Yale's Harold Bloom is a Jew who no longer puts his trust in the monotheistic deity or in the covenant. Nevertheless, he has made some provocative observations about the Hebrew Bible. By drawing on the work of the American Jesuit cultural historian and cultural theorist Walter Ong, I hope to show how Bloom and Ong can help us deepen our understanding of the Hebrew Bible.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) October 3, 2011: Unlike Harold Bloom, I did not grow up as a Jew. I grew up as a Roman Catholic. As a result, I did not received the Jewish instruction to place my trust in the covenant. Nevertheless, I have come to the conclusion that the covenant is one of the greatest ideas in the Western tradition of thought.

Despite the supercessionism of orthodox Christianity (i.e., the New Testament supercedes the Old Testament), self-described Christians are Jews spiritually. Tragically, early polemics between the yeasty followers of Jesus and their unpersuaded fellow Jews produced striking invectives against their unpersuaded fellow Jews, the consequences of which have reverberated tragically down the centuries. As a result of Christian persecution of Jews over the centuries down to and including the Holocaust, we should conclude that those Christian persecutors of Jews demonstrated by their persecution of Jews that they were not part of the covenant (i.e., not part of God's people), but were acting contrary to the inner meaning of the covenant which calls for God's people to recognize their mutual responsibilities toward other people. In other words, Christians are Jews spiritually. Self-described Christians want to claim that they are among God's people. But God's people are part of the covenant, so let self-described Christians show that they understand the inner meaning of the covenant through the ways in which they act.

In addition to drawing on comments made by Harold Bloom regarding the Hebrew Bible,

I plan to draw of the thought of the cultural historian and cultural theorist Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003). Before his destiny as a cultural historian and theorist had emerged in mature form, he had published two articles in 1946 and 1954 in Theological Studies. However, after Ong's destiny as a cultural historian and theorist emerged in mature form, he did not undertake to write any further articles for Theological Studies or for any other journal devoted to discussing Catholic theology. Ong's 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale's Divinity School were published in expanded form as The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (1967). In the book Ong does indeed thematize and discuss religious history, but in somewhat general terms. In subsequent books and essays, he concentrates his efforts far more on cultural history than on religious history. Of course one could discuss religious history without discussing theology. Christian theology can be located and contextualized in the context of Ong's account of Western cultural history. However, in the present essay, I plan to focus on understanding biblical theology in the Hebrew Bible in the context of Ong's work.

            Bloom is a cultural Jew, but he no longer puts his trust in the monotheistic deity of the Hebrew Bible or in the covenant. Nevertheless, he keeps writing fascinating reflections on the Hebrew Bible. Like Ong, Bloom tends to see the big picture of Western culture. But some of his big-picture views of Western culture cry out for comparison with Ong's big-picture views. By bringing Ong's big-picture views of Western cultural history into comparison with Bloom's, I hope to set the stage for deepening our understanding of the Hebrew Bible.

            In the present essay I will also work with Bernard Lonergan's account of the four levels of consciousness in Insight: A Study of Human Understanding: (1) empirical consciousness (sensory data and imagination); (2) intelligent consciousness (construction of conceptual constructs); (3) rational consciousness (evaluation of the adequacy of conceptual construction and of predications of conceptual constructs); and (4) responsible consciousness (decision making about how to act in a given situation). Frederick E. Crowe has drawn on Lonergan's thought to suggest that there is one human nature and set of operations in all human beings in all human history. For this reason, we can use Lonergan's account of intelligent consciousness and the constructing of conceptual constructs to account for the various conceptual constructs in the Hebrew Bible. Next, we can use Lonergan's account of intelligent consciousness to account for the more abstract conceptual constructs that emerged in ancient Greek philosophy. Next, we need to explain how and why those more abstract conceptual constructs emerged in ancient Greek philosophy. Drawing on the work of the French philosopher Louis Lavelle regarding the aural-visual contrast, Ong attributes the more abstract conceptual concepts that emerged in ancient Greek philosophy to the strong influence of visual cognitive processing. Ong develops this line of thought most notably in Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (1958). According to Ong, the printing press developed by Gutenberg in the 1450s helped heighten visualist cognitive process in Western culture. Independently of Lavelle, Lonergan also detected the strong visual tendency in Western philosophy. For Ong, Western philosophy from at least the time of Plato and Aristotle onward is characterized by visualist thought and visualist tendencies. By contrast, for Ong, the Hebrew Bible is a collection of different forms of oral thought and expression that were transcribed in writing. As a result, biblical thought and expression are decidedly different from Greek philosophic thought as exemplified in Plato and Aristotle. For this reason, biblical theology in the Hebrew Bible is decidedly different from later Christian forms of theology based on Greek philosophic thought as exemplified by Plato and Aristotle.

            Later on, Ong came to write about two broad cultural conditioning patterns that he characterized as the world-as-event sense of life and the world-as-view sense of life. In addition, he allowed that a new sense of life might be emerging today, but he did not try to name of describe it. But Lonergan has named historical-mindedness as the emerging alternative to a classicist world-view. I would suggest that what Lonergan terms a classicist world-view is an example of what Ong describes as the world-as-view sense of life. However, Lonergan in the one famous essay that I am discussing does not happen to advert explicitly to anything comparable to what Ong refers to as the world-as-event sense of life. However, the Hebrew Bible emerged historically is a culture still characterized by the world-as-event sense of life, not from a culture characterized by the world-as-view sense of life. But ancient Greek philosophic thought as exemplified in Plato and Aristotle emerged historically as the result of the world-as-view sense of life, and the entire Western philosophic tradition of thought from Plato and Aristotle onward has been characterized by the world-as-event sense of life down to Lonergan's Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. In addition, according to Ong, the Gutenberg printing press helped spread the world-as-view sense of life beyond Western philosophic thought and Christian theology based on Western philosophy. So two things emerge here. On the one hand, Ong's description of the world-as-event sense of life will be instrumental for understanding biblical theology in the Hebrew Bible as anatomized by Brueggemann. David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World is an excellent example of an attempt to describe the world-as-event sense of life. On the other hand, Brueggemann's very effort to understand the biblical theology of the Hebrew Bible, and the effort advanced in the present essay, can be understood to be examples of what Lonergan refers to as historical-mindedness, which is one way of naming an alternative to the world-as-view sense of life. Historical-mindedness characterizes Ong's work in cultural history and cultural theory. Ong's historical-mindedness can enable us to understand better not only the world-as-view sense of life but also the world-as-event sense of life. Nevertheless, historical-mindedness as exemplified in Ong's work is still just emerging as a serious alternative to the world-as-view sense of life.

In Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Ong has defined and explained nine characteristics of orally based thought and expression, which are manifestations of the world-as-event sense of life:

(1) orally based thought and expression is additive rather than subordinative (37-38);

(2) orally based thought and expression is aggregative rather than analytic (38-39);

(3) orally based thought and expression is redundant or "copious" (39-41);

(4) orally based thought and expression is conservative or traditionalist (41-42);

(5) orally based thought and expression is close to the human lifeworld (42-43);

(6) orally based thought and expression is agonistically toned (43-45);

(7) orally based thought and expression is empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced (45-46);

(8) orally based thought and expression is homeostatic (46-49);

(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.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview