The Rhetorical Word

Protestant Theology and the Rhetoric of Authority

Theo Hobson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351735193
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title was first published in 2003: This book offers a bold reading of Protestant tradition from a rhetorical and literary perspective. Arguing that Protestant thought is based in a rhetorical performance of authority, Hobson draws on a wide range of modern and postmodern thought to defend this account of rhetorical authority from various charges of authoritarianism. With close readings of Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard and Barth, this book develops a new 'rhetorical theology of the Word' and also a new critique of secular modernity, with particular reference to modern literature and the thought of Nietzsche. Confronting the related issues of rhetoric and authority, Hobson provides a provocative account of modern theology which offers new perspectives on theology's relationship to literature and postmodern thought.

Part One: Rhetorical Origins

Chapter 1
The Rhetorical Gospel (I): Biblical and Anthropological Roots

'Only desire speaks. Satisfaction is silence.'¹

At the basis of the biblical conception of God is his character as authoritative speaker. Thus does he create; by commanding, declaring, summoning. Thus does he relate to the first humans; by injunction and veto, and then by announcing a new deal which takes their transgression into account. Thus does he dispense merciful justice to the first murderer. (Administering justice and law-giving are of course central and recurring functions of his authoritative speech.) Other examples abound: thus does he frustrate the arrogance of Babel-with a literal 'put-down'. Whenever he intervenes in the human realm, it is always with telling words. His words are never 'only' words, but are charged with 'performative' force.² He decrees and forbids, promises and warns, curses and blesses.

And so begins the story of his dealings in human history. He calls Noah, then Abraham and the rest. '[T]his direct and unexplained confrontation-a verbal assault on a given person by God-is not the sort of thing one meets with in Greek or other nonbiblical traditions'.³ He commands them and they stammeringly assent. He makes promises about the future; he excites Abraham with the prospect of his descendants outnumbering the shining stars, and so talks him into signing a covenant. (It is signed not in ink, of course, but in blood: with the sign of circumcision. Throughout Hebrew religion God is revealed through the human signing of commitment to him.)

He is not just a God of words. He shows Moses his strength as a God of political liberation (and of military violence). But first he speaks to him, calling him by name, explaining his plan of deliverance. He wills to be known to Israel through words; remembered in stories and songs about his mighty deeds. In Deuteronomy he explicitly prescribes such speech-forms, whereby future generations are to be engrafted into the narrative. Also of course, Hebrew law is presented as his (written) utterance. (This is in common with the tendency of early law-codes to retain the direct authority of the ruler's voice.)

The narrative of the Hebrew Bible is the narrative of Jahweh's voice, and of his word's problematic reception. Alongside the stories of his speaking, the Jews develop a rhetoric of prayerful response, which praises his deeds and appeals for their repetition, often in tones of near desperation. These verbal means of relating to God – narrative and poetic – are gradually exalted over older religious habits, though they of course develop in the context of religious ritual. The authoritative voice becomes God's primary medium, and the explicit authoriser of ritual practice-most obviously in the presentation of the law, but also in the 'private rituals' of certain prophets, and in the prophetic criticism of empty worship. And it is the voice of God which underlies the emergence of textual authority: despite the role of writing in securing religious orthodoxy, these religious texts remain dominated by the power of the speaking voice.⁴

The notion of idolatry, so crucial to the differentness of the Jews, relies upon this vocal conception of God. It is only because God is essentially a voice of authority that he can, and logically must, veto the worship of other gods and even images of himself. A strong association between divinity and vocal authority works against the seemingly natural tendencies of polytheism and syncretism. Theism only becomes wedded to ideas of absoluteness, authority and exclusivity (i.e., henotheism becomes monotheism) when God is known as voice. (This dynamic is very consciously revived in the Reformation: the Roman church is charged with idolatry, with being a new 'Babylonian captivity' from which only God's pure Word can deliver.)

Why is this? Why does a God of exclusive authority have to be a speaking God, known for the commanding power of his voice? The reason seems to lie in the vocal basis of political authority. An authoritarian regime constructs and projects a single voice, generally identified with the sovereign ruler. Mere force of arms is insufficient to sustain power; its rule must become internal to its subjects' minds-it must exist in the aural guts of the people. The word 'dictator' points to a link between strength of speech and strength of rule. It may then be objected that, in its exaltation of the authoritative voice, this religion occupies the natural territory of political authoritarianism; it resembles an ideal, transcendent form of 'dictatorship'. But this need not be an objection. Though it resembles authoritarian politics, or rather precisely because it does, this voice may be used against all worldly claims to authority. (Admittedly, as we shall also discuss further on, it may also be used for the opposite, i.e. to hypostasize worldly rule.)

The Semitic exaltation of vocal authority should also be understood in terms of religious and linguistic anthropology. For it is a common trait of primitive religion to associate strong speech with both natural and supernatural power. In oral-aural cultures, words are intimately related to the exercise of power, as Walter Ong, among others, has shown. Before writing, words exist exclusively in the realm of sound. Unlike vision, sound always relates to an event occurring now, to something happening. Early man experiences words as 'powerful, effective, of a piece with other actuality far more than later visualist man is likely to do'.⁵ This helps to explain the dual reference of the Hebrew word dabar to both word and deed. And whereas vision is selective and optional (one can look somewhere in particular or nowhere at all), 'I not only can but must hear all the sounds around me at once. Sound thus situates me in the midst of a world'.⁶ Hearing is thus related to our reception of another's presence: When we speak of a presence in its fullest sense...we speak of something that surrounds us, in which we are situated...'.⁷ As we shall soon see, vocal power is also associated with demonic and spiritual possession.

