The interview meme: questions from Oursin

[tree_and_leaf]

You all know the drill: comment and I'll ask you five questions, though - as I still don't have internet at home (no love, BT, no love) it may take me a bit to get round to asking.

1. Do you have a favourite liturgical thing?

This is surprisingly difficult to answer, as in some ways the thing I most like about liturgy is the rhythm it gives to the year – no service or bit of a service can have its true effect in isolation from the rest. That said – I have a great weakness for anything involving images of light in darkness, especially if the liturgy itself is then combined with actual effects with darkness and light. I think my favourite service of the year is the Easter vigil mass, starting in darkness outside the church by the Easter fire, then processing into the dark church with candles, before the final acclamation of the Risen Christ and the church lighting up. It's – I'm reluctant to use the word 'magical', but I can't think of a better one. A sort of yearly eucatastrophe. I also love the collects for Advent – when I was a child, my parents or I would read the collect for the relevant Sunday before lighting the advent wreath and then having coffee and Christmas baking (which may not be totally unconnected to the warmth of my memories around it, but it's all good, if not in quite the same degree…)

I also really like the Advent prose, or more specifically, the antiphon.


2. Who is your favourite fanfic character to write?

I'm not sure there's one specific favourite, but there's common ground – I like writing characters who are buttoned up and ironic on the surface, but who are secret romantics (indeed, who sometimes don't know it). Phineas Nigellus was great fun – I'd definitely write him again if the inchoate notion for a sequel to the Blue Flower ever coheres into anything.


3. If you had to give up one or the other, would it be wine or whisky?

That's tricky, but although I probably know more about how to appreciate whisky, I think I'd have to give that up, because you can't really drink it with food, and not drinking wine would have bigger social implications.


4. What would be your ideal holiday if cost and time were no object?

I'd like to finally have the money (and time) to go and visit a friend of mine in Japan. But if we're talking really crazy, money-no-object plans, since childhood I've had a hankering to travel round the Baltic, doing as much as possible on foot, that is everything that can be done without swimming or annoying the Russian army (we're taking Paddy Leigh Fermor epic lengths of journey here, I know), and write a book about it. Come to think of it, that's not actually a holiday, but it is a dream.


5. Arians or Athanasians?
I have my reservations about the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian creed, but nonetheless, Athanasius every time. God is love: but love is not static, it implies relationship. And it is the love which is between the Persons of the Trinity – the Father eternally giving birth to the Son, and the Spirit of love between them – which flows out in creation.

The attitude to creation which Arrius' doctrine of the Son as not God but the highest created thing implies is my other reason for rejecting Arianism. If God did not enter his own creation, if Jesus was not God, then it seems to me that any redemption from the sorrow and pain and error of the world can only be a flight out of it which views spirit as the only reality and flesh as a – probably dangerous – illusion. But despite the various follies of the church on the matter historically, the doctrine of the Incarnation proclaims that matter matters. We are people, bodies as well as minds and souls, and through Christ's birth and life and death the whole person, not just the spirit or the intellect (as Gnostics like to think) becomes the place where God meets us, loves us and transforms us, both in the everyday and quotidian and in great joy and wretchedness, but most especially where we are weak and vulnerable. Though we are changed by Christ to become like children of God, like God in participating in the divine love (you could, albeit cautiously, say 'becoming God') it is not a matter of absorption into the Absolute – we remain ourselves, indeed it's only that which makes us truly ourselves – and there remains a central paradox in that even in the closest union between God and the soul (which in any case only exists because God gives it being), God is still irreducibly other.

…. anyway, I think if you take either the Trinity or the Incarnation (the same objection applies, though coming from the other angle, to the sort of Gnostic who thought that Christ was not really in the flesh because it's below the dignity of God to suffer hunger and thirst and fear and pain), Christianity becomes utterly meaningless, and you really might as well just become an Epicurian or an ascetic Buddhist, depending on temprament.

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Yes pls

[tree_and_leaf]

1. Where's your favourite place?

2. What is pont (as in your interests)?

3. How did your association with Tauruithorn come about?

4. Is that a hen in your icon, or what?

5. Most memorable cricketing moment?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

1. Probably Orkney. More specifically, the hotel at Woodwick House, Evie; or the Knap of Howar, the oldest house in northern Europe. (While not as well-equipped as Skara Brae, which came 600 years later, but it is still very cosy!)

Second place is shared between the Vale of Belvoir / the "High"* half of the Framland Hundred / Deanery, and Haddon Hall.

2. Pont (real name Graham Laidlaw) was a Punch cartoonist of the late 1930s and very early 1940s. His drawings are, simply, very funny; brilliantly observed, and full of detail. He did the "British Character" series, among others.

3. In 1993 and 94, I became very active in the Tolkien Society. jason_finch, the then-editor of Mathom (the smials' newsletter), wrote to me as organiser of Wellinghall (the now-defunct Birmingham smial), passing on an invitation to the 1994 Taruithorn banquet. I went, and much enjoyed myself, having briefly met some of the stalwarts (like kargicq, skordh and chainmailmaiden; and the rest is history.

