St. John begins his Gospel with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” a
The Word as “Logos”
His use of “word” is often explained with its connection with the Greek “λόγος.” bThe Scripture explains that God is Word, and this is associated with the Son in Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity. While there may be additional philosophical and theological meanings for “word,” my core idea here is of God coming to us through the medium of language. (more…)
Before adopting the triplets, we only had one daughter. Our solitary little girl, being surrounded by adults twenty-four hours a day, often acted more like an adult in a little body than a four-year-old. She wasn’t perfect, but she was an easy child to be around. Then, we adopted. Three 7-week-old babies entered our world in one day; our peaceful world of a single-child was gone; and things have been rocking ever since. Also, contributing to this was the fact that three years after adopting the triplets, my wife conceived and bore twins. In a period of three years, my household increased by 5 munchkins. So, there are eight of us: one dad, one mom, three boys, and three girls.
A couple of the things I have learned about myself as a father through the years since the adoption: 1.) I am a man, for good or for ill, and 2.) I am only one man, never more, never less.
I am a man, for good or for ill. When God placed the triplets before us, my wife and I raised the question, “Are we ready to make a decision that will last a lifetime?” Thankfully, as Christians, we were already used to making decisions that last much more than a lifetime. We could say, “yes,” and mean it. My “yea” had habitually been my “yea,” and my “nay,” my “nay.” I am a fallen man, but I have been redeemed, and in Christ, I can actually do good in this world. To decide to adopt was to decide to make the children mine—irrevocably mine. But I am also a man for ill. As surely as I can do good, I can blow it big time. To multiply people in my home multiplied opportunities for me to show my temper, my selfishness, my moodiness, my complacency, and did I mention my selfishness? Multiplying people multiplied both the opportunities to forgive and the daily, hourly, minutely need to be forgiven. I am a man, for good or for ill.
Also, I’ve learned that I am only one man, never more, never less. God created man, took a rib and made a woman. Man really is an individual. Woman really is an individual, but in matrimony they become one. As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out, Two equals one. A man can never be a husband unto himself. As a man, an individual before my Creator, all my faculties and capacities as a husband always involve love for and service to my wife. I cannot be a husband apart from her, and I cannot be a godly husband apart from her thriving.
Then, the man knew the woman, and she conceived and bore sons. Two equals one equals many. A man can never be a father unto himself. As a man, an individual before my Creator, all my faculties and capacities as a father always involve love for and service to my children. I cannot be a father apart from them, and I cannot be a godly father apart from their thriving. I am never more than one man, and daren’t dream of doing more than one man can, but I am never less than one man—a man who has been recreated into more than the singular by being remade a husband and father.
Through adoption, I’ve also learned some things about my heavenly Father. I’ve learned another facet of what the love of the Father looks like. Our heavenly Father has children born unto his children, and our heavenly Father has sheep that were once not of that fold—a people that were formerly not a people. Our heavenly Father is an adoptive father. One of the greatest blessings of adopting is that I know what it feels like to forget that three of them are adopted. In fact, I often forget that the three adopted children are biracial. They are mine. I am theirs. They have always been darker skinned—not because they’re adopted, but because that’s the beauty God decided to give them. God’s children, whether Jew or Gentile, are neither Jew nor Gentile. In Christ the middle wall of partition has been removed and we are one. Christ’s bride is undoubtedly mixed race. He has promised that it will be. In fact, we have no hope except that it is. Through adoption, this reality of our heavenly Father’s love has been experimentally manifest in my home.
The following quote is from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s The Origin of Speech, chapter 4 “The Conflict of Political Sense and Common Sense.” This is a conflict we have all felt, but probably haven’t expressed this way…
“The cry for peace and order is a desperate cry. Shouting for freedom and for regeneration of the good old days is of the utmost violence. The lullabies and sugar coating of common sense are not acceptable to crying, weeping, shouting, raging people. They must experience the miracle of seeing the dead come to life again, and foes become friends, and dissent become agreement, and shouts become new words. They must see and hear and touch before they believe. Formal speech produces exactly these miracles. The dead seem to come to life, shout becomes prayers, foes come to terms; inner dissent becomes harmonious song of strophe and antistrophe, of dialogue and chorus.
