“Reason Is Language, Logos.”–Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788). From the series Great Ideas.
1966 Herbert Bayer Born: Haag, Austria 1900 Died: Montecito, California 1985 acrylic on prepared fiberboard 30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Container Corporation of America 1984.124.16 (Not currently on view)
“The Limits of my language means the Limits of my World.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922
1966-1979 Herbert Bayer Born: Haag, Austria 1900 Died: Montecito, California 1985 acrylic on fiberboard 29 7/8 x 29 7/8 in. (75.9 x 75.9 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Container Corporation of America 1984.124.17 (Not currently on view)http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=1534
The Chief Question of the Evangelical Catechism
by Johann Georg Hamann[1]
Matthew 22:42, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?”
What do you think of Christ?
I. General Considerations for the Clarification of Doctrine Contained in this Significant Test Question:
1. Man is a thinking creature.
2. The Fall has killed him, his brain[2], his spiritual brain.
3. All thoughts about Christ or of God are hidden from us, (contrary) repugnant to us.
4. In order to think correctly about the Christ, a supernatural change of senses[3], as well as blessed illumination is indispensable.
5. The thoughts[4] of man are under God’s jurisdiction.
6. We human beings[5] must be prepared to be questioned by God, and to be investigated through thoughts, as well as actions – principally we must examine and verify our thoughts about Christ because according to these thoughts God will judge us.
II. The Content of this Question: What do you think about the Christ?
1. Objective — regarding the topic, Christ.
a. What do you think of His glory?
b. What do you think of His origins? Whose Son is He?
c. What do you think of His person?
d. What do you think of His anointing?
(1) Of Him who anointed Him, the Father
(2) Of His office for which He was anointed
(3) Of the Spirit by which He was anointed
(4) Of the measure of His anointing
(5) Of its thickly rich spices[6] and sweet aroma
(6) Of the beauty and delightfulness
(7) Of the worth and exquisiteness
(8) Of the virtue and the power of your anointed Redeemer to soften and move your heart and heal your wounds[7]
2. Actualizer of reality, of existence – Regarding the act of thinking
a. What do you know
b. What do you believe
c. What do you love
d. What value do you reckon[8] the Christ. What value do you reckon your reason, your will, your inclinations, your memory?[9]
3. Formality – Regarding the state of your thinking. What? What do you think of the Christ for a possession, for splendor, for use[10], for a value or price should you buy or sell Him?[11]
4. Subjective – – You – Jews – Pharisees – Sadducees – Disciples
III. Reasons why this is a chief question and premise of the Evangelical catechism
1. Without just thoughts about the Christ it is impossible to really think about God.
2. Without just thoughts about the Christ, religion[12] cannot take place, consequently no blessedness.
3. This question is the guiding principle of self-examination [13].
4. This question comprehends in itself all remaining questions about religion and is the key to unlocking the entire law because Christ is the end of the law.
5. This question stops the mouth from speaking all insolence and asking after useless curiosity.
6. This question is the standard and banner of all our thoughts.
7. This question casts aside all prejudices and errors, both in considering Jesus Himself and in all other things.
8. At the same time, this question explains Christ’s thinking toward us. How we think about Him, so He thinks about us; and we become to His way of thinking about us because His thoughts are creations, mysteries and wonder working.
9. This question is the richest source of thought and all sentiment[14].
IV. Application
1. For instruction.
a. The sum total of Chapter Eleven. Insight[15] is the name of Christ.
b. The best subject matter for contemplation and the best rule for self examination.
c. Christ is the best judge of the human condition because He alone knows our heart and thoughts and will be the future judge of these things.
d. The end purpose of Evangelical ministry is to teach Christ.
2. For the conviction of all ignorant, erroneous, unpleasant and offensive ideas. The basis for these ideas is ignorance, disbelief, pride, reason of the flesh, discord, the external façade of the church and the heart’s interior.
3. For examination and testing. –
a. The state of our ideas. Right ideas about Christ are effusive[16], rapturous[17], spiritual, practical, genuine, proliferate, humble without fear, and the sanctified and revived of our whole nature.
b. The object of our ideas, the subject matter of our thoughts. The exalted middle class, travels and labors, immeasurable treasures, ideas, words, works, the Gospel and the conditions thereof, service and wage, garb, love and the motive for it.
4. For admonition and instruction[18]. Prove, show, put on, display your deep respect and high esteem.
a. through the degrees, levels, ranks or grades of the same
b. through the effects — desire this deference to accompany all activities, avoiding all rivalry, letting your joy, sadness, and celebration sympathize with recollections of Him. Seek to propagate your ideas of Christ in others through godly conversations and by means of pious change. Amen.