4. It is a golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus), an ornamental species. It was imported to Britain, as indeed all pheasant species were, from Asia, and has become naturalised (from feral birds) in small numbers. To see one stepping out of the undergrowth is quite an experience.

5. Playing? Taking three wickets for eight runs (for the Birmingham Actuarial Society, insurers v consultants). Watching? Possibly seeing David Gower and Ray Illingworth steering Leicestershire to victory in the John Player League in 1977. On TV? David Gower scoring 200 not out for England.

*This is a geographical description, rather than necessarily one of their worshipping style.

[tree_and_leaf]

Thank you! Gower was a great player, wasn't he?

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. I was a teenage Arian, insofar as I rejected the Trinity and Incarnation, but once Arius starts fretting about 'the highest created thing' and emphasising the spiritual over the material world, which ISTR he does, this makes the whole thing less attractive.

[tree_and_leaf]

I was a teenage Arian

Sounds like the title of a comic-book retelling of Augustine's Confessions! Or something like that....

once Arius starts fretting about 'the highest created thing' and emphasising the spiritual over the material world, which ISTR he does, this makes the whole thing less attractive.

It does - to me it seems like a logical consequence of the theology, but I don't think Unitarians are prone to it - mind you, I have never actually talked about theology with a Unitarian, so that's not that valuable a comment.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think Unitarians are prone to it, though modern Unitarianism (in both the Socinian and Feathers Tavern senses) exists in a context removed from Arius, though I don't know enough about either offhand (and am meant to be concentrating on revising Jefferson this morning, so I can teach it this afternoon...) to rule. Nor have I discussed theology with a modern Unitarian either, though I'm not sure that there are all that many around. I remember Richard Harries being reported as urging non-Trinitarians to convert to Judaism as Unitarianism was now as good as defunct...

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Modern Unitarians, (in my limited experience) tend to go off in the direction of pantheism, and/or not having a theology at all.

am meant to be concentrating on revising Jefferson this morning
Hey, Jefferson was inclined toward Unitarianism. It's sort of relevant!

[tree_and_leaf]

I think once you take the Trinity out Christianity inevitably does dissolve into Gnosticism or pantheism -or, I suppose, Islam, which seems to draw on Christian heresy (the prevelance of various non-orthodox Christologies in north Africa and Arabia might well explain why Islam was so successful so quickly - it's not that big a leap from Arianism). Or else, as Harries suggested, reverting to Judaism, which in may ways seems like the logical conclusion if you can't believe in the Trinity yet can't bear to be anything other than Judaeo-Christian. Though I suppose that an attachment to Jesus would work against that - mind you, I honestly don't understand why, if he isn't God, one should think him any more compelling than, say, Socrates.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I would go beyond that. I would say that Jesus never really said anything that did not imply that He was God; look, for instance, at his claim to forgive sins, or, conversely, to have the power and right to judge. The difference between Him and the great teachers of virtue and wisdom, in particular Socrates and Confucius, is simply enormous; and notice that both Socrates and Confucius were careful to state that they had nothing to teach about the universe or the supernatural. Both of them felt that virtue in human life was a long enough, more than lifelong, study.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it Nestorianism, with its distinction between the divine and human natures of Jesus which is customarily seen as having an influence on Islam? The figure who passed on to Muhammad the last 'real' New Testament, according to Islamic mythology, a text which pre-dated the supposed sabotaging of the word of Jesus by self-serving factions in Byzantine Christianity, has been represented as a Nestorian.

Someone who shared a self-confessed muddled agnosticism with me was Dennis Potter; his play Son of Man keeps its options open as to Jesus's divinity, but suggests that his belief in his message, his effect on others and especially his sacrifice on the cross were transformative. (This was more apparent in the RSC production in 1995 than in the 1969 BBC original, I recall.)

[tree_and_leaf]

I think you're right about Nestorianism, now I come to think of it. I know less about that period than I'd like to - my knowledge of the Eastern Empire or areas bordering it is spotty at best.

keeps its options open as to Jesus's divinity, but suggests that his belief in his message, his effect on others and especially his sacrifice on the cross were transformative.

There is that, of course!

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

True - I'd been pigeonholing him as a Deist but that as good as presupposes unitarianism of one kind or another...

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply there's any connection between the Arians and the Unitarians; there clearly isn't, historically speaking. But they both arise from an aversion to paradox; it's interesting to see the different directions it works out in.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I didn't think you were, though my thirteen-year-old self certainly saw Arius simply as a unitarian, largely on the back of Ian Wilson'sTV tie-in Jesus - The Evidence.

[sally_maria]

If you feel like it - it must be oh, at least a few weeks since I did one of these. :-)

[tree_and_leaf]

Hullo, you're new!

1. What made you friend me/ where do you know my lj from?

2. Who's 'your' Doctor (as in Who?)

3. Have you done any fannish cross-stitch projects yourself?

4. What is guaranteed to make you hit 'back' when reading fan-fic?

5. Who's your favourite Bujold character?

[sally_maria]

1. What made you friend me/ where do you know my lj from?

I've seen you commenting on other friends' journals and you seemed like an interesting person. I also think I met you at Oxonmoot - you were with parrot_knight and had tapas on the Saturday evening at the bar in Blue Boar Street? Or I may have got completely confused - it's by no means unknown.

