First, the
present. My final year at seminary has started off quietly. Our community has
been reduced to a fifth of its former size: most of the people are continuing
their studies at the new seminary in Utrecht, a few others have completed their
studies, and then there are the stragglers who have gone abroad, one on a long
detour to Rome, the other to England to embark on a new path of life as a
Jesuit.
The three of
us who remain are currently enjoying a leisurely sort of life, with long
afternoons and (so far) a rather irregular class schedule. I have gratefully
seized the opportunity to work on my thesis about Isaiah 7.
Yes, the
thesis. I knew it would require some brain-stretching, and so far I have not
been disappointed. Modern exegesis is very different from traditional; the wide
christological vistas, ingenious historical harmonizations and safeguardings of
the moral purity of the Biblical heroes have succumbed to the spirit of T.S.
Eliot’s wasteland: ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’
Did you know
there’s a wasteland in Isaiah 7? Yeah, I didn’t. It’s there, a few verses after
the Emmanuel prophecy (the what?). Sweeney says the wasteland came in with the
first major redaction under King Josiah – M.A. Sweeney, a master of the
schools, not Eliot’s Sweeney who ‘shifts from ham to ham / Stirring the water
in his bath.’
It’s a
dangerous business, approaching Scripture with wedges for the cracks and
pincers for the protrusions. But it’s been done for centuries now; our
exegetical libraries are stuffed with lots of tiny bits of Bible, meticulously
designated by mathematical codes (Isa 7:1 = 2 Kgs 16:5). And the new criticism
does identify heaps and heaps of minor oddities that don’t quite square with
the older view of Scripture as written by a rather selective selection of
individuals united by the messianic faith of Abraham (the what?), and
containing accurate predictions of things to come (including the names of
monarchs who will not appear on the world stage for some 150 years: cf. Isaiah
45:1).
Of course the
older view has its defenders, and its arguments too. The same applies to the
evolution controversy: just yesterday I received an invitation from a new
traditional Catholic movement in the Netherlands to a conference where
knowledgeable speakers will take turns not only to poke holes in the evolution
theory, but also to explain why it is important for Catholics to do so.
Apparently there is enough material (though not very recent, I’d guess) from
the Magisterium to mount a case against evolutionism from religious authority
as well as scientific findings. The same would apply to Biblical criticism,
which has been severely limited by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the
first half of the 20th century.
The attraction
of being on the conservative side is that you can claim to fight for the
integrity of the faith; you defend bastions of thought at key strategic
locations in the battle for souls. (It might seem a rearguard action to most
people, but a few decades ago defending the Creed seemed like a rearguard
action.) Whereas you could not explain at a birthday party why you would spend
time finding out if the first part of Isaiah ends after chapter 39 or 33.
Existential
thesis crisis? No, not really. I merely find that I am not at home in bastions,
and am content to be an agnostic about many things, though not about all. I
want to weigh thoughts, conscious of their multitude and the smallness of my
scales, as well as my inability to oversee the entire ecology of ideas. But
even small-scaled creatures can thrive in beautiful environments, such as the
sea, or the zodiac.
Yours
sincerely,
Turgonian,
Tracker of Ithilien
