HOLOGRAPHIC MEMOIRS OF A DREAM – THE INVENTION OF TRAM HOPPING by JOHANNES ANDRIES NORTJÉ submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY in the subject SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR E VAN NIEKERK JANUARY 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To be true to the thesis of my dissertation, this dissertation is an ubuntuing, a dependent arising, and so it is our dissertation: we have put pen to paper and so credit is due to a whole community. My first acknowledgement goes to the one LORD our one God-s (El-ohim), YAHWEH, Yeshua and Rauch HaKodesh, who has not only inspired this story, but also given the opportunity to tell this story. It has literally been as if this path I/we walked has chosen me/us, and not I/we the path: so many choices and events could have been so different so that the dot pattern drawing could be no co-incidence, especially since many things had been contrary from what I intended. To add to this, all the aha moments I had in the ubuntuings of my meditations, and all the 'out of the blue' 'bright ideas' I accredit to these ubuntuings, and want to assure my LORD I'm not committing plagiarism – it is our/Your dissertation, since the inflation of the cognitive balloon has been with the breath of heaven, so it's in the first place YOUR informationing dissertation. Starting with names is a long list and longer than what I can list. To start with I want to say thank you to my family, Helen, Leandra-Joelle and Enrico, and all the sacrifices they had to make, and particularly Helen that had to work a full-time job while running a household when I was battling with my health (part of my story) and working on this dissertation. I want to thank my parents and my brother for time and money and food and so many sacrificial offerings all the years without expecting anything in return. They have proven to be truly family. I also want to thank my parents-in-law for putting food on our table, and helping with the children, and even funding a German language course for me and buying the property our house is on. My father-in-law is already in heaven and my mother-in-law in the intensive care unit at the time of writing, and so we don't know how long we're still going to have her, but this is also their story. I want to thank Hannes and Annemarie Marais for their faithful financial support every month all these years since I left for my first Bible college, for Cobus and Marlize Breedt for their faithful financial support every month since my second Bible college. I want to thank Deon Janse van Rensburg for his financial support in so many ways all these years: 5% of our house in Germany belongs to him, many plane tickets to South Africa were partly paid by him, and then the language editing of this dissertation as well as opening his house and lending his cars, etc. when I'm in South Africa. I also want to thank Cornu and Ingrid Pretorius for all their generous and lavish donations, and that Cornu has been a personal doctor when ever needed: never once has Cornu refused to help me in any way, ranging from plane tickets to South Africa, to financing my stays in South Africa, etc. I want to thank Werner and Mariaan Van der Merwe for their sacrificial financial support and open house, Dr. Markus Bali in Germany for his financial support, Professor Dr. Erasmus Van Niekerk for paying such a big part of my doctor's degree and opening his house and heart. I want to thank Randolf Bitter for being a private, 24/7, doctor to me and that he has been so willing to spend such long hours on the phone with me, and that we could become such good friends. I want to thank all the Mennonites in Germany that helped build our house and working Saturday after Saturday from early mornings to late evenings. I want to thank Jacob and Lorinda Esau for their support and every time Jacob helped me with all the practical things I couldn't accomplish with my two left hands. Without a home this story would have been a different story. Thank you for the belonging. I also want to thank Anna Goosen for helping me in my predicament I was in with my MTh and for Professor Dr. Johannes Reimer, both Mennonites, that were helping me out of the cul-de-sac when me story was in a dead-end in 2005. Without them their would have been no story, or a different story at another university. My mother-in-law always says that we are out of the same pot as tribes. I want to thank all my professors in all the Bible colleges and fellow students and Africa and everyone that has helped constituting me and my story. I'm truly raised by a community. Thank you community for the belonging. Last but not the least, I want to thank Professor Dr. Erasmus Van Niekerk for assisting me to put this story on paper. When I sat in his office that day, floundering around not knowing how to communicate what I intended to do, I'm sure I could see the disappointment in his eyes, and even after I gave him my first 120 pages I'm not sure he was convinced yet of what I wanted to accomplish and even to what extent that he once mentioned that it at first appeared to him as if I didn’t know my field. In retrospect I'm thankful for his professionalism and experience, and most of all his trust and patience to see how my medium became the message. DECLARATION I declare that Holographic Memoirs of a dream - the invention of tram hopping is my own work and that all sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. Johannes Andries Nortjé 3439-451-6 Date: 17 January 2012 SUMMARY The medium is the message in the first place: the medium as presence, as the author. His contribution to the academic world is his academic Holographic Memoirs. His story, the author's memoirs, is a fictive-narrative discourse with an organic ubuntu open-endedness. The Hologram is both an autobiography, but also all the information at all places simultaneously – nonlocal in quantum physical terms - within an intense hallucinating dream: no illusion, but rather a HyperReality with all its Virtual Identities. The invention of tram hopping is the plot of the story. The plot is like an hourglass where the first part of the story is the emptying of the sand, the deconstruction of modernism, but while the top chamber runs empty and the bottom chamber fills up, so the deconstruction is simultaneously a dependent arising/(social) construction/ubuntuing to revival – the synagogal Shekinah presence of YAHWEH. The top chamber is the unreasonable Newtonian physics and the bottom chamber reasonable quantum physics. The metaphysics (before the physics) of the top chamber is poststructuralism and deconstruction, while the bottom chamber is the virtual Hebraic worldview that delutively merges ubuntu and Buddhism. The long narrow neck in the middle is the moonily narrative that lives us with psychology (Psycho-logic) lost in sociology (Social-physics). Hermeneutics is set forth in the same contrasting hourglass of the top chamber, the inherited tradition, emptying to what it should accomplish – (virtual) presence. Keywords: YAHWEH, Yeshua, Holy Spirit, theology, philosophy, deconstruction, poststructuralism, narrative, consciousness, unconsciousness, dream, hermeneutics, revival, radical inductive, modernism, postmodernism, postliberal, liberal theology, novels, Virtual Reality, HyperReality, simulacrum, ubuntu, Buddhism, Hebrew, quantum mechanics, physics, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Euclidean, Riemannian, Siddhartha Guatemala, hermeneutical circle, fictive-narrative, Van Niekerk, currency Table of Contents Prologue:..........................................................................................................................................1 1. Self introduction and embedding of setting – the start of a mental journey...........................1 2. Radical inductive contemplation.............................................................................................2 3. Mental journey continues........................................................................................................2 4. Pertinent cultural reflection.....................................................................................................4 5. Inductive reflection continues.................................................................................................5 6. Mental journey continues........................................................................................................6 7. Inductive reflection continues.................................................................................................7 8. Mental journey continues in physical tram journey..............................................................10 9. Wider theolosophy debate.....................................................................................................11 Bibliography:........................................................................................................................14 10. Prescript as Postscript.........................................................................................................45 11. Dozing off the session.........................................................................................................48 Chapter 1: The muddy mess of modernism swept clean...............................................................49 1. Contextual embedding of session.........................................................................................49 2. Radical inductive