The Lamb:The Dragon: and the One Who Is

The following draws HIGHLY upon the lectures of Dr. John Wesley Wright- Point Loma Nazarene University Professor of Theology and Christian Scriptures.

“For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” –Genesis 3:4 (NASB)

The Apocalypse is the completion to a story that begins in the first chapters of Genesis. It is the story of what God is and what Worship is; recognizing God as the Creator, not the created. The book of Revelation is operating on two levels, the first is on the level of surface narrative and the second is a deeper narrative structure that encapsulates the whole of the Christian scriptures. This deep structure, or fibula, is expressed as the repetition of Human idolatry and God’s Judgment, from the suffering saints to righteous vindication.
Genesis sets forth an image of God creating, speaking things into existence from nothingness. It was a story that called the people of Moses to turn from Baal and false idols of stone and worship the one true God as Creator. In Genesis chapter three the serpent tempts Eve with idolatry, she is tempted to be “like God.” It is this sin, idolatry, which is brought to an end in Revelation.
The Apocalypse is a story told so that it’s hearers may be blessed, because it reveals the way that the world really is, it shows that the worship of the power of the beast, of nothingness, is only a parody of the one who sits on the thrown, and the one who was and is and is to come will bring creation to it’s proper telos.
The narrative of Revelation is not dictated by chronology, but rather upon recapitulating tensive symbols. These symbols do not have a one to one correlation with and singular historical event or place, but rather are continually embodied in various ways in history. In the text these various symbols show their polyvalence and are interpreted within the webs of other symbols.
This narrative recapitulation is also present in Genesis. In Genesis one there is an account of creation, God speaking things into existence. Then in Genesis chapter 2 the story goes back to the beginning and tells the same account differently. The underpinnings of the story are the same, the primary actor is God, who creates the heavens and the earth, where humans and creatures are, then the story progresses from union with God, to Adam and Eve’s Idolatry. These narrative elements are presupposed within the text of the Apocalypse, along with the present suffering of the saints and most importantly the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The text is thus drawing upon the images in each of these of these other narratives in order to “reveal” the way that the world really is.
The Apocalypse begins by setting the locations of the story about to be unfolded, but also the timeframe it will take place in. A vision is given to John , into heaven and earth, during the time that God IS. The span of the Story is over God who was, and is and is to come; God thus is the timeframe of the narrative. This marks the Theocentric nature of the story, God is not at all a part of creation because God is defined by God’s ongoing action and existence. This again sets God apart from the creation that is idolized. The strong distinction made in the Apocalypse between the Saints and the world, is that though they are both creation the suffering saints worship the living God, through the living person of Jesus Christ. The text persistently forces the reader to identify with those who are suffering.
In the first four chapters the Story is set up, John is given this vision from God, Spoken through Jesus Christ and delivered by the Angel to the messenger, John. The lampstands are the seven spirits of God and when John turns towards them he falls down dead. The voice he hears is the voice of Jesus, the one who was once dead, but now is living because God in Jesus overcame death. John is now participating in that death, and will be resurrected in chapter four. This marks the story, which is repeated over and over again in the story. John is then given the role of writing down the message of the one speaking, to the churches. These images, including the “tree of life” show the continuity of this story with the story of Genesis. These letters show that the economy of the world, the power structures it sets up are predicated upon the worship of creation, thus those who follow Jesus are given over to suffering. Those who hear the text are blessed to know that the final victory of God in Christ will be for those who suffer in this present age. In Chapter 4 John is Resurrected and brought up into heaven where he witnesses the throne room of God, the one who was and is and is to come. There is eternal worship of God, and the one on the throne is motionless, and holding a scroll. The deep structure is the right direction of the creaturely worship, toward the one who sits on the throne.
In chapter 5 the images are intensified. John weeps at the question “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” John has more revealed to him as he is weeping; at the throne is a lamb and the lamb is able to open the scroll because he was slain.
