travel traumas

My travelling woes were as follows. After fighting through blizzards and snowdrifts to get to the train station (where blizzard = snowfall and drifts = puddles of slush, but they tend to morph as time passes), and with a cold coming on, it turned out that the train was hoaching and there were no seat reservations and my luggage had to go at the opposite end of the coach I ended up finding a seat in.

Nothing unremarkable for a north-bound train at this time of year, but the woes worsened. First, the middle engine failed. Then, the front engine failed. An early indicator of trouble was the lights in the carriage suddenly cutting out, along with the air ventilation system, meaning that for a few minutes the train glided along silently in the near-complete darkness. Spooky. Things sprang back to life fairly quickly, but only temporarily. Somewhere around Perth, after most of the passengers had decanted, the heating failed altogether. By Pitlochry, the word had got out that we weren’t getting heating back, and we were having to travel at reduced speed, and it was all due to the freezing temperatures, with which the engines couldn’t cope, and we should just be glad we were moving at all.

As things got colder and colder, the human spirit really began to show through. Nothing like a crisis, for bringing out the best in people. Thus we had:

1. The Moan. Youngish, from the north of England, she took the opportunity roughly every twenty minutes to call up her hostess in Inverness to say that she ‘couldn’t take any more’ and although she had no idea where the train was, wanted the telephonee to find her a hotel at the next stop, where she would ‘get off and walk’. This was all immensely cheering.

2. The stoical Belgian. Had been on the train all day, starting with EuroStar at 6am. You either laugh or you must cry, he said. It is better to laugh.

3. The irrepressible English couple. Tremendously well-mannered, they remained resolutely cheery throughout, although they did escape early, in some obscure station several stops short of Inverness.

4. The Expert. Knew before everyone else exactly what the problem was and made free with advice to the conductor in a most helpful manner once it became clear that the conductor and driver had things in hand.

5. The Complainer. This lady was not in my carriage, but after we’d spent a fruitless hour in Aviemore attempting to be coupled to a rescue engine sent down from Inverness (to appreciate the full horror of this, at -16°C, please be aware that Aviemore should only be half an hour from Inverness under normal conditions) the entire train got transferred onto the single carriage that had come down from Inverness. There the conductor – now swathed in a proper winter coat, instead of the mere blazer in which she had previously patrolled the train, dispensing optimism and patiently answering endless enquiries (not to mention helping fix things out of doors, at the -16°C) – made an apologetic stop at the Complainer’s table to placate her with instructions for how to make an official complaint to ScotRail, a note of her own name, and yet another clearly heartfelt apology. She stopped at our table next – but only to say that she’d run out of complaint forms. I was aghast. Our table told her she’d done a great job, and we wouldn’t be complaining. It was all quite astonishing. I trust I will always fail to understand why it ever seems helpful to people to feel the need to make Official Complaints, when there is quite clearly nobody to blame and nothing to be done to reduce discomfort beyond putting up with it.

So we only reached Inverness two hours late. And my lovely hosts had hot chocolate and a hot water bottle ready and waiting. Bliss. But I never did manage to parse what was being displayed on the electronic message board in Aviemore, despite having had a whole hour in which to ponder it: SERVICE DISRUPTION WEATHER.

himself alone

John Bunyan wrote a whole book on Christ’s words in John 6, the promise that he will not cast out anyone who comes to him. He expounds this text from all sorts of angles and shows how the promise is full to overflowing with encouragement for anyone who might be troubled about their sins – they should come to Christ, and trust Christ himself alone to save them from their sins. Christ alone is able, so to Christ alone we should go.

“Christ as a Saviour will stand alone, because ‘his own arm alone has brought salvation to him’. He will not be joined with Moses, nor permit John the Baptist to be tabernacled by him; I say they must vanish, for Christ will stand alone. … Christ will not permit any law, ordinance, statute, or judgment to be partners with him in the salvation of the siner. Nay, he saith not, ‘And him that cometh to my Word’: but, ‘And him that cometh to me‘. The words of Christ, even his most blessed and free promises, such as this in the text, are not the Saviour of the world: for that is Christ himself, Christ himself only. The promises, therefore, are but to encourage coming sinners to come to Jesus Christ, and we are not to rest in them short of salvation by him.

