From Colbert...

This might be the first time I've ever heard a crowd cheer on someone reciting the Nicene Creed.

This won't make sense if you don't follow the link, but I think Scalia must really be an idiot or be some kind of evil genius.  The way he frames the decision should make Christians opposed to the ruling (so that the cross should not be emptied of its meaning into a general symbol for those killed in war).  Looking quickly at his wikipedia page and his views on the death penalty, it appears he is simply really dumb, which is the better of the two choices I suppose.  Here's the quote on the wiki page:

This is not the Old Testament, I emphasize, but St. Paul.... [T]he core of his message is that government—however you want to limit that concept—derives its moral authority from God.... Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral.... I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next?... For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. What a horrible act!... The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible. We have done that in this country (and continental Europe has not) by preserving in our public life many visible reminders that—in the words of a Supreme Court opinion from the 1940s—"we are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."... All this, as I say, is most un-European, and helps explain why our people are more inclined to understand, as St. Paul did, that government carries the sword as "the minister of God," to "execute wrath" upon the evildoer."- (the bold is mine)

Death no big deal, huh?  Might want to re-read ole St. Paul on that one...

Good I-monk post

Here's a good post from Internetmonk on the culture war.  Here's an excerpt:

Imagine, for a moment, that I came to your typically conservative evangelical church and asked to visit with your young people, high school through young married couples. I want to ask them some questions. -What do you think of the President?
-What is your position on abortion?
-What do you believe about the legalization of gay marriage?
-Are you in favor of any version of Federally controlled health care?
-What is your church’s definition of the inspiration and authority of scripture?
-What is a brief definition of the Trinity?
-How does your church’s beliefs differ from Roman Catholicism? 

He goes on to say he would get pretty vigorous, clearly articulated responses to the first 4 questions but a lot of blank stares at the last 3.  Anyway he goes on to address this problem and talk a bit about American idolatry.  Good stuff.

St. Anselm goes to Rehab

Here's something I've been working out as I lay down and try to go to sleep at night, it has been a remarkably good cure for insomnia.  This will probably end up being a pretty long and, for most people, uninteresting post- just so you're warned.


I'd like to discuss a little bit the ontological argument for God.  Now before you go, "Whaaa??" and click away, let me explain what it is in a nutshell.  The argument, first put forward by St. Anselm, is basically:
1. We can conceive of perfection (or that which no greater can be thought)
2. This perfection is an attribute of God.
3. Part of this perfection is existence (because existence is good)
4 God exists.
This idea has been poo-pooed by various philosophers ever since it was first published, including by this fellow Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, a Benedictine monk more popularly known as the "Island Guy".  His refutation was basically that he could conceive of a perfect island, the existence of this island was part of its perfection, so the perfect island must exist, right?  I'll be honest, the ontological argument just doesn't "do it" for me; if true, the argument only gets us to some vague philosophical conception of God, like Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, not necessarily Yahweh, much less addressing the truth of the Resurrection.  But, all that said, I've never felt the isalnd think really cut it as a refutation.  Thats right, this blog is about to weigh in on philosophical controversies from the 11th century.  I can feel my readership exploding as I type; it don't get no more relevant than this.

  The problem with the island is that an island can not be judged in the same terms as a being.  We can discuss rational beings in terms of their ethical/religious character an evaluate them on such terms.  One island, however can not be said to be morally superior to another (well I mean you could, it just wouldn't make sense).  The island or anything else without rational intellect (a dog for example), can only be judged on aesthetic or utilitarian terms- it's beautiful, trashy, it has resources we can use, ect. and affirmed as good in it's createdness (but this is an act of faith rather than a philosophical position).  It does not make sense to talk of it's perfection because any perfection would be aesthetic one.  I don't know that we can speak of aesthetic perfection, because an aesthetic judgment is necessarily subjective, rely both on the object being considered and the observer.  For example a perfect engine may need to be frictionless (for maximum efficency, which would ostensibly be part of its perfection) but the perfect tire obviously would not be frictionless as it must grip the road.  The tire's (and the road's) "imperfections" that cause friction are in fact a function of it's usefulness.

