Herem in Judges 9

During the wilderness sojourns in preparation for entry into the Promised Land, the Lord commanded the people to "devote to destruction" the cities of the Canaanites and to drive them out of the land. The meaning of Herem (devote to destruction) in this case is that of holy war--the Lord is taking vengeance upon the Canaanite peoples for their long history of sinfulness (cf. Gen. 15:16 where the Lord explicitly tells Abraham that He is waiting until the transgression of the Amorites is complete before He punishes them). The purposes of Herem are several, but perhaps most acutely is the testimony they are to serve to the people; that the Lord God's wrath and curse is upon those things "under the ban" (herem). It is a negative call to repentance from rebellion and re-alliance with the Lord God, as Rahab would recognize (Josh. 2), and even as the Gibeonites (Josh. 9) would recognize.

Interestingly, there seems to be a negative example of herem in Judges 9. Gideon, or Jerubbaal ("let Baal contend") has recently defeated the Midianites who were oppressing Israel, but in his weakness Gideon sets up idolatry in his hometown by making an ephod out of the spoils taken from the Midianite kings and princes. Gideon also multiplied wives, one of which was a Shechemite, who bore Gideon a son, whom he named Abimelech ("son of the king"). Abimelech wasn't a full Israelite, and since Gideon had seventy other sons, it would have been near impossible for him to have any hopes of kingship within the land. So he entices the Shechemites to slough off the yoke of Gideon's seventy sons and accept the rule of Abimelech, their brother (or rather, only half-brother, as Gaal son of Ebed, "worthless son of a slave," will later point out).

It is Abimelech's means for ridding himself of his brothers that seems reminiscent of herem. The Shechemites give him seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-Berith ("lord of the covenant"), which he uses to hire mercenaries to capture his brothers. Once captured, he seems to offer them as a sacrifice to Baal-Berith, for he slays them all on a rock at Ophrah--the same place where Gideon slew the kings of Midian as the Lord commanded, and where Gideon had set up his false religious worship. Then Abimelech is crowned king "beside the terebinth tree at the pillar that was in Shechem"--perhaps the same tree where God first appeared to Abram in Canaan and possibly where Jacob set up an altar to the Lord. So we have Abimelech resorting to the aid of a foreign god in order to destroy the sons of the Lord's anointed judge, and set himself up as the god's anointed king in place of YHWH of the Covenant. It would seem that there is a holy war between Baal-Berith and his people and YHWH-Berith and his people.

Of course the rest of the story plays out the fact that YWHW is the only one who has the power to accomplish His ends, as Abimelech destroys the temple of Baal-Berith in his destruction of the rebellious Shechemites, and then he is killed by a woman who drops an upper-millstone on his head at the tower in Thebez. Perhaps one reading of the narrative is that YHWH, the only true God and Holy One has the prerogative and power to enact herem on His enemies?

Thoughts on Plato's Phaedrus

I.               Prologue: Speaking of Eros (227a-230e)

II.             First Speech: Lysias’ encomium of the non-lover (231a-234c)

III.           First Interlude: Lysias’ argument good, but he lacks proper rhetorical form (234d-237a)

IV.           Second Speech: Socrates₁‘ encomium of the non-lover (237b-241d)

V.             Second Interlude: Socrates rhetorical form good, but the god Eros will be offended (241e-243e)

VI.           Third Speech: Socrates₂ ‘ encomium of the lover (Eros) (244a-257b)

VII.         Discussion 1: Proper Method of Communication: Dialectical v. Rhetorical (257c-274b)

VIII.       Discussion 2: Proper Mode of Communication: Oral v. Written (274b-277b)

IX.           Summary of Discussions 1 and 2 (277b-279c)

Socrates’ main burden is to persuade Phaedrus to acknowledge the superiority of philosophical discourse. In order to do this, he must convince Phaedrus that his present highest pursuit—rhetorical discourse—is inadequate. Lysias’ speech does not fulfill the epitome of rhetorical expression, though its basic argument fits the criteria for debating the weaker case. Socrates, in his second speech, adopts the argument of Lysias in order to show Phaedrus that he is more than competent to speak about rhetoric, since he is himself a consummate rhetorician. Socrates’ rhetorical expression is impeccable. Now that Phaedrus has been captivated by Socrates ethos, Socrates can move Phaedrus more capably than before.

