So I've been assigned yet another 5 page science paper. A 5 page science paper is equivalent to a 10-15 page paper in medieval studies. Or a grant application. I'm thinking this will be good practice for when I have to apply to such creatures as the SSHRC.
Oh, and Piotr Rubik is great music for writing. It makes every word another note in a spectacular epic.
30 October 2008
23 October 2008
Projects and Panic, Oh My!
So I've been organising my ideas for an MA thesis idea. I'm a little nervous, because so far the idea hinges on something that I haven't looked into nearly close enough. (Not entirely, but enough that I would need to re-think some ideas if it turns out I'm wrong.) I strongly suspect that fables are telling of cultural assumptions about people, but I don't have any evidence or theorists who support this idea to reference yet. Once I have that, I will feel far more comfortable pushing my ideas forward regarding fables and disability. I suppose that means once I've read a section of Metzler's book and I've done some homework that is actually due for classes and grades and such (Classes? what? I have to do work other than my personal projects to pass and graduate? dang...)
Here's hoping I'll survive this next month of projects and maybe I'll be able to find these useful things for my own work.
Here's hoping I'll survive this next month of projects and maybe I'll be able to find these useful things for my own work.
22 October 2008
Liminality!
Today I picked up Irina Metzler's Disability in Medieval Europe (also, parts are available here) from interlibrary loan. I started reading the introduction and at one point she says, "Questions this book addresses with regard to medieval notions of impairment, for example, revolve around ideas concerning the liminality of impairment..."1
Oh how I love the notion of liminality and it fills me with glee when I run across it elsewhere...
1 Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe. Oxford: Routledge. 2006. 1.
Oh how I love the notion of liminality and it fills me with glee when I run across it elsewhere...
1 Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe. Oxford: Routledge. 2006. 1.
20 October 2008
To Continue the Discussion
12 October 2008
And in His Image He Created Them
Recently Greg and I have been discussing the question of what does perfection in heaven look like and how does it fit with being ad imaginem Dei creavit -- creavit in imago Dei -- that is, created to the image of God, created in His image. To wit, what is the image of God and what is perfection and how do these concepts apply to people who are physically or mentally impaired?
There are a few things to keep in mind. The first is that we are commanded to be perfect as God is perfect. God never gives us a command that cannot be followed. This means that, if Christianity is for everyone, it must be possible for everyone to follow this command, regardless of any physical or mental impairment. This fits with the suggestion that perfection does not mean of the body but of the soul, and that we must rely on the grace of God to effect holy perfection in us. Still, one may bring up that we shall all be judged according to what we knew, and this may be the loophole to include physical perfection, but that suggests that God has made us unequal in our ability to be made perfect instead of it being our circumstances that allow us to see clearer the grace of God. The child who never hears of Jesus but strives to live as good a life following the Noachide Laws unknowingly is not the same as the deaf child who grows up following and serving Jesus; nor can we say that they are equally distant from perfection, one by not having the opportunity to know Christ by name and the other by not having full use of hearing. Rather, the former receives grace based upon the little they knew, and the latter based upon the great amount they knew. The physical impairment does not limit the relationship with the heart of God.
The second is that God is love. The case has been made that as with light and dark, and hot and cold, so with love and evil. Dark and cold are not measurable things in themselves, but absences of light and heat. In that way evil is not a thing in itself, but the absence of love -- the absence of God, to be exact. Therefore, if we say there is evil in the world, what we really mean is that there is an absence of love in the world. We see this absence by the presence of love, which is in truth the presence of God. The first sin, then, was in its nature a refusal or rejection of God and of love. If before the original sin the world was good, and therefore full of love and fully reflecting that which is of God (for that which is full of love is modeled and shaped to the image of love, which is the image of God), then after the original sin the world was deprived of love and reflected less that same image of God. One might say, then, if this is an imperfect world, and if Eden was perfect, that perfection depends on the full presence of love.
We are created ad imaginem Dei, but by being born to human parents in this world we are injured by the shadow of sin. But we are commanded to be perfect, so this means reaching for God who restores us to love, that is, to Him -- to His image.
So now we know how perfection is achieved and what it looks like. It is achieved by the grace of God healing us from sin and filling us with the love that is Himself, so that we reflect His love. It is a change in the soul. Anyone of any age, nation, race, culture, or background of any sort is able to experience this change to be like the complete image of God. Anyone. And in heaven we will all be made perfect and even the persistent inclination to sin will be gone so that we may unashamedly and totally without reservation reflect the love of God. Heaven, then, may well look like the end of The Last Battle where all the world is the same, except it is bigger, brighter, truer. And devoid of the shadow of evil and sin -- the true image of creation and of God and fully reflective of God's love.
