Did Jesus speak Hoplandic?
Within the church today it is almost universally presupposed that religious language, ideally, communicates an idea. Christianity is thought to offer a matrix of meaning through which one can orientate oneself in relation to the physical universe, God and others. Christianity offers Meaning (with a capital “M”), Meaning that speaks of the eternal and unchanging.
But it is often hard to fit Jesus into this mold for he comes across in the gospels as one who continually turned the tables on what people thought and believed. Every time the religious authorities thought they had life sussed out Jesus threw a spanner in the works. Disrupting the knowledge of the establishment. Instead of Jesus’ discourse setting us on a determinate course of meaning it seemed to act as a dis-course that would send his listeners perpetually off-course.
But is that it? Was Jesus just subverting our thinking, always pointing out the inadequacy of our systems? Or was he drawing us into a different understanding of what religious language is all about? Is it possible that religious language is less about communicating meaning and more about inviting us into a different mode of being?
In order to approach this idea let us employ a distinction used by the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas between the saying and the said. When one speaks there is both the act of saying and that which is actually said. This distinction becomes clearer when we think of meeting someone who speaks a language that we do not understand. For here we become aware that the person is saying something but we do not know what is being said.
In academic life the said is often privileged over the saying. What is important is that meaning is communicated and the way it is communicated is only important insomuch as it gets the meaning across (analytic philosophy and scientific discourse are interesting examples of this). Yet there are forms of communication that give emphasis to the saying over and above the said. Indeed this may be the basic and primordial element of all language.
An interesting example of this can be seen at work in the music of Sigur Rós who employ what they call “Vonlenska” (or “Hoplandic”) in many of their songs. Indeed it is used exclusively in their album ( ).
Hoplandic is a constructed “language” that lacks consistent grammar, logical structure, meaningful syllables and often even discrete words. When listening to their music the words themselves do not “mean” anything, nothing is said in their saying. Yet the saying itself invites a change in the sensitive listener. Connecting the listener to a deep reservoir of emotion, connecting them with the inner world of the one who sings.
This mode of “communication” is similar to what we see taking place between an infant and its parents. The grammatical non-sense that is communicated by the infant to the parent and by the parent to the infant is a discourse of the saying in which nothing is said but a connection is established or deepened. Indeed is it not the case that when children do learn to speak the constant questioning that comes with it is often less to do with gaining knowledge of the world and more to do with establishing a connection with the one they are speaking with. For instance a child may enter the room of their parents at night with some question or because they want to share something that they were thinking, but any parent knows that the communication is a way of the child connecting with the parents and that what the parents say in response is not as important as the actual fact of saying something. Here the saying refers to an expression of being alongside, of reaching out, of comforting, of connecting with. What is said is important only insofar as it compliments the connection established by the saying.
What if Jesus was someone who was always challenging us at the level of the said (taking what we thought was self evident and turning it upside down) so as to expose the nature of religious language as a mode of saying. What if Jesus was encouraging us to self-consciously speak like children?
If this is the case then religious language is not successful when it describes the source of our faith adequately but rather is successful when it deepens our relationship with that source. Thus the believer is one who questions a form of religious affirmation which mimics a scientific approach to existence and who instead affirms a theo-poetic (a term employed by John Caputo) dis-course which transforms our relationship with God, the world and each other.
Tags: communication, Hoplandic, Levinas, Peter Rollins, Saying and the Said, Sigur Ros, theo-poetic, Vonlenska
March 14th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
This resonnates with a thought I had about the Bible.
What is the Bible really?
If you assume that the Bible is fit for it’s purpose, there are a lot of interpretations of the Bible as a whole that fall apart.
It is clearly not a work of law. Too many commandments are obviously outdated, even in new testament time, and nowhere is a formula that explain how to seperate the temporal from the eternal law.
It is not an encyclopedia of the workings of heaven either. Very little space is spend on the nature of angels or demons, and what is written of God himself is cloaked in mystery and apperant contradictions.
Even the formulation of a morale system is beyond the purpose of the Bible. Too many stories have people who take multiple wives etc., where the legimity of their actions is never uncovered.
This I have thought for a long time. But what I found out was not just what the Bible is not, but what it is.
It is a tool, meant for creating disciples. The only way the Bible makes sense, not just as individual books, but a compiled whole, is through the eyes of a disciple in the making.