Plato believed that there was a realm of ideas which was superior to the material plane, so that we could judge say, a desk, based on the extent to which it conform to the ideal standard of desks that exists in the realm of ideas.  This system of thought influenced the Gnostic heresy, that plagued early Christianity (and I think still infects a lot of Christian circles today, but that is another post), basically that matter was bad and spirit good, which at it's far end led to the belief that Christ could not have become incarnate, but instead only appeared to be.  I say all that to show clearly what dangerous ground I am on here when I say that we cannot, I do not think, conceive of perfection in material terms.  Two reasons for this, first because materiality implies some sort of aesthetic judgment as part of its perfection, and second because of the corruptibility of the flesh, because of its susceptibility to death.  So, before the question is asked, this means that we cannot I think talk about Jesus as being perfect as touches His manhood.  This is a part of what  the poem in Phil. 2 is talking about when it says He emptied Himself, He took on the frailties of man including death.  This is why as Kierkegaard says, we cannot argue from the greatness of Christ or the effects of His life that He is God.  There is, as he says, an infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, which is a technical way of saying that man does not exist on a continuum with God; God is essentially different than man.  Which brings me nicely back around to the point I made at the outset, we cannot make an argument for God that is meaningful ultimately; faith requires an act of faith, not argumentation.

As a little postlude here, I do want to leave open the possibility for material perfection in the finally redeemed Creation.  The Resurrected Christ was an anticipation of what is to come when, "God's dwelling place is with man".  Now we don't really know exactly what it will be like, but then we could perhaps speak of perfections, because the diversity which God has created and so deemed good will certainly still be in place I would think.  I'm totally stealing this from somewhere in the writings of Lewis, but I forget where precisely, so I'll just roll with.  Goodness expresses itself in diversity, while evil is always monotonously the same.  The  remarkable variety of the saints when contrasted to the how incredibly similar evil men are in the end, is a case in point.  N.T. Wright has some good stuff about this, and I found a pretty solid (at least based on my skimming of it) summary of some of the main points of his book Suprised by Hope here on the Relevant magazine website (but you should still read the book).

I'll end with a few lines from W.H. Auden that sum up my feelings about arguments for the existence of God.

And must put up with having learned
All proofs or disproofs that we tender
Of His existence are returned
Unopened to the sender.
-Friday's Child, W.H. Auden

A Trip to Barnes and Noble

The other day I went to Barnes and Noble looking for a book I had wanted to read called Shopclass as Soul Craft, a book written by your typical philosopher/motorcycle repair shop owner about the dehumanizing aspects of the modern workplace - people don't really make things anymore, a tendency to replace skilled labor with un-skilled labor so that workers lose the benefits and stability of learning a trade, how white-collar jobs are increasingly becoming thoughtless, Office Space-like operations, ect.  It has been pretty good so far, much in line with what I've been thinking ever since I read Small is Beautiful this past spring (a superior book to this current one, you should go find it at a library somewhere, good stuff) and contains the somewhat troubling revelation that some new model Mercedes do not have a dipstick (we can't even check our own oil now?). 

Anyway, speaking of troubling revelations, while in the store I drifted over to the fiction section for a bit (and ended up picking up Three Men in a Boat, supposedly one of the funniest novels of all time, but have yet to start it) which is near the drama section, which is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare.  While looking, I overheard a sales rep talking to a mother, presumably there to buy some play for school for her kid.  The sales-lady said something along the lines of, "Here is our updated Shakespeare, it has the original text side by side with the text translated into English so you can understand it."  Now, I don't go around saying, "By my troth," or calling people "saucy merchants" or anything like that, but really, a translation?  Beyond a few marginal notes for anachronisms, I can't see the text as too terribly difficult if you read it slowly enough and think about what is going on.  If I was a English major/teacher I might be marginally depressed by all this.

