January 2007 – Page 6

Jesus Immanuel Bar-Joseph?

In an e-mail titled "Does Jesus have two given names?" a reader writes:

How does Mary and Joseph naming their infant "Jesus" square with
Isaiah’s prophecy that his name shall be Immanuel? In Matthew the
angel revealed to Joseph that Mary, "will bear a son, and you shall
call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All
this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call
his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us)." (Matt.1:21-23)

This is one of those cases where the solution lies in the nature of prophetic fulfillment.

The starting point to unraveling the mystery is to go back into the Old Testament and look at the prophecy in its original context. The passage being quoted is Isaiah 7:14, which is a famous Messianic prophecy. But in its original context, it has a different signification.

In Isaiah 7, God has sent the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz of Judea that the king of Syria and his ally, the king of the northern ten tribes (Israel) will not be able to conquer Judea. In fact–the northern kingdom of Israel is to itself be conquered (a reference to theconquest by the Assyrians and subsequent deportation that Israel suffered). To convince Ahaz that this prophecy is true, he invites the king to name a sign for God to give him, and Ahaz refuses, saying that he will not but God to the test. This was the wrong thing to say, and Isaiah responds:

"Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Imman’u-el. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

Now, there are two things about this passage that help us understand its original reference, and I’ve put them in blue.

The first is that the birth of the child is supposed to be a sign that God is giving to King Ahaz, since Ahaz refused to name a sign for himself. The purpose of this sign is to convince Ahaz that his kingdom really will not be conquered by Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel.

Ahaz reigned from appropximately 735 B.C. to 715 B.C., so it would do him no good at all if the sign were not to be fulfilled for over seven hundred years. That would (a) be long after he was dead and (b) long after the then-existing situation with Syria and Israel was over. It could scarcely serve as a sign backing up the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the situation.

This points us to look for the original fulfillment of the prophecy to be within the life of Ahaz, which ended in 715 B.C.

The second thing about the passage which helps us understand its original reference is the fact that it says before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good (i.e., avoid things that will hurt him and accept things that will help him), that the lands he is afraid of will get conquered. Now, the conquest of Israel by the Assyrians happened around 721 B.C., and it’s possible that the conquest mentioned in the prophecy is an even earlier one, which occurred in the 730s B.C.

So once again we’re pointed toward a child born in the 8th century B.C.

This child was not, in all likelihood, born of a virgin. The term that is used in Hebrew–almah–refers to a young woman. It is commonly assumed that an almah was a virgin, and the Septuagint translates it thus in Greek (parthenos), but that is not what the Hebrew requires.

This child may have literally been named Emmanuel, though not necessarily. Since "Immanuel" means "God (is) with us" and since saying that God is with us is a common idiom in the Old Testament for saying "we will be victorious" or "things will go well for us," the child’s prophetic "name" may not have been what he was literally called on a daily basis but may be taken as an expression of the fact that the child is a sign from God that God is with his people and their country will not be conquered by the alliance Ahaz feared. Or, in a third possibility, Immanuel may have been the literal name of someone who also had another name, such as was the case with kings, who took regnal names upon their accession to the throne. Thus some have speculated that Immanuel was King Hezekiah, who succeeded Ahaz and lived during the fulfillment of the prophecy. (Whether any have argued that Immanuel was Hezekiah’s birth name, I don’t know.)

However that may be, prophecy often has more than one fulfillment, and the authors of the New Testament recognized a deeper, Messianic fulfillment in the prophecy. There would come who truly was born of a Virgin and who truly was God with us, and thus Matthew sees in the prophecy of Isaiah a second, greater fulfillment in the person of Christ.

This is thus one of several passages in the New Testament that reveals that the sacred authors had a somewhat different idea of prophetic fulfillment than we tend to today. We tend to assume that, if Thing X fulfills Prophecy Y then X must be one and only fulfillment of Y, literal in all its details.

Not so to the authors of Scripture. To them, a prophecy might have multiple fulfillments, not all of which were equally primary and not all of which were equally literal. Some fulfillments might echo or reflect or correspond to the original prophecy, without its being its primary fulfillment.

That’s what we have here: A child born in Ahaz’s reign is the primary fulfillment of the prophecy, but within the spiritual sense of the text is another, grander, and later fulfillment that points to Jesus. We should not understand from Matthew’s application of this prophecy to Jesus that he was literally named Immanuel in the same sense that he was named Jesus. The application of "God with us" to Jesus is something that goes beyond being a name in the conventional sense–even in the conventional Hebrew sense–and applies to him directly as a descriptor of his Person. Jesus is literally God with us in the flesh.