The man therefore that comes aright, casts all things behind his back, and neither looks at nor has his expectations from anything but the Son of God alone. David says, ‘My soul, wait thou only upon God: for my expectation is from him: he only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence: I shall not be moved.’ His eye is to Christ, his heart is to Christ, and his expectation is from him, from him only.

Therefore the man that comes to Christ is one that has had deep considerations of his own sins, slighting thoughts of his own righteousness, and high thoughts of the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ: yea, he sees, as I have said, more virtue in the blood of Christ to save him, than there is in all his sins to damn him. He therefore sets Christ before his eyes; there is nothing in heaven or in earth he knows that can save his soul, and secure him from the wrath of God, but Christ; that is, nothing but his personal righteousness and blood.”

plodding up and down the vocal track

This is the first time for several years that I don’t have any December marking to do.

In celebration, here are some snippets of brilliance from previous years’ efforts.

Give two examples of words which have regular plural forms in English.

• floor and happy
• cat’s and dog’s
• walk > walk’s and sing > sing’s

Give two examples of words which have irregular plural forms in English.

• what and when
• beautifully and happily
• sheep, sheep; ox, oxens
• you and child

And from a short-essay answer:

• The weakening of function words is affluent in this dataset.

These students are our future!

a few hours to go

The latest victim of the ’secular mindset’?

There’s still time to sign a petition calling for “Justice for Duke”, before his appeal hearing tomorrow afternoon (15th December).

He was dismissed from his job with Wandsworth Council after a meeting with a client in which he suggested that she could put her faith in God.

The details are on this website along with a petition you can sign (click here). There were 4000 signatures within a week, and what the campaign organisers call a great swell of support from the media and members of the public. There should be enough time left to register your own support.

still free to criticise

The freedom of speech scene in this country isn’t the prettiest at the moment, even though all is not yet lost.

Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, as you’ll no doubt have heard, were cleared this week of ‘religiously aggravated threatening behaviour’ (which seems to be the shortest summary available of the charges which were brought against them under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 and Section 31(1)(c) and (5) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998).

Ericka Tazi, a convert to Islam, had been staying in their hotel, and had got involved in a discussion with them which seems to have centred on three controversial points – whether Jesus was the Son of God or just a minor prophet, whether Muhammed was a warlord, and whether the hijab is oppressive to women.

The strongest possible criticism of the Vogelenzangs which it seems reasonable to make is that their contributions were indicative of ‘a rather Fawlty-ish attitude to their guests‘. But being committed Christians, they could hardly be expected (i) not to be capable of giving an apologia for their belief that Jesus is the Son of God and (ii) keen to give it and (iii) underwhelmed by claims about what a peaceful and liberating-to-women religion Islam is.

The most serious question about their case, though, is not specifically whether Christianity is a better religion than Islam, but the extent to which people in this country remain free to say things which other people might find offensive. The Vogelenzangs were, thankfully, cleared – but in what unhealthy climate was it ever thought appropriate to arrest and charge them in the first place? and can the judge’s decision in this case really be taken as a guarantee that similar cases won’t arise in the future?

The judge has been widely quoted as saying that religion and politics was a tinderbox in this case – but it would be completely missing the point to see the case as nothing more than a foolish spat between committed adherents to two religions, neither of which is comprehensible to a secular mindset. It just happened to be Christians who were prosecuted in this case – but the views they are reported to have put to Mrs Tazi about Muhammed and the hijab are held widely. It could equally well have been an atheist, an agnostic, a Jew, a Hindu, or anyone else, who had found themselves in court, accused of religiously aggravated threatening behaviour.

The core problem is the growing readiness to treat someone’s subjective feeling of being offended as enough to constitute a conversation a matter for the police. The implications for free speech are not restricted to what Christians can say to Muslims, but what anyone can say to anyone else. What they can say, you’ll note, in conversation, as opposed to committing acts of violence against their persons or property.

