Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power
by
by
Lothar Krauth (Translator)
BlackOxford's review
it was ok
bookshelves: philosophy-theology, epistemology-language, church, german-language Living in Glass Houses
Christianity backed the wrong horse. Not Jesus who was admirable in many ways, divine or not. But language, that most unreliable of creations, which morphs and wiggles incessantly and always ends up controlling those who think they are using it. And the Christian sect most controlled by the independent beast of language is the Catholic Church, which doesn’t appear to realize that when it speaks, when it literally pontificates, it is doing so from the belly of the beast of which it thinks itself master.
Joseph Pieper was a leading German Catholic philosopher who wrote a number of interesting books on the philosophy and theology of culture. But in his Abuse of Language - Abuse of Power he has ventured out onto some very thin ice. His thesis is that language, that essential carrier of culture, has been corrupted and controlled, primarily by political interests which want to manipulate not merely public opinion but the very minds of the general populace.
Whether or not one agrees with Pieper’s thesis, however, it is clear that historically the dominant controller of language and mass linguistic manipulator has been the Catholic Church itself. The Church firmly hitched its wagon to the star of language as soon as it started making infallible pronouncements in the early Middle Ages. It’s been squirming ever since to get out of its historical positions on things as varied as slavery, usury, military service, democracy, Jews, and whether or not it’s only Catholics who can be saved. Language is its permanent vulnerability but it can’t back down from its obsession with it.
Unaccountably, this seems not to have occurred to Pieper. Nor does he seem to understand the essential connection between the control of language and what Christians refer to as faith. So his apologetics implicitly condemn precisely that which he means to defend, the authority of an institution which is the eminent example of the abuser he is attacking. The problem is in fact more fundamental than just saying regrettably stupid things. It lies at the core of Christian doctrine itself; so the Church, and in fact all Christian churches, are stuck with the consequences.
Christian faith is a somewhat slippery thing. It is a concept invented in its entirety by that genius of religious innovation, Paul of Tarsus. According to the theology of Paul, that set of ideas which forms the core of Christian thought, the desired state of human existence, that is to say, salvation, requires this essential quality: faith. It is generally accepted by Christian theologians ever since that this quality can not be acquired by trying to get it. It comes as a gift not as a reward for doing good or thinking good thoughts.
According to Paul, the object of this faith is Jesus as the risen Christ whom he expected to appear imminently to take ownership of the universe, which he will then return to his Father from whence it came. Paul got his timing for this event rather wrong. But Christians have stuck with Paul’s idea of the importance of faith out of... well I suppose out of the importance of faith. The self-referentiality doesn’t appear to bother them much. Nor, I suppose, should it since we have to build our lives as some presuppositions as we go along.
But what is this presupposition of faith? Paul says it is Jesus, a person whom he never met but about whom he has heard stories from others. Clearly, however, the historical existence of Jesus is itself a not very substantive matter. That existence is the tip of an iceberg which Paul and others would like all of us to accept as factual characteristics of that existence, things like Jesus’s motivation, his special status, the consequences of his short but dramatic life in cosmological terms, and his intentions for those who remembered him after his death.
Thus Pauline faith demands some considerable elucidation. It requires language in the form of foundational scriptures (mainly Paul’s letters to his dispersed Asian congregations), references (particularly to the existing Hebrew Scriptures which Paul used to ‘prove’ his assertions about Jesus), and gradually various creeds which summarized the ‘content’ of this thing called faith. As a practical matter, without this linguistic content, faith would be vacuous.
Hence the Christian problem of faith which arose immediately as the story of Jesus spread through the Roman Empire. Or more properly ‘stories’ since language implies interpretation which implies variation which creates disunity. So the early Church began a series of linguistic conflicts which continue to the present day. From the so-called Judaizers and Gnostics in the 1st century, to the Protestant Reformers of the 16th, to the dissenting traditional Catholics the 21st, the nexus of religious unity has always been linguistic content and its interpretation in every Christian sect.
Faith, in other words, is not just the acceptance of a formula of words (whether biblical or doctrinal makes no difference) but the commitment to defend this formula against competing formulae. Whatever historical events, original intentions, or progressive interpretations lie ‘behind’ these formulae are irrelevant. The words themselves are what one is meant to believe, to have faith in. What else is there? This is Christian faith, the defensive repetition of credal formulae.
In such a situation how could Christian churches do anything other than control language in order to maintain the unity of their adherents. It is an unavoidable consequence of Pauline theology. And it is more than a bit obtuse for an educated, intellectually sophisticated thinker like Pieper to pretend that he is defending human freedom against political forces out to reduce it. The Church is the standard, both historical and current, of just the sort of abuse he is worried about.
