Oor die skepping van 'n grammatika van saamleef

On creating a gramm ar for living together The article is about the question whether it is possible for South Africans to learn a new common moral language. Six well-known positions are considered: a common political language, a common economic lan­ guage, a common Biblical language, a common Christian language, a common language of survival, and a common rational language. What is most important for human life is not what propositions we believe hut what vocabulary we use. It is not only a new political dispensation that has to be negotiated but also the meaning of the crucial terms themselves. What has to he stressed ... is the vital, political and social impor­ tance of creating a new discourse, the urgent need to realise that language is much more than a passive reflection of a pre-existent, autonomous reality, that indeed, the language we use ... helps to construct the reality within which we act and to which we react.


A bstract O n creatin g a g ra m m a r for living together
The article is about the question whether it is possible fo r South Africans to learn a new common moral language. Six well-known positions are considered: a common political language, a common economic lan guage, a common Biblical language, a common Christian language, a common language o f survival, and a common rational language.

What is most important fo r human life is not what propositions we
believe hut what vocabulary we use.
(Richard Rorty) It is not only a new political dispensation that has to be negotiated but also the meaning o f the crucial terms themselves.

(J Degenaar)
What has to he stressed ... is the vital, political and social impor tance o f creating a new discourse, the urgent need to realise that language is much more than a passive reflection o f a pre-existent, autonomous reality, that indeed, the language we use ... helps to construct the reality within which we act and to which we react.

D IE M O O N T L IK H E D E : H O E L E E R M E N SE S O 'N T A A L ?
Indien 'n mens uiteindelik wel van die dubbele veronderstelling uitgaan dat die Suid-Afrikaanse sam elewing so 'n gem eenskaplike taal nodig het, ten einde 'n m orele basis te bied waarop die transform asieproses voltrek kan w ord, asook dat die Christelike kerke daartoe 'n bydrae behoort te maak, is die uiteindelik prakties-filosofiese o f etiese vraag: Hoe gebeur dit? Hoe kan 'n diep verdeelde, na-Babelse samelewing so 'n gemeenskaplike taal vind, begin aanleer en praat? W elke m oontlikhede bestaan daar?

Lindbeck se gevolgtrekking is interessant:
A fa m ilia r text can remain imaginatively and conceptually powerful long after its claims to truth are denied Thus, in a scripturally literate culture, even the antiscriptural is biblically troped and colored. Christians need not be entirely unhappy with the misuse o f their book. (Lindbeck 1989:37-55) v Hoe gebeur dit? Hoe is dit moontlik dat 'texts influence human hearts and minds even when they are not believed'? Lindbeck antwoord: Once they penetrate deeply into the psyche, especially the collective psyche, they cease to be primarily objects o f study and rather come to supply the conceptual and imagina tive vocabularies, as well as the grammar and syntax, with which we construe and con struct reality. Thus, texts ... can become, as Calvin said o f the Bible, the spectacles through which we see ... (T)he Bible has in this respect been preeminent in traditionally Christian lands. Its lenses have functioned as the most powerful, penetrating, and com prehensive ones. (Lindbeck 1989:37-55) Besonder belangrik vir die tema van 'n gemeenskaplike taal is Lindbeck ?e waardering vir 'n soort 'cultural Christianity' en 'n soort vrye, assosiatiewe, 'm idrashic' manier van die Bybel iees en   1987b: 125-152; 1987b:687-720).
The unity o f humankind prefigured at Pentecost ... is a unity o f renewed understanding, but the kind o f understanding is not that created by an Esperanto that denies the reality o f other languages. Attempts to secure unity through the creation o f a single language are attempts to make us forget our histories and differences rather than to fin d the unity made possible by the Spirit through which we understand the other as other. At Pentecost, God created a new language, but it was a language that is more than words.
It is instead a community whose memory o f its Savior creates the miracle o f being a people whose very differences contribute to their unity.
We call this new creation the church. It is constituted by Word and Sacrament, for the story we tell, the story we embody, must not only be told but be enacted. In our telling we are challenged to be a people capable o f hearing ....

D J Smit
The creation o f such a people is indeed dangerous, as we know from Babel. For the very strength that comes from our unity has too often led the church to believe that it can build the tower o f unity through its own efforts. Not content to wait, in time we try to make G od's unity a reality for all people through coercion rather than witness.
Remembering the church's relation to the Jews is particularly painful in this respect ....
The church has a story to tell in which God is the main character. But the church cannot tell that story without becoming part o f that tale ....
It is our belief that what God did at Pentecost he continues to do to renew and to sustain the presence o f the church so that the world might know that there is an alterna tive to Babel ....
We are not condemned to repeat the past. This means that we really do have an alternative to Babel, to the fear o f one another, and finally then, to war .... As a church we do not just have an alternative but we are the alternative. Not only do we have a story to tell but in the telling we are the story being told ....