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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
Vaclav Havel in a speech in 1989 speaks of the ‘weird fate’ which ‘can befall certain words’.
At one moment in history, courageous, liberal-minded people can be thrown into prison because a particular word means something to them, and at another moment, the same kind of people can be thrown into prison because that same word has ceased to mean anything to them, because it has changed from the symbol of a better world into the mumbo jumbo of a doltish dictator.
1 Havel, Vaclav, ‘A Word About Words’, Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965–1990, Wilson, Paul, ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 383.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., 383. Havel speaks also of the way in which the meanings of words, for instance ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’, are subject to a kind of contextual slippage in his Summer Meditations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar, in the essay, ‘What I Believe’, 60–62. In fact, Havel explains (63) that he has quit using the word ‘capitalism’ because of its associations. His comments reflect an understanding similar to Wittgenstein's who suggested that sometimes a word has to be ‘withdrawn from language and sent for cleaning — then it can be put back into circulation’. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Culture and Value, ed. Von Wright, G. H., Nyman, Heikki, tr. Peter Winch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 39.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 383–384.
4 Ibid., 378.
5 Ibid., 388.
6 Ibid., 382.
7 The Gospel According to St. John 1:1–5, 10–11. New Revised Standard Version.
8 Colin Gun ton argues, in his 1992 Bampton lectures, for an understanding of God and creation that rallies particularity and a ‘constitutive relatedness’; ‘every thing is what it is and not another thing entails the otherness of everything to everything else’. This distinction in unity is the hallmark of the dmne Trinity and of all relationships between God and world, and among creatures. Gunton, C. E., The One, The Three and The Many: God Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 41–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 My comments here are consciously in debt to Robert Frost: ‘Pulpiteers will censure/ Our instinctive venture/ Into what they call/ The material/ When we took that fall/ From the apple tree./ But God's own descent/ Into flesh was meant/ As a demonstration/ That the supreme merit/ Lay in risking spirit/ In substantiation…Spirit enters flesh/ And for all it's worth/ Charges into earth/ In birth after birth/ Ever fresh and fresh’. Frost, , The Poetiy of Robert Frost, /ed. Lathem, Edward Connery (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969)Google Scholar, ‘Kitty Hawk’, part two, 434–436.
10 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Garnett, Constance, ed. Manuel Komroff (New York: New American Library edition) I.v.5., 234–235.Google Scholar
11 Augustine, of Hippo, , Confessions, tr. Chadwick, Henry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), I.i.(l), 3.Google Scholar
12 Second Helvetic Confession, chapter XVII.
13 Havel, 382.
14 Tertullian, ‘The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas’, VI.4.
15 New Revised Standard Version.
16 The origins of describe (also descrybe) are Latin through Old French and Middle English (descrive). The mis-spelling ‘dis-scribe’ arose from mis-understanding, a confusion of this word with those words taking the prefix des-or dis-. The Latin describere means simply ‘to write (scribe) down (de)’. Modern usages, like Jeremy Taylor's (1649) carry this meaning: ‘Christ our Lawgiver hath described all his Father's will in Sanctions and Signatures of laws’. The ordinary contemporary sense of the word, which logically derives from the root meaning, is stated as follows: ’To set forth in words, written or spoken, by reference to qualities, recognizable features, or characteristic marks; to give a detailed or graphic account of. Oxford English Dictionary. As Shipley notes, there is also a close linguistic connection between the Latin root scribere and the medieval shrines or coffers or arks in which writing materials and manuscripts — rare, precious and expensive — were kept, and the relinquaries, shrines, coffers or arks in which were kept the relics of martyrs. Shipley, Joseph T., Dictionary of Word Origins (New York: Philosophical Library, 1945), 322.Google Scholar
17 Havel, 383–384.
18 Ibid., 384.
19 This line of reflection was recommended by my colleague Stanley Robertson Hall, Assistant Professor of Liturgies at Austin Seminary.
20 Kittel, Gerhard, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, tr./ed. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964), 11.169.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., 170.
22 New Revised Standard Version.
23 Note Fred Craddock's discussion in Preaching(Nashville: Abingdnn Press, 1985), 55–60.
24 New Revised Standard Version.
25 Westermann, Claus, What Does the Old Testament Say About God? The Sprunt Lectures, Union Seminary, Virginia, for 1977 (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979), 41–42.Google Scholar
26 Marney, Carlyle, Priests to Each Other (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1974), 73.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., 74.