It is offensive to Christians to say that Jesus was only a prophet, to say that we believe in three gods, to say that we worship the Virgn Mary, and whatever else Christians typically have to deal with in dialogues with Muslims. But how absurd it would be, for a Christian to take a Muslim to court for the offence caused by having to hear such things thrown in their teeth. Offensive they may be, but the actual issue is not how offended the Christian might be, but how defensible, or otherwise, their views are.*

So Christians find offensive what Muslims say, and Muslims get offended when anyone says Muhammed was a warlord. And it is offensive to atheists to call them fools, and offensive to everyone else when atheists call them ignorant and sick in the head. Then again, it is offensive to sociolinguists when Chomsky says caring about data is only as important as butterfly collecting, and who can truly estimate how offensive it is to a generativist to go all declarative on them.

But as the judge in the Vogelenzang case said, “Freedom to speak inoffensively is freedom not worth having.”

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* Strictly speaking, if Christians were more spiritually sensitive to the outrages perpetrated against the honour of the Lord every time such profanities were uttered, we would be a lot more offended and hurt than we currently tend to be. But a heightened spiritual sensitivity would only increase our sense of the absurdity of going to court about the offence caused to us, rather than taking practical, apologetic, action to enlighten and persuade. See also the first few paragraphs in this post from the olden days, when the blog was young and Muslims were offended for another reason.

season’s greetings

That was not, incidentally, the blog’s Christmas message, that last post.

That is because Scottish Presbyterians (my breed of) don’t do Christmas.

No, we have no truck with it, none whatsoever, and no compromise, no, not so much as a mince pie.*

So you can take your consumerism and bacchanalia and non-Regulative-Principle-compliant religiosity elsewhere; for festival days, vulgarly called holy-days, having no warrant in the Word of God, are not to be continued.

Not by way of turkey or goose, of nativity play or advent calendar, of tinselled tree or Santa Claus, of present, pudding, or office party, for you cannot serve God and Mammon, and you ought not to innovate in worship even in ways received by tradition from others, whether under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever.**

Said post would have been better published back in November, when the thought of it first wafted into my head – but it does conveniently reinforce the point that this anti-Christmas feeling is in no way the offspring of any disrespect for the fact and the doctrine of the incarnation.

Just as the anti-Easter thing is perfectly consistent with thorough-going commitment to the fact and the doctrine of the resurrection.

Revelation 22:12.

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* Although if you were to call it seasonal baking, and really, really insist, one might be tempted.
** I may just have to re-title myself as The Westminster Larger Catechism abridged and paraphrased.

the captain of their salvation

What is God? At Westminster, they said: God is a Spirit, in and of himself infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection; all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible…

This is true of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, since these three persons are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

It is beyond our understanding, why it pleased him to create anything, seeing he does not need any thing; but he did. Then there was rebellion among his creatures. Angels fell, and man fell. It is utterly beyond us to understand why he chose to continue taking any interest in this sinful fallen human race. It was out of his mere good pleasure, but we can’t say much more than that. In his mere good pleasure he made arrangements so that his own glory would be consistent with our good.

He made all the arrangements – he would bring some sinners out of their state of sin and misery, and bring them into a state of salvation, and he would do so by a Redeemer. The only redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continues to be, both God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, for ever. The Son was, and continues to be, and never ceased to be, infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection. Within the Godhead he had ample scope for loving and being loved by the other persons of the Godhead, who are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. Yet when the Father appointed him to the work of redeeming his people, he was pleased to do it.

It was undoubtedly a glorious work, all majesty and power and wisdom and love, but in order to carry it out, he needed to become of no reputation, and take on himself the form of a servant, and be made in the likeness of men, and humble himself, and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, this one who was by the Father from everlasting, as one brought up with him, daily his delight, and rejoicing always before him.

It was necessary that the Mediator should be God; it was necessary that the Mediator should be man; it was necessary that the Mediator should be God and man in one person. These are all necessary, if sinners were ever to be saved, but there was no obligation on the Son to be the Mediator, even though only he could be that mediator: no compulsion whatsoever. He would still be God over all, blessed for ever, if we had never been, or if we had been miserable. Yet as he was daily the Father’s delight, his delights were with the sons of men, and his delight was in mercy.

Strictly speaking, it is not the incarnation so much as the atonement which should above all absorb us in wonder and worship. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and that by the sacrifice of himself. The Son of man was lifted up, so that whosever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life; there is life for a look at the crucified one. Still it is legitimate, not to say necessary, to look in awe on this infinite stooping down, that the eternal Son of God became man, and to pause half way through Paul’s faithful saying – that Christ Jesus came. “His being clothed with our nature derogates nothing from the true reason of divine worship due unto him,” said John Owen, “but adds an effectual motive unto it.”

why should they be secret?