Here the images shift and the story is told again differently. Now the seven spirits are now the seven horns and eyes of the lamb. The lamb now opens the first four seals and they are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Each horseman is the same person, from a different angle. The one who comes to conquer on the white horse brings war, famine disease and death. Each one of these horsemen are parodies of the creatures around the throne, and the seals are things which are revealed in the world. The fifth seal allows John to seal the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God, which were under the altar. These are those who suffer from the conquest of the four horsemen and they cry out “how long oh Lord.” They are the fire under the altar to cook the sacrifice, when they are clothed in white it shows the contrast between them and the first white horseman. The next section again echoes back to Genesis, it marks the rolling up of creation. Now all those in power are the ones hiding,( like the ones under the altar) crying out “the attack of the killer slain lamb!” The irony here is palpable as John is revealing the way that the world really is, begging to be killed and hidden from a bloody dead lamb.
The inverse of these who are crying out for death, are those who are marked for salvation; Twelve twelve’s of God’s chosen people in white robes who have been made clean by the blood of the lamb. Again irony is present; the white robes are cleaned in red blood. After the final seventh seal is opened there is silence, rest that harkens back the seventh day of creation.
After this the symbols are again made over and the same story is replayed. Instead of seven seals there are now seven trumpets. An angel takes the prayers of God’s people from under the altar and hurled it to earth and there is thunder and lightning, audible responses to the prayers. The first four trumpets are not unlike the four horsemen; they bring destruction while again using imagery from genesis to describe the present suffering of the saints. The fifth angel sounded the trumpet and opened the abyss and gave the key to a fallen star (a part of creation.) The smoke that is rising out of the abyss is to be contrasted by the incents and flames coming from the altar of God. The incenses are the worship of the saints, while the smoke is the product of false worship, of idolatry. All of the coming violence comes out of this smoke. The one who is the ruler of the Abyss is a parody of the one on the throne, rather than ruling everything he rules, literally, nothingness, the nothingness from before creation.
The first to come out of this false worship are the locusts, they are a dreadful compellation of non-sense. The imagery is awkward and silly, first they locusts are like scorpion that sting, then they are flying miniature horses. The sixth trumpet is the destruction of a third of the worlds people, this connects back to the previous image of the mountain falling into the sea. Then horsemen come from the abyss, but these are the same as the locusts. After all of this the idolatry continues. In Chapter 10 the angel that comes down holding the scroll is Jesus, holding the scroll that was opened by the lamb earlier. The book is sweet to because it is the answer to those crying out from under the altar, but also bitter because it will bring judgment.
The seventh trumpet is the culmination of all that has come before, the kingdom of the world has now become one with the kingdom of God. The one sitting on the throne is “ the one who is and who was.” The absence of “and will be” means that we have come to the end of the story, and the coming symbols will again go back and retell the story of idolatry and of death and resurrection.
Chapter 12 opens in heaven and begins a new recapitulation. Here is the first time that we see the two signs. The first is a woman who is about to give birth, representing Hope and life, the other is a great red Dragon, which represents death and destruction. Here the Dragon is waiting to devour the hope which is about to be brought into the world, yet in a comedic failure the Dragon is not only unable to devour the child who is scooped up into the throne, but not even able to devour the mother before being cast down to earth and into the sea, again echoing creation. The Dragon now brings the conflict to earth and pukes all over the earth. The Dragon goes to make war against the church, the children of the woman (Mary.) In Chapter 13 the parody of God becomes more pronounced in the Beast. The Dragon gives over all its authority to the Beast, but that is absolutely nothing, there is no authority to give. Just as the Dragon is a parody of the one who sits on the throne and gives all authority to the lamb, the Dragon gives over the false authority to the Beast. The following imagery is an intense culmination of identification. Does the reader identify with the followers of the Beast, who is a parody of the lamb, with blasphemous names and 666 the symbol of false perfection, or with the followers of the lamb whose blood the whore of Babylon is drunk with? This is the idolatry that was the focus of Genesis and is now brought to full contrast in the end of revelation.
As the whore of Babylon is riding, adorned with jewels and Gold and beckoning the kings of the earth into her infidelity we not only see Rome, but all those powers that have been and will be engaged in the world’s idolatrous worship. Weather it is now or during second temple Judaism the fundamental distinction between worshiping God, and worshiping the created remains the same. At the end of the Apocalyptic narrative the final judgment comes, The one who sits on the throne Establishes the New Heaven and New Earth and the kosmos is set back into the fullness of correct worship.
Each of these sections have told the same story using varied symbols, each of them showing the movement from Idolatry and the present suffering of the saints, to the judgment of God and the restoration of creation. This narrative presupposes all that came before it, especially Genesis 1-3, using it to mirror images and draw the scope of the biblical story into the conclusion which is Jesus Christ, The Revelation.

