Wednesday, March 17, 2004
(10:18 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
See Kotsko Live! (updated)
Tomorrow, Thursday, March 18, there will be a presentation on the crucifixion of Christ as viewed through a political lens, at the Maternity BVM parish center (in the school) at 11:00 and 7:00 PM. The two presentations will be identical, except that the first will include some junior-high age students from the school.
The presentation will include a consideration of the local political circumstances in first-century Judea and will then widen to include a discussion of Paul's political response to the cross. Only the finest tools of historical-critical analysis will be used. I will be the main presenter, and Jared Sinclair and Jesse Bridges will deliver dramatic monologues in the voice of Caiaphas and Pilate, respectively. There will be a discussion period following the presentation.
No refreshments will be provided.
UPDATE: Both presentations went well.
As Jared noted in the comments, I did indeed duke it out (intellectually) with a twelve-year-old Catholic schoolgirl. Tonight, one of the previous presenters in this series said that she fielded a few questions from that same girl, and that Fr. Jim was there and bailed her out -- he extended no such courtesy to me. In essence, she waited patiently for me to finish my half-hour presentation and then pounced on me with the question of how to get to heaven. I did my best, even though it was only tangentially related to my topic (or was it?), and ended up embracing a radical Augustinian position. One woman started spouting some Pelagian bullshit she probably heard on Christian radio ("God doesn't decide who goes to heaven; we decide, through our own actions") and I jumped in and said that although that's a good way to extort good behavior from people, it's not really scriptural and isn't really supported by the tradition. But, you know, whatever.
The evening discussion was even better. I was able to add in some more asides, since I felt more comfortable in a group of fifteen people than in a group of one hundred people, most of whom were bored out of their minds. Andy Kring, Jared Martin, and Rachel (never met her before tonight and didn't get her last name) came to represent the Olivet contingent, and as much as Jared and I have butted heads online, it really helped to spur some very productive discussion. In my paper as it stood, I had already characterized the real Paul and pseudo-Paul has having different strategies, and through discussion of what it might mean if Paul really wrote the Pastorals et al. (which he didn't), I came to the realization that the church might be in a situation where none of the strategies represented in scripture are available to us any longer. For instance, as Craig Keen has emphasized, the path of martyrdom is not available in America today -- no one seeing what would have been called a "martyr" in the olden days would find that appealling at all, if they even saw the "martyr." Simply due to the larger scale of everything, the situation is phenomenally more complex than in Paul's day -- and we no longer plausibly have access to "Jesus coming back."
In any event, for the empire seminar, CTS's house journal is doing a special issue, and these presentations should give me some good material for a paper along those lines. As a sidenote, if you want to learn about the very latest in biblical interpretation and study under theologians who also teach courses in political economy, you'd probably better come to Chicago Theological Seminary. If not, then just keep working at your boring dead-end job like the lazy piece of crap you are.