G.K. Chesterton and Obi-Wan Kenobi

I frequently peruse Christianity Today's Books and Culture section; they have new articles about once a week and their reviews have steered me towards some good books in the past.  Anyway two articles about G.K. Chesterton there (whom you should read if you haven't yet, especially if you like C.S. Lewis)- a general one on his recent resurgence and another, a review of a new biography of GKC (btw Baylor Press has got a book on Chesterton coming out next year by Ralph Wood, should be pretty good, I think).  The former led me to Gilbert Magazine and an article about Alec Guinness, the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Apparently he also played Father Brown, GKC's priest-detective from a series of novels and short stories, in a movie in the 50s.  The movie is pretty terrible from what the article says, but an incident during filming ended up having a profound effect on Guinness.  While returning to his hotel in France during filming, Guinness, still dressed in the vestments of Fr. Brown, was met by a little boy, who thinking him a real priest took him by the hand and led him excitedly towards his home, talking all the way.  Afraid to startle the boy with his poor French, Guinness remained silent.  At a hole in a hedgerow the boy said a hasty good-bye and turned into to his house; apparently he had only wished for a safe, reassuring walk home.  As Guinness writes in his autobiography, "Continuing my walk I reflected that a Church which could inspire such a confidence in a child, making its priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable could not be as scheming and creepy as so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, long-absorbed prejudice."  Shortly after this Guinness converted to Catholicism, which is all to say that G.K. Chesterton might just change your life, you should read him.

Three Definitions of a Reader

From a working library by way of Alan Jacobs' blog Text Patterns:

The first definition is the most familiar: one who reads, or one who is fond of reading. A young girl tucked under a tree with a book in hand; an old man waiting for the bus, nose pressed into the spine; three little boys sitting on the curb sharing a newspaper, ink smudged on their knees.

 The second definition harks back to the single-room schoolhouse: an anthology of texts used for teaching. Here the term passes from the person doing the reading to the object being read, from reading for its own sake to reading with intent. The image of reading remains, but it becomes focused, purposeful; it becomes work.

The third definition shifts from the object to the machine: a device for reading data. No longer human, the reader becomes mechanical, the texts reduced to ones and zeros. There are no stories, only limitless information, each digit as insignificant as the next.

Church in a Railcar

The Russian Orthodox Church apparently is organizing churches in old railway cars.  Thought it was a cool picture.

Evolution and Genesis (Now there's a loaded title)

First let me preface this by saying that this post will be wildly speculative; I will just be throwing alot of stuff out there and seeing if any of it sticks.  Second, let me say that I feel there are ways in which this post is completely unneccessary.  The main point is man was created somehow (through evolutionary processes or not) and suffered some kind of fall by choosing the knowledge of good and evil rather than the knowledge of God and life with Him.  All that said, time to jump in.  Let the controversy begin.

Before going in to the theology of all this, let me first speak to the science- and the limits of science.  A confession here is in order first though, I haven't taken biology since my sophomore year in college- and then I napped in class on occassion and borrowed a textbook that I have yet to return; so I am not by any means up to date on the science behind all this.  But as far as I can tell, and based on what some smart fellow Christians have said on the subject, the science points to evolution as the cause for the diversity of life on Earth.  Otherwise, God has placed a lot of fairly compelling evidence for evolution, presumably in an attempt to dupe a bunch of scientists into atheism.  So our options seem to be either accepting the theory of evolution as the best explanation of the available data, critique the science behind it (which many try to do, with little success), or accuse God of acting against His character by tricking us into belief in an evolutionary explanation (by hiding fossil remains in the earth for instance, so that when we found them we would interpret them as signs of man's predecessors and so be fooled).  Maybe I making strawmen out of the other two options, but anyway looks like evolution is the most likely to me.  So what does that give us, if anything?  A means of Creation.  Science cannot say anything positive or negative about the existence of God or the truth of the Resurrection.  It is an approach to truth, it however cannot acknowledge something as true or not; the scientific method only rejects or fails to reject hypotheses, it is by nature (fancy theological word) apophatic.  This however is not sufficient, it is not how men live their lives.  An example that will perhaps help segue into the theology behind all this is our use of images in describing God.  In Christian thought there have been two main ways of approach to the Truth of God in Himself which, as Paul says, we now only see "through a mirror darkly"  (little explanatory aside here- back in the day they had different mirrors, made out of shiny metal rather than glass; in Paul's day it would be more like checking yourself out in whatever kitchen appliance is handy rather than walking all the way to a bathroom - you get the general idea of what's going on, but you can't pick out all the details).  The two ways of approaching this truth have been through the use of images (the way of affirmation as Charles Williams used to call it)- God is a Father, Christ is a Husband, ect. and through the way of negation (apophatic theology)- God is not a Father as we conceive of fathers, not husband like we think of husbands, ect.  Both ways are neccessary however, the way of affirmation so that we can think of God in human terms and the way of negation so that we do not make an idol out of our conception.  As C.S. Lewis said once, "We must desire God more than we desire our conception of God."