Socrates repents of the argument of his first speech, acknowledging the ideal nature of eros, which is to stimulate the return of the soul to its primary being; union with the Forms. The second speech epitomizes Socrates’ goal for Phaedrus and demonstrates Socrates’ argument for rhetorical art in the following discussion: Socrates’ knows that Phaedrus’ soul is speech-loving, which is definitive of the philosophical, kingly or Zeus-loving soul. However, Phaedrus has been deceived by the appealing nature of rhetoric, thus Socrates must purify Phaedrus through dialectic—a process he can only arrive at through first winning the admiration of Phaedrus in his current state of confusion. Since Phaedrus’ soul is multi-faceted, Socrates presents the same idea through facets of speech (i.e., first something prettily formed, then something pretty-formed and true in content, then something formed for truth and true in content). The second speech is Socrates’ appeal to pathos, for it is meant to stir in Phaedrus a desire for the sort of Eros that leads to knowledge and the proper pursuit of knowledge.

Socrates proceeds from his second speech to discuss the true art of speaking, which is, of course, dialectical rather than rhetorical—or better yet, any rhetorical art necessarily presupposes dialectical discussion. The latter portion of the discussion, which evaluates written and oral discourse, is necessary (and so is the discussion of dialectic) due to Plato’s epistemology. Plato believes in a three-tiered reality; at the top, the unchanging and unified Forms; in the middle, the somewhat stable and unified intellectual reality of definitions; at the bottom the realm of appearances and bodily sensations, which are constantly in flux. The Forms are only understood through a divine intuition, which occurs through a gradual ascent from the realm of appearances up to the Forms. To recall Socrates’ second speech: beauty is visible in appearances, which can stimulate one to recollect the Form of Beauty, or not. The common response to erotic stimulus is to reproduce bodily desire: beautyàdesireàsexual intercourseàreproduction of a body. Another, uncommon response, is to reproduce knowledge of the Forms: beautyàdesireàintellectual intercourseàrecollection of the Form of Beauty. The orgasm resulting from sexual intercourse is, perhaps, analogous to the divine intuition of the Form resulting from intellectual intercourse.

The process of intellectual intercourse is properly dialectic, because it is able to extrapolate from appearances the more stable definitions of things in themselves, which prepares the soul to receive the divine intuition of the thing-in-itself, which is not reproducible discursively. Herein lies the division between the Forms and Intellectual Reality. Because intellectual reality depends upon discursive reasoning, it depends upon language. Language is highly codified, but it remains unstable because the names of things change or encompass more than one term, making even good definitions susceptible to confusion (cf. Plato’s Seventh Epistle).

The instability of language even in the realm of intellectual reality also reveals the greater incapacity of written discourse when compared to oral. In oral discourse there is greater assurance that the names we use correspond to the terms of the definition—the speaker is always free to correct his own or his interlocutor’s errors. In written discourse the non-present author cannot correct misconceptions of the names being used, therefore there is less stability even in the realm of definition. Oral discourse can also be directed to a specific audience, and preserved from foreign audiences for whom the discourse is not intended. Written discourse may be picked up an read by anyone, whether or not the individual’s “soul is fitted” to the discourse. Additionally, written discourse is a copy or image of the thoughts in the mind, which makes it metaphysically as well as epistemologically inferior to dialectical discussion within one’s own mind. At best writing functions as a reminder of what one already knows but has not had on the mind, or as a playful activity, or as a stimulus for those souls who will take up its discourse in their own search for eternal truths.