The Story of God : An Evangelical Apologetic for Process Theology

The following is a summary of "The Story of God" by Michael Lodahl the professor
who is overseeing my honors project. He and I do not see eye to eye a variety of Issues, however I do agree with him on many others and regardless of the tone of this paper I wish to emphasize my great respect for him.

“We are construction workers and not only interpreters of [God’s] future.”
-Jurgen Moltmann

In the Story of God, Michael Lodahl seeks to introduce Christian theology by setting it within the context of the biblical narrative; he draws his reader not only into a better appreciation of theology, but into the very story about which he is writing. He sets out to do this in such a way that those who are not professional theologians can access it and to does so with special emphasis up the Wesleyan –Armenian tradition.
The book holds in tension the two streams from which it feeds; the narrative of the bible, as well as doctrines that are extrapolated from this narrative. Thus Lodahl is able to explicate how the narrative informs doctrine and conversely how doctrine shapes the way we approach the story that we are called up into as participants. The book espouses a theology that holds human agency at its center.
The book itself is divided into seven different parts. These parts reflect a movement through the protestant canon as well as an important doctrine related to each part of the story, for example, part IV is titled “The Jewish People in God’s Story: The Doctrine of Covenants.” This shows us the place in the story, then the doctrine that accompanies this piece of the narrative.
The book depicts God interacting with creation by relationship. God is not just the author but also the main character within the story itself. It also places humanity within the story, not just as ones acted upon but also as ones who can act. God is most certainly the leader, but we have a say. This is a central argument of the book, and one that influences many of the interpretive moves Lodahl makes. He states “God is not bound like a slave to some predetermined master plan…our Redeemer can repent or turn from one plan of action to another if the humanly created situation dictates it.” Chapter eight is titled “ Human ‘Response-ability’ and sin,” this is a perfect example of how Lodahl is “telling God’s story” with special attention to humanity’s ability to respond and change the story. In fact human agency is what necessitates the formation of Lodahl’s process theology in response to Theodicy.
The first part of the book deals with the “How God’s Story Gets Told.” There are four chapters in this part, each of them corresponding to one element of the Wesleyan quadrilateral, scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Lodahl begins talking about Scripture by tying together history and story, saying that “the biblical faith is rooted in historical events…” this is important to Lodahl because God is at work for our salvation in the very history of our planet, it is again this setup that allows most fully for human agency. This historically rooted biblical faith is concrete in the people of Israel, and in the person of Jesus Christ as found in inspired (pnuema breathed) scripture.
Chapter two is about tradition. Lodahl says that “Tradition is not only something we inherit, as a body of historically accumulated interpretation of scripture, but also something we may contribute to…” Lodahl describes the Wesleyan tradition that informs this book as being interested in Christian perfection. He asserts that Wesley’s understanding of holiness encourages ecumenicalism, a universal attitude toward other Christian traditions.
Chapters 3 and 4 describe the next two sides of the quadrilateral; reason and experience. Lodahl first outlines the various arguments for the existence of God, from the cosmological argument to Anselm’s ontological argument. He explains that none of these things give absolute proof for God, but rather give a “measure of support or justification to those who are already believers.” The fourth chapter explores experience, extremely important to how Lodahl explains our relationship with God. He recounts the story of John Wesley at Aldersgate, when his heart was warmed and he was given assurance of his salvation. From this Lodahl says that experiencing God is a “deep and decisive giving of ourselves to God.” By the Holy Spirit that was in Jesus works to draw us into God’s story. This leads to ”certain attentiveness to lived experience, a true openness to learning in and from the world around us.”
The second part of the book begins Lodahl’s project of working through the biblical narrative. Here Lodahl tells the story of God’s creation, but also uses this story to unpack various doctrines that are incorporated in and tied to creation. Lodahl’s process theology, though thinly veiled, is apparent from the start, when he suggests that a more well rounded way to approach the creation story is as “creatio ex amore” as opposed ex nihilo. It is out of love that God creates, an interpretive move spurred on by Theodicy. Human agency is the answer to theodicy, and Lodahl describes the human divine power interaction as such: “then the Creator truly is love, and divine power is not a ruling fist but an open, bleeding hand. “ This divine gift of agency is granted to humanity, being made in God’s image and thus we are sustained in order that we may make and be accountable for these decisions. It is only within this framework that there is an ability “to love.”