From Barnabas:

Islam is a one-way street. You can convert to Islam but you are not allowed to convert from Islam. All schools of Islamic law, shari‘a, agree on this rule and specify the death sentence for an adult male Muslim who chooses to leave his Islamic faith. Most also impose the death penalty on women apostates. The rule was established many centuries ago by Islamic scholars, but even today most Islamic religious leaders and many ordinary Muslim people agree with it.

The death penalty is rarely put into practice, but the existence of this “apostasy law” is so well known amongst Muslims that it generates strong hostility towards apostates, whether from family or community, from religious or secular leaders, from police or judiciary. So it is normal for converts from Islam to face persecution and violence. They may be arrested, either for apostasy or on a pretext. They may be attacked, beaten or even murdered by their own relatives. And those who commit the violence will probably not be punished for it.

A further range of penalties for apostasy is laid down in shari‘a, including losing one’s spouse and children and forfeiting one’s property and inheritance. These are imposed in many Muslim contexts today.

It is not surprising that many converts from Islam to Christianity keep their new faith secret, but why should they have to do so? Islam actively encourages non-Muslims to convert to Islam, but it is the only world faith with a death sentence for those who leave it.

As part of the campaign to have the apostasy law abolished, Barnabas has a petition you can sign, calling on the government to ’support all efforts by Muslims to have the apostasy law abolished, so that Muslims who choose to leave their faith are no longer liable to any penalty but are free to follow their new convictions without fear, in accordance with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’

four years

Four years ago yesterday, I wrote my first ever blogpost!

(That was over at blogspot.com – we’ll have to wait till next month for the three-year anniversary of the move to wordpress.)

When I started, I hardly told anyone about it, thinking I would feebly run out of things to say within a few posts. Ah, the folly. (Then when that never happened, somehow the time never seemed right to make a big announcement. Come and read my new old blog!)*

What’s more surprising is that more and more people keep reading. That such ruminations and pontifications linguistical and calvinistical should hold more than a passing interest is surely a matter of wonder all round – although I must say it’s lovely talking to y’all and long may the conversations continue!

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* It goes without saying though, that everyone who knows me in real life should consider themselves warmly invited! Even if we’ve never discussed it in person, don’t be afraid to visit and browse freely.

the humanness of language

Vern Poythress has a new book out – In the Beginning was the Word: Language – a God-Centred Approach (thanks to Jeremy Walker for flagging it up).

It’s available for sale here, accompanied by a publisher’s description which induced some raised eyebrows, I admit, from a linguistic point of view (what can be meant by the specification of the meaning of every word in every language? in what way does language reflect and reveal the glory of the Creator, other than in the trivially true way in which everything in the Creator’s creation does? doesn’t the publisher care about gender-specific pronouns, or is it only Christian men who are supposed to read this book? isn’t the publisher aware of the difference between language and speech? am I, possibly, being too harsh?).

Let’s just overlook all of this and put it down to a non-technical presentation of what must be, at least if you read the endorsements, an insightful, profound, compelling, significant piece of work.

Instead, I’m more interested in what you can see inside the sample pages.

Specifically, this paragraph from p18:

The New Testament indicates that the persons of the Trinity speak to one another. This speaking on the part of God is significant for our thinking about language. Not only is God a member of a language community that includes human beings, but the persons of the Trinity function as members of a language community among themselves. Language does not have as its sole purpose human-human communication, or even divine-human communication, but also divine-divine communication. Approaches that conceive of language only with reference to human beings are accordingly reductionistic.

Now, I find almost everything in here questionable (apart from the first two sentences, I suppose). One – terminology – I’m more familiar with the term ’speech community’ than ‘language community’ (although I don’t suppose much hangs on the difference; correct me if I’m wrong). I find it odd to say that God is a member of a language community that includes human beings. Surely, it is odd to think of God as being a member of any kind of community that includes human beings: he is infinite, humans are finite; he is eternal, humans are created; he is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being and his attributes; humans are not. If he so much as notices humans, it is infinite condescension on his part – and yet he does more – and even so, he is not part of our communities. Great fear, in meeting of the saints, is due unto the Lord, even and especially when he reveals himself most condescendingly. Certainly he speaks, and we must listen. And through the Mediator we have access to the Father to speak to him in prayer, which in his grace he hears. But this does not a speech community make.