Rhetoric, oral or written, in Plato’s epistemology, is a propaedeutic to discourse on knowledge, or “mature” speech (contrast with Callicles’ view that dialectic is propaedeutic to rhetoric, or “mature” speech in Plato’s Gorgias). Furthermore, rhetoric is only helpful as a propaedeutic when it has been established upon the foundation of dialectical discourse—scientific knowledge grounds right opinion; so not only is episteme superior to doxa, but so too techne as Plato defines it.

Isaiah 4

In Isaiah 4 we have the end of a lengthy indictment of Israel for her sins, closing with a vivid depiction of the haughty women exchanging their finery for the clothing of lament, exile, and barrenness. Yet in the second verse there is a promise of renewal--the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious for those who escape the wrath of God's vengeance. Those whom God keeps from destruction shall be purified from the filth of sin, the blood of injustice, and the spirit of judgment--they will be holy (vv. 3-4).

Then verse five presents a powerful image of the Lord's glory and presence--the cloud of smoke by day and the shining fire by night--a clear reference to the cloud and fire that led Israel through the wilderness in their exodus from Egypt. The key difference to note, however, is that in this renewal of His presence, the Lord will not concentrate His glory in one place, say, the tabernacle or the tent of meeting; nor will His glory only cover the leaders of Israel such as Moses or Aaron the High Priest. Now the glory of the Lord will be over all of the assembly, over every household, to be a covering for the glory of the people of the Lord.

Not only is this portrait a testimony to the expansive nature of God's restoration of His people from the death of exile into the resurrection of the promised land (think new heavens and new earth), but it is also a testimony to fathers who are seeking to understand what they are to be for their family.

First and foremost, the father is to be holy and to keep his family holy. The purging of sin is the primary benefit that the Lord bestows upon His people. Second, the father is to cover the glory of his wife and children with his own. This means not only that he provides and protects them, but also that his own glory is made manifest in how well he has preserved the glory of his family. Father need to internalize that truth, for more often than not fathers seek their glory in their profession, in their career accomplishments or promotions, or by how smart, strong, or successful they are in the eyes of the world. However, God will judge fathers on how well they glorified their wives and children--how pure will the father present his bride and his children to their Heavenly Father? Truly this is a man's eternal glory, that he has covered his family as God covers His family--being to them a tabernacle for shade in the daytime and a place of refuge and shelter from storm and rain.

On Jonathan Edwards On Being

I ran across a reminder this morning of why one must always take great care in reading any particular author, but especially of those who are very careful in drawing distinctions. Jonathan Edwards is such an author, whose mind is at once so far-reaching and yet so close to the point before it that he is able to account for many distinctions that a lesser mind could not conceive. If there was one mind other than Christ's that I would seek to emulate, it would be a toss up between Augustine and Edwards.

Anyway, to the point. Here is a conclusion to a section from Edwards' philosophical notes On Being:

This infinite and omnipresent being cannot be solid. Let us see how contradictory it is to say that infinite being is solid. For solidity surely is nothing but resistance to other solidities. Space is this necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent being. We find that we can with ease conceive how all other beings should not be. We can remove them out of our minds and place some other in the room of them, but space is the very thing that we can never remove and conceive of its not being. If a man would imagine space anywhere to be divided so as there should be nothing between the divided parts, there remains space between, notwithstanding. And so the man contradicts himself. And it is self-evident, I believe, to every man that space is necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent. But I had as good speak plain. I have already said as much as that space is God. And it is indeed clear to me that all the space there is, not proper to body, all the space there is without the bounds of the creations, all the space there was before the creation, is God Himself. And nobody would in the least stick at it if it were not because of the gross conceptions we have of space.

Edwards' conclusion sounds controversial. Space is God. Historically, the Church has understood God to be "outside" or "beyond" both time and space. The reason for this restriction was because time and space have predominantly been conceived with respect to material bodies. But Edwards is careful to preface his conclusion with arguments that remove the problem of solidity (i.e. material bodies) from consideration. God (the infinite and omnipresent being) cannot be a solid, for He would have to be in resistance to some other solid or solids. He would not be the simple, self-existent, and eternally one God. There would be another or others that are not God against which God would be existent and defined. Thus, God is not a solid.

