 |
 Sittler was in love with
language. He loved to read it, he loved to hear it sung, and he loved to
write and speak it. He was a consummate stylist. He put words together
in such graceful and creative combinations that people felt compelled to
write down his words on whatever might be available, including a napkin
or the back of a book.
Sittler
attributed his love of language, first, to the words of the Bible and
the preaching of his father. In a chapter of Gravity and Grace (GG)
entitled “Language: Allure and Boundary,” Sittler writes about his
father reading the liturgy at Communion: “I didn’t know exactly what
father meant when…he said “ ‘And therefore with angels and archangels
and all the company of heaven...’ ”but I knew it was something very
big.” These forces probably contributed to the relatively formal and
“old fashioned” vocabulary and cadence of his speech. In GG (77)
he writes that “Our generation has lost its ear for multidimensional
language.” The statement applies to both secular and religious language,
but he was particularly concerned about the latter. “Yet without the
recovery of that [multidimensional] language, I think we are going to
have a very difficult time transmitting the Scriptures to future ages.”
In other words, Sittler looked to the past — to tradition — to bring us
into the future. He was not averse to developments such as non-gendered
language for God, but he stressed that considerable imagination and care
are required to come up with new words that convey the same “rhetorical
beauty” as the original words.
At the same time, Sittler believed with
theologian Paul Ricoeur that well-chosen words may transcend the writer
or speaker’s original intention. (Running
with the Hounds, p. 14) Language can “take upon itself a life of
its own,” he says. The contemporary reader must immerse herself in great
language and work diligently to search out its meaning. Sittler applied
to language the same requirement for discipline that he did to every
aspect of life.
A sample of materials on Language
available from the Archives
-
Equipping the Saints for Ministry
(Texas Lutheran University), Audiotape (7/80)
available online
-
The Holy Spirit and Human Reflection (Concordia
Summer
Theological Conference, Minnesota), Audiotape (7/26/82)
-
Conscience and Capitalism (Wartburg
College, Iowa), Audiotape (1982)
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