Two – I fail to see how it is reductionistic to conceive of language as merely serving human-human communication. Partly, there’s no ‘merely’ or ‘only’ about it – language is a beautiful, rich, elegant, effective, complex, amazing tool, which only humans out of all creatures have, for communicating with each other. It doesn’t belittle language to say that only humans have it. But partly too – only humans have it! Humans use language for all sorts of meaningful reasons – to convey or take in indexical, social, affective, and propositional kinds of information, and so on. Animals have no way of using such a tool. But also, to speak reverently, the Trinity has no need of such a tool. The Scriptures present the persons of the trinity as taking counsel together and speaking one to another (this is one of the reasons, after all, how we know there are distinct persons in the Godhead). But the three persons of the trinity have always existed in a fellowship of love and harmony with each other. The Spirit searches the deep things of God. The Son knows the will of the Father. As the Father is omniscient so is the Son and so is the Holy Spirit. The purposes of the Father are the purposes of the Son and the purposes of the Spirit. Everything is always present before God. Thus, on the propositional front, he doesn’t need to be told anything for information. Indexical? Each person knows the other persons thoroughly; there is no question about the identity of any person or the relationships each person stands in to the other persons. Affective – he has no parts nor passions: it doesn’t even apply. Or think of the stuff of language – syntax, morphology, phonology – with imagination straining at the limits of what is reverent, without the physical production of some word, spoken through a vocal tract (or gestured by hand in signed languages), there can be no phonology, and without a word, no morphology, and without concatenations of words, no syntax. How sad, to have a concept of the communion between the persons of the Trinity that doesn’t even rise above the possibility that language such as humans have is the only conceivable manner or method of it.

Pages 18-19 do (I should point out) contain discussion of two passages of scripture which are used in support of the position that part of the purpose of language is for communication within the Trinity. One is John 16:13-15, where the Spirit is said to hear (from the Father) of the things of Christ. The other is John 17, the intercessory prayer: “John 17 presents not merely human communication but also divine communication between the divine persons of the Father and the Son. That communication takes place through language. And so language is something used among the persons of the Trinity.” But caution is needed. It cannot be a literal hearing, just as it cannot be a literal speaking – speaking and hearing involve physical, motor and sensory, processes. Further, things are true of the incarnate Son which are not true of the other persons of the Trinity. It is not in question that Christ speaks in John 17 as a divine person, but he speaks as a divine person with a human nature. There is no doubt that the Father heard him (as he “hears” prayer) as he spoke with human language, but the fact that the communication between Christ in his time on the earth and the Father naturally included human language does not automatically license the conclusion that the pre-incarnate Son and the Father and the Spirit communicated with each other using language that is somehow the same means of communication as human beings use among themselves.*

So: I think the case is overstated. There is no doubt that there is communication between the persons of the Trinity. There is no doubt that God speaks to humans using language. There is no doubt that language, which humans use to communicate with each other, is a gift from God (although of course affected by the Fall). But a more compelling case needs to be made – from scripture – that the communication between the persons of the Trinity is by way of language. Language is a special gift for humans – it is suited to human capacities and human needs. By conflating ‘language’ with ‘communication’, you fail to take the opportunity to explore exactly how unique and special language is, you bring divine communication within the trinity down to the level of the finite and frail efforts at interaction which creaturely and fallen humans make, and you make linguists grouchy.

All of which, it turns out, I said before, better, here.
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Note too the argumentation in the following pages from the possibility of translating ruach as ‘breath’; and the notion of breath “carrying speech to its destination”; this concept does not strike me as particularly salient in how phoneticians would understand articulation, nor in how semanticists would conceive of the creation or accessing of meaning, although on both fronts I remain open to correction. Phoneticians and semanticists, needless to say, are prone to mistake – but if there is a mistake here, or elsewhere, in how linguists understand language, this needs to be demonstrated through serious engagement with the principles and concepts that are current. Even in something aimed at a lay audience, there could still be a nod to the concerns of anyone with more specialised knowledge.