This is just a brief note to my readers (if there are any) to inform them that my family and I will be on a trip to the U.S. for approximately two weeks. Consequently, blogging may be very light or non-existent during this period. However, I promise to do my best to return to more regular blogging upon my return to China. Thank you for your understanding.
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"In the beginning was the Word." (John 1:1)
With these words, the apostle John identifies God with "the word." As most serious students of the Bible know, "the word" here translates the Gree k logos. According to the commentary in the NIV Study Bible, for the Greeks, logos meant not only the spoken word but also the unspoken word in the mind, that is, the reason. Consequently, it could also mean the "rational principle" that governs the universe. Moreover, in the book of Genesis, we are told a number of times that "God spoke and it was so." Thus, words are connected with God's creative power. However, the use of words, that is to say, language, is not only associated with God, but also with mankind, whom God created in His own image--in Latin, imago Dei. Although there has been considerable discussion about the meaning of this phrase imago Dei, it does at least suggest that human beings, as God's supreme creation, reflect His nature in some ways. It can be argued that one way in which human beings resemble their Creator is that they possess language. Language, properly understood, seems to be a uniquely human trait. While it is true that various kinds of animals have their own systems of communication, these do not seem to approach the complexity and sophistication of human language. I am not a scientist and so do not have any real expertise to bring to debates about evolution, creation, and related matters. However, I not only have a master's degree in linguistics , but also have been a student and teacher of language for many years. Given such a background, perhaps it is not surprising I have long been skeptical about the claim that human language evolved from simpler forms of communication employed by our (supposed) simian ancestors. In this scenario, human language was initially extremely simple, but gradually evolved towards greater complexity as human beings themselves evolved. I have at least two problems with this view. First, I think it shows a lack of appreciation for how great the gap is between animal communication systems and human language. Even the languages of so-called primitive peoples, who would presumably be the closest to our alleged evolutionary ancestors, are relatively complex. Thus, there is a lot to explain in order to give a convincing explanation of how human language evolved from ancient apes to the earliest humans. Second, to the best of my knowledge, there is no actual evidence for such a Darwinian evolution of human language. Languages do evolve in the sense that they change over time, but such changes are not generally characterized by a tendency toward increasing complexity (the vocabulary of a language could be said to become increasingly complex as new words as added to it, but often these new words are simply based on existing words or borrowed from other languages). The ancient languages of which we have written records are not noticeably less complex than modern languages, a fact to which I, as a one-time student of Latin and occasional student of classical (ancient) Chinese, can attest. In short, it can be argued that human language is both evidence for the reality of a Creator and of the resemblance between the Creator and his greatest creation, mankind. This is certainly a topic of considerable interest (to me at least), and perhaps in the future I will have more to say about it. Here in China it is the day after what many Westerners call "Chinese New Year" and what the Chinese call (somewhat optimistically, I think) Chun Jie, the " Spring Festival." As I write this post, I can hear the sound of fireworks being set off--although the noise seems somewhat subdued compared to two days ago, when there was a veritable barrage of fireworks going off in the hours leading to midnight on the night before the holiday. The noise is always quite tremendous at that time--in fact, an acquaintance of mine, a foreign student from the African country of Sierra Leone once told me that it reminded him of the sound of guns being fired during the civil war in his country a number of years ago (obviously, not a very pleasant memory for him). The fireworks will continue every night until the Lantern Festival, which takes place two works after Chun Jie, and then the holiday season will officially end. As many may be aware, according to the Chinese version of the zodiac, this year is the year of the dragon. The dragon is a very potent symbol in Chinese culture, with quite an auspicious meaning. In the past, the dragon was the symbol of the emperor (only the emperor was allowed to use a five-clawed dragon), decorating his clothes and his residence. Children born in the year of the dragon are considered to be especially lucky. Moreover, for many Chinese, the dragon has become a symbol of the Chinese nation itself. A popular song, written actually by a musician from Taiwan I believe, refers to the Chinese people as the "children of the dragon." This generally positive view of the dragon contrasts considerably with that of Western culture, in which dragons are often seen as symbols of evil, no doubt at least part due to the fact that in the Book of Revelation in the Bible the dragon represents Satan. Thus, the dragon as a symbol is a very g9od example of the differences between Western and Chinese culture. In addition, it helps illustrate the often counter-cultural nature of the Christian faith. While it is true that many Chinese view the dragon in a positive light, this is not true for many Chinese Christians. Influenced by the association of the dragon with Satan in the Bible, many Chinese believers are opposed to the use of its image. In fact, many years ago, when I was dating a Chinese woman who was a believer, she insisted that I get rid of a framed papercut of a dragon I had hanging on the wall of my apartment, a gift from some former English students of mine in Taiwan. I complied--although I must confess later having some mixed feelings about doing so since it had been a gift! I mention in my self-introduction that I have an interest in (Western) classical music. However, this post is not so much about music but about the life of a musician, namely, the composer Johannes Brahms. Recently, I have been reading Jan Swafford's Johannes Brahms: A Biography. Overall, I've enjoyed reading this book, even if after about two month's of reading I'm only at page 188 out of 636 pages! Nevertheless, skipping ahead in the book a little, I noticed that the author asserts on page 