But here is where Edwards' brilliance shines. Our minds cannot conceive of anything irrespective of space. We need the concept or attribute of space as a basis for thought. The Biblical knowledge that Edwards' possesses provides the solution: space must be God, for what else but God is a necessary precondition of thought? He will later have to clarify what he means by distinguishing space proper to body and space within the bounds of creation, but all that space not so defined is an attribute of God. As Paul says, quoting a wise pagan, in God we live and move and have our being. He is our space, or maybe as Augustine would say, the home we inhabit. Is it any wonder that men, however much they might wish to deny God or escape Him, cannot, for their being that particular thing in the space of all that is, is their being in God. All souls are restless until they find their rest in God.

Here is where some might consider Edwards a full-blown pantheist. But for a thing exist within something else is not the same as for the something else to exist within a thing. I may inhabit a house without the house being in me. A thought may exist within my mind without being predicated of my essence. Pantheism only follows from a misconception of space, a misconception Edwards laments at the close of the passage.

I find that I, unlike Edwards, am too prejudiced a thinker. I too often want to have a party-line to play, a conclusion fixed by some other, more-reliable thinker, so that I may rest in his conclusion. But what if Edwards had not allowed himself the freedom of thought to examine space in ways hitherto neglected? Of course speculation has its dangers as well as does narrow=mindedness. But perhaps here is where the Anselmic, Athanasian, Augustinian dictum comes to our aid: believe in order to understand. There are basic truths that any child can understand about God, and indeed Christians all over the world teach their children to believe these things in order that they may understand; and also frequently repeat that they never be forgotten (even unto old age). But to mature we must also allow our minds to seek understanding that broadens the scope of our belief. If I may be permitted a physical analogy. In weightlifting, the muscles used to force the weights undergo microscopic tears in their fibers--there is a breakdown of their previous unity. But it is in these microscopic tears that the space necessary for muscle growth is opened up. With rest and good diet added to the weightlifting, the muscles grow into the spaces opened by the tearing down produced by the force exerted by the muscles. The growth of our understanding is similarly grown. When we force our minds to consider thoughts that are difficult, and may even cause spaces of doubt or the unknown to open, there is created space for the nourishment of recovery in the things we do know to grow into these spaces and increase our understanding.

Edwards pursues an observation about space that seems to contradict the common faith of Christianity -- space seems to be necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent, but we affirm that God is not bound by or contained by space. Instead of retreating he pursues the problem, drawing upon what he knows well already, in order to seek an understanding that reconciles the problem. The result is a conception of space that not only reconciles the problem, but opens up opportunities for developing more understanding on immaterial space.

I realize that I'm dramatizing a bit here. Edwards may or may not have undergone the sort of process I describe above. However, what troubles me in the current age is how quickly many in the Church are to censure the intellectual weightlifting that is essential to sanctified spiritual understanding. Yes, heresies abound. Yes, novelties can lead to great error. Yes, yes, yes, to a thousand other dangers that persist whether or not Christians pursue the exercise I here recommend. Augustine once said that rhetorical abilities should be pursued by Christians so that the truth would have a better expression in its defense against promoters of error who were already using eloquence. The same is true, I think, of intellectual inquiry. The thousand and one ways in which it can result in error to not negate the (at least) several ways in which it directs us to greater understanding of the truth.

Handout on the Progymnasmata

Below is the first part of a handout I used in a faculty workshop on the Progymnasmata.