Well it seems I have continued my habit of ballooning introductory paragraphs into such lengthy affairs.  Good to be consistent I suppose.  So then question becomes, "Given evolution as the most probable explanation for the origins of life on earth, what do we do with Genesis 1-3?"  First let me say we should not on the one hand throw it out, or on the other be scared that it does not speak of evolution.  The latter is more briefly addressed, so I'll turn to it first.  The Bible is, primarily, a record of God's revelation of Himself to man and is itself a part of that revelation.  He must either speak in terms sensible to man (as our Jewish friends like to say "The Torah speaks in human language") or reveal centuries of scientific knowledge and terminology to the Israelites as a preface to the Genesis account to satisfy our conceptions of what the Bible should be (which would make for an even longer introduction than the one accompanying this post).  So instead the Bible uses sensible terms for its original audience (Joshua commanding the sun to "stop" being the most famous example), regardless of our satisfaction with those terms.  But still the question, "What to do with Genesis?"

Two major implications are how do we tie what seems to be the narrative of a historical event, The Fall, involving two people to a species that arose and presumably arose as a species rather as two individuals and secondly how do we account for death and its existence before the Fall.  Again let me reitirate that this is going to involve some speculation and is in the end, I think, unimportant; that is to say the theological importance of the fall and the explanation it provides for the human condition are vastly more important than tying the Fall to a historical event involving two historical individuals named Adam and Eve.  It is much easier to for instance turn the story of Noah into an adventure on a boat or to argue the architectural viability of a boat that large made without modern materials, it is much harder to grapple with God being so distressed by humanity that he wished to destroy the creation (you could in fact translate the verb in Gen 6:6 I think it is as God repented of having created man).

The Eastern Orthodox (or at least our old friend Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov) have this idea of the universal culpability of man; that is, that as far as I am guilty of sin, I am responsible for all the sin in the world.  I hear that they interpret Paul's talk of Adam in Romans 5 as being representative of all mankind.  Since I am guilty of sin, I can no more blame Adam for the Fall than myself; we are all responsible and we are responsible for each other.  Now let me say two things about this before relating it back to our main topic.  First, that I like this idea very much.  It explains things, shows our interconnectedness- a guy struggles with lust, a girl with body issues or eating disorders and we think these things are unrelated.  It puts us in a position of responsibilty and shows how damaging sin it to the world and the impossibility of it being truly private.  Second, this does not sit easily with the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin.  It shifts the blame from an inherited propensity to sinfulness to the personal sinful act.  But I find it impossible to judge between the two.  Human memory functions in such a way that we seem to begin life in media res, the story is already in progress by the time we get to it; that is to say, I can't remember myself not being or my entering into conciousness, neither can I remember my first beginning to sin.  So whether we sin because we inherit the taint of Original Sin or we just start sinning early on, on our own steam so to speak, the result is the same- a loss of fellowship with God.

Now if I remember right, in the opening chapters of Genesis, Adam is referred to as "the adam"- the man or the dirt-guy (adamah the Hebrew word for earth is where we get adam from) and Eve is called the woman, they don't have proper names.  So then perhaps the story becomes instead of a historical account of specific people, a general account of what man and woman always choose to do- desire to be God and fall out of fellowship.  This then is where our idea about universal culpability comes into play, we all are Adam choosing to fall.  After the Fall is when they receive their proper names I think, after that we can talk of historical people in what we can recognize as historical settings.  The first chapters of Genesis are unique in that they portray a mode of being that is different from what we experience.  As far a part as my life is from say, Abraham, I can imagine myself in his setting, dealing with the same problems; I can not imagine life in the Garden.  This is why I don't see the point in tying Adam and Eve to individual people in a recognizable setting, we could not relate to them before the Fall anyway.  The theological truth, that we are fallen and that we carry some sort of guilt over are exile is what is important. 

The other big question is death before the Fall, a big subject.  But I have written for far too long by now anyway and will leave that, for now, to a later post.

Father Damien just got canonized...