28 Barth, Karl, Learning Jesus Christ Through the Heidelberg Catechism, tr. Cuthrie, Shirley C. Jr. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdinans, 1964), 111–112.Google Scholar
29 Busch, Eberhard, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, tr. Bowden, John (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 224.Google Scholar
30 As when Hawking, Stephen W. says, ‘An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!’ A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (London: Bantam, 1988), 9Google Scholar. And: Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian Faith, ed. Mackintosh, H. R., tr. J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. &T. Clark, 1928), 16–18.Google Scholar
31 Gunton, Colin E., The One, The Three and The Many: God Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 Jūngel, Eberhard, God as the Mystery of the World:On the Foundation of Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute Between Theism and Atheism, tr. Guder, Darrell L. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983), 3–42Google Scholar, especially ‘section 3. The Basic Theological Uncertainty (Aporia) of Christian Talk about God.’
33 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics II. 1., ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F. (Edinburgh: T. &T. Clark, E.T. 1957)Google Scholar, II. 1.61. ‘We might say of this revelation of His name that it consists in the refusal of a name, but even in the form of this substantial refusal, it is still really revelation, communication and illumination.… God is the One whose being can be investigated only in the form of a continuous question as to His action’. See also Wood, Charles, The Formation of Christian Understanding: Theological Hermeneutics (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, second edition, 1993), 34–35.Google Scholar
34 John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, chapter XVI, The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, ed. Schaff, Philip and Wace, Henry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1898, reprint 1979), Volume IX, 38Google Scholar. Also: Ciakalis, Ambrosios, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Chadwick, Henry, foreword (Leiden/New York: E.J. Brill, 1994)Google Scholar; Pelikan, Jaroslav, Imago Dei: The Byzantine Apologia for Icons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; also Paul C. Finney, ‘Antecedents of Byzantine Iconoclasm: Christian Evidence before Constantine’ and Stephen Gero, ‘Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Failure of a Medieval Reformation’ Gutmann, Joseph, editor, The Image and the Word: Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977) 27–62.Google Scholar
35 John of Damascus, On Divine Iviages: Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images, tr. Anderson, David (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980), 15–16.Google Scholar
16 The sense of‘work’ meant here is indicated in Tavener's, John introduction to Ikons: Meditations in Words and Music, co-authored with Mother Thekla (London: Fount, 1995)Google Scholar, where he says: ‘Let us begin again and again and again, but let us always begin anew as if for the first time, picking up all that we have learnt from both the via negaliva and the via positiva. … We believe and yet we know nothing‘, (ix) And, speaking of the manner in which he listens to the Gospels, then goes to work, to pray, to reflect on the lives and writings of the saints, to talk with and listen to his colleague in faith, Mother Thekla, allowing all of this to be a work of praise to produce musical icons, one gains a sense of the manner in which work is worship and worship work especially in the making of images.
37 Torrance, T. F. provides a helpful discussion of this patristic conception of the Word in The Trinitarian Faith: An Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), 68–75, 117–145.Google Scholar
38 Notice particularly the excellent opening chapter of Chopp, Rebecca S., Power to Speak: Feminism, Language, God (New York: Crossroad, 1992) 10–39.Google Scholar
39 Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader:Explomtions in the Setmiotics of Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 3–5; also 47–66.Google Scholar
40 John of Damascus, On Divine Images, 15.
41 Rebecca Chopp, Unpublished response to Walter Brueggemann, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion/ Society for Biblical Literature, Frontiers in Biblical Scholarship: The Endowment for Biblical Lecture Series, (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1995), 2.
42 Ibid., 4–5.
43 Chesterton, G. K., Orthodoxy (London: Bodley Head, 1908), 83.Google Scholar
44 Zenger, Erich, A God of Vengeance? Understanding the Psalms of Divine Wrath, tr. Maloney, Linda M. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 43–44Google Scholar. The concept of ‘semantic shock’ to which Zenger alludes derives from Weinrich, Harald, ‘semantik der kūhnen Metapher’.in Theorieder Metapher, ed. Haverkamp, A (Darmstadt, 1983)Google Scholar. As Zenger notes, ‘the ‘contradictoriness’ of the metaphors… give them their ‘bold character’’. (99). The second quote in Zengrr's statement is drawn from Jūrgen Werbick, Bilder sind Wege. Eine Gotteslehre (Munich, 1992).
45 John of Damascus, On Divine Images, 19–31.
46 Hauerwas, Stanley, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1995), 23–24Google Scholar. This essay was previously published as ‘What Could It Mean for the Church to Be Christ's Body? A Question Without a Clear Answer’, Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 48 (Winter, 1995) No. 1.Google Scholar
47 Ibid., 24.