When Rowan met Fyodor
How on earth Rowan Williams has found the time to write a new book about Dostoevsky will no doubt become an issue for some of his opponents within Anglicanism, who suspect that he has lacked focus in his role as ABC. Archbishop Williams has written much about Russian literature and theology over many years as a scholar, and his fascination has continued while in episcopal office.
Nevertheless, of Doestoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction is less than celebratory. Money quote:
'The archbishop's mind is one of eternal fractal elaboration. Each thought produces its opposite; each qualification must be qualified; each pool of sense must be adulterated with a dash of nonsense. There were times when I wondered whether I was struggling through the worst prose ever written by a poet. Sometimes the thought disintegrates entirely, like a jellyfish dropped in a jacuzzi: "The absolute necessity for recognition in the exchanges of dialogue means that, while we can indeed at one level say what we please (that two and two are not four), the construction of a life requires that we discover how we can speak in a way that does not just repeat or reproduce what is given, yet is at the same time occupying the same world of thought and perception that others in their speech inhabit. Speech may be free but it needs to be bearable - otherwise it fails finally to be language at all." The irony of a man writing so badly about the necessity of writing well is hardly to be borne.'
Rowan Williams talks to Stuart Jeffries about his book .
Comment number 1.
At 14th Oct 2008, U11831742 wrote:That's one of the most damning reviews I have ever read.
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Comment number 2.
At 14th Oct 2008, The Christian Hippy wrote:The Idiot
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Comment number 3.
At 15th Oct 2008, gveale wrote:If you divide that quote by Pi, using a post-structuralist hermeneutic and a post-Bayesian epistemology with feminst sensibilities, and then subtract the number you first thought of (after smoking some of Portwyne's mushrooms) you get some very profound thoughts.
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Comment number 4.
At 15th Oct 2008, Bernards_Insight wrote:Actually I thought that this;
"The difference between the self-aware believer ... and the conscious and deliberate atheists is not a disagreement over whether or not to add one item [God] to the sum total of really existing things. It is a conflict about the policies and possibilities for a human life: between someone who accepts the dependence of everything on divine gratuity and attempts to respond with some image of that gratuity ... and someone who denies the dependence and is consequently faced with the unanswerable question of why any one policy for living is preferable to any other"
...was very cogent and compelling, a far better quote than the one above. If there's just a few more of those thoughts, that book might be worth a read, particularly as i'm a massive Dostoevsky fan.
Flip me, that's twice in one month I've found myself agreeing with Eyebrow Williams.
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Comment number 5.
At 15th Oct 2008, gveale wrote:It is worth noting that Andrew Brown completely misses Williams point here. Assuming Williams means what you and I take him to mean Bernard (that Theism means more than adding one more thing to your list of what exists; it involves reinterpreting everything else on the list as well.) Williams may mean something else entirely.
He may also mean that because everything that exists depends on God, the term "exists" is too weak to describe God. I can't see that this sort of language is very helpful, and it leads to situations were reviewers like Brown think you are half-way to Atheism.
Graham Veale
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Comment number 6.
At 15th Oct 2008, Bernards_Insight wrote:Oh, I don't know.
While God may be the source of all existence, He doesn't "exist" in the way that "existing things" do. Rather he is the very act of existing, that is shared in by all existing things. That is not the same as being "one existing thing", and certainly not "one existing thing among many"
Don't want to stray too far down the Portwyne route, like, but i think there is something to be said for that kind of language.
:)
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Comment number 7.
At 15th Oct 2008, petermorrow wrote:Bernard
'Eyebrow'
Was that 'East London' for highbrow?
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Comment number 8.
At 16th Oct 2008, gveale wrote:pk
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Comment number 9.
At 16th Oct 2008, gveale wrote:Peter Klaver
Did you know the Pope was a Catholic? Just while you're stating the obvious I thought I'd join in.
Max Plank didn't interpret quanta realistically at first. Niels Bohr had a model of the hydrogen atom that was soon overturned. Things we can't see might exist. Arthur Compton did experiments that persuaded De Broglie that matter might have an associated wave. Force is equal to mass times acceleration. If you're going to weigh in with facts a good A level Physics text book might contain, why can't I join in?
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Comment number 10.
At 22nd Oct 2008, PeterKlaver wrote:I only just spotted this post by Graham a few days ago. In a thread I wasn't even commenting in. And totally off-topic for this thread. I seem to have really hit a nerve in him, haven't I?
Yummie.
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