Notes (An Annotated Exhortation):
[1] Johann Georg Hamann, “Die Hauptfrage des Evangelischen Catechismus,” “Aus der Mappe des Philologen, um 1760,” IV Band, Sämtliche Werke, Kleine Schriften, 1750-1788, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe ed. by Josef Nadler (Wien: Thomas-Morus-Presse im Verlag Herder, 1949), pp. 249-250. A render’s offending translation by mcduffee, alone responsible for excesses, losses and errors mine as winnings from playing manifest lotteries of misunderstanding. The prizes have never been clearly identified nor entirely inventoried but, I believe them to be composed from various amounts of sense data and wild ideas accrued and stored as trained ignorance trafficked through a checkered education administered by a system of language I heard spoken without realizing I learned to speak by listening, grounded in the organon sin while subject to multiple movements of the stars, tides, calendars and traditions, all of which, nevertheless, churn in one, I trust, who has been healed by precious blood shed unto the reckoned condition of alien righteousness imputed justly by its Owner, and thus is the One whom I follow along at the heels of like a parabiotic dog does his apologue Master (and yes, made more the man for doing so than those who speak all manner of harsh things against Him). If I use words without being convicted in spite of my standing before God, or fail to break into a doxology because He allows me to stand before Him, then what happens to me for speaking at all?
[2] das Gehirn. “Originally, that soft, white substance in the cavity of the skull, which is comprised of two masses, the larger of the two in a strict sense the brain [cerebrum], the smaller referred to as the cerebellum [das Gehirnlein oder Hirnlein]…many hold that the brain is the seat and the center of operation [die Werkstätte] for the soul. Translation of entry found in Johann Cristoph Adelung, Dietrich Wilhelm Soltau, and Franz Xaver Schönberger, Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart (Wien: Bauer Verlag, 1811), Digitale Bibliothek, Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum, Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, read from http://lexika.digitale-sammlungen.de/adelung/lemma/bsb00009132_2_0_862
[3] eine übernatürl. Sinnesänderung: The senses primarily, but in the wake of their transformation a change of tastes, tendencies and understanding of the meaning of everything. As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy will later say in his visionary works, Out of Revolution and Fruit of Lips, a change of style demonstrably proves a change in life, which can end and begin divinely endowed revolutionary change in history.
[4] der Gedanken, the ideas. Our word idea comes from the Latin tapped into Greek, it means the form or appearance of a thing as opposed to its reality (Latin, videre, to see). An idea is whatever exists in my universe of conscious reflection upon earlier listening, what I might think, know or imagine as concept, image or notion pieced together or taken apart.
[5] Not an abstract classification or species of life, but men, women, children, families, communities and generations living in history.
[6] Exodus 25:6; 30:23fl.; 1 Kngs 10:2; Matt 2:1-12; Jn 19:40: der Specerey. http://de.academic.ru/dic.nsf/grammatisch/44303/Specerey
[7] The pedagogic strategy played out as style, the examining of something the reader is led to realize is unexpectedly essential only after having read about it, i.e., response predestined — a reply required that generates uncertainty and intrigue. Should I continue to read or not? Is Hamann mad? Is he putting me on? Should I dismiss him, or realize with the train of readings he releases he also points out an illuminated pathway for me to follow. Back to II. 1. a. subsumed under I. 6! [8] schätzen, to guess, like at the carnival, when for a dollar you try to guess the weight of a single Mom scantily clad to be undressed a MILF, for money to feed her habit, and maybe her child, if there’s any left over and she remembers. Guess within the pound and you’ll win a stuffed teddy bear made by slave laborers overseas somewhere putting in twelve-hour days for the hope of getting free, their exploitation rippling out rings of profit, ending at the shoreline of our lust, with that kiss we want when giving the little cuddly nothing to our sweetheart. Come on, take a guess, how high should we hold this in esteem, tell me, just what is the worth of Christ’s glory? Where am I to do the math, who in me reckons the bottom line, who am I standing before the Lord, do I muster as one among the last ones, the hollow ones or as one of their modern-day docetic children? Paint me, dress me, squeeze me, I want to feel alive. However we see ourselves, believing, now back we go and finish reading II. 2. d.
