Papers by Peter G Epps
Christianity & Literature, 2016
September 2016. Readings of Endo’s Silence usually focus on the pivotal conversations Ferreira... more September 2016. Readings of Endo’s Silence usually focus on the pivotal conversations Ferreira and Inoue have with Rodrigues. Too tight a focus, however, diminishes the challenge the novel poses to modern readers; Silence becomes mere personal tragedy, selling short the novel’s complex involvement in Buddhist–Christian dialogue. The character called ‘‘the interpreter’’ broadens that challenge. His three major conversations with Rodrigues present the groundwork and summation for a challenge more perennial and more specifically rooted in Endo’s milieu than would appear from just those events surrounding the fumie scene.
"In “Kubla Khan” and its prose introduction, Coleridge offers repeated examples of conscious effo... more "In “Kubla Khan” and its prose introduction, Coleridge offers repeated examples of conscious efforts to gather up the loose ends of history, both globally and personally, in political and spiritual contexts. “The Pains of Sleep” depicts personal suffering as inextricably linked with the act of constituting self and others in relationships determined by the act of representation itself after the manner exemplified in Coleridge’s philosophical and poetic works. This depiction is especially important in light of the convergence since Coleridge’s time of views as different as Japanese Buddhism and Continental philosophy. West or East, philosophy seeks to represent the human subject as accounting for itself and all things with no residue of prior representation. Coleridge’s work anticipates this convergence, particularly in the spiritual concerns which dominate his late works.
Coleridge’s attempt to represent himself in terms of Christian confession while upholding his account of the human subject leads him to discuss the doctrine of original sin at length in Aids to Reflection. This engagement broadens the conversation beyond the parochially Christian or Western and exposes the complex problem of Coleridge’s philosophical anthropology which persists in Coleridge’s posthumously published Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. Despite the formative role he attributes to Scripture in Christian confession, Coleridge is scandalized by the traditional doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. Coleridge uses Scripture to explain original sin in Aids, but reads Scripture in Confessions under a scheme of representation that implicates not only readers and writers, but the divine Author, in complicity with original sin. This limits the possibilities of those very resources upon which he draws in “A Nightly Prayer,” which responds to “The Pains of Sleep” by elaborating in perhaps its simplest, most personal form Coleridge’s Christian confession. Ultimately, Coleridge’s attempt to found a Christian self-understanding on a Biblical doctrine of original sin is incompatible with the philosophical anthropology in which Coleridge grounds his Biblical hermeneutics. Coleridge’s corpus thus provides an extended example of the difficulties involved in attempts to found a unified understanding of self, others, world, and God upon the conscious experience of the human subject.
Director: James E. Barcus, Ph.D.
Committee:
Luke Ferretter, Ph.D.
Barry A. Harvey, Ph.D.
Jay B. Losey, Ph.D.
Phillip J. Donnelly, Ph.D.
Joshua S. King, Ph.D."
Mechanistic materialist H. P. Lovecraft spent his entire career writing supernatural horror ficti... more Mechanistic materialist H. P. Lovecraft spent his entire career writing supernatural horror fiction. This paradox occasions an exploration of horror and Christian hope in his fiction. The appeal of supernatural horror fiction in a culture which denies the supernatural demonstrates the fascinating nature of objects of Christian hope, even when represented as frightening or revolting. Lovecraft's stories contain such Christian elements as revelatory visions, bodily resurrection, radical transformation (conversion and glorification), a body of immortal beings transcending mortal history (the Church), and a longed-for "unveiling" (apocalypse). These elements, however, are depicted as horrible rather than hopeful, as Lovecraft attempts to suppress Christian hope even as he exploits its irresistible appeal. Lovecraft's pursuit of the fascinating, however, ultimately leads to stories in which the inversion is incomplete and Christian hope shines through. Stories examined include "The Outsider," "The Shadow Out of Time," "The Dunwich Horror," and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."
Director: Ralph C. Wood, Ph.D.
Studies in Browning and His Circle, Jun 2001
Examines Biblical backgrounds to "Bishop Blougram's Apology," discovering a layer of discourse un... more Examines Biblical backgrounds to "Bishop Blougram's Apology," discovering a layer of discourse unremarked by prior scholarship, in which the Bishop repeatedly condemns himself by allusion to Scriptures, particularly those about the office of the bishop and the nature of Satan in Peter's Epistles.