2. Who's 'your' Doctor (as in Who?)

Peter Davidson, definitely. I have vague memories of some of the later Tom Baker stories, but the Fifth Doctor is the first one I really connected with.

3. Have you done any fannish cross-stitch projects yourself?

I must admit I haven't. I've never been particularly interested in stitching people - I'm never that impressed with the results. I could have gone for symbols, I suppose, but I haven't come across anything that has demanded that I stitch it.

4. What is guaranteed to make you hit 'back' when reading fan-fic?

I do tend to try and finish stories once I start them, if I stop part way through I'm more likely to have the story preying on my brain afterwards. If I finish it I can then file it under never bother with that author again and mostly forget about it. Of course, if the first few paragraphs are so badly spelled, punctuated etc that I struggle to read it, them I will probably give up.

5. Who's your favourite Bujold character?

Ooh, that's not an easy one. I do have a lot of admiration for Ekaterin, I think she shows a strength of character that a lot of TV's kick-ass chicks could do with aiming for when they grow up.

[tree_and_leaf]

Ah, placed you - you're quite right. Sorry, I'm abominable with names, whether RL or LJ...

I've bee working my way slowly through Bujold, so have only just met Ekaterin, but she seems great so far.

[sally_maria]

Don't worry, I'm not that great with them either. For some reason LJ names I find easier, but I suspect mine is sufficiently normal to be Not Memorable.

After reading Cordelia's Honor, I must admit to have been greedy enough to read whichever ones I could lay my hands on, so I got them very much out of order. And I first met Ekaterin in Without a Star, when I had no idea who Miles Vorkosigan was, so I've always known about their relationship. She hasn't had an easy life in a lot of ways but she's handled it with grace and a quiet courage that tends to go unnoticed.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

The epic Baltic journey sounds amazing, I hope you get the chance one day.

I'd like some questions please.

[tree_and_leaf]

1. What was the highlight of your recent trip to North America?

2. What's the best thing about working in museums?

3. And the most frustrating?

4. What's your favourite kidlit book?

5. If you could meet any fictional character, who would you pick.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Go on then - I'm a sucker for this meme, and it must be getting on for a year since I last played...

[tree_and_leaf]

1. Would you consider living in (as opposed to visiting) China for an extended period of time - say a couple of years?

2. Where in the world would you most like to visit?

3. What's the best part about living in Edinburgh?

4. What on earth is that carrot saying?

5. Any wild, unrealised, 'before I die' plans?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've done this for a while, either. (And should you ever feel like re-visiting Phineas Nigellus, I for one should be glad to read it.)

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Ditto on Phineas-love.
And go on, I'll take some questions...

Right, then.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

Have at it, m'dear.

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

I must admit that I have never viewed Arianism from that particular angle. The rejection of the Incarnation and the Trinity held a certain appeal to me when I was slowly losing my Catholic faith but didn't want to committ to agnosticism yet. But to see the matter of Christ being God incarnate, the word becoming flesh, as a celebration and affirmation of the body is just something that never occurred to me. Maybe because none of the religious figures in my life ever put it like that, instead of insisting on all the less than life-affirming "don'ts".

Also, five questions, please.

[tree_and_leaf]

The church seems to get screwed up about the body-spirit opposition constantly, in spite of the fact that it actually knows this is rubbish when it's forced to stop and think about it. And I don't know why this keeps happening.† Possibly it's just that to a certain kind of personality type, the idea that the flaw in human nature, or sin, or whatever you want to call it, is located in the body (whereas the mind and the will are fine, as long as they dominate the body's urges) is less threatening than the idea that the crack runs right through, and that actually whatever the weaknesses of the body, they're much less nasty than the more spiritual sins, such as pride.

Presenting morality as a list of don'ts is damaging in all sorts of ways; but it's also lousy theology.

... I'll get back to you on the questions - now I have to run and do some photocopying before my seminar.

† Some of it's S Paul's fault, because he was ill-advised enough to talk about the 'flesh' as a problem. I am fairly sure that by that he actually meant 'human nature as opposed to divine grace' rather than 'body bad, spirit good', but it's a deeply misleading term. And, of course, there's a lot of cross-contamination from later Greek thought, where - while they didn't have the same interest in sin - they did think of the body as subordinate to the spirit, and the journey to God (or the One) in terms of transcending the flesh, and when that gets combined with the Christian idea of sin as the barrier to God, it's liable to produce a weird hybrid which locates sinfulness in the flesh. Dangerous, and as I say, lousy theology - but it seems to have a horrible power of compulsion.

[themolesmother.livejournal.com]

I've been rather absent from LJ of late, so this is quite a good way of getting back into the swing of it. Count me in.

MM

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting observation about Arianism being basically anti-matter. Nicely thought and argued.

And please ask away.