The late American Jesuit philosopher and theologian Frank M. Oppenheim (1925-2020; Ph.D. in philosophy, Saint Louis University, 1962 -- the year in which he turned thirty-seven) published the masterful book Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987 -- the year in which he turned sixty-two). However, Oppenheim appears not to have been familiar with the work of the American Jesuit Walter J. Ong.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) August 20, 2023: In the late American Jesuit philosopher and theologian and Royce specialist Frank M. Oppenheim's masterful book Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987 - the year in which Oppenheim turned sixty-five) achieved an impressive synthesis of the work of the prolific American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916; Ph.D. in philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, 1878).

In Oppenheim's 1987 book Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion, he includes a "Chronology" of Royce's life (pp. xvii-xviii). In it, he notes that in 1902 "Royce starts his fourteen years of in-depth study of logic" (p. xvii) - which Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) had urged him to undertake. Moreover, Oppenheim emphasizes that Royce wrote his 1913 The Problem of Christianity after he had his 1912 Peircean insight (pp. xiii, 9-10, 18, 22, 23, 31, 190, 161n.12, and 363n.19).

Oppenheim discussed Peirce most extensively in his 2005 ambitious book Reverence for the Relations of Life: Re-imagining Pragmatism via Josiah Royce's Interactions with Peirce, James, and Dewey (University of Notre Dame Press; for specific page references to Peirce, see the "Index of Names" [p. 493]).

Now, in Oppenheim's Chapter 12: "[Royce's] Empirico-Historical Method: First Stage" in his 1987 book Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion (pp. 183-204), he says the following about Royce's 1913 masterpiece in the philosophy of religion, The Problem of Christianity: "his [Royce's] selected ideas, designated 'Christian' simply by historical origin in [Christian] communal consciousness,, but eternally sown in the Universal Community by its Interpreter Logos-Spirit, stand in the truth and are true, whatever changes come" (Oppenheim, p. 192; italics in Oppenheim's text).

So what are Royce's "selected ideas, designated 'Christian'" in his 1913 masterpiece The Problem of Christianity (Macmillan, two volumes; but reprinted as one volume by the University of Chicago Press in 1968; and then the 1968 edition was reprinted by the Catholic University of America Press in 2001, with a "Foreword" by Frank m. Oppenheim, S.J. [pp. vii-xxxi])?

In Oppenheim's "Foreword" in the 2001 edition of Royce's 1913 masterpiece The Problem of Christianity, he informs us that for Royce's purposes in his 1913 masterpiece the "three essential ideas of Christianity which had found him without his devising them [p. 366 in Royce]" were "the three ideas of [1] community, [2] humankind's fallen state, and [3] its liberation (or atonement) by his generalized idea of Grace (or Loyalty)" (p. x).

In Oppenheim's "Foreword" in the 2001 edition of Royce's 1913 masterpiece, he writes of Royce's "prophetic voice" in his 1913 masterpiece (p. vii), and Oppenheim subsequently informs us that Amos was "one of Royce's favorite prophets" (p. xxiii).

Now, in Oppenheim's 1987 book Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion, he uses a superscript numeral on p.192 to direct our attention to endnote 18, p. 376. In it, he says, "Although familiar with the Greeks' more intellectualist sense of idea (logos [which is famously used, in Greek, in the prologue in the Gospel of John]), Royce approached the biblical sense of idea (dabar [in the Hebrew Bible]) with its emphasis on spirit, will, embodiment, and action [Oppenheim directs us to p. 319 of Royce's 1913 masterpiece The Problem of Christianity]. Taken in the latter sense and then shaped into the everlasting 'sword of the Spirit,' his set of leading ideas meant far more to Royce than various worldly weapons. In support of his ideas, he could cite strong Scripture precedent: 'Not on bread alone is man to live, but on every word [dabar, 'idea'] that comes from the mouth of God' (Matthew 4:4)." Oppenheim here inserts dabar in square brackets in Matthew's text, which is written in Greek.

Now, the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) discusses the Hebrew term dabar in his 1967 book. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press, pp. 12 and 113), the expanded version of his 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University.

Now, the contrast that Oppenheim sets up between "the Greeks' more intellectualist sense of logos," on the one hand, and, on the other, "the biblical sense of idea (dabar) with its emphasis on spirit, will, embodiment, and action" calls to mind the visual-aural contrast that Ong works with in his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason [in the Age of Reason] (Harvard University Press; for specific page references to Ong's discussion of the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history, see the "Index" [p. 396]).