[mentioned in Year's Work in English Studies:
In the next article, ‘Tipping the Scales: Contextual Clues in "Bishop Blougram's Apology"’ (SBHC 24[2001] 54–67), Peter Epps examines the biblical contexts of the ‘Apology’, and argues that close examination of these contexts ‘indicates that Blougram's self-justification ultimately condemns him, while Gigadibs’ rejection of the casuistry is redemptive’ (p. 54). ]"
Reviews by Peter G Epps
Intégrité, May 2021
This volume, the second in a projected series of three on how the term “vocation” and the various... more This volume, the second in a projected series of three on how the term “vocation” and the various traditions that lend it definition might serve to renew the vitality of American higher education, combines two rare excellencies. It is a book addressing administration and pedagogy that is humane; and it is an edited volume so adroitly managed as to read like the report of a conversation, if not a collaboration. The timeliness of its topic and its broad purview make this collection of essays one that should find a home on the shelves of deans, directors, advisors, and faculty everywhere. If it raises as many questions as it answers, I feel confident that authors and editor would agree that this is by design.
Christianity & Literature, 2019
Reviews two major critical works developing themes in Shusaku Endo's novel Silence.
Mythlore, 2018
Yuasa demonstrates that she is a careful and deeply sympathetic reader of Lewis, and insightful w... more Yuasa demonstrates that she is a careful and deeply sympathetic reader of Lewis, and insightful when she is reading closely. Her care for the much-loved novelist, apologist, and Oxford don is worthy of praise, and her skill in the service of those works and their characters is exemplary. Lewis scholars interested in the author’s ongoing popular and critical reception should add it to the shelf. I would not assign it to a class, as its conceptual world is confused and the very poor editing makes the book much easier to nit-pick than I have here represented. It is of no use in serious discussions of “postmodernism,” except as an example of an idiosyncratic usage of the term derived from weak philosophical sources.
Christianity & Literature, 2017
Christianity & Literature, Dec 2014
Presentations by Peter G Epps
In a timely article, Andrew Klavan summarizes a growing consensus on the standard account of mode... more In a timely article, Andrew Klavan summarizes a growing consensus on the standard account of modernity:
The Enlightenment Narrative had its beginnings as a sort of humanist propaganda campaign. Terms like Dark Ages and Middle Ages […] were meant to solidify the new generation’s self-congratulatory idea that they had relit the fire of knowledge after a dark “middle” period.
Klavan then responds to the idea that core humanities derive strictly from the psycho-social utility of “fictions” that haunt us, saying, “This is not what fiction is; this is not how fiction works. Good fiction does not create phenomena; it describes them.”
Even tradition-minded educators are often committed to defense of a fundamentally Coleridgean and Arnoldian conception of Great Books that both misrepresents the tradition and propagates the ideological manipulation declaratively practiced by generations of purveyors of the Great Books. Humane educators should practice ressourcement instead, redressing the short shrift given to poetic and philosophical expressions of the realist and Christian “middle” of the tradition.
As founder of the organization hosting The Urban Village, I adjusted the timing of my remarks as ... more As founder of the organization hosting The Urban Village, I adjusted the timing of my remarks as needed to suit the schedule. This talk comprises two sets of comments, a brief set of remarks about "Why and How" and a somewhat longer discussion titled "Cultivating, not Creating: The Formative Virtues Rubric." Following board members James Silk, presenting on Virtue Education in the context of parish religious education work, and Amanda Herrick, presenting on the history and varieties of classical homeschool curricula, my talk described the rationale for the work of The Servi Institute and the role of sound Assessment, founded on a sound philosophical anthropology, in helping parents, learners, and all other stakeholders work together toward the goal of whole-person formation.
Speculative fiction, from fairy tales to myths of national origin to Weird Tales and X-files, has... more Speculative fiction, from fairy tales to myths of national origin to Weird Tales and X-files, has one abiding trait: by a sort of parallax from its very weirdness, speculative fiction makes us conscious of our creaturely participation in Creation, of the material conditions and consequences of being a rational soul created in the image of God. In fictional secondary worlds, whether reluctantly or eagerly, “the face” is limned; in our fantasies, we often admit the transcendent Presence whose conspicuous absence defines the modern in philosophy, historiography, and imagination. This paper therefore has the character of a walk through several of the fictions which, whatever their imperfections may be, have contributed to my understanding of God’s relation to His human creatures, culminating in a look at the benefits theological reflection may gain from the time-travelling historian novels of Connie Willis.
I offer these remarks more in the manner of an after-action report than a manifesto, in hopes tha... more I offer these remarks more in the manner of an after-action report than a manifesto, in hopes that the idea of integrating the Liberal Arts with the Practical Arts as a bedrock mode of Christian education will find new home after new home in your hearts, families, neighborhoods, and universities. I will begin with a little background and analysis of the brief statement on the Liberal Arts that was written to guide curriculum reform efforts at St. Gregory's. I will continue by discussing the necessary integration of the Liberal and the Practical Arts in the Christian life, and then by describing the framework we were developing at St. Gregory’s in order to set the direction for consistent improvement in forming such students.
