Here is Therese's note for you all to read. Arne.
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Jay Lemke from Xmca writes:
>I think it may be useful for us to discuss the varieties of
>dialectics, and perhaps even the dialectics of dialectics, since
>dialectics as theory, method, or even meta-method, by its own
>thesis, must change in history.
--->'Formation and destruction' is another shorthand for dialectic. I >agree with Arne that Brahma the Creator and Shiva, Lord of >Destruction, are lonely without Vishnu the Preserver, and that >Western masculinism may be implicated in marginalizing the >supportive, sustaining, nurturing, helping dimensions of human >activity as boring, or feminine, while usurping creativity (which >females have long had prior claim on, much to our male womb-envy) >and glorifying Destruction (instead of understanding it as part >of ecological balance and harmony, and not an excuse for personal >glory, cruelty, aggrandizement, or domination). But this is still >a matter I think we are not so clear on: that sustaining is not >the contradictory of change, but a part and aspect of change, and >change of sustaining. Some serious dialectical thought about this >might have much to say about the social aspects of human >development, or about forces of fundamental social change that >are not mainly about 'breaking eggs'.
Interesting. This is exactly how I envision faith (Treue, Vertrauen, Glaube), as conceived in its original form among the ancient Israelites, a culture which today is so often looked down upon as 'primitive'. Faith is before all else a sustaining, nurturing force:
Augustine was very enthused about that Old Testament statement on faith in Isaiah 7:9 'If you do not believe, you shall not understand.' This reading of faith stems from a highly significant mistranslation in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament which stems from hellenistic times and is naturally influenced by the prevailing Greek rationalism of the age. In the Hebrew (Masoretic) Text, the meaning is properly 'If you do not have faith, you shall not continue.' Faith is the force of continuation which binds Israel and its God in a covenant that lasts for thousands of years, through the horror of the Holocaust and beyond.
The faith of the ancient Israelites also involved the concept of nurturing and preserving. The Hebrew word root that appears in the Isaiah verse mentioned above is '-m-n. In its simple (Qal) form, the active participle means a 'guardian' or one who raises and educates children. The God of Israel nurtures and educates his children, who in turn are guardians of the Torah (Instruction) given them by their God.
This 'sustaining,' 'preserving,' 'nurturing' faith is however in no way conceived of as something static and unchanging, ahistorical like the classical Greek idea of eternal truths and abstract ideas. Rather, it is inherently dialectical, depends upon change and strife and for its own grounding reasons, is bound up with history and is, one could certainly say, inherently historical in nature.
Such a faith, even if it were to take a secularized form, is certainly a candidate for a 'force of fundamental social change that is not mainly about breaking eggs.' With that I am in no way referring to such phenomena as the holier-than-thou legislation of religously-backed conservative politics in the U.S., or jihad-mentalities in the modern Middle East. More important, more in line with this concept of faith, is the idea of covenant and the dynamics of the lives of individuals and the existence of communities and institutions within a covenant.
The possibilities are many, and the idea is not new. On a world scale, as a tool for crafting peace between nations. On the scale of national politics, the citizens of a nation and their government conceived of as a covenantal relationship. Down to the smallest scale, as a mechanism of psychological healing for individuals, partnerships, families.
My theological two cents.
Therese