CHRISTIANS IN THE WORLDS OF DISCOURSE + DONALD R. HETTINGA + Professor of English Calvin College If we think hard about what we do, we who are Christian teachers of writing face a dilemma, for some of the best recent work in composition theory carries with it a relativistic epistemology with which we can hardly be comfortable. The dilemma is not one we can ignore, for the theory (or parts of it) is not only influencing the topics of presentations at writing conferences, but it is also shaping the presentations of rhetoric in the mainstream textbooks that most of us use. No doubt many of us appreciate the practical wisdom that we hear in these papers or read in these textbooks about teaching a process of writing, about treating writing as a recursive activity, about using writing as a means of discovering ideas. But at the same time we need to recognize what the theorists who are putting such phrases into our academic vocabularies recognize, that "whether or not they consciously choose to do so," all writing teachers "are tacitly teaching a version of reality and the student's place and mode of operation in it" (Berlin 766). What we need to recognize, moreover, is that the version of reality assumed by some theorists is one in which, according to their own testimonies, truth is relative, in which absolutes do not exist. Absolutes, according to advocates of this so-called New 1 Rhetoric, belong to worldviews that are bankrupt.1 Because they believe in absolutes, practitioners of classical rhetoric and of traditional (based on 18th-century positivism) rhetoric assume that "knowledge is simply a static entity available for retrieval" (Berlin 774). According to the New Rhetoricians, the tendency in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to believe that truth could be ascertained either deductively or inductively "was to create unnatural distinctions--subject/object, mind/nature, inner experience/outer world, private reality/actual fact--which led to false conclusions about how the processes of mind, and therefore processes of language, work to shape awareness" (Knoblauch and Brannon 58). Such erroneous assumptions stand in the way of the recognition that "discourse enacts the world," that "its knowledge is not 'about' the world but is rather constitutive of the world, the substance of experience, an explanation of the self. Discourse represents, not an accumulating of facts or even of arguments, though it encompasses these. Essentially it represents the contexts of meaningfulness that human beings create for themselves and inhabit" (Knoblauch and Brannon 60). To the proponents of the New Rhetoric, recognition of the dependence of meaning on context forces the conclusion that "truths are operative only within a given universe of discourse," a universe shaped by all the elements of the rhetorical situation (Berlin 775). 2 The question facing us is whether acceptance of that conclusion necessitates eschewing our belief in absolute truth. In other words, can we acknowledge what is right about how the New Rhetoric describes the processes of writing without completely accepting its relativism? I think we can. I will argue that the process of discovering truth in writing as outlined by the new Rhetoricians is compatible with a biblical model of discovering truth, but I will also suggest that our acceptance of that paradigm requires us to approach the process with a kind of seriousness that probably would be foreign to the New Rhetoricians. In one sense Christians are participating in a "universe of discourse" just as Marxists or feminists or railroad hobbyists. Yet, to say that is to describe Christian discourse from a position outside that universe. From the inside, the situation looks very different. Only in a sociological sense are we participants in a discourse community within a plethora of other discourse communities. The skeptic, of course, will retort that the Marxists, the feminists, the railroad hobbyists all might make similar assertions about the importance of their universes. However, in another sense, ours is an all or nothing universe; we cannot accord equal status to the truth claims of other universes and still claim to be legitimate members of our own. Consequently, even as we note the compatibility of the New Rhetoric with a Christian Rhetoric, we need to observe 3 essential differences in beliefs, differences that need to inform our teaching of rhetoric if that teaching is to be valid in our own universe of discourse. We need, for example, to see as well that the two begin with very different assumptions. While both seek a discovery and an articulation of truth, each begins with different assumptions about the possibility of success in that very endeavor. The New Rhetorician only expects a limited formulation of truth because such is her imagination of the world. When Knoblauch and Brannon write that "discourse enacts the world" because it sets forth "the substance of experience, an explanation of the self," they are assuming that the self provides the totality of experience (60). Hence, for them, writing, while "the expression of human intelligence and imagination," is merely a means by which people "express personal significance" (60-61). The truth they seek is an existential truth. From a Christian perspective, they are beginning in unbelief. This is not to say that Christian writers are not seeking personal truth; they are, but with a significant difference with regard to what they expect can be known. Christians begin in belief, in the expectation that though "now we see but a poor reflection; then we shall see face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12).2 In the world that we come to know there is the reality, the evidence of an all-powerful, all-loving God, a reality that is discernible through personal experience, but a reality that is not 4 merely personal because it is accessible to all, or at least for all for whom the veil is removed (2 Corinthians 3:12-18). Thus, Christian writers can begin the act of writing in faith, "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1). This