Part three engages the tragedy of God’s story: sin. Lodahl examines the consequences of our disobedience to a “loving seeking God.” This sin is the inevitable consequence of human agency. Lodahl shows how the shift of worship from Creator to creature infests our webs of relationships, and leads to a denial of responsibility. In this part Lodahl not only re-affirms human response-ability, but also describes God’s role in this story, as a “lead character” not merely the author. It is because of this role that God limits his own power and knowledge in order to allow for us to take action. He concludes by quoting Frederick Sontag; “His power is fully adequate to sustain himself against uncertainty.”
In the fourth part Lodahl describes God’s covenantal relationship with Israel. It is one of “human rebellion and divine redemption.” In looking at the story of Israel, he also gives a glimpse of Israel’s God. Lodahl uses images of God changing God’s mind, asking questions and even repenting as a way of showing the apparent discontinuity between the biblical narrative and the classical metaphysical characteristics commonly associated with God. This frames God, not as a distant deity but rather as a passionate and persistent God of relation and of Grace. The Covenants represent that love and Grace for creation. Through Noah, Abraham, Moses and David God is working to bring the people of Israel back to faithfulness. God sets them apart, takes them out of Egypt, and relents to allowing them a King. Through each of these we see God’s willingness to change coarse and “repent.” This again gives credence to the agency of humanity, that we humans participate in a give and take relationship with God. Abraham was called upon to pick up and move towards the future on nothing but the promise of God. This displays a God to which the future is unknown, but even “without a map” we are to trust God on the basis of our relationship and God’s promise. The prophets are ones who speak the truth of God’s desire for participation and faithfulness among God’s people.
In the fifth section Lodahl explains the great “twist” of plot in God’s story, the Person of Jesus Christ, who lives out the story of Israel. In this section Lodahl works through the paradoxes of Jesus Christ: Christ’s humanity and Christ’s divinity, the crucifixion and the resurrection. It is apparent that Lodahl sees it fitting to emphasize the humanity of Jesus Christ, even in the section on his divinity. It could only be for love that God would take on the fleshliness of incarnation, birth, baptism, and death that we may know and enter into relationship with him through the human being, Jesus Christ. Yet “in order to be our redeemer at all” Jesus Christ must also be God; a God that Gregory of Nazianzus describes as “assuming” all aspects of humanity in order that they might be healed. Lodahl places the chapter on Christ’s resurrection before the section pertaining to Christ’s crucifixion. He does so in order to highlight that the resurrection of Jesus is the beginning, the founding event of Christ’s Church. In the following chapter concerning crucifixion Lodahl outlines the various atonement theories, from penal theory to Gustav Aulén’s Christus Victor. Each of these seeks to explain the central belief that by Jesus death we are healed.
The sixth part of the Story of God pertains to the Church, the ones called out. Lodahl shows how we are communally sustained in our relationship of grace with God. He opens with the Church’s birthday; Pentecost. The Pentecost event represents an un-doing of Babel. Where humanity was once scattered and torn apart, the Spirit intercedes and binds us into God’s church. In Christ ethnic, cultural and linguistic boundaries are overcome. , Lodahl explains the doctrine of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, as well as the Trinitarian worship. Keeping with his overall emphasis on human response, he explains that the sacraments are ways that God “gets in touch” with us physically. In taking the sacraments, we can be physically brought up into the story. We are initiated into the Kingdom by baptism and sustained Eucharist. These are the central images of the church to proclaim that salvation is found it Jesus. Lodahl describes various ways the church has seen our reconciliation to Christ, in the end he states that the human response to divine grace should never make us forget we do not save ourselves. In this recognition, we can be sanctified as the people of God. As we live out our calling we are able to move past theoretical debates and distinctions and move towards a Gospel that reaches into our lives to challenge us.
The last part of Lodahl’s book is about eschatology. Here we see Lodahl’s process theology most acutely represented. Lodahl explains the two connotations of the Greek word telos. The first meaning is “the end;” the point of finality, the buzzer at a basketball game. Lodahl acknowledges this, citing Heb. 1:10-12, but Lodahl is more compelled to speak of telos in terms of God’s goal. It makes sense that Lodahl would be drawn to this vision, the future is not yet written, but God can have a vision or a goal for the undisclosed future we are making with God. Lodahl states that “eschatology is not simply about what we are waiting for God to do; eschatology is about the divine vision…which is, at least to some extent, entrusted to us.” Lodahl writes also of divine judgment through this lens of human agency, that we each must be able to give an account of our lives. God is a just judge, who remembers that we are but dust and commits judgment into the hands of Jesus. Lodahl also maintains the Wesleyan conviction that each will be judged according to the light given to them.
The Story of God is a defense of Process theology from a biblically based Wesleyan perspective. Lodahl’s theological persuasion can be summed up in his own words: “ Even more important to God than our salvation is our moral agency…” The Story of God works through the narrative of the Bible, using that moral agency as its lens, and the culmination of this project is a theology of participation.

