may dovetail with Girard and Crawford.

              • #6123
                Sheelah
                Moderator

                I don’t know Cawford’s thinking, but I am sure that Jung’s individuation is something quite apart from the interdividual in the sense of mimetic theory. Having said that Rich, I would prefer to leave it at that, as this is really outside of our remit in the discussion on this Forum about ‘Jesus the Forgiving Victim’.

    • #47177
      andrew
      Member

      Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
      Yesterday, I heard someone sharing one of those tell-all accounts of oneself, which certain evangelicals like to call ‘testimonies’. She lamented a former time in her life in which she “didn’t know who she was.” She recalls always wanting to be like other people, and never being satisfied. She summed up this sentiment by declaring with exasperation that at that time she “didn’t even have her own favorite color!” What she meant by that line was that she would let other people’s preferences guide hers in every way—even the little ways. It struck me as a forceful and direct acknowledgment of human mimesis.

      Unfortunately, she seems to believe that she has now been freed from this dependence on others. While she accurately perceived the mimetic nature of her past self, she appears to persist in blindness to the fact that people (simply because we are people) can never ‘free’ ourselves from mimesis. There is little doubt in my mind that she was probably correct to decry some of her past behavior, and she is unquestionably correct to identify mimesis (though she didn’t use this word) as an explanation for her behavior. Yet, I fear, she is woefully misguided to believe that, when she ‘met’ Jesus, she effectively jettisoned mimesis from her manner of being.

    • #47178
      Sheelah
      Moderator

      Andrew, I’ve frequently observed that the concept that we desire according to the desire of another seems to be immediately obvious to some people but quite a struggle for others. The idea of the autonomous self really does die hard. Would I be correct in thinking that this is what you are observing here? Can you think of any examples or illustrations of mimetic desiring that would help the person of whom you are speaking?

    • #47187
      andrew
      Member

      Yes, Sheelah, I believe you were correct to describe what I observed as an instantiation of how “The idea of the autonomous self really does die hard.” I was reviewing the first video of module one yesterday. In the introductory bit, before the lessons begin, James says, “What I hope you are going to get from this course is quite how far removed Christianity really is from being all about how you should behave yourself—how what it is really all about is how much you are loved.”

      I run in circles where the height, depth and breadth of God’s love is proclaimed. However, it is most often proclaimed in such a way that the ‘me’ in ‘God loves me’ somehow precedes God’s loving. There is an unsightly twist in this messaging whereby the greatness of God’s love is demonstrated primarily in relief against a list of contemptible attributes belonging to those God loves in spite of themselves. It presupposes that we must know an existence as sinful people before we can adequately appreciate God’s love. How do I communicate that God doesn’t need great sin to frame the greatness of divine love? I try to say, “God doesn’t need us to be sinful! God loves us just how Fred Rogers said he liked his audiences—just the way you are.” But my audience hears a man who can’t come to grips with his own sinfulness and, thereby, can’t see just how much God loves him.

      It’s comical really. Two sides berating the other with the same accusation: “You don’t understand how much God loves you!” –“No, it’s you who doesn’t understand how much God loves you.” Rivals insisting on explaining the love of God instead of practicing it.

      No, Sheelah, I’ve yet to come up with any effective examples for illustrating how desire is essentially mimetic. Ironically, I’ve seen myself become an example of mimetic desire in my failed attempts to illustrate mimetic desire. But the miserable example I’ve made of myself on these occasions is hardly illustrative to those who don’t already know what to look for.

      • #47189
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        Andrew, as I read your post, I wonder if you have thought to see all this as relational, not as an abstract concept. James is teaching an anthropology of Christianity, that is, how we relate to one another. Can you think of all the people in your family circle, the workplace and your social life and how you relative to them? Do you ever think that you would like to have x’s singing voice, or career, or social acumen, or intellect, or goodness, or spirituality or whatever, etc.etc.etc? Now, it is important to remember that so many of our desires are totally harmless, until they result in rivalry which can lead to conflict. Have you ever felt rivalry or resentment towards another? Do you ever feel dislike towards another or are irritated by someone’s behaviour or opinions and have not asked yourself why this person is pushing your buttons? All of this is the intricate web of desire that we live in, and of which we are mostly unaware. It is also extremely difficult to allow ourselves to be loved. But God is not judgemental, we have been taught of an angry, judgemental God, we it is we who are angry and judgemental.

        Then there is positive mimesis, to desire or imitate good qualities of someone, as in Imitatio Christi, imitate Christ or the good. We really find God in the other. Does all this make sense?