should lend a confidence to Christian writers that is unavailable to non-Christian writers, a confidence that the truths discovered in the act of writing will fit into the large pattern of truth which is the revealed presence of God. Of course, since we presently perceive merely a poor reflection of that absolute, our descriptions of that absolute reality must necessarily be somewhat tentative and negotiable, negotiable, that is, within the constraints established by the scripture of our community--the Bible. To say that truth is negotiable according to a set of guidelines is not the same as to say that truth is relative and completely subjective. For Christians, the state of intention is a crucial part of the rhetorical process, for the New Rhetoricians are correct: "discourse enacts the world" (Knoblauch and Brannon 60). In discourse we both shape our personal understanding of the world and try (implicitly or explicitly) to show that world to others. In discourse we formulate what may have before been formless; we represent who we are and we articulate what we believe about the nature of people and things. In discourse we perform ethical actions, that is, we present our ethos to the world. 5 In part to say this is to agree with the advocates of the action theory of language. In this view, "language is not prior to or more primary than action, but it is a product of human action and also a means whereby we perform certain kinds of action (Walhout, et al. 43; Dasenbrock 291-305). Frederick Buechner points out that "in Hebrew, the term debar means both 'word' and 'deed' and that "thus to say something is to do something" (Wishful 96). If this is true, if through language and the act of writing we have the power of creation, we also have the responsibility of that power. If through our discourse we enact our representation of reality, we need to give special care to that enactment. One significant way to exercise that responsibility is to monitor our intentions. If we are composing words to be published for the reading others, we should heed Buechner's cautionary remark that "who knows what such words do, but whatever it is, it can never be undone" (Wishful 96). At the beginning of the act of writing, then, we would do well to question our intentions, to ask ourselves why we want to write. Our answer is important, for we know that in his Sermon on the Mount, Christ teaches that a sin in mind is the same as a sin in action. If our answer "does not," in Augustine's words, "build the double love of God and of our neighbor," it is not the right answer (30). If our language enacts the world, if it forms the testimony of our lives, we should give prayerful consideration to the testimony before beginning it. We need to recognize as some 6 Christian thinkers do, "that knowledge contains its own morality, that it begins not in neutrality but in a place of passion within the human soul," and that "depending on the nature of those passions, our knowledge will follow certain courses and head toward certain ends" (Palmer 7). Whether we are writing a memo or a book, whether an essay or a poem, our intention will shape the direction of the writing. Our writing (and our discovered knowledge) will take one path if we begin with a passion for power and another if we begin with a passion for reconciliation; one path if we start with a quest for fame, another if we seek to praise. Yet having good intentions can hardly be the whole answer. Indeed, to say only that would be to ignore a central issue of the New Rhetoric: that writing is a means of discovering meaning. In such a view, intentions do not serve the same kind of role that they would in a classical or traditional rhetoric in which the writer would simply be searching for the proper form and words in which to express her intentions. On the contrary, in the New Rhetoric, "writing is eternally renovative, progressively shaping, testing, and revising its statements." Moreover, "It's intrinsically subversive as earlier coherences are sabotaged in the context of additional information and insight" (Knoblauch and Brannon 60). Donald Murray considers this kind of discovery the essence of the paradigm: "At the beginning of the composing process there is only blank paper. At the ;end of the composing process there is a 7 piece of writing which has detached itself from the writer and found its own meaning, a meaning the writer probably did not intend" (Murray 7). To acknowledge the correctness of this paradigm is not necessarily to give up a notion of absolute truth. Rather, it is to recognize a linguistic dimension to psychological reality, to understand "that language in a sense comes between the writer's self and objective reality, modifying the former as it gives shape to the latter" (Dowst 68). What this means is that, as Buechner suggests, "in some important sense the thing you are seeing or feeling doesn't even fully exist for you until you have given a word to it" (Buechner, Room 166). The significance of this for us who believe in a Word that is absolute is that until we know, until we explore and acknowledge the Word in our words, that Word doesn't exist for us. Our writing, our words, if done correctly, can create for us an ever fuller knowledge of the Word. Since, as Augustine reminds us, "the whole temporal dispensation was made by divine Providence for our salvation," when we discover new things when writing about that "temporal dispensation" we are discovering new things about the "divine Providence" that made it (30). However, while we no doubt recognize the truth of this description of the paradigm, we also know and must consider the ethical statement of this phenomenon as expressed by St. Paul: "I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; 8 no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:18-19). Since both our understanding of the nature of the writing process and of the nature of our persons suggest that in the act of writing we are apt to shift away from our intentions, however good they might have been, we need a means of evaluating and perhaps checking the direction of a draft. The desire for such evaluation does not rise from some kind of crotchety Christian suspicion of creativity or imagination; instead it serves as a logical step in the mind of the New Rhetorician as well. If while composing a draft, the writer "listens for evolving meaning," in revision, the next stage, the writer evaluates, accepts or revises her discourse (Murray 7). "Interestingly enough," note Knoblauch and Brannon, "in all writing, at a certain point the system of assertions itself begins to require the kinds of choices that are relevant for completing it." The writer must decide if some newly discovered insights, "even if pertinent to the subject, even if superior to those already conveyed, may have to be suppressed if they compromise structural integrity." On the other hand, if upon evaluation, new meanings have emerged that the writer deems legitimate, "some substantial portion of the existing text must be abandoned to allow the new insight to assert its influence over the logic of interconnection" (Knoblauch and Brannon 71). In a Christian rhetoric, this assessment of evolving meaning needs to be made not merely on the basis of 9 structural integrity, but on the basis of biblical principles. The practice of such critical revision permits discerning Christian writers to decide whether a shift from intention in the process of composing a text represents a goodly and Godly shift in intention or whether it is a sinful or potentially sinful one. For the New Rhetorician, a crucial consideration in the revision stage is the anticipated reaction of the audience. Since "truths are operative only within a given universe of discourse," audience plays a determinative role in defining the truth of a given discourse (Berlin 775). But is this necessarily so, or is it a confusion of what is true with what is meaningful? Can't we agree with Martin Nystrand, for example, "that the meaning of the text is not irrevocably fixed by the speaker's intentions," but that "rather it is reciprocally configured by the speaker's intentions and the interlocutor's interests as they relate in the context of use," without agreeing with Berlin that such meaning is ultimate truth (35)? How we answer, it seems to me, depends entirely on our assumptions--again, on what we are expecting to learn about the world when we begin to write. Consider, for example, this statement from Young, Pike and Becker that Berlin holds forth as representative of the New Rhetoric: "We have sought to develop a rhetoric that implies that we are all citizens of an extraordinarily diverse and disturbed world, that the 'truths' we live by are tentative and subject to change, that we must be 10 discoverers of new truths as well as preservers and transmitter[s] of old, and that enlightened cooperation is the preeminent ethical goal of communication" (776). Berlin cites this statement as evidence that the New Rhetoric is responsive reality, that it emphasizes the individualistic discovery of truth because the nature of the world calls for such a rhetoric. In responding to this assertion, we might be tempted to argue that such reasoning is specious and circular, that since these writers begin with the assumption that truths are tentative, they discover truths that are tentative. However, if we did so we should also have to acknowledge that from Berlin's position a Christian theory might look specious and circular. The dispute is one that cannot be solved by reason. The difference is one of worldview and of belief. What is fallacious is Berlin's suggestion that the notion of writing as discovery is necessarily exclusive to the New Rhetoric. We could, for example, emulate Pike, Young and Becker in outlining a view of the world that allows both for adherence to absolute truth as well as advocacy of a rhetoric that values audience and emphasizes writing as discovery: We are all citizens of an extraordinarily diverse and disturbed world; there is an absolute truth revealed both in the world and in the Bible, but our understanding of that truth is tentative and subject to change; that we must be discoverers of new truths as well as preservers and transmitters of the basic truth; and that the expression of that truth is the 11 preeminent ethical goal of communication. Audience is still important in this view, but its influence is on the tentative truths, on the contextually determined meanings of specific texts which represent the limited understandings of basic truth as discovered by an individual writer in the course of his composition to a particular audience. These tentative truths are the result of what Nystrand terms "a negotiation of meanings" in which participants in discourse must work to "sustain a mutual frame of reference" (42). Speakers negotiate by questioning each other; writers negotiate in part by composing for what Nystrand calls a "context of eventual use" (42). While such treatment of audience opens the possibility of cynical manipulation of language, of what, perhaps, many people mean by the phrase "mere rhetoric," it is nonetheless an important dimension of a Christian rhetoric. At the very least it calls for a sensitivity and consideration of others that should be a part of Christian action. As some New Rhetoricians have realized, this consideration encourages writers to "take an ethnographic perspective exploring and describing the various 'cultures' or communities they inhabit." In doing so they might ask such questions as these: "What makes their fraternity? What rituals, attributes, sacred texts, manners, and dispositions make theirs recognizably theirs and not another's?" (Freed and Broadhead 163). But more importantly, such an approach acknowledges what some Christian thinkers claim, that truth 12 is communal. Parker Palmer writes that "by Christian understanding, truth is neither 'out there' nor 'in here,' but both. Truth is between us, in relationship, to be found in the dialogue of knowers and knowns who are understood as independent but accountable selves" (55-56). Just as we know the basic truth through relationship with Christ, we know the