What Matthew is doing, therefore, is taking a text from Isaiah and discerning within it (which is to say, within its spiritual meaning) a prophecy of a Virgin Birth leading to God Incarnate being with us.

Incidentally, here’s a tip for understanding how some New Testament fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies work: To avoid the trap of thinking that each Old Testament prophecy has one and only one fulfillment, which is the one the New Testament records, or that the New Testament fulfillment must be the primary fulfillment of the prophecy or that all the details of the New Testament fulfillment have to match those of the Old Testament prophecy, try replacing the word "fulfills" with a broader word, like "corresponds to" or "reflects" or "echoes," to reflect the broader understanding that the biblical authors had.

In a particular case, they may have meant only " . . . and this reflects what was said by Isaiah the prophet" instead of " . . . and this is the one and only literal-in-all-its-details fulfillment of what was said by Isaiah the proiphet."

Attack Of The United Nations!

(DAILY PLANET) — Turmoil has engulfed the United Nations. The taxation of trade routes to outlying countries is in dispute.

Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to many small countries.

While the General Assembly endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, Secretary General KOFI ANNAN secretly dispatches two Jedi Knights, guardians of peace and justice, to settle the conflict.

They fail, leading to unrest in the General Assembly. Several thousand small countries declare their intention to leave the United Nations.

This separatist movment, under the leadership of the mysterious MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, has made it difficult for the limited number of Jedi Knights to maintain peace and order in the world.

Secretary of State CONDOLEEZZA RICE is returning to the General Assembly to vote on the critical issue of creating a GRAND ARMY OF THE UNITED NATIONS to assist the overwhelmed Jedi.

However, Kofi Annan, mired in "baseless" allegations, is removed from power following a vote of no-confidence and is replaced by the sinister BAN KI-MOON of South Korea, who is voted emergency powers to address the current crisis.

Promising to renounce his emergency powers as soon as the crisis is resolved, Secretary General Ban immediately deploys a clone army developed by disgraced South Korean scientist HWANG WOO-SUK and dispatches them to points all over the globe.

Secretary Ban promises to stun opposition into submission with shock and awe provided by Industrial Light and Magic.

Meanwhile, CONSPIRACY THEORISTS long suspicious of the United Nations begin making preparations at their hidden rebel bases.

AND THE SAGA CONTINUES . . .

The Curtain Closes On A Long-Time Blog

Readers of JA.O may recall a few months ago when Bill Moyers sicced his lawyers on me that I was represented by Steve Dillard, a lawyer and fellow-blogger who ran the popular Catholic blog Southern Appeal. I really appreciate Steve’s help, on this occasion and others, as well as the lively blogging he and his compatriots have provided.

I was sorry to learn, just before the holidays, that Southern Appeal is closing its doors. Its proprietor, Steve Dillard, has decided for personal and professional reasons to discontinue the blog.

I know I’ll miss it, and many others will, too. Southern Appeal was one of the earliest and most popular Catholic blogs, bringing faith-based commentary on a wide range of issues, particularly social and political ones.

It was also a robust group blog, with many co-bloggers from a variety of perspectives (some of them Protestant) who worked together respectfully and well.

If you’ve read Southern Appeal before, be sure to

CHECK OUT STEVE’S FINAL POST.

In it he notes where you’ll be able to read the continuing blogging efforts of his co-bloggers, as well as keep up to date on his own speaking engagements.

If you’ve enjoyed Southern Appeal, you might also take a moment to leave Steve and his co-bloggers a note letting them know and expressing support for their future blogging efforts.

God go with you, Steve and all. I look forward to seeing you around the Internet.

Technology For The Scrupulous

There are certain subjects that I tend to handle by e-mail rather than posting them on the blog. I very much prefer (and ask) that when people e-mail me they let me post their question (in anonymized form) and its answer so that others can benefit from it, but sometimes, if the issue is especially sensitive, I’ll handle it by e-mail instead.

One case where I tend to do that is when people feel that they may have done something that God will not forgive them for–something unpardonable.

The reason that I tend to help people like that via e-mail is that I don’t want to stir up worries unnecessarily in other readers, who may be scrupulous. I mean, if you’re scrupulous and you’d never thought that Sin X is unpardonable then why should I make your life harder by publishing a blog post entertaining the question that it is. Even if I offer sound arguments for why God forgives Sin X, you’d probably rather not have even known about the issue–at least if you’re scrupulous.

I feel it’s important to help people who are afraid that they have done something that will permanently damn them. It’s a common worry that affects a lot of people at some point during their lives, and it’s an absolutely terrifying position to be in, so I want to help people who are at that point, and I want to do so without stirring up fears needlessly in others.

