Exploring Ecumenism

Conversations: cosmic and prosaic

So, why insert conversation for word when translating logos?  Generally, word is the accepted translation.  I think yesterday's exercise points up the meaning of word; clarifies our understanding of it.  I'd always thought of it as something static - a noun.  In the beginning there was the word - plonk!  Conversation implies something dynamic and participative.  And so does word.  What is the point of a word if it is not to communicate?  In context, word must mean more than a word on the page or in speech.  It implies a response.  Word implies conversation, at least in this context.

Let's not be diverted into asking who the conversation was with.  It is however interesting the refrain in the opening verses of Genesis is that 'God saw that it was good'.  Again this implies some sort of conversation or response.  If God knew it was going to be good, if God had embarked on an enterprise with a definite and clear outcome, why say this?  God acted (spoke?) and received a response, checked to see it was good before moving onto the next stage.  God saw it was good because God was seeking a response to her/his actions.  It admits the possibility it might not have been good.  If there were not that possibility - why look, let alone remark upon it?  The pattern is act, check, act.  The process any creative artist might adopt.

This implies a universe not created by a pefectionist who pre-determines all things from the beginning.  But a universe where the outcome is predetermined but the means to the outcome are not predictable at the outset.  I will return to this in more detail at some later date.

One last point, we speak of ecumenical conversations - am I implying some common ground between these prosaic conversations and the great universal conversation which started all things and keeps them going?  Yes I am.  This might sound outrageous - my point is that the most prosaic conversations contain the seeds of the same creativity we find in God's creative act. That is all conversations are potentially creative; free conversations will always lead to the creation of new things.  This is what the Quakers mean by the spirit of the meeting.  They do not mean consensus but a new creation.  All our conversations are important.  Ecumenical conversations are a small number of the conversations that are going on - they are likely to be more effective if seen in their cosmic context.

How it all started (in the pub?)

My new word of the week is Targum.   A friend when I asked explained it is ‘is an Aramaic translation usually in the form of an expanded translation of various books or section so of the Old Testament’.  This accounts for the origin of the word but it seems to be used to mean an expanded translation of scripture.  This implies a significant hermeneutical element as it will be expanded to make or underscore a contemporary point. 

My Targum for today is an exposition of the opening verses of John’s Gospel.  Some time ago I read the word logos is usually translated as word but it can equally be translated as conversation.  I read this in a Methodist Mission Education publication in 2003, unfortunately I have been unable to track it down.  (If anyone can find it I would be grateful to see it again.)  If memory serves this article included a Targum based on the same opening verses.  So, I suppose this is my attempt to reproduce it of course with my own spin.

Tenuous as this may seem to be, it has been the start of a fruitful line of enquiry, one I intend to pursue further.

‘It all started with a conversation, God was there of course, indeed you could say God was the conversation.  God’s conversation was there from the beginning.  All things came into being through the conversation and without the conversation not one thing came into being.  Life is what came into being through the conversation and life illuminates all people.  And so life and God are in conversation and this illuminates the dark places and brings them into the conversation.’

Many years ago I heard the story of the invention of the cloud chamber (used in particle physics to show the tracks of particles, which leave a trail of bubbles in some medium).  Apparently, it was invented in the pub, where there was a salt cellar on the table and someone started to drop grains of salt in the beer and observed they left a trail of bubbles. 

I suspect many things have been invented during this type of unstructured conversation (and messing about) and so why not the universe?  There is something magnificent about the idea of the universe emerging from a pub conversation. 

If anyone thinks this is a bit too flippant I am trying to capture something of the feel of the casual way in which things come into being.  This is enormously important and I will pick up on it later.