Michael Scott; A Horrible Player: The Office Through the Lens of Wittgenstein

The show is an artful composition of awkwardness, each line vacant of a laugh track drips with irony and embarrassment. NBC’s The Office is a comic portrayal of how language plays its part in society, bringing the audience into moments of pure, unadulterated tension and keeping them there. In order to create this tension they write characters that are totally incapable of assimilating into generally accepted socio-linguistic patterns. In the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, he shatters his previous assertion that meaning is reference. Instead, the Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations claims that meaning is use. This essay will argue that the reason Michael Scott and the rest of the cast of The Office is awkward is due to their inability to properly participate in the language games that make up “proper behavior.” In their breaking of these systems the audience deems “normal” or “common sense” the show creates hilarity. Thus it is necessary to explore the components of language that give it meaning within the late Wittgensteinian framework.
In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein lays out a new way to understand meaning distinct from his previous ideas in the Tractatus Logico-Philisophicus. In this earlier work Wittgenstein describes philosophy as elucidation. In a manner, he is building a bridge with language to what is real, or true. This takes the form of his logical atomism by using the idealized language. From this, what we can say we can say clearly; what we can’t say we show- namely the relation between things. It is this seeking of the discrete that pares language down to a one to one relation between the reference and its corresponding label. Quine calls this one to one relation the “Myth of the Museum.” It describes an exhibit that is labeled by a plaque or sign. In this “myth” the entire meaning of a word on the sign corresponds to the reference, that which is being exhibited.
Learning a language then is the matching of objects with the assigned, static word, which denotes that object. This process could be done with through ostension, a wonderful example of this is a flash card. The picture portrays the object or action which is labeled by the word on the other side of the card. The learner thus connects the image with the word.
If meaning is thus affixed, the clarity of language should be achievable. Words will set out certain relations between proposition that make up the complexities of the world, and because those words are of a concrete nature both parties who speak that language will therefore be capable of comprehending those complexities. This, however, is not the case and The Office is a prime example of the critique Wittgenstein has of his own earlier framework.
Michael Scott is the epicenter of the drama in the show because he tries to say things (and subsequently do things) that are beyond his comprehension. Even in situations where he is able to decipher the dictionary definitions, he is often unable to understand the specific utilization of those words as they are being used within the particular context. Nuances are lost to him because words do not have a one to one concrete correlation, but as Wittgenstein describes in Philosophical Investigations, are parts of webs of relation that construct meaning via use. Wittgenstein asserts, “One will point to places and things- but in this case the pointing occurs in the use of the words too and not merely in learning the use.“
Wittgenstein explains that language acts as webs and systems of tensive symbols, each use set within the context of each other use. These are called language games and each one of these different games are not set apart by distinctly articulated rules, but rather are held in cohesion with rules that are ambiguous and yet intuited. Wittgenstein describes the rules of these games as follows: “ But we say that it is played according to such and such rules because an observer can read these off from the practice of the game- like a natural law governing the play.” In order to find the meaning then, it is necessary to find its use, not its flashcard. One does this by entering into the game and watching those who play by its “rules.” If one were to watch a game of women’s Lacrosse, it is clear that there are a great number of rules, which are enforced. Seemingly every two minutes a whistle blows and the field resets, the girls get into a different formation and the game starts back up again. It would not be simple to learn the rules of Lacrosse simply by being told them. Once one watches for long enough the game starts to look familiar and one can start to recognize movements against the common flow and layout of the play. This is precisely how one is able to learn language, “Don’t think, but look!” Language however does not have a referee that runs out and blows a whistle (even if grammar wishes to do so.) It is not the whistle that then signifies a miscalculated throw, or a misused word. “ But then the use of a word is unregulated, the ‘game’ we play with it is unregulated- it is not everywhere circumscribed by rules…” Wittgenstein also talks about these language games in terms of a picture that is blurred. Even in such a photo the shape and form of the person is apparent. He asks, “Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?” Not only is the indistinctness of language game parameters apparent, it is necessary in order to provide a language, which can contain the possibility of communication. The various nuances of language are given to us by the various uses of words, not by their fixedness but rather by their mobility.
The Office uses the indistinctness of language to provide a backdrop for humor. The show presupposes the initiation of its audience into certain language games that make up our societal norms. This includes how words are used in certain contexts, and what words, phrases or intonation are inappropriate in a given situation. The audience was rarely given the “rules” to these language games, but have almost by happenstance, been thrust into playing them. After a period of time it becomes so natural that the game is essentially invisible, until someone exhibits a behavior that cuts against the grain of these systems. Wittgenstein points us to the “behavior characteristic of correcting a slip of the tongue. It would be possible to recognize that someone was doing so even without knowing his language.” It is also possible to know that someone ought to be correcting a slip of the tongue, but the characters in The Office do not even know that they have violated anything. The audience is thus left squirming, not for a distinct reason, but rather for an indistinct violation of the intuition. It is not unlike watching a horrible game of soccer played by five year olds. It is clear that the kids who are scrambling about aimlessly are not fully able to participate in that thing we call soccer, and humor arises from this parody of what a match should look like. When I was playing on a local recreational league team in first grade I saw the kid with the ball and full on tackled him. My father had to pull me aside and persuade me that this particular game did not allow for my rather narrow skill set. The problem with Michael Scott is that he is 40 years old and has lost the cuteness factor of the above-mentioned five year olds. Subsequently we laugh at him because he is pitiful and ridiculous.
Setting the show within an office extenuates the audacity of these misuses because language games of the work place require “professionalism.” This professionalism presupposes a certain vocabulary, thus when Michael calls things “gay” he gets himself into problems with the company. Oscar is actually a homosexual and is thus rightfully offended by Michael’s inability to discern how to use language within this professional context. In order to fix the problem Michael forces Oscar to “come out” publically. This results in Oscar calling Michael “Ignorant, insulting and small.” While Michael may be all of these things this situation is brought to a head because Michael is inept at seeing how the language game functions, he does not see the contour of the blurry person, he sees a radically different shape, or what is more likely, is that he is playing an entirely different game all together.
Another example of how Michael Scott is unable to differentiate between language games is in the episode titled “Back from Vacation.” In it Michael gets back from a trip to Sandals, Jamaica, where he learned several phrases and behaviors that he wants to bring back to the office. Here it is appropriate to cite Wittgenstein proposing “Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not present to us so clearly.” While here Wittgenstein is speaking about the uniform appearance of a word, it is equally possible to talk about the uniform sound of a word. Even if two people pronounce a word the same way that does not mean that within each other’s language game the word means the same thing. This is precisely Michael’s problem; he tries to get the entire office to say “HEEY MAUN” While this was a word that made overweight and sunburned American tourists happy while on vacation, it is not something that makes sense to say within the context of a work environment. Michael also uses the phrase “island living” while bundled up and shivering in his parking lot in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Michael is here trying to transport meaning as if it was static, but the audience can see that he is mistaken.
While Michael Scott is predominantly the source of comedy because of his inability to play language games there are also moments where Michael starts to make sense. Almost seamlessly Michael will move from being incompetent and embarrassing to being a skilled salesman. This is because sales, and some other skills, are actually games that Michael knows how to play. In one episode Michael takes a client out to dinner, while most of the experience is almost painful to watch, when it comes to the actually sales part of the meeting, he comes roaring to life with tremendous skill. This simply highlights that Michael is not just bad at most socio-normative language games, but is good at games that are foreign and more obscure.
Many of the other characters in The Office are unable to participate in the language game of the audience. In fact the only two who are exceptionally skilled at playing the language games are Jim and Pam, who bait the others into saying and doing things that are obviously ridiculous. This comedy of errors is not unlike the Three Stooges; only instead of physical stupidity, there it is a comedy of verbal errors.
The framework that Ludwig Wittgenstein sets up for understanding meaning as use gives us a lens to see our world differently. Rather than a language that is constrained to a direction denotation of reference we are given a complex web of relations that allows for rich webs of meaning. In The Office, we have seen how these language games are played and governed by “natural laws” that make the audience aware that Michael Scott is unable to participate in these patterns correctly. In describing the show one might describe being anxious or fidgety, these are also symptoms of our own language games regulating what we see as “fair play.” While The Office is seemingly void of academic complexities, it displays a comedy of linguistic miscalculation that might have even made Wittgenstein himself chuckle.