317 that Brahms was a "humanist and an agnostic." This view of Brahms' religious views rather conflicts what another author I've read had to say on this subject. In his book Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, Patrick Kavanaugh writes, on page 144, that Brahms was "a believer but a somewhat unorthodox one." Needless to say, there is rather a contradiction here. I am not an expert on Brahms' life, so I am not clear who is right on this issue, but such a stark difference in perspectives is striking. It is tempting to think that the two authors' views are reflective of their own beliefs. From his book, it is quite clear that Kavanaugh is a Christian. Regarding Swafford's personal religious beliefs, I am ignorant, but I notice that he refers to John 3:16 as "dogma," a word which seems, in contemporary usage to be a rather derogatory in meaning. Thus, I suspect Swafford does not share Kavanaugh's beliefs. Perhaps both men are seeing their subject through the prism of their own beliefs and emphasize those things that seem to support their respective positions. For example, Kavanaugh stresses Brahms' love for and knowledge of the Bible, while Swafford points out that Brahms consciously avoided direct reference to the Lord Jesus Christ in his celebrated choral work Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) and defended that decision in a letter to an acquaintance. On the other hand, the truth may be that no one is really certain about Brahms' faith or the lack thereof. As I understand it, Brahms was a rather private man; indeed, Swafford acknowledges that he kept his convictions "close to his chest" (p. 318). In fact, this disagreement about the nature of Brahm's religious views reminds me of a similar debate about another well-known figure, George Washington. The conventional view among most historians these days is that Washington was not a Christian but a deist (someone who believes in a God who created the universe but subsequently has been uninvolved in human affairs). Nevertheless, as I understand it, for many years after Washington's death, it was assumed that he was an orthodox Christian. Some continue to make that argument. I am no expert on this question, but based on my admittedly limited reading on the subject, it seems to depsnd on how one interprets the evidence. Fundamentally, though, like in the case of Brahms, the problem is that Washington never made any absolutely unambiguous declaration of his beliefs, as in his time it was not always the case that public figures would do so. Moreover, like Brahms, in some ways, Washington was a rather private man. Hence, barring the emergence of some as yet undiscovered document in the case of either man, it is likely we will never know for sure in this life. One of the things I have discovered as an English teacher in China is that students are apparently taught a particular interpretation of English literature, clearly Marxist in flavor. This fact struck home with me when one of my students was writing her graduation thesis (all undergraduate seniors in China are required to write a graduation thesis in order to receive their degree). The student was writing a paper comparing the English Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. As the student was writing about Shelley, she mentioned that the theme of Shelley's well-known poem "Ode to the West Wind" was something like "class struggle" or "revolution". I knew Shelley had a reputation for being an advocate of "revolution," but I was somewhat surprised by this assertion. Not being that familar with the poem, I decided to read it to see if this was a plausible interpretation. Needless to say, after reading the poem, I could not see anything, literal or symbolic, in the poem about "class struggle" or "revolution" (whichever it was supposed to be) Certainly, it was a poem about the west wind and by extension the power of nature, but I really couldn't see how it could be about "class struggle," "revolution," or any other theme favored by Marxists.
This is not an isolated example. For instance, Doctor Faustus in Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, perhaps one of the best known dramas of the English Renaissance, is an atheist hero struggling against the evil power of religion (or something like that), according to my students. I have tried to point out to my students that this interpretation is somewhat unlikely (for one thing, if Marlowe made Faustus an atheist hero to express his own atheism, he would have been risking his life since atheism was a capital offense in Elizabethan England). Nonetheless, even after this, I still find such interpretations appearing in my students' writing. Furthermore, certain literary works seem to be favored to the extent they can be interpreted in an ideologically correct way. For example, Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a favored text because it is (supposedly) a critique of industrial capitalism, as is Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter since it puts the Puritans specifically and religion in general in a bad light. Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby is also popular because it is about the illusionary nature of the "American Dream." Given how strongly such ideas have been inculcated into them, I suspect I will be dealing with this phenomenon for some time to come., despite my best efforts to have my students adapt a more nuanced approach to literature. Welcome to Non Nobis. The title of this blog is a reference to the Latin version of the opening of Psalm 115: "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to you be the glory." The focus of this blog will be on faith, the life of the mind, and related matters (broadly defined!). You may not agree with everything I say, but I hope you will find it interesting at least! Please feel free to leave your comments, but please try to keep the expression of your views within the bounds of civil discourse.
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AuthorStephen W. Hoyle currently teaches classes in Language Arts and Latin at a private school in the Washington, DC area. Previously, he taught English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at universities in the United States and China. He received a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in linguistics from George Mason University. In addition to China, he has lived in Belgium and Taiwan, and traveled extensively in Europe. His interests include language (having studied French, Latin, modern Mandarin Chinese, classical Chinese, Japanese, and koine Greek), education, philosophy and Christian theology, literature (mainly poetry), history, and classical music. He is married to an immigrant from China and has a daughter who is a college student. Archives
April 2024
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