Showdown

I decided that I'm done with my identity crisis. Or at least that I'll be ignoring it with a vengeance for the next couple of weeks. My identity crisis is ridiculous. I can't believe I've spent so much time obsessing about it lately, and I really don't have any more time to spend obsessing over it in the next couple weeks. So it's done, by royal decree from (Qu-ing) Mackenzie. I intend to put spend my last few days at Messiah thinking of much more productive things.

Like showdowns. Between professors. I want, more than anything, to get Dr. Miller to sit in on one of Dr. Downing's chapel lectures (or vice versa), and then to see them face off. Dr. Miller has this wonderful common sensical, down-to-earth approach to the Bible. Dr. Downing has this incredibly pie-in-the-sky, how-can-I-use-this-to-support-my-point, deconstructionist, death of the author appraoch to the Bible (um... and everything else, come to think of it). Basically, her approach to the Bible is everything Dr. Miller is telling us never to do: read into it our prejudices, read it out of historical and cultural context, and take it out of its literary context, as a connected whole, with all the verses related to one another, and ignore authorial intent. I keep wondering who would win? The English department's postmodern poster child? Or the Habakkuk Inquisitor (and by that I mean he put on the pressure during our Habakkuk presentation)?

Dr. Downing is armed with a formidably large vocabulary (larger than most dictionaries I know), is loved by all and sundry, especially the honors program, and favors deconstructing everything and extracting meaning from the smallest bits possible, so that by the time she's done I have completely forgotten what the oroginal point of the material was, or her original point in deconstructing it (or else I wasn't paying very good attention, which could also be the case).

Dr. Miller, as I've said, is big on common sense and the big picture. What's happening as a whole? Tone? Authorial intent? In its context? Ok, you got that? Now go in for details. What's the eternal relevance?

They're both intelligent, they both have PhD's. They're both extremely passionate. Both, I suspect, can raise their voices very loud. Dr. Downing, I have a feeling, would perceive any attack on her theological hermeneutics as an attack against herself. Dr. Miller would perceive an attack on his theological hermeneutics (depending on what subject and which passage) as an attack on the Holy Spirit, or God, or something. Or reason. He's kinda big on reason.

Which would win? Pie-in-the-sky or common sense? I think it would be fascinating to watch.

You've probably notice, in and among my musings, my slight bias against Dr. Downing. I'm not sure why I liked her so much in my interview and am so irritated by her now. Is it her mangling of the Bible in chapel? Is it her emphasis on the situatedness and individuality of belief propagated by the postmodern view? Is it her extremely large vocabulary? (Heteroglossia? What?!) Is it simply a personality thing? Is it merely my natural perverseness (and by that I don't mean perversion) coming out, and demanding that since nearly everyone else (not you Andrew, I know.) professes to love her, I need to dislike her? Is it because this whole postmodern thing has me completely flummoxed, and, since she is the postmodern poster child, I feel threatened by her? I wonder.

And I will leave you to wonder too. Wonder, with all the might of your tiny human brains (which are probably larger than mine.... but then, I can't figure out what's wrong with me either).

*warning, strange mental image ahead*
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Red promo poster with large letters:

COME SEE THE SHOWDOWN BETWEEN
THE POSTMODERN POSTER CHILD
AND THE HABAKKUK INQUISITOR!!!
Tonight, at 7:30, in Miller Auditorium!
Tickets are $7 for students and $15 for adults!
Don't miss this historic one-time event!

*image at bottom of poster consists of Dr. Downing in her leather pants and strangely curled hair wearing a boxing robe and gloves, facing Dr. Miller with a sumo wrestler's haircut and a boxing robe*