(9) orally based thought and expression is situational rather than abstract (49-57).
We can add "not" to each of these nine predications to delineate nine characteristics of the world-as-view sense of life.
I have mentioned Lonergan's account of the four levels of consciousness. When we self-consciously reflect on how we are indeed employing the four levels of consciousness, we will usually overcome the world-as-view sense of life. But our heightened awareness of the four levels of consciousness will also be removed from the un-self-conscious world-as-event sense of life. Nevertheless, our heightened awareness of how we are employing the four levels of consciousness does have an "event" dimension to it. I might dub this heightened awareness as world-as-self-awareness. But when I am trying to name how we can move beyond the un-self-conscious world-as-view sense of life, I prefer to use Lonergan's term "historical-mindedness" as the way to cultivate moving away from the world-as-view sense of life. In short, historical-mindedness is the antidote to the world-as-view sense of life.
The Testimony of Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is a national treasure to be cherished. I have always benefited from reading his books, even when I have found particular points to disagree with. In my discussion below, my disagreements with particular points that Bloom makes are highlighted. Despite my explicit disagreements, I am enormously thankful to Professor Bloom for having the courage of his convictions to say the very things with which I happen to disagree. If he had not said these things, then I could not disagree with him about them. For this reason, I am abundantly grateful to him for stimulating me to think about the very points with which I disagree. He has served as an excellent foil against which I have developed my own thinking about certain matters.
For years now, Bloom has been intrigued with the anonymous biblical author known as the Yahwist, the author of the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible, the parts known for their use of the tetragrammaton YHWH to refer to the monotheistic deity, which is Englished as Yahweh. Famously, or infamously, depending on your point of view, Bloom claims that the Yahwist was probably a woman. For among other things, the Yahwist undercuts the pretensions of men. Of course it is impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Yahwist was a woman, just as it is impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Yahwist was not a woman.
In any event, Bloom is intrigued with the voice of the Yahwist. This anonymous author captivates him, just as Shakespeare's character Hamlet also captivates him. Now, Ong never tired of urging us to attend to voice, as Bloom regularly does. In this respect, Bloom is one example of the kind of literary critic that Ong wanted literary critics to be. As a matter of fact, Ong wanted to initiate undergraduate English majors at Saint Louis University into the practice of attending to matters of voice in poetry (in his course Practical Criticism: Poetry) and in prose (in Practical Criticism: Prose). In Practical Criticism: Prose, Ong assigned students to read Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951), which consists of short essays by a literary critic commenting on different voices in popular culture and experimenting in those very essays with different voices in responses to the voices being discussed. Because Ong would like to see American adults learn how to respond critically to the artifacts of popular culture, we might say that he wanted to see American adults be initiated into the art of the literary critic and learn how to respond to the appeals that different voices make on our attention.
Ong presents his basic argument for paying attention to voice in "Voice as Summons for Belief: Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self." We should note that faith in this title does not necessarily refer to religious faith, even though religious faith may work in ways analogous to the ways in which faith works in literature. Faith works in literature by evoking our sense that the author of the work in question is making a genuine effort to speak from the depths of his or her consciousness in constructing the work of literature, as distinct from speaking from more superficial levels of consciousness, as the artifacts of popular culture examined by McLuhan and all forms of kitsch art do.
But Bloom is intrigued with the voice of the Yahwist. The Yahwist constructed the character known in English as Yahweh, just as Shakespeare constructed the character known as Hamlet. The character Yahweh has a voice, just as the character Hamlet has a voice. At one time, Bloom put his trust in Yahweh. But Bloom reports that he no longer puts his trust in Yahweh or in the covenant. Fair enough. He is being honest and candid in telling us where he now stands. However, as we listen to Bloom's voice as a literary and cultural critic, we should notice how his personal cynicism is expressed in certain points in his cultural criticism. In short, Bloom is far more reliable as a literary critic than as a cultural critic. As a result, I find Ong preferable to Bloom as a cultural critic. Bloom is unsurpassed as a literary critic. But Ong is unsurpassed as a cultural critic.
In Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present (1989),Bloom makes remarkably straightforward observations that I would align with Ong's thought: "Frequently we forget one reason why the Hebrew Bible is so difficult for us: our only way of thinking comes to us from the ancient Greeks, and not from the Hebrews. No scholar has been able to work through a persuasive comparison of Greek thinking and Hebrew psychologizing, if only because the two modes themselves seem irreconcilable" (27). What Bloom here refers to as "our only way of thinking" does indeed come from the Greeks, as he says, not from the Hebrews. Regarding our only way of thinking, let us note that the very word "theology" is formed from Greek root words, one of which is also the root word for "logic." But in the Aristotelian tradition of logic, univocal terms must be used, instead of polysemous words. Thus if theology is understood to mean that logic and therefore univocal terms will be used, then we will have difficult with Brueggemann's study of the theology of the Hebrew Bible because he shows that univocal terms did not prevail in the Hebrew Bible. When Bloom refers to "our only way of thinking, he is for all practical purposes referring to what Ong means by distinctively literate thought and expression that emerged historically in ancient Greek philosophy as exemplified by Plato and Aristotle, the kind of distinctively literate thought that involved decidedly visual cognitive processing and that represents the world-as-view sense of life. For all practical purposes, what Bloom refers to as "Hebrew psychologizing" is an example of the world-as-event sense of life that Ong associates with primary orality and with residual forms of primary oral cultures. By contrast, as mentioned, Greek philosophic thinking represents the world-as-view sense of life that Ong discusses.
In Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005), Bloom discusses the Hebrew wording Ehyeh asher ehyeh, wording that names the deity whose name is Englished as Yahweh. Bloom says, "The traditional rendering is "I Am That I Am,' which I explicate as "I will be present whenever and wherever I will be present'" (27). Later, Bloom says, "The name of Yahweh must after all primarily mean being present" (144). Later, Bloom refers to Yahweh in passing as "the Master of Presence" (149; his capitalization). Later, Bloom says, "After all, his very name intimates that his presence depends upon his will" (173). Later, Blooms says, "The mystery of Yahweh is in his self-naming as a presence who can choose to be absent" (200). But enough about presence! I do not know Hebrew, so I will leave it to experts in Hebrew to judge Bloom's understanding of the words Ehyeh asher ehyeh.
But here's Bloom's key argument: "Whoever you are, you identify necessarily the origins of your self more with Augustine, Descartes, and John Locke, or indeed with Montaigne and Shakespeare, than you do with Yahweh and Jesus. That is only another way of saying that Socrates and Plato, rather than Jesus, have formed you, however ignorant you may be of Plato. The Hebrew Bible dominated seventeenth-century Protestantism, but four centuries later our technological and mercantile society is far more the child of Aristotle than of Moses" (146). The historical Jesus was far more a child of Moses than of Aristotle. The historical Jesus probably never even heard of Aristotle or of Greek philosophy. So it is ironic that many self-described Christians today appear to Bloom to be far more the children of Aristotle than of Moses.
However, in Ong's terminology, the experience of presence bespeaks the world-as-event sense of life. But we Americans today are indeed the products of modernity and the world-as-view sense of life that was exemplified in ancient Greek philosophy by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and then carried forward in ancient and medieval culture through the inward turn of consciousness and then powered into stronger depths after the development of the Gutenberg printing press in the 1450s. Nevertheless, through the influence of residual orality in the Roman Catholic tradition of thought and spirituality, the experience of God's presence remained a cultural and personal ideal. However that may be, as mentioned, Bloom's understanding of the Hebrew words Ehyeh asher ehyeh may not be supported by experts in Hebrew.
In conclusion, the far more troubling statement that Bloom makes is his claim that we moderns are separated by our cultural conditioning from the cultural conditioning embodied in the Hebrew Bible. If he is right, how can we hope to understand the biblical theology of the Hebrew Bible? We will need to use our imaginations and our sense of empathy. As we use our imaginations and our sense of empathy to try to understand the biblical theology of the Hebrew Bible, we will be trying to work our way, however gradually, out from our culturally conditioned world-as-view sense of life and toward what Lonergan refers to as historical-mindedness. Through our emerging historical-mindedness, we will try to understand and feel a kind of intellectual empathy for the world-as-event sense of life as manifested in the Hebrew Bible.
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