I.                Origins of the Progymnasmata

1.        Emerged as a pedagogical program for upper-class Greek boys during the late empire (4^th Century).

2.       Contains fourteen exercises, which proceed from simple to complex:

                                     a.     Fable, Narration, Anecdote, Maxim, Refutation, Confirmation, Common Topics, Encomium, Invective, Comparison, Speech in Character, Description, Thesis, Introduction of a Law

3.       Expectations of the student

                                     a.     It was expected that the student of progymnasmata would have a good working knowledge of Greek mythology, important works of literature (especially Homer), and the highlights of Athenian history.

                                    b.     Each exercise develops particular composition skills, which would eventually serve as elements in more advanced exercises or complete speeches.

II.             Progymnasmata within the Classical program

1.        Grammar

                                     a.     Progymnasmata were originally the grammar stage of rhetoric.

                                    b.     They were exercises designed to help young people learn different tools of speaking that would aid them in assemblies, courts of law, and public addresses

                                     c.     Fables, narratives, anecdotes, and maxims are the simplest and require the most amount of repetition through variation—changing of perspective, alternation of tense or time period, reversal of outcome, change of starting point, and so on. The idea is to get children familiar with as many ways of manipulating language by using short and enjoyable “building blocks.”

2.       Logic

                                     a.     Some progymnasmata involve tacitly logic-stage skills, such as finding the best arguments on both sides.

                                    b.     Refutation, Confirmation, Commonplace, Encomium, Vituperation, and Comparison are the most logic-stage in nature, for they emphasize argument-making and logical arrangement and progression. The students should be challenged to identify as many possible valid claims as well as invalid and logically fallacious claims.

                                     c.     However, most, if not all, progymnasmata exercises can be used in a logic-stage fashion. For example, the maxim exercises could be turned into a debate of competing maxims, where the exercises are followed and then a discussion ensues as to when each maxim seems more applicable than the other.

3.       Rhetoric

                                     a.     When mastery of the progymnasmata has been accomplished, larger writing or speaking assignments should be made that require the progymnasmata categories to be used in producing a persuasive address.

                                    b.     Characterization, Description, Thesis, and Introduction of a Law are the most naturally suited for the rhetoric stage because they require the most extensive use of rhetorical figures, imaginative thinking, and reality-based application of arguments and claims.

                                     c.     As with the logic-stage, all of the progymnasmata elements may be used in a rhetoric-stage manner. An essay or speech may require the student to use three or four of the progymnasmata to convey their thought or defend their thesis in a way that is persuasive, beautiful, and engaging on a level both thoughtful and winsome.

III.           Progymnasmata within the Christian program.

1.        The progymnasmata are, like rhetoric, built upon observation of how lived communication functions in culture. One doesn’t need to know what an “antimetabole” is in order to use one: for who doesn’t know the phrase, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”?

2.       In the same way that rhetorical figures are universal patterns of human communication, so too progymnasmata are imbedded in the human world. They need not follow the specific patterns of the Greek system, but the general concepts and typical patterns of development may be found in any culture across time and place.

3.       Therefore they fit within the Christian program of education as an example of God’s natural revelation to man, as much as the techniques of tiered irrigation or building construction.

4.       Moreover, we find the progymnasmata within the Scriptures, whether explicitly in the maxims quoted by Paul, or implicitly in the Biblical writers’ characterizations of historical figures such as Pharaoh or Ahab.

IV.           What are the desired outcomes of the Progymnasmata?

1.        Given the natural progression of the exercises and their being part of God’s natural revelation, the progymnasmata have at least three desirable outcomes for our children.

2.       First, if used well, they ought to produce more versatile well-rounded writers, both in terms of style, (through gradual incorporation of rhetorical figures of style) and perspective, and compositional structure.

3.       Second, if used well, they ought to produce more versatile and well-rounded readers, who have grown attentive to the inescapable selectivity of communication and the various consequences of the choices made in writing or speaking.

4.       Third, if used well, they ought to produce a fuller sense of God’s grandeur, insofar as children recognize that these skills are God’s gift to men both good and evil, in the same way that mathematics, physics, or any other part of creation ought to enhance our sense of wonder and thanksgiving for God.