Christianity backed the wrong horse. Not Jesus who was admirable in many ways, divine or not. But language, that most unreliable of creations, which morphs and wiggles incessantly and always ends up controlling those who think they are using it. And the Christian sect most controlled by the independent beast of language is the Catholic Church, which doesn’t appear to realize that when it speaks, when it literally pontificates, it is doing so from the belly of the beast of which it thinks itself master.
Joseph Pieper was a leading German Catholic philosopher who wrote a number of interesting books on the philosophy and theology of culture. But in his Abuse of Language - Abuse of Power he has ventured out onto some very thin ice. His thesis is that language, that essential carrier of culture, has been corrupted and controlled, primarily by political interests which want to manipulate not merely public opinion but the very minds of the general populace.
Whether or not one agrees with Pieper’s thesis, however, it is clear that historically the dominant controller of language and mass linguistic manipulator has been the Catholic Church itself. The Church firmly hitched its wagon to the star of language as soon as it started making infallible pronouncements in the early Middle Ages. It’s been squirming ever since to get out of its historical positions on things as varied as slavery, usury, military service, democracy, Jews, and whether or not it’s only Catholics who can be saved. Language is its permanent vulnerability but it can’t back down from its obsession with it.
Unaccountably, this seems not to have occurred to Pieper. Nor does he seem to understand the essential connection between the control of language and what Christians refer to as faith. So his apologetics implicitly condemn precisely that which he means to defend, the authority of an institution which is the eminent example of the abuser he is attacking. The problem is in fact more fundamental than just saying regrettably stupid things. It lies at the core of Christian doctrine itself; so the Church, and in fact all Christian churches, are stuck with the consequences.
Christian faith is a somewhat slippery thing. It is a concept invented in its entirety by that genius of religious innovation, Paul of Tarsus. According to the theology of Paul, that set of ideas which forms the core of Christian thought, the desired state of human existence, that is to say, salvation, requires this essential quality: faith. It is generally accepted by Christian theologians ever since that this quality can not be acquired by trying to get it. It comes as a gift not as a reward for doing good or thinking good thoughts.
According to Paul, the object of this faith is Jesus as the risen Christ whom he expected to appear imminently to take ownership of the universe, which he will then return to his Father from whence it came. Paul got his timing for this event rather wrong. But Christians have stuck with Paul’s idea of the importance of faith out of... well I suppose out of the importance of faith. The self-referentiality doesn’t appear to bother them much. Nor, I suppose, should it since we have to build our lives as some presuppositions as we go along.
But what is this presupposition of faith? Paul says it is Jesus, a person whom he never met but about whom he has heard stories from others. Clearly, however, the historical existence of Jesus is itself a not very substantive matter. That existence is the tip of an iceberg which Paul and others would like all of us to accept as factual characteristics of that existence, things like Jesus’s motivation, his special status, the consequences of his short but dramatic life in cosmological terms, and his intentions for those who remembered him after his death.
Thus Pauline faith demands some considerable elucidation. It requires language in the form of foundational scriptures (mainly Paul’s letters to his dispersed Asian congregations), references (particularly to the existing Hebrew Scriptures which Paul used to ‘prove’ his assertions about Jesus), and gradually various creeds which summarized the ‘content’ of this thing called faith. As a practical matter, without this linguistic content, faith would be vacuous.
Hence the Christian problem of faith which arose immediately as the story of Jesus spread through the Roman Empire. Or more properly ‘stories’ since language implies interpretation which implies variation which creates disunity. So the early Church began a series of linguistic conflicts which continue to the present day. From the so-called Judaizers and Gnostics in the 1st century, to the Protestant Reformers of the 16th, to the dissenting traditional Catholics the 21st, the nexus of religious unity has always been linguistic content and its interpretation in every Christian sect.
Faith, in other words, is not just the acceptance of a formula of words (whether biblical or doctrinal makes no difference) but the commitment to defend this formula against competing formulae. Whatever historical events, original intentions, or progressive interpretations lie ‘behind’ these formulae are irrelevant. The words themselves are what one is meant to believe, to have faith in. What else is there? This is Christian faith, the defensive repetition of credal formulae.
In such a situation how could Christian churches do anything other than control language in order to maintain the unity of their adherents. It is an unavoidable consequence of Pauline theology. And it is more than a bit obtuse for an educated, intellectually sophisticated thinker like Pieper to pretend that he is defending human freedom against political forces out to reduce it. The Church is the standard, both historical and current, of just the sort of abuse he is worried about.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ August 14, 2013
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