It is (one of) the way(s) God appear to those who search for him, even on a subconcious level.
I know this approach to the Bible does not justify the extreme importance and authority the book have had historically, since God can and have discipled people through other books, people, nature etc.
But that is not a proof in itself. Occam’s razor don’t work in the kingdom, and I maintain that the Bible have a special, seperate (=holy) place.
My proof is the parallel to prayer. There is no obvious reason why God acts only in the resopnse to prayer (as a general rule), since he is perfectly capable of acting “unmotivated”.
But experience tell us that this is a fact. The success of 24-7 prayer is a testament to this.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Peter,
If I may quote you (a little long):
“…but any parent knows that the communication is a way of the child connecting with the parents and that what the parents say in response is not as important as the actual fact of saying something. Here the saying refers to an expression of being alongside, of reaching out, of comforting, of connecting with. What is said is important only insofar as it compliments the connection established by the saying.”
If this parent ’said’ something mean, would this not ruin connection, even reverse it? So wouldn’t ’saying’ instead “compliment” the ’said’?
I really liked what you wrote up until this example in that I don’t know how it doesn’t actually undercut your premise.
Yet I do enjoy the clarity your writing brings as it pertains to knowledge that is irregardless of the source, of connection, of relationship.
In psychology (B.S., Arizona State University), one set of “experiments” states that “70%+/- of all communication is non-verbal.” Somewhat similar/parallel to “Hoplandic” I think. This is, in actuality, bunk. If for no other reason than the remaining 30% is significantly more powerful AND broader in content than “the 70%.” (there are also significant flaws in the experiments themselves).
Perhaps more at hand is the issue of what is being assumed as “meaning” or “content” (”communication”) — if it is simply some kind of knowledge or command, then the old “meaning” of communication stands. But what Levinas and many others point out is that communication is not that limp, small, nor sterile!
Enjoying your posts,
David
March 15th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Hey there
Thanks for the comments. In terms of your thoughts on communication David I see your point however interestingly I think parents often do say something ‘bad’ to their child in such situations. For instance one might say ‘you little tearaway’ etc. but in a way in which the saying communicates the opposite of the said. Indeed I remember an extreme example when was walking in Belfast one day. A parent turned to their child and said, ‘I am going to stick your f’n head in that puddle’. I was shocked by this, until I heard the child respond in the same way to the parent. Then it became obvious that this rather violent sounding language was actually a loving playful activity (not that I am saying this is necessarily a healthy expression to use with a child)!
Indeed Northern Ireland is famous for having a very aggressive humor which constantly aims at putting the other person down. Friends of mine who visit from other countries are often amazed at the conversations I have here with friends and ask ‘do you guys really hate each other’. But here saying ‘nasty’ things to people is actually a way of communicating that you like a person.
So I personally am more of the opinion that the saying is more important than the said (i.e. that language primarily communicates beyond ‘meaning’ and establishes various modes of connection between people). Unlike Habermas who I read as seeing language at its best as communicating information I am more persuaded by Lacan who seems to see ideal language (or the origins of language) as a mode of managing relations. What it actually communicates in terms of content about the world being secondary.
Hope this is a useful add-on to my original post though it might not convince you… look forward to more thoughts/critiques
Thanks
Pete
March 15th, 2008 at 6:20 am
To me the idea of extra-litteral communication is so obvious that it doesn’t need defending.
You only have to cast a short glance in the direction of a field who exlusively work in litteral communication: computer code.
Coding is hard to learn, especially for people who have little training in formal science like math or logic.
And this is due to the need to express everything explicitly. We are so used to other people guessing our meaning, that our communication is often a matter of throwing hints at each other, things that are ambigious in a formal/grammatical sense, but makes sense in the context.
I would say communication with animals are an even better example of this. “You stupid dog” can be both an expression either love or anger, fully dependant on the attitude of the speaker.
March 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
[...] Did Jesus speak Hoplandic? [...]
March 16th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I enjoyed this post peter and the examples you gave, both sigur ros and parenting. our first child is now three months old and so I totally connect with the saying as being more important than the said. And I liked how you connected it back into how Jesus communicated. Lots to think through! Oh and I’m wondering where Levinas makes this distinction at?
March 17th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
does a glossolalia fit this idea?
