The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (Modern Library Paperbacks)
Things I Have Learned: Chapel Talks
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
May 2nd, 2007
Rhetorical (Un)Grace
What I’m about to say sounds very much not like a rhetorician.
I don’t know how much stock I put in this craft. I’m having trouble being its cheerleader. I read about the conflict between Erasmus (the great style guru and the semi-Pelagian) and Luther (far from stylish and Mr. Sola Fide himself) and think, “See — look at that. See where rhetoric got Erasmus? Sure — he was smooth and beautiful — dressing truth in beautiful clothing. But maybe that garb was hiding the truth. Maybe rhetoric was its shroud, not its complement?”
I’m not saying that I’m gonna chuck Cicero in the trash. And this is far from that pagan Platonic vent about rhetoric! But the near-foolish boldness that I hear Paul encouraging from the Ephesians doesn’t seem to fit with what I read in Quintillian.
I think believing “wisdom” (the ancient study of rhetoric) looks more klutzy than we’d like to admit. When you know God is ever-present in every audience, maybe that changes your style. It’s not just transparent. Maybe I’m just noodling the differences between the continuous tension between the prophet and the sage.
I still have my Solomon, James, Augustine, de Pisan, Vico, Campbell, and Bahktin — my friends in the faith and in the discipline. But when being “rhetorically sensitive” becomes a club, I’m just not so sure.
May 3rd, 2007
Amie Says :
At the expense of sounding dumb, What do you mean when you say you are a “rhetoric” ?
May 3rd, 2007
cklewis Says :
In the most general sense, rhetoric is the use of symbols to influence other people. Aristotle called it a study. Cicero called it a builder of civilizations and culture. Quintillian said an orator was a good person speaking well. Kenneth Burke in the 20th-century said it was a strategic use of ambiguity.
I could go on and on. Essentially, it’s figuring out how talk changes us and how we can best use that skill.
May 4th, 2007
Amie Says :
I love charts –
think – talk – believe – act
that is kinda how I see it…..
I am actually getting a lot of flac from some people because I am studing theology, and particpating in converstations about it. Their thought is “it is right there in the Bible, just read it and believe it”. I get that, but it is the thinking and discussing and even arguing about what it says that really makes it affect/change me. Does that make sense?
May 7th, 2007
Raw! Raw! Rhetoric! « Join the Dance Says :
[...] May 7th, 2007 Right after I read this honest struggle with one of my crafts on a blog and this concocted idea of rhetoric meets theology in a pamphlet, I wanted to say something. And what I had to say was too long for a comment on a blog, so I thought I’d take up my blogspace, and not hers. [...]
May 7th, 2007
Anna Says :
I appreciate your thoughts about this, and it made me start thinking. I had too many words to put here, so I invite you to http://annabarnes.wordpress.com.
March 9th, 2008
pgepps Says :
“When you know God is ever-present in every audience, maybe that changes your style.”
I think you are onto something, here. May we step a bit farther from Burke, and drop “audience” in order to avoid confining God in an Other role?
I would suggest that, if a rhetorical understanding sends us away from “objectivity,” the notion of an arbitrary subjectivity is still folly: even the secular world recognizes the intersubjective construction of “reality”; it would seem the believer in the Creator God fully present in Christ has a vastly expanded “interpretive community” which goes far to remove the quotation marks from reality. And Scripture is true, no matter how many “truths” we wrest from it, breaking them in the process.
March 9th, 2008
cklewis Says :
pgepps — Welcome!
I would, of course, align myself with the intersubjective reality camp. And as a rhetorician, I wouldn’t say that God as Audience is Othering Him in the least. Even our ol’ pal Aristotle saw argumentation and persuasion as a joint activity — you speak *with* a listener (rather than “to”).
I’ve recently realized that the “faith community” with whom I’d lived, worked, and ministered for 2 decades had really forgotten that God was participating in their messages at all. They presume not that God is there moving and changing them, but that their position is identical with God’s (so why bother consulting Him at all?). Rhetoric, then, becomes a weapon. “You can’t do such-n-such because that’s not appropriate.” Becoming just like the materialists they scorned in the 1920s, they can’t see the Spiritual. I’m still a little stunned by it all. Deists! They are just Deists!!!
So I am struggling, as a rhetorician, with how to say, “Don’t be so obsessed with the rhetorical!” One way I think I’d say it *now* is to say, “Don’t be so pagan!” But that may be off-putting.