If speech did not produce these miracles for society, it would be unnecessary. As a “means of communication” it is only used by common sense. But 10,000 languages have been spoken over thousands of years just as often as means of excommunication as of communication. They have cursed the werewolf and the demon and the enemy just as often as they have blessed the child and invoked the spirit and obeyed the Lord and reconciled the enemy. Any tribe has been exposed to constant attack from within and without. It’s formal language has kept it in existence as a body politic through migrations over the earths and over decimatinons and ravages through time. Miraculously, it is anchored in an eternity and defies space and time. Speech is the political constitution of a group beyond the lifetime and living space of any individual, beyond common sense and physical sense.”
I hope the owners of the copyright for Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s Out of Revolution don’t mind these regular quotes. If they do, I’ll send them the royalties. Maybe if some you go and buy the book, they’ll consider this an effective advertising campaign and send me a check. Hint, hint.
I’ve had the opportunity to read for several hours today, and I continue to be “blown away” by the narrative of Western Civilization’s Autobiography as told by Rosenstock-Huessy. I’m still working my way through the portion on Lenin and the 1st and 2nd Russian Revolutions. Here’s a gem from today’s reading:
“The materialistic outlook of the Marxists was much truer than they imagined. According to their own theory, changes in economic conditions create new thoughts in men; but in spite of this fact, most of the Russians believed in 1917 that the dream of a world revolution could be realized after a World War. They habitually overlooked the fact that the War itself had created new economic conditions unknown to Marx. The soldiers of the Great War, in their humble and unconscious role as soldiers, made the real revolution. Like Hamlet, they could say to any Marxian dogmatist, “our withers are unwrung.”
When the French bourgeoisie began to take the first steps toward revolt, about 1750, its leaders had in mind specific economic conditions and abuses which were recurrent for the next forty years. The Great War, on the other hand, made a complete change in the economic conditions of the world. Not until the depression of 1929 was the change taken seriously. Prophets, Cassandras, demagogues, had foretold it; but the overwhelming majority of governments and parties had tried to return to the conditions of 1914. These conditions were progress, bigger and better conditions of living, an upward trend for everything, a cheering up from year to year. In so far, the Communists in the Kremlin shared the illusions of the people who held the World Fair of a Century of Progress in Chicago as late as 1933. For had not Socialism and Marxism been born under pre-War conditions? According to the Marxian creed itself, how could a theory be workable after a change in its material government? It was a triumph of Marxism over the Marxists when the Great War, a real and substantial material fact, proved to be of more importance than any volition on the part of parties or individuals. The World War was a World Revolution: it ended Marxism as it ended liberalism.”
In his 1938 work, Out of Revolution, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy spends nearly 100 pages on Russia, Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution. Tucked in between his discussion of Marxism and his introduction of Lenin, he diverges into a brief aside about the importance of Fyodor Dostoevski (1821-1881) and Leo Tolstoi (1828-1910.) For your Saturday morning reading pleasure, here’s his summary:
“Tolstoi–not exiled to Siberia like Dostoevski, but living as a voluntary hermit in the social prison of his environment, Tolstoi, the wizard of Yasnaya Polyana–became the centre of enlightenment for the Eastern nations. His letters, published by Paul Biriukov, are full of political counsel for the emancipation of Asia. The importance of the Russian revolution for Asia is well illustrated by Tolstoi’s influence.