Saving and Hoarding...

If one were to take every instance where the Bible speaks about money and cut it out, the book would be in tatters. Over and over again Christ calls us into the riches of Grace, but in following Jesus we must also remember his words, that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. In the Gospel of Mark, Peter proclaims Jesus as the “Messiah.” Here the readers heart leaps, finally, someone gets it! But Jesus, rather than commending Peter, gruffly tells him to shut up.
Peter in this passage envisions the messiah as a warrior, a conqueror. It is like Peter is telling Jesus, “You are the one who is going to beat up Rome!” Yet this is not the nature of Jesus’s ministry; he does not come to conquer by killing, but rather by being killed. The next time that Jesus is called “Son of God” it is by a Roman centurion. In Mark it is not in the power of Jesus that we declare him Lord, but rather in the brokenness that he was willing to consume for our sake.
We as Christ’s church must not forget that it is not in Strength, power, and influence that we find the heart of God, but in those who this world forgets. If we find our end in the security of power and money in this world, than we are declaring Jesus wrongly, just as Peter did. If, however, we see money as a means by which we can give up all the power and glory the world offers, walking humbly, doing justice and loving mercy, then we find our end in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
When we store up money in order to feel powerful and safe, we hoard. If we put money aside so that we may better serve Jesus Christ, recognizing that all we are and have belongs to him, then we are saving. Drawing black and white lines about how much is too much is not doing it justice. There are poor who hoard and rich who save, but as the privileged we must remember how much more susceptible we are to find security in these things. For those who are poor and neglected there is no façade of protection. The danger for us, who have been blessed abundantly, is that we can tend to have false confidence in our own abilities.

