Thursday, November 06, 2003
(11:36 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
You can because you must
Jared beat me to it, but here you go: some new Zizek.
On a sidenote, I'd like to review some things that I learned in class the last couple days:
- In Ken Stone's Old Testament I class, we discussed the book of Chronicles. He said that it is usually ignored, for a lot of very good and understandable reasons, but that it's valuable in that it shows someone who obviously knew the "official" story (in this case, the Deuteronomic History, approximately Deuteronomy through 2 Kings) reworking it to fulfill the needs of his time. Even if we disagree with all the Chronicler's conclusions, Prof. Stone said, we are all in the position of the Chronicler -- we need to be actively engaged in reworking our traditions. He claimed that even when we try to say that our tradition should never change, we are objectively reworking our traditions anyway, so we need to be honest about it. Being an authentic part of, for example, the Christian tradition, means not necessarily subscribing to a certain set of beliefs, but being involved in a certain set of ongoing arguments.
- Ted Jennings pointed out some interesting things about Paul's "condemnation" of homoeroticism in Romans 1: first, he doesn't say that homoerotic activities are deserving of death, but rather that slander, gossip, adultery, etc.... are deserving of death. We just jump back to the queer part because we can't make sense of what he's literally saying. Also, his condemnation of gentile culture is parallel to his condemnation of Jewish culture -- both, according to their own standards, are unjust. He knew that for the Romans, gender issues were of overwhelming importance, so he pointed out that particular failure that was most meaningful to the Romans. The point of his letter is to announce a new kind of justice, inaugurated by Christ. Also, he says that the word "righteousness" is a made-up word in theology. The only justifiable translation of the underlying Greek word is "justice," but theology likes to obscure justice issues.
- I'm just getting pissed off in my Bonhoeffer class. Sometimes I get really tired of being in this Christian argument. I plan on taking as much philosophy as possible, so as to have an "out." I'm a bad person. I'm going to feel trapped if I stay with theology, and guilty if I don't. Maybe I just don't like Bonhoeffer very much. Reading The Cost of Discipleship, I think to myself, "Why do we need this? We already have Kierkegaard, who does the same thing, only a lot cooler."
I think I'm going to drop out of school and work at 7-11, even though I already have another job and there are no 7-11s around here.