[note: Presentation draft--citations lacking/informal] Grounded in the Sky: Analogy in the Arch... more [note: Presentation draft--citations lacking/informal] Grounded in the Sky: Analogy in the Architecture of the Work of Art Art as poetry is founding, …instigation of the strife of truth: founding as beginning. Always when that which is as a whole demands, as what is, a grounding in openness, art attains to its historical nature as foundation. This foundation happened in the West for the first time in Greece. What was in the future to be called Being was set into work, setting the standard. The realm of beings thus opened up was then transformed into a being in the sense of God's creation. This happened in the Middle Ages. This kind of being was again transformed at the beginning and in the course of the modern age. Beings became objects that could be controlled and seen through by calculation. At each time a new and essential world arose.
Informal talk given for a local literary circle's symposium on H. P. Lovecraft. Revisits the sit... more Informal talk given for a local literary circle's symposium on H. P. Lovecraft. Revisits the situation of Lovecraft's obscure sonnet cycle, which this term (Spring 2015) was part of my Honors Introduction to Literature section at OSU.
Informal talk given to a local historical re-enactment group about the renewal of interest in ant... more Informal talk given to a local historical re-enactment group about the renewal of interest in antebellum South Carolina writer William Gilmore Simms. Once prominent, then increasingly isolated and eventually ignored because of his sectionalism and his appalling defence of slavery, Simms has gradually come to be studied again as an important contributor to the movement among writers and publishers to establish a national literature for America.
This conference poses the question “Has Fiction Lost its Faith?” I suggest that this question i... more This conference poses the question “Has Fiction Lost its Faith?” I suggest that this question is roughly the same as that asked in the title of Dana Gioia’s 1991 essay, “Can Poetry Matter?” If literature and literary study make any substantive contribution to the common good, it must be because both poetry and criticism are bound up with the active life in much the way teaching is, as a traditionary and culture-making work. The cultural moment that leads us to ask such questions as “Has Fiction Lost its Faith?” and “Can Poetry Matter?” is also the moment for which poems such as Holderlin’s “Bread and Wine” were written. As those who concern ourselves with poetry “in lean years”—also translated “the destitute time”—we will certainly want to take counsel in the matter. Beginning with the unlikely pairing of Martin Heidegger and Francis Schaeffer, and picking up some guidelines from St. Thomas Aquinas, I hope to identify some of the material conditions for a poetry that keeps faith and matters. [...] In a culture experiencing “the destitute time,” poetry can matter when poets called into close contact with the definite and plurivocal nature of the sacraments wrestle with the implications of that understanding for every part of life. Our culture’s rapid political and epistemic pendulum swings merely perpetuate the “divided field” of human reason that Schaeffer correctly diagnoses, but cannot cure with univocal propositions. It ought to be possible, however, to engage in a poetics of adjustment to the status of creature that richly explores analogical language and the allegorical understanding of history and lived experience; this should be most possible for those richly engaged in the sacramental life of the Church.
Takeuchi Yoshinori proposes that "conversion is said to begin with self-purification" for "mystic... more Takeuchi Yoshinori proposes that "conversion is said to begin with self-purification" for "mystical traditions of all times and places." He further differentiates "mere morality or ethics" from "purification that follows on conversion." Takeuchi suggests that "such purification is permeated throughout by … the problem of life and death." For Takeuchi, reflection on human moribundity links traditions as varied as Buddhism, Christian mysticism, and existentialism. Some crucial insight transforms reflection on suffering: "Without the memento mori … those reflections become nothing more than pathological abnormalities."
In response to this Buddhist reading of Christian teaching, I propose a reading of key New Testament passages addressing the relationship between human suffering and the time required for human conversion. Specifically, I suggest that the description of God's longsuffering in 2 Peter 3, and its relating the suffering of believers to the prospects of unbelievers for conversion, forms the linchpin of a series of readings from the Epistles which provide a consistent account of the duration of the mortal history of human suffering.