Regaining The Inner-Worldliness of Being

In “Six Characters in Search for an Author” Luigi Pirandello writes a play within play. It opens on a frustrated manager who is attempting explain a script by “Pirandello.” Each of the actors complains about the esoteric nature of the script. While the play is strange it is also exceedingly humorous because Pirandello creates awkward moments where he writes critical things about himself. The awkwardness is felt by the reader or hearer due to the meshing of two worlds, the world of the play and the world of the author himself. Though there is no rule about the bifurcation of these two worlds it has become an assumption that they should not interact. This is the project of Martin Heidegger in “Being and Time;” making visible an assumption, which in the apex of modernity has been made invisible, namely that Da-sein exists within the world and is thus is not radically separated from it ontologically. Just as Pirandello through his play highlights the author- character distinction, Heidegger deconstructs the subject object distinction inherent within modern thought.
“Being and Time” seeks to recover the essence of Being, a quest to venture backward through time in order to recover a question asked by Plato and then forgotten. Not unlike a Platonic dialogue Heidegger uses words to grapple and play with the reader so that he or she loses the veneer of confidence in their objectivity.
In this essay I will hone in on a section where Heidegger deals with the father of modernity (Descartes). In this section Heidegger addresses the fundamental separation Descartes establishes between the subject and the object. Heidegger then relocates the vantage point from which Da-sein encounters the phenomenological.
Heidegger asserts that “One look at traditional ontology show us that one skips over the phenomenon of worldliness when one fails to see the constitution of Da-sein of being-in-the-world.” It is important to highlight the being of the world.
Descartes sees the world by extensio, and by this extension fundamentally spatial. The nature of the world is thus based upon the description of the multiplicity of things variant extensions. These things are objectively present, they have depth and length and “corporal substance we call the “world.” Thus Descartes view of the world predicates an assumed notion about it’s being, namely that it is inaccessible. To say that the world is round, or blue or any other adjective is to presuppose its existence. Thus being is attributed to the world and the description becomes that thing which is sought after. Kant who parrots Descartes says, “‘Being’ itself does not ‘affect’ us, therefore it cannot be perceived. Being is not a real predicate.” Thus Descartes completely avoids the problem of being, sidestepping it and attempting to express being in terms of “definite qualities of the beings in question.”
By establishing the search for being as impossible Descartes cements the distinction between the subjective being and the object it encounters. Because the void is mammoth we cannot do anything but look across this canyon and categorize those attributes, which are the expressions of being. The being who looks across this infinite distinction is thus not in the world at all, not a part of it but is objectively present and at the same time objectively distant from its existence.
To Descartes the world is like a play that the audience looks upon in total discontinuity. The actors play out the scene upon the stage, mere feet away, and yet those attending are not at all participants merely onlookers. They experience the play by their observations of its movements from this fixed vantage point. The audience member thus stretches out with their senses and mind in order to take the attributes and motions and sounds and order them cohesively. The narrative must be assembled from what is observed.
Descartes assumes this about the world’s being. It is this separation that is intrinsic within modernity. The concept of objectivity, mental displacement in order to more accurately measure variants, is most poignantly present within “Meditations.” Here Descartes supposes that to be most “objective” is to leave the trappings of ones body and operate by the purely logical, accepting only that which is indubitable. Here Descartes finds what is real by creating space between him and those things that he measures and observes. The underlying presupposition is identical to that which Heidegger destructures by recovering the inner-worldliness of Da-sein.
This assumption made by Descartes has been engrained within the fabric of modernity, and as this fabric unrolls the threads of this subject-object distinction become nothing but the way the world is by nature. Heidegger asserts “the problem [is that]…traditional ontology is at a dead end, if it sees it as a problem at all.” Descartes has been so persuasive and pragmatically significant that his ideas that were once revolutionary are merely societal assumptions. Those who attend a play do not wonder why they are not allowed on stage, it is simply a convention that seems normal and pragmatic.
Heidegger thus makes the assumption, that being is inaccessible, apparent and asks the question of being anew. He is concerned with the being of Da-sein as not merely an objective presence within the world, but rather as having existence in the world. It is not that Da-sein has a place statically appointed within the theater, but that it exists in the theater, as do the actors on stage.
Heidegger is that audience member who realizes that the discontinuity between the actors and the audience is artificially imposed. There is no physical wall between the stage and the seating only that wall which is presumed by a notion of proactive mental engagement. The play is not mere sense datum that is collected, ordered and categorized by the active working of the autonomous mind. Rather the actors and the audience are both within the theater; they are not radically distant but radically contingent.
Da-sein is that being which finds itself existent within the world and thus is able to passively receive the phenomenological. “The being that Descartes is trying to grasp…with the extensio, is rather of such a nature that can be initially discovered only through an inner-worldly being initially at hand.” While Descartes finds himself unable to access the being of the world, which is phenomenological, it is due to the fact that one only finds existence when one exists within the world initially. The question of being then can, and must be asked, and approached, not as chaos to be made sense of but rather as a story that one is taken up into.
Heidegger is able then to ask the question of things essential “thingliness.” It is not a question of its outward appearance, these are pre-phenomenological questions, but rather by the contingency of Da-sein to the things being Da-sein witnesses that which the thing reveals. It is a passive act of receiving revelation.
“In its familiarity with significance Da-sein is the ontic condition of the possibility of the disclosure of beings encountered in the mode of being of relevance (handiness) in a world that can thus make themselves known in their in-itself.”
Heidegger is thus saying that ones proximity to those things which one is inquiring is not a strike against objectivity, but is rather the very thing which enables Da-sein to encounter what Descartes deems impossible; being.
Descartes view of accuracy and precision is derived from the notion of space, of distance. In order to see objectively we must separate out mind from our bodies, and our being from the world, which is infinitely distant. In affirming the inner-worldliness of Da-sein being, Heidegger is critiquing the most fundamental assumption of modernity.
To Heidegger the audience, which thinks that they are fundamentally separated from the play as neutral onlookers, is deceived. Those watching are not safe, not actually distant from the narrative playing itself out but are rather a part of the act. They are able to reach out and participate in the play and in doing so the narrative is revealed to them, not as fragments of a puzzle to put together but as a whole.
Pirandello does not pretend that the play he writes is in some way different and distant from himself, but rather acknowledges that the lines of distinction are arbitrarily imposed. In like manner Heidegger affirms the inner-worldliness of Da-sein and rejects the Cartesian myth of subject-object distinction.