So what, then, of deafness? Of blindness? Of lameness, autism, or Down's? How do these impairments found in the physical body fit into this image of perfection? We already understand that perfection is a matter of grace and the soul. We understand that these people can follow and serve God and be made perfect by His grace. What does their perfection in heaven look like, then? Does it necessarily include a physical change to that which we call normal, or is it possible that these impairments will remain with them in heaven?
Now some people will argue that with the Fall of Man, the whole of creation was shaded by evil, and they would be correct. And they may further say that deafness, blindness, lameness, autism, Down's, and all the rest are manifestations of the physical effects of the Fall. And they may be right. But they may not be. They could argue that these people claim to be whole in who they are, impairment and all, simply because they are deluded by the sin that is in the flesh, but that is too simple. Rather, I think that perhaps God gave these people to us as a blessing and an opportunity for us to reflect His love. Just as The Necessary Beggar has mendicants who give us the chance to offer a blessing, so those who are impaired give us the chance to show them love and grace. And in return, they are given the chance to show love and grace by accepting it from us and by teaching us to see the world through their eyes. I am a poor person to speak on the blessings we receive from spending time with those who are impaired, although I have heard repeatedly from those who have had good opportunities to do so that it really is not you who blesses them, but they who bless you. And if that is true in this world, why should that not be true in the next as well, only all the more so?
I cannot say anything conclusively, having never been to heaven, but this is what I suspect: Heaven will be exactly as this world, except with infinitely more love for God will live in, among, and around us. We will be glorified in our bodies, yes, but we will retain those characteristics that make us His unique creations who all serve to reflect His image like the blind men and the elephant. And we will bless each other by our strengths and weaknesses and bless the Lord by doing so.
There are a few things to keep in mind. The first is that we are commanded to be perfect as God is perfect. God never gives us a command that cannot be followed. This means that, if Christianity is for everyone, it must be possible for everyone to follow this command, regardless of any physical or mental impairment. This fits with the suggestion that perfection does not mean of the body but of the soul, and that we must rely on the grace of God to effect holy perfection in us. Still, one may bring up that we shall all be judged according to what we knew, and this may be the loophole to include physical perfection, but that suggests that God has made us unequal in our ability to be made perfect instead of it being our circumstances that allow us to see clearer the grace of God. The child who never hears of Jesus but strives to live as good a life following the Noachide Laws unknowingly is not the same as the deaf child who grows up following and serving Jesus; nor can we say that they are equally distant from perfection, one by not having the opportunity to know Christ by name and the other by not having full use of hearing. Rather, the former receives grace based upon the little they knew, and the latter based upon the great amount they knew. The physical impairment does not limit the relationship with the heart of God.
The second is that God is love. The case has been made that as with light and dark, and hot and cold, so with love and evil. Dark and cold are not measurable things in themselves, but absences of light and heat. In that way evil is not a thing in itself, but the absence of love -- the absence of God, to be exact. Therefore, if we say there is evil in the world, what we really mean is that there is an absence of love in the world. We see this absence by the presence of love, which is in truth the presence of God. The first sin, then, was in its nature a refusal or rejection of God and of love. If before the original sin the world was good, and therefore full of love and fully reflecting that which is of God (for that which is full of love is modeled and shaped to the image of love, which is the image of God), then after the original sin the world was deprived of love and reflected less that same image of God. One might say, then, if this is an imperfect world, and if Eden was perfect, that perfection depends on the full presence of love.
We are created ad imaginem Dei, but by being born to human parents in this world we are injured by the shadow of sin. But we are commanded to be perfect, so this means reaching for God who restores us to love, that is, to Him -- to His image.
So now we know how perfection is achieved and what it looks like. It is achieved by the grace of God healing us from sin and filling us with the love that is Himself, so that we reflect His love. It is a change in the soul. Anyone of any age, nation, race, culture, or background of any sort is able to experience this change to be like the complete image of God. Anyone. And in heaven we will all be made perfect and even the persistent inclination to sin will be gone so that we may unashamedly and totally without reservation reflect the love of God. Heaven, then, may well look like the end of The Last Battle where all the world is the same, except it is bigger, brighter, truer. And devoid of the shadow of evil and sin -- the true image of creation and of God and fully reflective of God's love.
So what, then, of deafness? Of blindness? Of lameness, autism, or Down's? How do these impairments found in the physical body fit into this image of perfection? We already understand that perfection is a matter of grace and the soul. We understand that these people can follow and serve God and be made perfect by His grace. What does their perfection in heaven look like, then? Does it necessarily include a physical change to that which we call normal, or is it possible that these impairments will remain with them in heaven?