    • #47188
      andrew
      Member

      I’d like to publicly thank whoever had the foresight to sell these online subscriptions to the Forgiving Victim series in 2-year stints. It has been a very pleasant experience to think on a question for months, get nowhere with it, and know all the while there is still a supervised forum awaiting my return. Thank you, Sheelah, for your questions. The person I wrote about last September was a guest speaker who has not yet returned to our church. Still, I knew it would be entirely unsatisfactory if I responded to your “Can you think of any examples or illustrations of mimetic desiring that would help the person of whom you are speaking?” with a “Well, I doubt I’ll ever see her again anyway, so what’s it matter?” It does matter. If I’m not a part of helping others see, I’m not a part of people seeing—and that would make me blind, wouldn’t it? I’ll continue to carry your question with me. I’ve begun to seriously doubt that I’ll ever think up a good example of mimetic desiring, but I do still hope to recognize the good examples when they meet me.

      • #47190
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        I think the best way of helping others to see, is to BE what you believe. Francis of Assisi was reputed to have said “preach the gospel, use words if you have to”. If he didn’t say it, he should have !!

        So good to hear from you again Andrew.

    • #47191
      andrew
      Member

      Yes, it has occurred to me that it is my neighbors and loved ones who have provided me with my desires, both profound and superficial. But I haven’t ever tried to catalogue precisely which desires come from who.

      Yes, I’ve known resentment all too well on too many occasions. It occurred to me one night how much I hated a certain type of person. I began writing all the reasons I couldn’t stand any of the people I’d ever met from this particular group (i.e. westerners who live in non-western countries). I had meant for my indictments of others to be a self-justification (as is I were the one western sojourner who actually knew how to respectfully inhabit a foreign culture), but once my indictments were written down … I saw that I couldn’t have described myself better. For a few years I could only make sense of this self-encounter in the other by thinking, “well, I guess I’m just one of those people who hates himself.” But after being introduced to Girard’s analysis of scandal, I began to see more than hatred. I had believed in a distinction that wasn’t there in order to give myself prestige. I had become a ex-patriot who sought only to situate himself amongst an array of other ex-patriots, and who never actually gave his full attention to the local population. This had been, of course, at the very top of my list of things I hated about ex-pats. The unmitigated forces I poured into proving I was not like the other western sojourners I met, ended up turning me into the living breathing reality of what I had perceived those others to be–even as I made-believe that I myself was vastly superior. I couldn’t stop myself from becoming more and more isolated, as I nurtured my resentment of those who isolate themselves from their neighbors while claiming to be exploring the world.

      The way out of the snare, I suppose, would have been to sincerely endeavor to help those other travelers I despised to appreciate the culture we were living in. Then maybe I would have been open to receiving their help in doing the same.

      This was all several years ago, I’m not at all sure what I may be ensnared in now.

    • #47192
      Sheelah
      Moderator

      Well, Andrew we all have our demons of one sort or another and we all have to learn to forgive ourselves and allow ourselves to be loved. We need more heart knowledge and less head knowledge.

      I have always found the following advice from the wonderful John Main and Dorothy Day to come from a deep well of experience, humility and compassion, which is so much of what Christianity is about, is it not? Do let me know what you think.

      “…Our challenge as Christians is not to try to convert people around us to our way of belief but to love them, to be ourselves living incarnations of what we believe, to live what we believe and to love what we believe.”

      ? John Main author of “Word into Silence”

      “The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.”

      Dorothy Day

    • #47193
      andrew
      Member

      Thank you for sharing these quotes, Sheelah. I found them to be quite fertile beginnings for meditation. I look forward to pausing to reread them in the future. These are my thoughts thus far. It’ll help if I enumerate the clauses of the first passage.

      (1) Our challenge as Christians is not to try to convert people around us to our way of belief (2) but to love them, (3) to be ourselves living incarnations of what we believe, (4) to live what we believe and (5) to love what we believe.”

      I was initially puzzled by the conclusion of Main’s quote (5). What would it mean “to love what I believe”? I know a few smug ideologues—but, of course, that can’t be what was meant here. I worked backward through the quote trying to make sense of this line; for I had thought I was tacking and in complete agreement until I hit up against this bit at the end.