A Cross That Teaches us to Mourn and Rejoice

The beauty of redemption In the Cross is that in its bitterness and raw audacity we see a microcosm of our calling as the church.

The Call of Christ eluminates the most horrendous parts of that which lies within us. The death and decay that we shuffle away to the periphery of our recognition is collected and hung before us, embodied in the crucifixion. Yet the promise of the Cross does not give us an immediate evacuation from this present darkness, but rather drags us deeper into its folds. Just as Christ dove headlong into all that is fearful and decrepit; so we who cling to him dragged into those places the world forgets; The darkest alleys, the deepest dregs of our human hell. We who hold fast to Christ and his Cross drink in the death that surrounds us, mourning, weeping, and paradoxically rejoicing , because God as Made new in us what God will some day make new in all of creation.


We are called not to the abandonment of this hell which our humanity has built, neither by middle class pews, nor spiritual euphoria but rather by the recognition of Christ’s eschatological death we are called to be reconciled and in this way the world will know the Kingdom by those who have been

Compassion

To Love someone is to Bring yourself, in the profundity of your brokenness, into communion with an other's brokenness.


The blind man on the street with a tin cup does not need our pity, but our camaraderie in the fallenness of our humanity. It is not in abundance that we serve, but rather in total emptiness; so that we may be vessels, brimming with grace that calls us into a sober recognition of our own discontinuity with God.

The table of Gods eternal life, requires not our certainty in a treatise or statement of faith but rather our submission to God, so that in fear and trembling we may ne reconciled to life and painfully torn from death's grasp.

It is out of our conviction of humanities inadequacy that we can join together in mourning. Yet this mourning is not all that we share when reaching out to those in need, we can also be brought together in the Joy of the resurrection. We share in the knowledge that Christ has begun a great work in us that someday will be carried out to completion.

Together we must cry out for a mutual destruction with Christ on the cross, so that we may also be absorbed into his glorious resurrection and the life of the age to come.