Thus far my solution has been handling queries like that largely by e-mail, but this limits the potential good that the answer may do. What I’d rather do is write the answers in some kind of web-based repository where they can benefit multiple people–but without needlessly stirring up fears.

This would also have the benefit of letting people go back to the repository when they need to in order to calm their fears. I had one person write me, and I sent him material that he found helpful, and he’d re-read my e-mails to comfort himself whenever he got fearful, but then his e-mail crashed and he lost them all. (Fortunately, I was able to pull them up out of my e-mail and re-send them.)

A key element in doing that would be to break the subject up in to little chunks so that the fearful could read those chunks that applied to them and not the ones that didn’t.

There are also certain chunks that I’d want to make sure that almost everyone reads (e.g., the fact that the story of the Prodigal Son was given to us precisely in order to stress the fact that you can begin as a son of the Father, then go off into horrible, horrible sin, and still come back and be forgiven, which serves as a reference point for God’s mercy that has to be kept in mind when reading other passages).

The question is how to present these little chunks to the reader in the best way, and that’s where I’d like advice from people.

Two plausible options occur to me. There may be others also, and if so I’d like to hear about them, but here are the two I’m thinking about at the moment:

1) The Minimally-Tagged Presentation

In this version I’d have a list at the top of the page of the things I think virtually everyone should read. I’d advise people to click on these things and read them.

Below this would be a list of answers to the particular things that worry people. The items on this list would be very brief and as non-descriptive as possible (i.e., minimally tagged) so as not to stir up needless fears. For example, many entries in the list might just be the citation of a scripture passage (Book X, Chapter Y) and nothing else. That way if you were having a fear that something in Book X, Chapter Y meant that you were irretrivable damned, you could click on that link and find out why this isn’t the case.

I could then tell people to read only the entries that are actually bothering them and, if they’re not sure what the reference is for the passage they have in mind, I could provide a link to a searchable Bible so that they could look up the reference and know what to click on.

The drawbacks of this approach are the facts that (a) some people may click on things that aren’t bugging them (in fact, some people may have anxiety over what’s under all the different links that they start clicking them just to find out) and (b) they may not be able to figure out what one that want to click on, even if I provide a link to a searchable Bible.

2) The Non-Tagged Version

This version would start out with links to the chunks that I think almost all of the fearful should read, as before, but it would not have the second list. Instead, it would have a search box, and you’d enter search terms relating to your fear and be given results you could click on to read the corresponding chunks. The idea here is that you wouldn’t even see things that weren’t already bugging you, and so they wouldn’t raise needless fears.

The drawbacks here are (a) people might not enter the right search terms (they misspell things, use different abbreviations for biblical books, use different translations that use different vocabulary) and might miss the material was there to help them, and (b) they might generate too many results and see things that end up stirring up new fears anyway (e.g., the word "unpardonable" or "unforgivable" might show up in almost every item in the repository, and if they wouldn’t the word "and" or "the" would).

The latter problem might be ameliorable if I were able to get someone to do me a custom search function that would only accept certain terms, but that could exacerbate problem (a) at the expense of curing problem (b).

So I’m not sure what to do.

I’d like to find a way to use technology to provide help for people on these points without the risk of placing greater burdens on them, but it seems like some degree of risk will be unavoidable, and it isn’t clear which of these approaches (if either) is the better. There may also be a third approach that I’m not even considering.

My question for you–particularly if you are someone who struggles with these kinds of issues–is what you think. Which approach do you think would be most beneficial–and, if you think you have a better solution than either of them–what it is.

Much obliged for the feedback, folks!

BTW, I *totally* understand if folks would prefer to comment anonymously on this one. Just make up a new, temporary handle for yourself. That’ll make the discussion easier than if we have a bunch of anonymous blanks.

Science Fiction As Literature

CHT to the reader down yonder who linked to a discussion in First Things in which Fr. NeuhausJoseph Bottum (CHT to readers for the correction) raises the question of science fiction as literature. Commening on a post at the Volokh Conspiracy, he writes:

There exists an intellectual defense of science fiction, but what’s interesting is that the query produced a hundred comments and, as near as I can tell, not one of them attempts the intellectual defense. What they pursue, instead, is a systematic assault on the notion of literature.

You can’t discount the American horror of appearing to be snob: Ordinary readers like science fiction, and we’re all just regular folk, after all. But what’s curious is the deployment of postmodern tropes: Some years ago, literature professors (of the MLA persuasion, anyway) turned against the whole idea of literature, the Volokh Conspiracy commenters note. So if even trained literary critics are unable to say what qualifies as literature, why can’t science fiction be literature?

