10 Years After

St. Anger

Literary Criticism consisted of finishing up Jungian criticism and then covering Jacques Lacan. I find both of these much more appealing as psychological critics than Freud. Freud seems over used in pop culture. For some reason that makes it very hard for me to take it too seriously. Maybe it's the way his terms and fagments of his concepts are bandied about by armchair shrinks.
It's between classes now and I thought I'd come over to the library to get some reading and a little research completed.

Grammar survey : Working to come up with a way to do it as a handout. I don't think that would be so hard. The hard part will be sitting down and actually doing it. I figure I'll use 3 types of multiple negatives disallowed by Standard English, one form allowed (e.g., 'I am not unhappy with my grade.'), and then some filler stuff to distract from all the negative forms used.

While here I looked up Hell in the OED. Here's the etymology: [OE. hel(l, obl. cases helle str. fem. = OFris. helle, hille, OS. hellja, hella, MDu. helle, Du. hel), OHG hella (MHG. helle, mod.G. hölle), ON. hel, gen. heljar, Goth. halja:- O Teut. *haljâ str. fem., lit. 'the coverer up or hider', f. hel-, hal-, hul- to hide, conceal, HELE. in ON. also the goddess of the infernal regions, 'the ogress Hel, the Prosperine of Scandinavian mythology' (Vigfusson).]

On my way to the copier room I walked past the new books received by the library and a book titled "The Trinity" by Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall caught my eye. Due to the discussions in my Milton class about the possibility of Milton intending Satan, Sin, and Death to be an unholy trinity in mirror image to the traditional holy Trinity the concept of the Trinity itself has been on my mind. In fact, the Jehova's Witness that I work with doesn't believe in the trinity. He views it in some sort of historical sense as being a pagan influence and then points to the lack of direct scriptural evidence for such a construct¹. Anyways, when I saw the book I thought I'd glance through it.

The first thing I read blew me away:

According to the church father Augustine anyone who denies the Trinity is in danger of losing her salvation, but anyone who tries to understand the Trinity is in danger of loosing her mind.

This is the first sentence of the book and while you might think I found it interesting due to the concept of the persuit of knowledge driving one insane (as in the movie "PI") you would be mostly incorrect. In fact, what initially struck me so odd was the authors' use of the female pronoun. It seems an odd paraphrase of St Augustine's view since he is always portrayed as sexist.

The woman together with the man is the image of God, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned as a helpmate, which pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God: however, in what pertains to man alone, is the image of God just as fully and completely as he is joined with the woman into one (De Trinitate, 12, 7, 10)

¹Neither of these, I feel, is a good argument against any religious belief. I rebutted his direct statement with his religion/cult's view that Jesus was really the archangel Michael. They take this idea from a passage in the book of Jude (1:9) : "Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee." Not to rant to long about religion, but it doesn't seem to me that the use of the article before archangel should be taken to mean that Michael was the only archangel. There are other references in the bible to so-and-so the prophet without any implication that the prophet talked about was the only prophet, but rather used to distinguish that fella from others with a like name. Other arguments refute this view more systematically.