I hadn't actually heard of him before, but Father Damien, a Belgian priest who ministered to lepers in Hawaii, just got canonized this past Sunday.  He's a "martyr of charity", he eventually contracted leprosy and died of it from his years of ministry to them.  Anyway here's his wikipedia article, good to see stuff like this.

And because it's just that kind of night....

Another poem.  YAY!

This one has a weird story accompanying it: I wrote it while I was (almost) asleep.  It was one of those long mornings where I had a late class and could lounge around in bed, floating in and out of sleep.  Anyway as seems to often happen to me, upon waking- and here I use the term pretty loosely- I had a song stuck in my head, except that what I had was not exactly a song but that fake interview David Crowder does at the end of his A Collision album with the clueless interviewer.  In it, you hear the violin piece, "The Lark Ascending" (the part Crowder uses comes about 5 min. in) which is based on a poem by George Meredith, which I found online, (or just watch this video of lava lamp and skip to about 7 min in)

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings

Anyway I was kind of thinking about that and how Crowder said he often didn't feel like the lark and how un-larky I myself felt.  I then somehow, and here is where my memory gets a bit hazy, composed a poem in my head about my non-larkishness, thought about it a bit as I lay there, thought it worthwhile enough to write down, got up, wrote it, and promptly fell back asleep.  Weird.  Anyway the poem doesn't really have a title, although I thought about using the horrendously cheesy pun "Birds of Pray".  I ended up not because I thought someone might:

a) think I really thought that was a legitimate title and was myself horrendously cheesy

                          or

b) say to themselves, "Birds of Pray, hmm, you know I like that"

either of which would miss the point. The relation between God and man is at some level comic (and not just in the old Shakespearean sense that it all ends in a wedding).  There is something so incongruous about approaching God in prayer that makes us all seem a bit ridiculous- like being a bit under-dressed somehow (a feeling me and my flip-flops have often experienced), but yet he takes us seriously, helps us in our weakness.  Anyway the poem which shall remain nameless...

It seems prayers not personified

take up alien, avian forms

Some are ascending larks

or wandering woodcocks

strongly winged eagles

or light descending doves

but mine often take the form

of fat, self-satisfied pigeons

squat, couched carriers who've forgotten

their vocation and wander about low,

close to the ground and winging weakly

til fast-rushing Pneuma comes, meets

bears upward to ancient, holy skies.

                                             -1/12/09

Poetry: A post you should probably just go ahead and skip....

So it's been awhile since I posted much of anything, it's been even longer since I put up any poetry.  Let me preface this by saying that I am not a poet.  I'm too lazy.  I like to explain things too much.  And I just don't have that certain je ne sais quoi, as the French and pretentious English speakers say, that makes a person a poet.  So what you get is somewhat crappy free verse with no sense of meter (and I'm not saying this out of false modesty, hoping someone will contradict me- "Oh, they're not so bad"- they are bad- as poetry at least). Nonetheless I do like to write it because it allows me a mode of expression that communicates more than simple description could.  The following poem, which I wrote almost exactly a year ago, is a case in point; I could say that I wrestle with God and that my thoughts are somehow tied up with everything I feel about my dad (a prospect which terrifies me about my own future kids- but that's probably a ways off... a long ways) or I could show it.  This poem is by no means an allegory, I really did used to wrestle with my dad when I was little (though we probably called it wrasslin') and I did like to climb up into his big leather recliner while he was gone- but that does not mean there isn't something more going on.  Poetry, or some other type of creative writing, allows the author to show this- it invites the reader to share in the story and see how these connections exist.  So, as I'm sure the suspense is killing you, here it is:

Father's Chair

I climb up, a child or old man, into Father's chair

It's soft- plush, full-grain leather- a contrast

to rough, scraggled hair, the birth or remnants of a beard

that scratched me as we wrestled,

Father is gone now, off to work perhaps,

or in simple absence for my benefit; the manliness

I feel approaching his chair, covertly or by institutionalized means

and sitting and smelling, familiar, masculine Father-smell;

remembering strong hands; gruff sports that drew me

close up; occasional victories, my own doing or not,

that made me like him.  And these

soft, still moments,

intimacy in absence

that perhaps no father and son can speak of,

eternal memory

that I am his, in my Father's chair.

                                 -10/12/08