There’s something a little odd in the use of this line by a group of lawyers and law professors who are known for their rejection of the postmodern turn in their own profession of law. Still, as an anti-intellectual argumentative strategy, it’s pretty smart: You get to deny that there is any specialized knowledge necessary for determining literature (“even the trained people don’t know what it is”), and at the same time you get to appeal to the authority of those specialists to promote your favorite reading.

But smart ain’t the same as intellectual. As I say, there is an intellectual defense of some genre writing. But—believing, as I did, that lawyers tend toward being natural intellectuals—I would have preferred to see the discussion begin with the acknowledgement that Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe produced literature. Now, does any science fiction stand near them?

As someone with pre-postmodern sympathies on a host of issues, I find myself sympathizing with Bottum when he looks askance at postmodern attempts to simply deconstruct the idea of literature. He’s quite right that Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe composed works that deserve unique commendation.

However, as a philosopher of the analytic tradition, I am also sensitive to the difficulties in defining what counts as literature, as well as the subjective difficulty of assessing what meets the criteria that could be proposed.

Unfortunately, Bottum plays his cards close to his vest and does not propose a definition for literature. He simply offers us a list of individuals he holds as having produced literature and asks us whether any works of science fiction "stand near them."

I can’t divine what standards our good divine might employ in assessing that question, but my initial inclination is to answer "Ask me again in five hundred years."

The list of luminaries Bottum cites is so stellar and so hallowed by centuries (except for Goethe) that one would have to display remarkable temerity to identify a recent science fiction author as a "new Homer" or a "new Virgil" or a "new Shakespeare" or even a "new Goethe."

By pointing to the cream of the literary crop–instead of literature of more modest means–Bottum has set the standard remarkably high, and diminished the ability of others to give him an answer. It would be easier if he identified 20th century figures who he regards as authors of literature, but by picking only authors whose works have stood the test of time, he makes it hard to offer comparisons with works that have not yet been subjected to the test of time.

We are thus without either a definition or a list of contemporary authors of literature, to which contemporary science fiction authors might be compared.

Having said that, I think that it is quite clear that science fiction–as well as genre fiction in general–can count as literature, however literature is defined. As evidence, I would offer the very list of literary luminaries that Bottum cites. Every one of them is known for producing works of literature that, if they were published today for the first time, would count as genre fiction.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey would both count as works of fantasy literature. So would Virgil’s Aeneid. So would the Divine Comedy. So would multiple plays by Shakespeare (Hamlet is a ghost story, Macbeth has witches, The Tempest is built around a wizard, and let’s not even go into the fantasy elements in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Faust would also be classified as fantasy based on its subject matter.

So literature obviously does not exclude the fantastic, which is central to science fiction. Indeed, fantasy is often classed together with science fiction, but if one were to insist that the two categories must be distinguished such that science fiction must involve science or the future rather than the supernatural then it still seems there are works of science fiction that are clearly literature.

I won’t go so far as to proclaim a new Homer, but it strikes me that Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus and George Orwell’s 1984 both stand sufficiently near the works of the authors Bottum mentions to count as literature. Frankenstein, in particular, is well along in the process of standing the test of time and is likely to be with us five hundred years from now, quite possibly on an equal footing with Faust.

I’d also agree with the commenter who wrote:

Those who believe SF isn’t literature should read A Canticle for
Lebowitz or the work of Gene Wolfe or Tim Powers, not to mention
Tolkien.

It thus strikes me as possible to cite clear examples of science fiction that counts as literature, even given the vague guidance Bottum has offered us regarding what belongs in that class.

I am intrigued by Bottum’s statement that "There exists an intellectual defense of science fiction," which he later speaks of as if there is only one intellectual defense ("not one of them attempts the intellectual defense"). I am a bit perplexed by the fact that he does not seem willing to extend the same to genre fiction in general, saying that "there is an intellectual defense of some genre writing."

Unfortunately, Bottum is even more coy about what this defense might be than he is regarding what counts as literature.

Once again, I will not attempt to divine the mind of the divine, but I will offer the following thoughts:

1) If the inclusion of futuristic technology or situations is a sufficient condition for a work to count as science fiction, then it seems immediately apparent that science fiction can be literature for the simple reason that there will be literature in the future.

I don’t know that there will be another Homer or Shakespeare–their positions in the Western Canon have to do not only with the quality of their works but also with their place in the histories of the languages in which they wrote–but I suspect we will have future Goethes. In fact, I suspect we get several Goethes every century, it just takes time to recognize them.