It has become a commonplace to point out the radical shift in the meaning of "knowing" brought ab... more It has become a commonplace to point out the radical shift in the meaning of "knowing" brought about by the popularization of the moveable-type printing press. Works such as David Lyle Jeffrey's People of the Book further examine the ways that the material facts of reproducing the Scriptures, and of teaching with or without direct recourse to the text, affect and effect changing relationships of knowing, believing, and confessing within Christendom. Jeffrey explores the sense in which Christian cultural identity has been formed—for better and for worse—by the particularity of what he calls “a deposit of ‘writings,’ a book which contains all ‘the holy books,’ [as] preserved in St. Jerome’s term for his fourth-century translation […the] biblioteca divina [, which] means literally ‘divine library’” (xii). [...] Not only American evangelicalism, but much of the world under the influence of expanding Christendom, is under the influence of a particular understanding of Scripture in which “the Bible becomes the founding text in their own subsequent national literature” (xiv).
When we look at this development through an educational lens, we can see that the readily available codex caused a radical shift in both the diffusion of learning among the population and the density of learning for every individual. It is this sort of interaction—in which a body of instruction becomes embedded in a particular cultural and technological medium—which demands that we pay careful attention to what is being assumed, and what modified or lost, when we adopt various means for education. In what follows, I hope to pull on a few of the threads of current conversations about education, and a couple of remoter concerns, to make one or two proposals which, I am sadly sure, will principally serve as conversation-fodder. I hope they may make some of the more modest theses which follow them seem more palatable.
My edition of J. B. Bury's The Idea of Progress is the 1932 MacMillan reprint with Preface and pr... more My edition of J. B. Bury's The Idea of Progress is the 1932 MacMillan reprint with Preface and prolonged introduction by Charles Beard, co-founder of the New School for Social Research. The printing was timed for the 1933 Centennial Exposition in Chicago, “A Century of Progress,” part of a worldwide tradition of such events including the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, titled “Progress Made Visible.” [...] Passing from some brief remarks on the 1893 and 1933 expositions which serve as a pretext for the discussion of Beard's and Bury's influential views about history and progress, I hope we will come together at last to think of that most interesting special case, the grammar/text/book.
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Papers by Peter G Epps
Coleridge’s attempt to represent himself in terms of Christian confession while upholding his account of the human subject leads him to discuss the doctrine of original sin at length in Aids to Reflection. This engagement broadens the conversation beyond the parochially Christian or Western and exposes the complex problem of Coleridge’s philosophical anthropology which persists in Coleridge’s posthumously published Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. Despite the formative role he attributes to Scripture in Christian confession, Coleridge is scandalized by the traditional doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. Coleridge uses Scripture to explain original sin in Aids, but reads Scripture in Confessions under a scheme of representation that implicates not only readers and writers, but the divine Author, in complicity with original sin. This limits the possibilities of those very resources upon which he draws in “A Nightly Prayer,” which responds to “The Pains of Sleep” by elaborating in perhaps its simplest, most personal form Coleridge’s Christian confession. Ultimately, Coleridge’s attempt to found a Christian self-understanding on a Biblical doctrine of original sin is incompatible with the philosophical anthropology in which Coleridge grounds his Biblical hermeneutics. Coleridge’s corpus thus provides an extended example of the difficulties involved in attempts to found a unified understanding of self, others, world, and God upon the conscious experience of the human subject.
Director: James E. Barcus, Ph.D.
Committee:
Luke Ferretter, Ph.D.
Barry A. Harvey, Ph.D.
Jay B. Losey, Ph.D.
Phillip J. Donnelly, Ph.D.
Joshua S. King, Ph.D."
Director: Ralph C. Wood, Ph.D.
[mentioned in Year's Work in English Studies:
In the next article, ‘Tipping the Scales: Contextual Clues in "Bishop Blougram's Apology"’ (SBHC 24[2001] 54–67), Peter Epps examines the biblical contexts of the ‘Apology’, and argues that close examination of these contexts ‘indicates that Blougram's self-justification ultimately condemns him, while Gigadibs’ rejection of the casuistry is redemptive’ (p. 54). ]"
Reviews by Peter G Epps
Presentations by Peter G Epps
The Enlightenment Narrative had its beginnings as a sort of humanist propaganda campaign. Terms like Dark Ages and Middle Ages […] were meant to solidify the new generation’s self-congratulatory idea that they had relit the fire of knowledge after a dark “middle” period.
Klavan then responds to the idea that core humanities derive strictly from the psycho-social utility of “fictions” that haunt us, saying, “This is not what fiction is; this is not how fiction works. Good fiction does not create phenomena; it describes them.”
Even tradition-minded educators are often committed to defense of a fundamentally Coleridgean and Arnoldian conception of Great Books that both misrepresents the tradition and propagates the ideological manipulation declaratively practiced by generations of purveyors of the Great Books. Humane educators should practice ressourcement instead, redressing the short shrift given to poetic and philosophical expressions of the realist and Christian “middle” of the tradition.