March 17th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
I liked what you said. I think this is precisely the reason I am so deeply moved by jazz music. Similar to how Jesus teaches people on the level of the said, a music teacher teaches a jazz musician the fundamentals of jazz theory e.g. play a C dorian scale over this note, you need to work on your fingering etc. This is necessary to teach someone how to play jazz, but the theory itself is not the point. The point is to allow the musician to improvise, to actually play. When I listen to good jazz, it is as if the musician is bearing his or her soul to the audience; communicating something deep inside of himself that is beyond words. If anyone’s interested, listen to John Coltrane’s “A love Supreme” album, or his live version of “My Favourite Things” and you’ll see what I mean (I hope).
March 17th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Pete,
I really appreciated this post and I’m looking forward to your new book.
Lately, I’ve been discovering the Jewish tradition of rabbinic Torah commentary called Midrash. In Midrash, the ancient rabbis used their own creative stories to fill in the gaps and draw out the meanings in Torah (stories about our stories). I think that is exactly what we have in the Gospels as writers give us their theology through stories about the story of Jesus. That understanding really helped me connect the dots and solved some of the logical inconsistencies. “Theology through story” flys in the face of modern systematic style theology. I like it! It reminds me a of Ikon.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m blogging more about how Emergent theology and ritual could draw from the Midrash tradition here:
http://www.faithprogression.com/search/label/Midrash
Thanks!
March 18th, 2008 at 4:22 am
As always I am really appreciative of the comments! To come back to a few of them,
Bo: The computer analogy is great. The philosopher Herbert Dreyfus has long attacked the AI movement on exactly this point, using Heidegger to argue that one cannot programme computers to act in (seemingly) self-conscious ways by simply feeding them information (the said). The reason, in brief, is because interaction with an environment requires a saturation in context that cannot be fully explicitly stated.
Wess: Need to check but I think it is in Totality and Infinity (one of the few Levinas books I have wrestled with so far)
Seeker: An interesting question! I must say that my own background was in the Charismatic movement and I did view glossolalia (speaking in tongues) as a mode of breaking free from the predominance of calculative thinking in religion. I also like how in much of the Charismatic movement it is not encouraged as the expression of an ecstatic hypnotic state so much as an everyday natural activity. I tend to think that there are elements of the charismatic tradition which lend themselves to a more deconstructive approach to Christianity, but feel (and am open to being wrong) that the movement is largely tied up in a modernist, scientific approach to faith. But someone like Carl Raschke would, I think, disagree… seeing it as a legitimate pomo expression of faith.
Zak: love the Jazz analogy
Mike: The Midrash tradition is one I too find fascinating and more faithful to the biblical narrative than more recent modes of reading. Indeed in my new book I implicitly employ its approach while the book I am currently working on is a compilation of parables.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:26 am
This tracks on so many levels, and may be partly why we do Sigur Ros in church gatherings
Keep up the amazing work
April 7th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
[...] a limb and say that this music transcends diction. Peter Rollins talks about their use of Hoplandic here and does a much better job than I’d be able [...]
February 25th, 2010 at 1:31 am
I was looking up “Jesus and Levinas” because I couldn’t remember what Levinas had to say about Him and I came across this post. I like your exploration and your examples AND I have a qualm….you characterize the saying as being “an expression of being alongside” but if you knew Levinas you would know that that very term “alongside” was how he radically departed from his brilliant, possibly evil mentor/persecutor Martin Heidegger and a very “loaded”, ill term to use here. He found that Heidegger’s depiction of the social relationship as beings “alongside” or “with” other beings (aardvarks, oak trees, and other humans all much the same) to be radically inadequate. It is not awareness of our own being that gives rise to the awareness of other persons/things as Heidegger would have it but the “Other” way round. Levinas esteems our relationship with the “Other” as not being merely “alongside” or “with” the Other but “for the Other” and this assigns us a place beyond Being, a sort of dimensional shift (which is/means/constitutes time, language, and ethics…yatayatayata)
I understand what you are trying to “say”
I think with “being alongside, of reaching out, of comforting, of connecting with.”. It does not go far enough, does not convey the radical difference between the Saying and the said, between the being “For” and being “with”. I don’t mean to be nit-picky, just that Levinas is most important thinker/writer/human beings to me and I think these small/HUGE rigors are worth it. Many thanks to you for reading this if you actually do and if not at least for thinking and writing about these glorious….”topics”. We can all do with more Jesus and Levinas.