See my somewhat lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):

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Peter Ramus (1515-1572) was a French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr. In Ong's massively researched 1958, he surveys the history of the formal study of logic from Aristotle up to and beyond Ramus.

Remember that Royce, at the urging of Peirce, spent fourteen years studying modern formal logic.

Now, Ong's use of the term shift, in the expression aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in his massively researched 1958 book, calls to mind the Jewish biblical scholar James L. Kugel's book The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). No doubt the ancient Hebrew shift that Kugel (born in 1945) delineates can be understood in terms of Ong's account of the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history.

In ancient Jewish history this gradually unfolding aural-to-visual shift continued in subsequent centuries, as the late Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner (1932-2016) shows in his book The Transformation of Judaism: From Philosophy to Religion (University of Illinois Press, 1992).

In the English-speaking world, the English Renaissance poet and pamphleteer John Milton (1608-1674) is probably the most widely known person who studied Ramist logic (in Latin) - at Cambridge University. Subsequently, he wrote a textbook in logic (in Latin). Subsequently, after he had become famous as a poet and pamphleteer, he published his textbook in logic (in Latin) in 1672.

Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger edited and translated Milton's 1672 Logic in volume eight of Yale's Complete Prose Works of John Milton: 1666-1682, edited by Maurice Kelley (Yale University Press, 1982, pp. 139-407) - with an eloquent "Introduction" by Ong (pp. 144-207). Ong's "Introduction," slightly shortened, is reprinted as "Introduction to Milton's Logic" in volume four of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1999, pp. 111-142).

Now, Ong published his 1969 article "World as View and World as Event" in the journal American Anthropologist, volume 71, number 4 (August 1969): pp. 634-647. It is reprinted in volume three of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1995, pp. 69-90).

I discuss Ong's 1969 article in my article "Walter Ong and Harold Bloom can help us understand the Hebrew Bible" in the journal Explorations in Media Ecology, volume 11, numbers 3&4 (2012): pp. 255-272.

The late anthropologist David M. Smith (1940-2022; Ph.D. in anthropology, University of Minnesota) discusses Ong's 1969 article in his 1997 book chapter "World as Event: Aspects of Chipewyan Ontology" that is reprinted, slightly revised, in the 2012 book Of Ong and Media Ecology, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, pp. 117-141).

Remember that Royce, at Peirce's urging, spent fourteen years studying modern formal logic. For Ong, the formal study of logic from Aristotle onward up to and beyond Ramus, extending to modern formal logic, involves what Ong refers to as visual cognitive processing in our western cultural history.

Now, what Oppenheim refers to as "the Greeks' more intellectualist sense of logos" aligns with what Ong refers to as the world as view sense of life. What Oppenheim refers to as "the biblical sense of idea (dabar) with its emphasis on spirit, will, embodiment, and action" aligns with what Ong refers to as the world as event sense of life. Now, if Oppenheim's claim that Royce's sense of the Christian ideas he discusses in his 1913 masterpiece The Problem of Christianity is correct, then Royce's account of the three protean Christian ideas, mentioned above, represents a noteworthy account of how those three Christian ideas express and represent what Ong refers to as the world as event sense of life!

Unfortunately, Oppenheim himself does not explicitly refer to his perceptive characterization of Royce's use of "the biblical sense of idea (dabar) with its emphasis on spirit, will, embodiment, and action" in his discussion of Royce's account of the three Christian ideas, mentioned above, in his 1913 masterpiece The Problem of Christianity - where such explicit discussion of his characterization might have helped clarify what he was saying about Royce's account of Christian ideas.

Unfortunately, Oppenheim does not happen to advert explicitly to either Ong's massively researched 1958 book or to his seminal 1967 book or to his 1969 article - or to Eric A. Havelock's relevant 1963 book Preface to Plato (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Because Oppenheim died in 2020, he will not be exploring Royce's work in any further publications.

Unfortunately, Ong does not discuss Oppenheim's 1987 book Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion. Because Ong died in 2003, he will not be exploring Oppenheim's 1987 book in any further publications.

In conclusion, I would like to return now to Oppenheim's characterization in his "Foreword" in the 2001 edition of Royce's 1913 masterpiece The Problem of Christianity as what he refers to as his "prophetic voice" (p. vii). Regardless of what all Oppenheim may have meant by this statement in 2001, I have suggested here new ways in which Oppenheim's statement in his 1987 book Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion (p. 376n.18) about the Hebrew word dabar versus the Greek philosophical word logos can understood as related to Ong's extensive account of the aural versus the visual cognitive processing in our Western cultural history.

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