tentative truths of our lives through our discourse with others who are members of his body. To make such an assertion is to do more than make yet another call for the incorporation of peer editing in our writing classrooms. Yes, Christian writers like all writers need a test audience to judge the effectiveness of their "contexts of eventual use." And, yes, the communal editing can work to keep the writing honest or consistent to the writer's intentions and the community's values. Writers get the opportunity to see if their intentions were realized in the text or if somehow in the context of this trial audience the text misrepresents their understanding of truth. But we needn't label this kind of conversation as a mere exercise. Such communal questing for truth should be part of the Christian life. Richard Foster, terming it a spiritual discipline--the discipline of guidance--reminds us that though "God does guide the individual richly and profoundly, He also guides groups of people and can instruct the individual through the group experience" (Foster 151).3 When, as Christians, we respond to a text written by another Christian, we can bring a communal sense 13 of absolute truth to bear on an individual writer's discourse. Such critiques are essential to our growth as Christians, as members of our universe of discourse. The communal response is a way we can help each other live in the world without being part of the world, a difficult task because, as Joseph Harris notes, "one is always simultaneously a part of several discourses, several communities, is always already committed to a number of conflicting beliefs and practices" (19). Thinking of rhetoric in these terms assumes Christian writers who are taking their Christian walk seriously. But, then, this essay assumes that throughout. Because in our rhetoric we both know God and respond to him, part of our rhetoric must consist of our practice of spiritual disciplines. Although such matters usually aren't raised in academic discussions, we must recognize that prayer, study of scripture, worship, meditation, and fasting need to occur in preparation and support of the quest for truth outlined here. If we truly believe that we "were once darkness," but that now we "are light in the Lord" and that we are to "live as children of light" (Ephesians 5:8-9) and if we truly believe that the source of that light is the Word (John 1:1-14), then that belief must shape our rhetoric. To be right in our intentions, our invention, our composing, our revision, our editing--to be right in our rhetoric, we must be right with God. Augustine's advice to teachers and preachers is advice that we should take seriously: 14 Whether one is just now making ready to speak before the people or before any other group or is composing something to be spoken later before the people or to be read by those who wish to do so or are able to do so, he should pray that God may place a good speech in his mouth. For if Queen Esther prayed, when she was about to address the king concerning the temporal welfare of her people, that God would place 'a well ordered speech' in her mouth, how much more ought he to pray for such a reward who labors in word and teaching for the eternal salvation of men? (168) Since in writing, we enact our lives, we need to write from our hearts as well as our minds. In doing so, we can employ the approach of the New Rhetoric while we acknowledge our belief in absolute truth. In doing so, we can teach our students to engage themselves in the significant issues of our culture while, at the same time, we would be encouraging them to engage in dialogue with other members of Christ's body. The version of reality that we then would be teaching as we were teaching writing would be one that acknowledges the Lordship of Christ while it recognizes our freedom as images of his. Notes 1Since the phrase "new rhetoric" has been used a number of times in various ways in this century, let me attempt to clarify my use of the phrase by saying that I do not refer 15 to the "new rhetoric" as defined by I.A. Richards or by James Burke but to the "new rhetoric" as defined by Berlin, Murray, and Knoblauch and Brannon. 2This and all subsequent references to the Bible are to the New International Version (NIV). 3On these points, I am indebted to Paul R. Johnson who addressed similar issues in his paper, "Reciprocity and Values in Composition," presented at the Midwest Conference on Christianity and Literature in October, 1987. Sources Cited Augustine. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. Library of Liberal Arts Series. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958. Berlin, James A. "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories." College English 44 (December 1982), 765-77. Buechner, Frederick. A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984. Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1973. Dowst, Kenneth. "The Epistemic Approach: Writing, Knowing, and Learning." Eight Approaches to Teaching Composition. Ed. Timothy R. Donovan and Ben W. McClelland. Urbana: NCTE, 1980. Pgs. 65-85. Foster. Richard J. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978. 16 Freed, Richard C. and Glenn J. Broadhead. "Discourse Communities, Sacred Texts, and Institutional Norms." College Composition and Communication, 38 (1987), 154-65. Harris, Joseph. "The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing." College Composition and Communication, 40 (1989), 11-22. Knoblauch, C.H. and Lil Brannon. Rhetorical Traditions and the Teaching of Writing. Upper Montclair, N.J.: Boynton/Cook, 1984. Murray, Donald M. "Writing as Process: How Writing Finds Its Own Meaning." Eight Approaches to Teaching Composition. Pgs. 3-20. Nystrand, Martin. The Structure of Written Communication: Studies in Reciprocity Between Writers and Readers. Orlando: Academic Press, 1986. Palmer, Parker J. To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983. Walhout, Clarence, Roger Lundin, and A.C. Thiselton. The Responsibility of Hermeneutics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985. 17