      The second to last line (“to live what we believe”) seems to me to be little more than a rephrasing of the line immediately preceding it (“to be ourselves living incarnations of what we believe”). So, I collapsed (3) and (4) together. However (3/4) seems to say something different than (5). So how were they to be related? I read back further still and saw that (2) “to love them [i.e. those around us]” seemed to be that which is defined by the conjunction of (3/4) and (5). In other words, to love those around us is to simultaneously become what we believe and love what we believe.

      Now, if we become a something and love that same something, then we love ourselves. Have I gone off the rails, or is this not implied by what Main is saying? We will love ourselves when we succeed in meeting the Christian challenge to love those around us and forgo any desire that we may have to convince them of stuff.

      If it is OK to read the passage this way, then it appears to affirm a (new-to-me) approach for interpreting “love your neighbor as yourself.” In order to love another, the lover must love the one whom she herself becomes in the loving of the other. In the same vein, in order to love herself, the lover must love the love she has for someone other than herself. When we love, it is not actually other selves that we are loving. Rather, when we love, we love love itself—whether this loved love be our own act of loving or the act of some other’s loving. And if God is love, then the love of love is the love of God. So, we love love first, then we can love others and ourselves by loving the love in ourselves and others. Is this not congruent with Jesus’ identification of the greatest commandment and what he says comes right after? I think so, but maybe this is a vain analysis of something that is only understood in performance.

      As for Day’s quote, I initially had a critical reaction. It seemed that she was operating within the autonomous-self paradigm. At first, I read the “we must only work on ourselves” to mean “we each-as-an-individual must only work on our respective selves—each to each’s own.” But after very few minutes, I saw that it was my own reading that imposed this individuated-self interpretation upon Day’s words. The text could be read just as well through the lens of interdividuated selves. The ‘we’ can be understood as a group growing in grace as they love one another. This group works to improve the love they all share—while loving this love they share even as they are working on it.

      What, then, does this make of the “people” referred to in the last sentence? I think that the “we” refers to all of those whom we love and with whom we jointly endeavor to improve our love. Accordingly, I think that, the “people” Day refers to at the end (i.e. those about whom we can do nothing other than love) are those who don’t join in our endeavor to improve the love we share. These are our enemies; they are working against what we are working for. Yet, as Jesus instructed, it is best to love our enemies. Our friend are those we both love and with whom we work in tandem on improving our expressions of love. Our enemies are those we can only love, because they won’t work with us on improving any expressions of shared love.

      In a lecture delivered to the Seminary of the Southwest in September of 2017, James makes the point that loving our enemies should not be construed as pretending our enemies aren’t really working against us. Our enemies are, by definition, truly working against us, but we don’t have to respond in kind. We don’t have to work against them. There is a transcendent model we can follow, whereby we are guided toward working for the benefit of all—ourselves and other people. Jesus didn’t say, “He who is not with me, I am against.” He only said, “He who is not with me is against me.” There may be people who are against us, when we are for the resurrected Lord. However, we cannot be for the resurrected Lord if we are against anyone.

    • #47194
      andrew
      Member

      Share a favorite mystery or detective story. Describe what effect learning “who done it” at the end had on how you viewed certain characters or events from earlier in the story.
      The first season of the British television series “Broadchurch” is perhaps the most gripping detective story I have ever been told. It isn’t about a crafty killer who attempts to outfox the authorities and get away with it. In fact, the murderer in this story simply grows tired in the end. He starts trying to turn himself in before he ever even becomes a suspect. It is not really about the intrigues of a murderer, a sleuth, or what it takes for the latter to track down the former. Rather, it is primarily about a small town which is grieving the loss of one of its own and, overall, everyone in the town does a remarkably terrible job of grieving. The death was the murder of a child. So I don’t suppose there really would have been any way the towns folk could have processed the ordeal “well”. But accusations start flying! Almost everyone starts to look guilty (even the murdered child’s father). A second town member ends up dead—not at the hands of the villain “back at it again,” but, rather, this second death owes solely to the sheer force of the fierce accusations being bandied about by the townsfolk.

      One of the lead characters is a local police officer who is slowly and methodically taught to become suspicious of the people she grew up with. This aspect of the story begins to muddy the genre distinction. The local officer’s forced descent into the terror of suspecting the worst of loved ones is not unlike the classic contours of a horror film. Normalcy slowly erodes and in the end only frightful villainy is left.

      This detective story doesn’t fill the viewer with satisfaction once the case is solved. I felt more disturbed after the culprit confessed; I think because I had (to that point) judged the murder to be the most steadfast and levelheaded character. The one who had seemed the most successful in pushing ahead with normalcy was the perpetrator of the disaster that turned the town upside-down. The murderer never appeared anything other than normal; all the while, the police were scouring the town for the person who was “cracking” and starting to behave unusually. It was a catch-22. The unusual thing (i.e. the cracking) that would have ed the police to the murderer would have been to notice that one person behaving normally in a fracas.

