KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 28 November
Written for our learning
A defining feature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that they are more or less explicitly logocentric, word-centered. For all three of these religions of ethical monotheism, God is understood largely in terms of Logos, the Greek word for reason or word. Thus the Word as Law defines Judaism; the Word made Flesh is central to the Christian understanding; and the Word as the Will of Allah is a major feature of Islam. All of the world’s great religions to one extent or another give priority to written texts: the Vedas and the Upanishads of Hinduism; the various Buddhist texts in pali or sanskrit, the commentary traditions in philosophy, to give but a few instances. There is something inescapably significant about written texts, the scriptures and the writings of religion and philosophy.
This calls attention to the mystery and the wonder of reading and writing, one of the most profound of all human abilities and one which speaks to the idea of civilisation. The ancient Sumerians were among the first to do so many things practically speaking in terms of technology that gave them a power over nature: such things as sailing – using wind and therefore not necessarily determined by the flow of water; irrigation – being able to redirect water to where it can be used for agriculture; and a host of other practical inventions. But perhaps the most important invention was writing: cuneiform script, wedge-shaped marks in clay, that probably originated in a warehouse. Why? There is a necessary connection between numbering and naming things which then leads on to stories and ideas. Reading and writing signify civilisation.
“Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,” St. Paul famously says. He is referring to the Hebrew Scriptures but paradoxically his remark will extend to the inclusion of his own writings which comprise the greatest part of the Christian Scripture, the New Testament. What is written is written for our learning. This speaks to the prominence and the significance of reading and writing, to the significance of books.
This is a particular concern and challenge for our age as Maryanne Wolf wonderfully explains in Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (2018). Following upon the success of Proust and the Squid (2008), she has written an engaging book about what has transpired in the last ten years in terms of neuroscience and the impact of the digital culture on our reading. Far from being a technophobe, she nonetheless seeks to alert us to the dangers of losing the capacity for “deep reading,” for a kind of collectedness, “a place of stillness,” that belongs to Aristotle’s idea of contemplation as the highest form of human life. This complements the theme of our attention to ethical principles which alone can properly shape our lives. Sitting and listening like Mary is necessary for Martha’s activity, too. Without it, we are the endlessly distracted in a culture of distraction, unable to focus and at the mercy of digital overstimulation and manipulation. The theologian John Dunne notes that wisdom is “but contemplation in action.” Wolf wants to show this in part through literature and philosophy and in part through neuroscience.