In response to this Buddhist reading of Christian teaching, I propose a reading of key New Testament passages addressing the relationship between human suffering and the time required for human conversion. Specifically, I suggest that the description of God's longsuffering in 2 Peter 3, and its relating the suffering of believers to the prospects of unbelievers for conversion, forms the linchpin of a series of readings from the Epistles which provide a consistent account of the duration of the mortal history of human suffering.
When we look at this development through an educational lens, we can see that the readily available codex caused a radical shift in both the diffusion of learning among the population and the density of learning for every individual. It is this sort of interaction—in which a body of instruction becomes embedded in a particular cultural and technological medium—which demands that we pay careful attention to what is being assumed, and what modified or lost, when we adopt various means for education. In what follows, I hope to pull on a few of the threads of current conversations about education, and a couple of remoter concerns, to make one or two proposals which, I am sadly sure, will principally serve as conversation-fodder. I hope they may make some of the more modest theses which follow them seem more palatable.
Coleridge’s attempt to represent himself in terms of Christian confession while upholding his account of the human subject leads him to discuss the doctrine of original sin at length in Aids to Reflection. This engagement broadens the conversation beyond the parochially Christian or Western and exposes the complex problem of Coleridge’s philosophical anthropology which persists in Coleridge’s posthumously published Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. Despite the formative role he attributes to Scripture in Christian confession, Coleridge is scandalized by the traditional doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. Coleridge uses Scripture to explain original sin in Aids, but reads Scripture in Confessions under a scheme of representation that implicates not only readers and writers, but the divine Author, in complicity with original sin. This limits the possibilities of those very resources upon which he draws in “A Nightly Prayer,” which responds to “The Pains of Sleep” by elaborating in perhaps its simplest, most personal form Coleridge’s Christian confession. Ultimately, Coleridge’s attempt to found a Christian self-understanding on a Biblical doctrine of original sin is incompatible with the philosophical anthropology in which Coleridge grounds his Biblical hermeneutics. Coleridge’s corpus thus provides an extended example of the difficulties involved in attempts to found a unified understanding of self, others, world, and God upon the conscious experience of the human subject.
Director: James E. Barcus, Ph.D.
Committee:
Luke Ferretter, Ph.D.
Barry A. Harvey, Ph.D.
Jay B. Losey, Ph.D.
Phillip J. Donnelly, Ph.D.
Joshua S. King, Ph.D."
Director: Ralph C. Wood, Ph.D.
[mentioned in Year's Work in English Studies:
In the next article, ‘Tipping the Scales: Contextual Clues in "Bishop Blougram's Apology"’ (SBHC 24[2001] 54–67), Peter Epps examines the biblical contexts of the ‘Apology’, and argues that close examination of these contexts ‘indicates that Blougram's self-justification ultimately condemns him, while Gigadibs’ rejection of the casuistry is redemptive’ (p. 54). ]"
The Enlightenment Narrative had its beginnings as a sort of humanist propaganda campaign. Terms like Dark Ages and Middle Ages […] were meant to solidify the new generation’s self-congratulatory idea that they had relit the fire of knowledge after a dark “middle” period.
Klavan then responds to the idea that core humanities derive strictly from the psycho-social utility of “fictions” that haunt us, saying, “This is not what fiction is; this is not how fiction works. Good fiction does not create phenomena; it describes them.”
Even tradition-minded educators are often committed to defense of a fundamentally Coleridgean and Arnoldian conception of Great Books that both misrepresents the tradition and propagates the ideological manipulation declaratively practiced by generations of purveyors of the Great Books. Humane educators should practice ressourcement instead, redressing the short shrift given to poetic and philosophical expressions of the realist and Christian “middle” of the tradition.
In response to this Buddhist reading of Christian teaching, I propose a reading of key New Testament passages addressing the relationship between human suffering and the time required for human conversion. Specifically, I suggest that the description of God's longsuffering in 2 Peter 3, and its relating the suffering of believers to the prospects of unbelievers for conversion, forms the linchpin of a series of readings from the Epistles which provide a consistent account of the duration of the mortal history of human suffering.
When we look at this development through an educational lens, we can see that the readily available codex caused a radical shift in both the diffusion of learning among the population and the density of learning for every individual. It is this sort of interaction—in which a body of instruction becomes embedded in a particular cultural and technological medium—which demands that we pay careful attention to what is being assumed, and what modified or lost, when we adopt various means for education. In what follows, I hope to pull on a few of the threads of current conversations about education, and a couple of remoter concerns, to make one or two proposals which, I am sadly sure, will principally serve as conversation-fodder. I hope they may make some of the more modest theses which follow them seem more palatable.
poems "Vessel," "Mao's Garden" and a riddle.