[9] Did I hear the trap snap? My wit, my common sense, my intellect; my understanding writhes beneath the steel bar of God’s word that holds me tight, caught before the Lord. An unjust scale is an abomination to the Lord, now what do I really esteem higher, the Lord’s glory or my estimation of it? careful now mcduffee, this process operates under conditions stipulated by I. 6.
[10] der Gebrauch, longstanding, ongoing use, application, or practice as custom. Application strikes at the pragmatic obsession, choking the life out of North American evangelical homiletics. Are we really in one another’s company for this kind of conversation about the glory of Christ? Its application? Its exploitation? What do we have that we have not received? What have we received that God in Christ has not lifted up, taken and held for us?
[11] Whether aware of it or not, now I am trapped, shall I barter His glory, put it up for sale, or for auction? Who will give me the first bid? No! Of course not, well will I invest in it, accrue wealth from it or spend it on something worthwhile, worth having, of what worth? No! Well then will I just keep it to look at, to handle at will or maybe use it to get some work out of it or make sense of it? I flip and twist but I’m caught; my rodent spine is snapped for my being lured and enticed by my own desire, going after the bait I set out so that I could catch another. If not deceived, what a fool I am; and if deceived, where are my beloved brothers and sisters to slap me sober?
[12] Exodus 20:1-17; John 5:19-47; Acts 20:18:35; James 1:19-27. It is the Lord who judges us. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each of us will receive his commendation from God. To our benefit then, let us learn not to go beyond what is written, for what do we have that we did not receive?
[13] One quadrant of the full circle of speech, together being sound doctrine (1 Timothy 1:10), effective prayer (James 5:16), honest self-examination (2 Corinthians 13:5) and vital speech (Ephesians 5:25).
[14] die Empfindungen, perceptions, sentiments, feelings. The hope of holiness purifies. We trust that He loves us that much, we trust that He is that powerful! Who knows better than me how wretched I am, and yet, how little I know! I love Him, I have not seen Him, yet with you, I believe in Him and rejoice with His joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, believing that the outcome of our faith is the salvation of our souls. He who is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, who upholds the universe by the word of His power, He wants us with Him, and He will have us holy!
[15] die Erkenntnis, die Einsicht – inspection, understanding; judiciousness, perception; realization; decision, sentence, finding. The discovery of a universe. The recognition of oneself. The finding of a court, a just decision with a mixing of agnoscere with cognoscere. I don’t know to what chapter eleven Hamann refers. The fourth section of Luther’s Small Catechim was added in 1551. The section is titled, “Christian Questions with Their Answers.” Designating Luther as their author, the questions are prepared for those who intend to go to the sacrament of the altar. The seventh of twenty questions asks, “Who is Christ?” The response answers, ”The Son of God, true God and man.”
[16] überschwenglich – pouring out or forth, overflowing; expressing excessive emotion in an unrestrained manner, remembering nevertheless, that living the life in Christ is doing the impossible without knowing it except by faith in the power of the Spirit, in accordance with the authority of God’s word; thus in this case remembering, we speak to edify and not to confuse others into thinking we are mad; we speak to convict, to call to account, that others who are without gift or faith may have the secrets of their hearts disclosed, so they might fall on their faces to worship the God they have come to be convinced is in our midst. Let all things be done for edification. The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; for God is not confused or a God of confusion, He is not the God of the envying or makers of strife or the evil workers of the agitation and tumult of war. Therefore by faith we trust our effusive thoughts about Christ shall be contemplated properly and in an orderly manner; as Christ gives the Spirit without measure the Spirit in turn teaches us the mind of Christ so that all the thoughts we receive through the study of God’s word shall be taken captive to the obedience to Christ. The light of His glory is diffused throughout creation, confused in the world, and fused with our spirit through the gospel.
[17] entzückt, delightful, enchanting, but so much more so than Rococo charm. Each right thought of Christ taken captive by Christ is the equivalent in our soul of the event that is to come when we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with the dead in Christ to gather with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. These effusive, rapturous thoughts of Christ given full reign over our soul are tempered only by the timing of the Lord while we live lives of self-control born in us as a fruit of the Spirit.
[18] die Anweisung, assignment, direction. Not just information for me to follow that I may know how to do something, but a command for me to do something I am ordered to obey as an assignment unto a particular end by way of a specific course of action. For we are His workmanship in Christ created onto good works that He has preordained that we should walk in the. God help me (and He does), dissipated saint that I am, as a son of Eli I have stumbled over His commandment for years. Nevertheless, I continue studying the right way about how to do things, learning to listen, striving to see, stepping into the life He has given for the days He has numbered, growing into His faith as He has allotted unto that Day.
