Peter Rollins & the Shrine of the Book

There is a wonderful museum in Jerusalem containing the Shrine of the Book.  It houses the oldest "bible" in the world.  It is a testament to the place of sacred text, sacred word, in the life of Judaism, and by extension, to Christians who hold to a sacred text. 

Now Pete didn't say anything about the Shrine of the Book yesterday, but I want to raise it as a point of departure for what we might say or not say about a sacred text (revelation), our relationship to it, and its place in our relationship with God.  One of Pete's themes has been something along the lines of this (my phrasing):  the necessity of moving beyond language.  And by extension, moving beyond a way of reacting to sacred texts.  What I sense in some of Pete's approach is Wittgenstein - a theory of language and logic and reality.  To put it briefly, let us say that language is a ladder by which we climb to reach God.  That is, in one sense, a traditional understanding of what we mean by written revelation in the form of our scriptures.  Except, Wittgenstein says, when you get to the top, in order to progress any further, you need to sort of cast the ladder off.  True enough in one sense:  the fullness of God is beyond language to comprehend - at least language as we use it.

But in all of this there I also have a sense that what is missing is wrestling with the presupposition that language itself is the the way in which revelation occurs for a community.  It is different than simply saying "God 'spoke' to me".  On the one hand language is inadequate to describe God, yet I suggest that a defensible starting point is that we are creatures for whom language is a necessary part of knowing and loving God.  We are zoon logon politikon, as the Greeks would say. We are animals who use language and live in cities:  language and community are related.  Added to this, we have the use of language/thought used in language to describe or express the internal life of God.  The prologue to John's gospel uses the "language of language" (are you following that?) to describe God's internal relationships.  The word was God.  So one of my points in yesterday's conversation was this:  our use of language is really an imitation of, an image of, something which is already expressed in God:  the relationship between the One and the Word.  As such, it remains with us - we need to continue to use language, because it is part of our imaging of God's own internal life.

Comments

[Ranjit Chatterjee]

nice to read of this. i've been studying wittgenstein and religion for some time. in 2005, i published 'wittgenstein & judaism: a triumph of concealment' (new york: peter lang, 2005). would anyone with such deep interests like to look it up. i hope there'll be something there for you, hopefully not a mirage. my web page is at www.ranjitchatterjee.com.

ranjit chatterjee

[joseph]

Thanks for the comment, Ranjit. I became interested in Wittgenstein via Augustine, & a comparison of the theories of language which one find in them, particularly religious language. I'll have a a look at your work.