Now some people will argue that with the Fall of Man, the whole of creation was shaded by evil, and they would be correct. And they may further say that deafness, blindness, lameness, autism, Down's, and all the rest are manifestations of the physical effects of the Fall. And they may be right. But they may not be. They could argue that these people claim to be whole in who they are, impairment and all, simply because they are deluded by the sin that is in the flesh, but that is too simple. Rather, I think that perhaps God gave these people to us as a blessing and an opportunity for us to reflect His love. Just as The Necessary Beggar has mendicants who give us the chance to offer a blessing, so those who are impaired give us the chance to show them love and grace. And in return, they are given the chance to show love and grace by accepting it from us and by teaching us to see the world through their eyes. I am a poor person to speak on the blessings we receive from spending time with those who are impaired, although I have heard repeatedly from those who have had good opportunities to do so that it really is not you who blesses them, but they who bless you. And if that is true in this world, why should that not be true in the next as well, only all the more so?
I cannot say anything conclusively, having never been to heaven, but this is what I suspect: Heaven will be exactly as this world, except with infinitely more love for God will live in, among, and around us. We will be glorified in our bodies, yes, but we will retain those characteristics that make us His unique creations who all serve to reflect His image like the blind men and the elephant. And we will bless each other by our strengths and weaknesses and bless the Lord by doing so.
Predetermination, Free Will, and Narrative
I was having a discussion with a friend the other day, and the question of the co-existence of free will and prophecy came up. It is not uncommon for people to feel that if something in the future is fixed and unavoidable that free will must not exist. However, in the Christian tradition we have both. We have Paul who gave us a slough of statements regarding predetermination, and with that a requirement that humans have free will in order to truly worship and love God. So that leaves us with an issue. Things are predetermined and certain prophesied events must occur as they are fixed. I propose that a way to understand that is through the eyes of narrative.
When writing a story, many describe the characters as directing where they were going to go and what they were going to do. The characters take on lives of their own. The same could be argued for us. We are created by God. We are His creation. He has placed us in our families and given us certain characteristics. These are all elements that shape our backstory and who we are. And there is a general plot that is set into place that we are living within, along with our own subplots. So in that way we have no free will and our future is determined for us.
However, there is the issue of the characters taking on a life of their own. Because we, the characters, have depth and because different things motivate one that will not another, and we have different experiences, we can only decide what would make sense for us to decide. And I suggest that it is out decisions which drive us to a fixed point. It is not that the point is fixed and we are manipulated to reach it, but rather that a point is fixed because, due to who we are, we would never have chosen otherwise.
This includes situations where seemingly random events happen. It is because of our own decisions which are made based upon who we are that bring us to a certain place at a certain time, and it is because of the decisions of other people which are based upon who they are that brings them to do something at that certain place and time, or otherwise cause something to happen then and there. And we need not consider natural events that happen to us, for they have nothing to do with our own will, save that we were in the place where and when it occurred.
Because of this we can have a predetermined story and the foreshadowings of prophecy, and at the same time it happens by our free will. We, because we are who we are, make the decisions that lead to nothing other than what has been predetermined and foretold simply because what has been told is the result of who we are.
When writing a story, many describe the characters as directing where they were going to go and what they were going to do. The characters take on lives of their own. The same could be argued for us. We are created by God. We are His creation. He has placed us in our families and given us certain characteristics. These are all elements that shape our backstory and who we are. And there is a general plot that is set into place that we are living within, along with our own subplots. So in that way we have no free will and our future is determined for us.
However, there is the issue of the characters taking on a life of their own. Because we, the characters, have depth and because different things motivate one that will not another, and we have different experiences, we can only decide what would make sense for us to decide. And I suggest that it is out decisions which drive us to a fixed point. It is not that the point is fixed and we are manipulated to reach it, but rather that a point is fixed because, due to who we are, we would never have chosen otherwise.
This includes situations where seemingly random events happen. It is because of our own decisions which are made based upon who we are that bring us to a certain place at a certain time, and it is because of the decisions of other people which are based upon who they are that brings them to do something at that certain place and time, or otherwise cause something to happen then and there. And we need not consider natural events that happen to us, for they have nothing to do with our own will, save that we were in the place where and when it occurred.
Because of this we can have a predetermined story and the foreshadowings of prophecy, and at the same time it happens by our free will. We, because we are who we are, make the decisions that lead to nothing other than what has been predetermined and foretold simply because what has been told is the result of who we are.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)