From this association between words and dynamic power arises the magical belief in the intrinsic power of certain words and speech-forms. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the phenomenon of cursing (and of oaths, which are conditional curses directed against oneself: 'If I am lying, may the gods punish me...'). Here words become the quasi-physical bearers of hostility; a certain formalised speech-form is deemed magically efficacious, like a spell. Indeed a spell is itself essentially linguistic. The claim to control one's environment through magic generally entails a claim about the efficacy of language. Ritualised language is deemed to have authority over the material and spiritual world. Healings and exorcisms performed by shaman and witchdoctor figures offer further examples of this. Here, as in Christian tradition, demons are expelled by a ritual form of speech which bids them depart. 'Exorcism' literally means 'out-oath-ing'; i.e., the special exercise of verbal force. Intruding spirits are often taunted and abused, and the demons' voices may be represented by the shaman in a sort of ventriloquism.⁸ At the centre of such rituals is a linguistic performance of authority over the spirit-world. (A form of this abides in psychoanalysis: in Freud's 'talking-cure' the neurosis-causing childhood memory must be verbally acknowledged, or named, for its dark power to be vanquished.) Another, related, area of linguistic magic relates to names. It is a common primitive belief that a person's name is a source of their vulnerability to hostile magic. This applies to spirits as well: the act of naming is often central to the spiritual combat of exorcism. And repeatedly in the Bible the divine name is the locus of divine power.

All such belief is rooted in the ability of speech to communicate authority and, even more basically, to perform hostility. Classical epic narrative is a useful resource here: it celebrates verbal as well as physical force; the power of rhetoric as well as of arms. The Iliad very largely consists of speeches-one of its central concerns is the power of rhetoric to move, to change minds, to affect reality at least as much as physical force. Even gods are open to the 'winged words' of humans. And it is here that humans most closely resemble gods-in their ability to instil pathos through rhetoric, to inspire or 'possess' other souls with their words.⁹ The ability of words to instil courage and so affect military action is the classic 'proof of the power of rhetoric, in which human and divine capability merge. (One of the most famous speeches in English literature – the one that Shakespeare writes for Henry V before Agincourt – fulfills the same function.) Such is a basic ingredient of heroism (which also entails the ability to resist rhetoric: thus Achilles' refusal to be persuaded to join the fray).

Speech and force are related in other ways in Homer. Every duel between rival heroes is preceded by vaunting and taunting, boasts and threats; a form of verbal sparring known as 'fliting'. Though on one level these speeches are unrealistic embellishments to the action, they may hint at the very origins of rhetoric. Like rival stags or bulls, the heroes first attempt to avoid fighting by scaring the other off.¹⁰ The verbal violence of boasting and taunting is ambiguous: it can either prevent actual bloodshed or provoke it, constitute a sort of foreplay to fighting. Something similar is still part of the ritual of boxing: every big fight is preceded by televised boasts and threats in which the opposition is strongly advised to back down. (Interestingly, the bragging of the greatest boxer of modern times, Mohammad Ali, has entered the rhetorical lexicon; for instance his poetic threat to 'float like a butterfly and sting like a bee', and his simple assertion, 'I am the greatest'. He remains lauded for his rhetorically expressed attitude as well as his actual success-perhaps an echo of the Homeric ideal of heroism.) Ong argues that this polemical duelling, or 'fliting', has a profound influence on all arenas of ancient discourse, most notably classical rhetoric, and even philosophical dialectics (despite its claim to transcend such origins). Even well after the advent of writing, public discourse remains related to the assertion of claims to authority: 'the history of the word, at least in the West, is intimately tied up with the history of certain kinds of polemic'.¹¹ Oral cultures are steeped in agonistic performance; writing, on the other hand, 'fosters abstractions that disengage knowledge from the arena where human beings struggle with one another... . By keeping knowledge embedded in the human lifeworld, orality situates knowledge within a context of struggle'.¹²

The formalisation of strong speech is thus at the heart of the magicoreligious. Spells, curses and prayers are forms of verbal power. Such belief is not entirely alien to us. In a sense primitive cultures are only more explicit than us in endowing words with such power. The power of words and the verbal creation of sense is something we cannot fully make sense of either. The nursery rhyme insistence that, unlike sticks and stones, words cannot hurt us is mere wishful thinking (indeed it is an incantation against their power; and thus a contradictory attempt to use verbal power against verbal power). Words can and do hurt and we have many expressions which know it: they can be scathing, cutting, crushing, venomous, vitriolic etc. Words, for us as well, can 'contain' authority: your word is my command; his word is his bond. Speech can be called 'mere words' or 'empty' because it is not expected to be.

These primitive dynamics surrounding language are crucial and will recur throughout my study. Religion never outgrows its primitive linguistic roots. It endows certain forms of speech with a power and significance that ultimately defies sober analysis. (Sober analysis is always weaker than religious speech: this is theology's methodological problem.) Religion stubbornly does things with words that should not be possible; things which scandalise the wider verbal community. In relation to language, religion never stops believing in magic. And secular thought remains marked by this belief: as proponents of 'deconstruction' have insisted (or complained), a magical and religious aura still surrounds the spokenness of langauge. More abstract and conceptual models of truth have less popular currency than the model based in utterance. Truth, like lies, is something spoken. The tradition...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Dedication
• Introduction
• PART ONE: RHETORICAL ORIGINS
• PART TWO: PROTESTANTISM
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index