Episode 7 // Language

A theological movement that I've found very useful in my own self-study of Christianity is that of 'postliberal theology'. A great deal of its framework is based on the thinking of the great analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein -- and his ideas of 'language-games'. It perceives Christianity as some 'overarching narrative', and within it, its own embedded grammar and logic, culture and practices. The movement in some sense rejects an epistemology founded on the Cartesian cogito, but instead reclaims one based on the language and culture of the particular community and its particular tradition. Paradoxically, it is rather unconcerned with an exegesis founded on historicism, and is more so taken with interpretation as an 'act of imagination' with the needs of the community at the forefront. It is similarly unconcerned with the 'objective' meanings and truths of text as well as the scholarly adventure of retrieving 'original meaning' of texts (as if such a thing exists, in light of Gadamer's hermeneutics), and is more so inclined to the non-foundationalist task of interpreting what the text means for a particular community, now. This emphasis on the particular, and the eschewing of the universal, intends to empower normative interpretations of texts that incite action; this in some sense arising as a response to the frustrating liberal inaction of the Christian church under the Nazi regime and other similar shortcomings of theological liberalism.

This is the sort of context that non-explicitly serves as a backdrop for this week's episode themed on 'language'. I find a great deal of significance in 'language' and firmly believe it to be foundational for not only spirituality, but consciousness and human existence itself. I attempted to explore the far-reaching theme of 'language' in this week's playlist with references from Saussure's pioneering work on structuralism, to the semiotics of the 'I am' statements Jesus uttered in Johannine literature, to Berio's exploration of the text's relationship to vocalization and meaning, and to the theological relationship between Pentecost and the tower of Babel. Hopefully it was relevant to your relaxing 'reading week' wherever you happened to be.

The image below is from a 12th century illuminated manuscript known as 'St. Albans Psalter' or the 'Albani Psalter'. It illustrates, in characteristically English Romanesque style, the biblical story of Pentecost and the related imagery of glossolalia (speaking in tongues).

[download forthcoming]


0:00:53 - station id: Holy Fuck
0:00:59 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:10 - promo: black history month, prisons, racism
0:02:19 - The Magnetic Fields - 'The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure'
0:05:28 - talking: on Saussure's signified/signifier theory, lectio divina, Johannine 'I am' statements, [1]
0:10:15 - Boredoms - 'Super You'
0:17:51 - Toro y Moi - 'Divina'
0:20:07 - Pelt - 'True Vine'
0:36:38 - promo: brother brian's bluegrass (radio show)
0:37:25 - The Golden Gate Quartet - 'He Never Said a Mumblin' Word'
0:40:42 - Luciano Berio - 'A-Ronne'
0:47:52 - talking: on Luciano Berio and nuances of meaning, text and vocalization, Resurrection Williamsburg, glossolalia, theology of Babel and Pentecost (via William Cavanaugh), [2], [3]
0:55:29 - Greg Scheer - 'Glossolalia'
0:58:27 - station id: Shad
0:58:31 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
0:59:02 - psa: Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee territory
0:59:12 - Spacetime Continuum & Terrence McKenna - 'Speaking in Tongues'
1:09:40 - Fiona Soe Paing - 'Tower of Babel'
1:12:54 - Anthony Braxton - 'Language Improvisations' (Excerpt)
1:20:11 - Matmos - 'Roses & Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein'
1:23:32 - talking: on Wittgenstein, [4]
1:28:49 - Jani Christou - 'Tongues of Fire: A Pentecost Oratoiro' (Excerpt)


"[A] religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought. It functions somewhat like a Kantian a priori, although in this case the a priori is a set of acquired skills that could be different. It is not primarily an array of beliefs about the true and the good (though it may involve these) or a symbolism expressive of basic attitudes, feelings, or sentiments (those these will be generated). Rather it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulations of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments. Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities. It comprises a vocabulary of discursive and nondiscursive symbols together with a distinctive logic of grammar in terms of which this vocabularly can be meaningfully deployed. Lastly, just as a language (or “language game,” to use Wittgenstein’s phrase) is correlated with a form of life, and just as a culture has both cognitive and behavioral dimensions, so it is also in the case of a religious tradition. Its doctrines, cosmic stories or myths, and ethical directives are integrally related to the rituals it practices, the sentiments or experiences it evokes, the actions it recommends, and the institutional forms it develops. All this is involved in comparing a religion to a cultural-linguistic system.

...It remains true, therefore, that the most easily pictured of the contrasts between a linguistic-cultural model of religion and an experiential-expressive one is that the former reverses the relation of the inner and the outer. Instead of deriving external features of a religion from inner experience, it is the inner experiences which are viewed as derivative."
- George Lindbeck (The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age)


Further Info:
[1] Yale New Testament Lecture on Johannine Literature (Video Lecture)
[2] Meaning in Relation to Text and Vocalization by Luciano Berio (Short Text)
[3] William Cavanaugh on Babel and Pentecost (Video Lecture)
[4] Wittgenstein His Life and Philosophy (Audio Lecture)