Not with Wisdom of Words

Nonrational Persuasion in the New Testament

Gary Selby

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780802873002
• eBook ISBN: 9781467445450
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Many texts in the New Testament do more than simply explain the main tenets of the Christian faith; they invite believers to imagine and experience their theological claims. In Not with Wisdom of Words Gary Selby shows how biblical authors used poetic, imaginative language to inspire their audiences to experience a heightened sense of God's presence.
 
 
 

Chapter One

Rhetoric, Poetics, and the Ecstasy of Faith

When Paul, in 1 Thess. 4:16-17, describes the parousia of Christ by enumerating the audible and visual portents that would accompany that event, the “cry of command,” the “archangel’s call” and the “sound of God’s trumpet,” he certainly intends to persuade his hearers to believe and to act in certain ways. This passage, like all of the NT’s poetic texts, clearly supports the NT’s theological claims. It does so, however, out of a dramatically different understanding of persuasion than that of merely supplying evidence for rational processes of argumentation. Instead, it uses language to embody or represent those claims in a way that provides hearers with something of a visceral, extrarational consciousness of the theological message. In short, it creates an imaginative experience that reflects the understanding of persuasion not so much of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, but of his other classic treatment of the communicative arts, the Poetics.1 Although the line between the two was never completely definitive, Aristotle clearly believed that the two arts employed markedly different modes of expression. As Baldwin put it, “Finding these to be distinct essentially, as . . . processes of conceiving, ordering and uttering, Aristotle treated them separately as two distinct technics, rhetoric and poetic.”2

This chapter explores the classical theory of poetics as it was outlined in Aristotle’s Poetics as a vantage point for viewing the NT’s poetic texts, focusing particularly on Aristotle’s explanation of how mimesis, or artistic representation, functioned to influence the poet’s audience. From there, the chapter explores what Halliwell calls the “rhetorico-­poetic” tradition, a tradition of public communication that explicitly embraced mimetic processes alongside rational arguments in its understanding of persuasion. It is in this tradition, represented especially by such writers as Gorgias and Longinus, that early Christian persuasion finds its natural “home,” because of the emphasis that such writers placed on using language to create the kind of “ecstatic” experiences that the NT understood as being foundational to religious faith. As a backdrop for considering the distinct understanding of persuasion that these writers brought to public discourse, we begin with a brief discussion of classical rhetoric’s character as a rationalistic mode of persuasion.

Rhetoric as Rational Judgment

The tradition of rhetoric, as it was codified in the treatises that comprised what Kennedy called the “philosophical tradition,” provided theoretical knowledge and practical strategies for engaging in civic persuasion in the primary avenues that were available for public speaking throughout most of Greco-­Roman history, namely the courtroom and the legislative assembly.3 Although he did envision a place for ceremonial rhetoric, Aristotle’s focus on judicial and legislative locations for the practice of rhetoric as he envisioned it is clear in his complaint that the handbooks had neglected deliberative rhetoric — to his mind, the one “nobler and more worthy of a statesman” (Rhet., 1.1) — in favor of judicial rhetoric. This also explains Aristotle’s anemic treatment of epideictic, which Kennedy attributes to the relative paucity of opportunities for public speaking outside those two primary settings.4 This focus continues throughout the Hellenistic and Roman traditions, and Cicero would endorse it by citing with approval his Greek forebears who “separated from other uses of speech that portion of oratory which is concerned with public discussions of the law-­courts and of debate, and left that branch only to the orator” (De or., 1.6.22).5

The fact that the conceptualization of rhetoric as an art grew out of the exigencies of the courtroom and the legislative assembly profoundly shaped its epistemology and what it envisioned as its telos. Aristotle declared, “The object of Rhetoric is judgment [κρίσεως] — for judgments are pronounced in deliberative rhetoric and judicial proceedings are a judgment” (Rhet., 2.1, Freese). Although he would later admit the need to arouse emotion, he nevertheless opened his treatise by claiming that in the courtroom, exercising judgment was akin to using a ruler to measure the length of an object: arousing “anger, jealousy, or compassion” in the jury would be tantamount to “warp[ing] a carpenter’s rule before using it” (Rhet., 1.1). Commenting on these passages, Black asserted that Aristotelian rhetoric was aimed at a decision, “a kind of conclusion, drawn on the merits of competing claims.”6 In a similar way, even Isocrates, traditionally categorized as a sophist, argued that rhetoric, the ability to “speak before a crowd,” was the external counterpart to inner deliberation, the ability of wise persons to “skillfully debate their problems in their own minds” (Antid., 256-57).7 Much later, the youthful Cicero would introduce his treatise De Inventione by mentioning the breadth of what might be covered in a rhetorical handbook but then focusing his readers’ attention to “the most important of all the divisions,” which was invention, the discovery of the cause or claim that would be offered for the audience’s assent. The Rhetorica ad Herennium reflects the same focus.

It offers a copious treatment of style and, as Reid pointed out, it actually includes “embellishment” — the use of “similes, examples, previous judgments, and other means which serve to expand and enrich the argument” — as an integral dimension of the “complete argument.”8 Nevertheless, it clearly subordinates these persuasive elements to the ultimate goal of helping the audience grasp the import of the facts of the case, on the assumption that doing so will enhance their ability to pass judgment on the claims being presented for their evaluation.

A number of scholars have pointed out that this understanding of rhetoric’s telos as judgment gave Greco-­Roman rhetoric its fundamentally rationalistic character, reflected in Aristotle’s assertion that “enthymemes . . . are the substance of persuasion,” and that matters such as “the rousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions” are “non-­essentials” (Rhet., 1.1); thus, the central goal of rhetorical training was to become “skilled in the enthymeme” (Rhet., 1.1). What attention he did give to delivery and style was a concession to the “defe...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Rhetoric, Poetics, and the Ecstasy of Faith
• 2. Visions of the End (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)
• 3. Performing Despair (Romans 7:14-25)
• 4. Rhapsody on Love (1 Corinthians 13)
• 5. United in Worship (Ephesians 1:3-14)
• 6. Reconfiguring the Rhetorical Encounter, Part One: Placing Hearers “in” the Content
• 7. Reconfiguring the Rhetorical Encounter, Part Two: Removing the Rhetor, Constituting the Community
• Conclusion: A Discourse for the Church
• Modern Authors Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture and Ancient Sources Index