Leo Tolstoi
He too offers no solution of the social question. Less orthodox than Dostoevski, he even taunts the church which he detests. The Sermon on the Mount, the sermon to the masses, is all he keeps of the Christian tradition, dropping as he does all that Jesus taught in the inner circle of the disciples. Tolstoi, who is a saint in Russia even today, [written in 1938, M.H.], prepared the way for the Revolution by his song of the majesty of the people. Dostoevski revealed the individual. Tolstoi’s theme is the majesty of the people, not the nation in the Western sense of the word. The people’s face is like that of the simple Moujik. As long as it is not corrupted by consciousness, as long as it does not ask for a constitution, the people in its pre-Adamitic stage that lies before all political volition opens like a door so that the higher power may enter and take possession of the soul.
To be sure, Tolstoi has no solutions to offer. But by his assertion he destroys everything superimposed upon his genuine layer of “the people.” Tolstoi and Dostoevski together composed a new creed. One gave to it his doctrine of the weak and trembling individual, the other enriched it by his faith in the majesty of the people, which reacts like the ocean, the cornfield, the forest, because it is patient, passive, obedient.
Fyodor Dostoevski
The Revolution itself practically abolished literature. The statistician superceded the novelist. The poet was a man, “in the air,” as the term is. One of the better novels of post-war Russia is called Concrete. Concrete took the place of the air, economy the place of poetry.”<>регистрация а в googleконтент а это
The following paragraph is quoted from Out of Revolution, by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. Although some of the historical details are unknown to me, the overall thesis of this short argument is too evident and too relevant to be missed.
“Both Lenin and Hitler agree in one thing. First of all they realize that the farmer and worker are not interested in war, but beyond that, both are too much the pagan and the soldier not to use the fighting force and the discipline of a uniformed army. They abolish war by constantly using war machinery for internal purposes. In this respect, Mussolini is like them. The Pontine marshes, the Lira, like the coal mines of Donez, grain, money, raw materials, houses, homesteads are attacked, conquered and victoriously annexed by this new civil war strategy. The telegrams all read like reports from the front, whether it be Mussolini or Stalin who receives them. Powers usually only given to the executive in time of war are bestowed upon it in this present emergency because the emergency is the new warfare. Lincoln’s martial law measure of emancipation and Roosevelt’s New Deal powers are closely connected. Emergency is like war, and this holds good in many countries today. It is a great moment in the history of humankind when the energies of the race shift from martial laws to civil emergency laws. The armies enlisted against territorial enemies are superceded or outstripped by armies enlisting against nature. The change is so colossal, coming as it does after six-thousand years of warfare, that it can neither be achieved in a few decades, nor its scope understood by the passionate masses. Still, it is true, revolution has taken the place of war.”
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy was born in Berlin, Germany in July 1888. He received doctorates in law and philosophy from the University of Heidelberg. In 1917 he served as an officer in the German army and fought in the trenches of The Great War. Upon Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933, Rosenstock-Huessy immigrated to America, taking a position at Harvard, then later at Dartmouth College where he taught social philosophy until he retired in 1957. He died in 1973.
This being an internet blog post, you’re probably not planning on sitting here all day, so I’ll cut to the chase. The rest of the post will be a couple of quotes from Rosenstock-Huessy to set his flavor on your pallette, hopefully whetting your appetite for more. I’ll wrap it up with some thoughts about Rosenstock-Huessy by James B. Jordan.
Articulated Speech: When you yell “iiiiiiiih” and your chum yells back “iiiiiiiih,” you are two little animals making inarticulate noise. When you, however, say to him: “Now listen, Johnnie,” and he says, “I listen, Billy,” you are two people speaking to each other in articulated speech. What is the difference between the two cases? In articulated speech, the process of listening is clearly defined between another person and yourself. You summon him to act as a listener. The roles are distributed between you two, because one in the same act first is suggested as an order on your side; then, the same act is acknowledged as a voluntary reaction on his side. You and he enter in this specific relation. In answering you, “I listen,” he partly identifies himself with you since he admits that he knows exactly what you mean. Furthermore he preserves his personality by adding “I.” Speech is both identity with, and distinction between, people. It is like weaving a pattern out of several fibres. For his “I listen” is not the same sound as your “listen.” It has passed through his conscience and consciousness and he had to reshape it before he passed it back to you. Now the sentence “I listen” carried back to you something quite different from the noise “iiiiiiiih.” It was now a declaration of cooperation, of acknowledgement of his having heard you. A sentence is a personal relation between answerable people. Articulated speech is communication between responsible people.