If we then contemplate the first Goethe of the twenty-second century, writing in 2107, then even if he writes fiction that is purely realistic in terms of his own day, it will include elements that make it science fiction by our standards. This is true whether technology advances or not, whether we are living in a utopia or a dystopia or not, or whether we are living in a world that has slid back into barbarism.

This reveals to us the difference between subject matter (genre) and literary quality.

2) "Genre" and "literature" are two separate categories, just as "plot" and "literature" are two separate categories. There is no such thing as a literary plot; literature can use any plot. And there is no such thing as a literary genre; literature can be written in any genre.

Genre has to do with the subject matter that is found in a story. The Odyssey counts as fantasy because it has Odysseus going from island to island meeting fantastic beings and beset by gods. If you keep the exact same plot, with the same episodes and scenes, but change the details so that he’s going from planet to planet meeting fantastic beings and beset by aliens then the genre becomes science fiction.

Whether something counts as literature is not principally a judgment about subject matter. It is largely a judgment about quality. Nothing counts as literature if it is of poor quality. To be literature, it has to be good.

Some might want to stop there and say that the difference between literature and ordinary writing is simply the distinctive quality of literature. If it’s really, really good, it’s lit. Otherwise, not. But others might want to add other criteria.

Discerning what those criteria might be is difficult. One does not want to merely endorse the preferences or prejudices of a particular age, and so one must look across time–from Homer to Shakespeare to Goethe–and ask what indisputable works of literature have in common.

The differences between the works are vast. The Iliad does not read at all like The Sorrows of Young Werther, but a plausible criterion would be that works of literature engage the human condition in a particularly insightful way. This, indeed, may be the difference between literature and ordinary writing.

An ordinary comedy might be well-crafted and funny, and an ordinary romance might be well-crafted and entertaining, but Shakespeare’s comedies and romances go beyond that and allow us greater insight into the human condition.

That, incidentally, is what Frankenstein and 1984 do. Frankenstein isn’t just a creature story, and 1984 isn’t just a speculation on what life might be like thirty-six years after George Orwell wrote it.

If we accept the definition of literature as writing of high quality that is particularly insightful on the human condition (and I have no way of knowing if Bottum would accept this definition) the it seems clear that works of any genre can count as literature because there is no subject matter that of its nature prevents an author from writing well or displaying insight into the human condition.

It doesn’t matter whether the story is about a romance or the solving of a crime or the prosecution of a legal case or the efforts of a doctor to save lives or someone living in the Old West or someone living in the future. Unless you are prepared to say that there are no insights to be had on the condition of people in such situations then you must be prepared to say that such stories can tell us things about the human condition and thus potentially serve as literature.

Even something as "frivolous" as comedy can do that (note Shakespeare’s comedies), since humor is part of the human condition.

3) To apply the foregoing insight specifically to science fiction, it has often been pointed out that by using fantastic themes and situations, science fiction writers are able to hold up a unique mirror to the human condition and illuminate it from a different angle.

If you’ve got the ability to create life from non-living matter, as Dr. Frankenstein did, or if you can envision the playing out of social trends decades into the future, as George Orwell did, then you can throw light on aspects of the human condition that are hard to bring out in the confines of purely realistic literature.

The same applies if you put humans in a very different situation than the one they commonly find themselves in today. This can happen, for example, if you put them on another planet, or imagine them meeting another intelligent race. Or you might chuck the humans entirely and just think about what an alien race would be like and how it might be similar to and different from humanity.

In all of these ways, science fiction can hold up a mirror to mankind that let’s us look at its condition from a new angle.

4) Even more fundamentally, the senses of wonder and dread are themselves part of human nature, and science fiction allows us to express and explore these. It was wonder and dread that fired the ancient imagination and led to the creation of the gods and monsters of the classical age, as we find them in the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeneid. It was wonder and dread that led Shakespeare to put ghosts and witches and wizards in his stories. And it was wonder and dread that led Goethe to give literary form to a bargain with the devil.

What generates wonder and dread in us changes from age to age, and thus we find somewhat different elements of the fantastic in the writings of Homer and Shakespeare and Goethe. Today many find feelings of wonder and dread conjured in them by contemplating the science and technology that life thrusts upon us, or the thought of what the future will bring and how it will be different from today, or what other kinds of life may exist in God’s creation.

In contemplating all of these, we express a fundamental aspect of the human condition and exercise the gift of reason that God gave us, and despite the sniffing of those who are so in love with realistic fiction that they have lost the sense of preternatural wonder and dread, they can indeed find their place in human literature.