      • #47271
        Sheelah
        Moderator

        A brilliant description of a chilling event, Andrew.

    • #47269
      andrew
      Member

      Have you read, or do you know someone who reads, Scripture from a Marcionite perspective? What question does a Marcionite reading attempt to answer?
      I suppose I have heard people talk about “God in the Old Testament” as if this were a distinct from what we read in the Gospels.

      Why does James say a Marcionite reading of Scriptures is a mistake?
      It sets up the God of the Israelites as an inferior foil for understanding the superior God of the Christians. Not to mention the question of consistency that would face people who define their “One God” over and against some other people’s “One God,” the practice is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and lends itself very easily to justifications of violence against the “barbarians” who worship the wrong “One God”.

      Have you read, or do you know someone who reads, Scripture from a fundamentalist perspective? What question does a fundamentalist reading attempt to answer?
      Yes, plenty. They attempt to reconcile a depiction of God’s righteousness with all the violent acts attributed to God in the Bible.

      Why does James say a fundamentalist reading of Scriptures is a mistake?
      Fundamentalism assumes that Scripture are meaningful in themselves and by themselves apart from readers. Fundamentalists claim falsely that an objective bias-free reading predates any readership and is available to cautious readers to uncover. The truth is that scriptures only take on meaning when they are reader and that readers are always employing a particular (i.e. not universal) interpretive key.

    • #47273
      Sheelah
      Moderator

      Absolutely, Andrew. James’ intention in this section is to introduce two different approaches to reading Scriptures: the Marcionite way of reading and the fundamentalist approach. He then goes on to demonstrate that by approaching Scriptures as a progressive revelation, we can discover new and more true things about God and ourselves. In this course, Jesus is essentially the interpretative key.
      He points out that Marcion thought some texts to be so violent that he proposed ditching the Hebrew Scriptures, as something to do with another god. While a fundamentalist reading says there is one God through the entire Scriptures. This leads to certain readings of Jesus’ death as being demanded by the Father.
      James then posits another approach, that of a progressive revelation which sees the New Testament working as an interpretative key opening up Hebrew Scriptures and allowing us to see that the one true God was always making Godself known in and through the Hebrew texts as simultaneously God and Victim.
       The point of approaching the texts as progressive revelation is that it enables us to be less frightened of the Hebrew Scriptures, to find them less of a “trap” that you must accept if you are to be a “good person.” ?
       There is no such thing as reading these texts without an interpretative key. The Scriptures do not have an interpretative?free meaning of their own. ??? Moreover, prophecy is always read as a movement backwards from your interpretative key. It is going to nudge you into seeing certain words and deeds of the past as pointing towards a certain fulfillment beyond themselves, and sometimes a certain fulfillment despite and beyond themselves.
      The following session three elaborates more fully on this theme.

    • #47279
      andrew
      Member

      James explains that reading the texts through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim is a particular option for interpretation. What difference does this option make to how we interpret Scriptures?
      Reading scripture doesn’t have to be a theological exercise. It does not have to be a matter of distinguishing two gods from one another or about outlining a consistent theodicy. When we adopt the position of the forgiving victim, reading scripture might be nothing more than perceiving with greater and greater clarity what it is we do to maintain order in our community.

      What unheard voices might emerge using this option?
      If it were the voice of an indignant victim that emerged, then we would have a voice that we must either silence completely or a voice we would need to burnish beyond recognition. For if the indignation in a victim’s voice is heard and believed, we would be turning ourselves turn toward revenge. Internecine violence would escalate among ourselves without restraint. If we forgo listening to the voice altogether, then a community of people proceeds in ignorance not knowing the full story of what made us a community of people. The only way for us to hear the truth about the source of human being (and live through it) is to hear it from a forgiving victim.

      How does reading Scripture as progressive revelation help us discover new and more true things about God and ourselves?
      It allows God to be a subject who guides our reading of scripture, rather than taking God merely as an object which is spoken about in scripture.

    • #47288
      Sheelah
      Moderator

      This is an excellent reading of James’ intent Andrew. As you say, reading the scriptures through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim is not an abstract theological exercise, but rather a learning about human behaviour. Seeing scripture through Jesus’ eyes is an extraordinary learning process, is it not?

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