Can you taste that? That’s the flavor of insight. But when he does his philosophy, when he passes this insight along, there is not an ivory tower in sight. His prose is dense, but soft, moist, and easily chewed. Kinda like a good pound cake.
This next quote is taken from Out of Revolution, an 800 page history of European civilization. Rosenstock-Huessy said that the thesis for this 20-year work was discovered while he was in the trenches during a battle in World War I. His historiography claims to be anti-Cartesian and anti-Comte, by which statements he intends to set his method apart from the mainstream presuppositions of how to do history. But even in history, or perhaps especially in his history, Rosenstock-Huessy’s emphasis on the sociology of articulate speech is unmistakable.
Every human being is endowed with the wonderful gift of speech. He can express his own secret better than anybody else. We rarely reveal our true selves in the market place of life. Words often seem to be made to hide our thoughts. But the more we try to avoid emphasis, or even truth, in our speech, the more the few moments stand out in which language has the full weight of self expression. A bride speaking her decisive “Yes” or “No” before the altar uses speech in its old sense of revelation, because her answer establishes a new identity between two separate offsprings of the race and may found a new race, a new nation. We are so dull we rarely realize how much history lies hidden in marriage, and how the one word spoken by the bride makes all the difference between cattle-raising and a nation’s good breeding.
His insight seems to be patently obvious once you’ve read it, but without him saying it, you never would’ve come up with it. In one sense he has a “firm grasp of the obvious,” which is often said in manner meant to be deprecating. But when your argument is one that is prima facie to any intelligent reader, I think the only adequate description of him would be “genius.”
In Biblical Horizons’ Open Book Newsletter 25, James B. Jordan concludes his brief introduction of Rosenstock-Huessy thusly:
…I recommend that anyone seriously interested in laboring in the intellectual arena become familiar with Rosenstock-Huessy’s insights. Now for a few observations.
1. Rosenstock-Huessy is always a surprise. One never knows what he will write or say on a topic, but it will always be something “different.” He tries to come at old things in new ways, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.
2. Rosenstock-Huessy is rather a maverick as a Christian. He scoffs at the notion that the universe is millions of years old. He claims to hold fiercely to Nicene orthodoxy, and views the Bible as God’s inspired Word. He has contempt for liberal Christianity and for literary criticism of the Bible. He affirms that the four gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in that order. Yet he also thinks that the books of Moses were put together in the days of David. Also, he often speaks and writes as if the Church were going to wither away in the next millennium, but he remained an active church-goer all his life. (In fact, the coming age of international techo-tribalism will be a golden time for the local church, for the local church is the purest form of the tribe.)
3. Rosenstock-Huessy’s followers and advocates are, it seems, mainly composed of people who want some kind of religionless Christianity, or some kind of one-world order that is not grounded in the church. The antithesis between Christ and non-Christ, between “history” and the “world,” which is pretty clear in R-H’s own work (though not as clear as we would like), is not maintained by many of his disciples. In my opinion, the “liberals” who have taken up R-H’s insights are not being faithful to the master. Be warned, though, that if you begin to read the literature surrounding his work, you will sometimes encounter left-wing nonsense.
Any book recommendation made from any person to another is also no less than a bit of economic advice. I am making the economic assertion the sum of the monetary price of a book by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy added to the temporal price it costs you to read it will never exceed the profit you will acquire through this particular business venture. Many writers are worth your time and money. You will search long and hard before finding one more profitable than Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.
p.s. If you finished this post, I want to say “thank you” for spending part of your life reading it. I hope you found it helpful.<>game mobiпродвижение а купить
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
