The Wood between the Worlds
Friday, October 24, 2003
This really persistent girl outed me as a conservative today, so we'll see where that goes. Nowhere good, I expect; still, I can't really see the point in a direct lie.
There is a nearly perfect unspoken consensus on political and social issues here. This perfectly nice guy overheard me saying that it was really a pity to politicize people's choices and in doing so deprive them of a chance to be happy. His response was "Typical conservative thing to say." Since I had been basically agreeing with a black girl who was complaining about how black-solidarity ideology made marriage difficult for successful black women, it was a bit surprising. But the thing is, he's right. She was obviously aware that she was uncomfortably close to heresy, and I was forthrightly in it.
Still, it's amazing how many people are willing to believe that kindness and decency are planks in a political platform.
A single error unites all beliefs that reduce people to skins thinly stretched over a flesh of propositions. It is to insist that words precede experience, whether logically or ontologically. All of us troglodyte conservatives are well accustomed to seeing the faults in grossly reductionist systems like Marxism or Freudianism, but in more or less subtle form the error affects almost everyone today. I have been slow coming to it, yet it's not hard to escape, except that it is so pervasive that it can hardly be seen.
When someone says, "There must be a god/the Good/a logos for there to be good," he makes the same error. This must be a primary experience for any sane man: good exists. It exists whatever else happens; nothing can erase the fact of its existence. This truth is easily hidden, because there are so many ways that the primary experience can be affected by beliefs subsequently. Beliefs can easily prevent a man from acknowledging what it is that he experiences; they can cause him to deny the experience in retrospect; they can even lead him to avoid any repetition of the experience. And belief is useful for its explanatory power: "Good can't be explained without reference to a god/the Good/a logos" is a possibly true statement. And "I can't explain good without reference to a god/the Good/a logos" is very often indeed a true statement for the speaker. But good exists regardless.
Nor is this a defense of some loathsome variant of Platonism. The good that exists is not a reified abstract, but a recognizable kind of experience, as little as a touch at the right time, as much as an attic hiding place. Everything else is at best an explanation, and as such, is subject to the frailty of the human intellect, but the existence of each good act is as absolute as a rock or a stump.
If a sane man loves his wife, he must recognize that the fact precedes its explanation. If he then says that he believes that love is not actually something itself, but a product of the selfish gene/gender domination/class struggle/the id etc., he is either lying to himself in a particularly foolish way, or in fact is not sane at all. It might be, in a strictly theoretical sense, that what he calls his love is in fact just an extrusion of one of those ideas into perceptible form; but for him to believe it, he must be insane.
(It is a fact often overlooked, that there are a very great number of beliefs that, regardless of their ontological status, are humanly false and require madness to believe. If a man tells me that he believes that the CIA shot Kennedy, I immediately know him for the common or garden-variety maniac that he is. Yet it is of course in strict terms possible that a CIA agent shot Kennedy. More than that, he could even be right, and I wrong, and yet he would be the madman. The reason is in the kind of thinking required by the belief. Assuming that my frothing friend is, as I am, very far removed indeed from the events of Nov. 22, 1963, then he must rely on the worst kind of rationalizing, conspiracy theorizing, and blind acceptance of dubious authority in order to reach his conclusion. The truth of the single proposition finally arrived at is in fact not relevant to a consideration of the nature of his mental process.)
More subtly than a reductionist, anyone who says that he must believe God exists before his love for his wife has any meaning, has fallen into a terrible madness. That God exists may be an excellent explanation for his love, it may increase the enjoyment he feels when he remembers experiences of it, it may lead him to experience it more often, it may even lead him to a more effective practice of it. But his love is the fact, and God is the theory. If a man needs a theory to believe his own experience, he is mad.
I have actually heard a man, a truly good man, say that did he not believe in God, he would commit all manner of evil. Here the error has snuck in again. Evil is not to be done because that is what evil means. We all experience, both giving and receiving, evil in many forms, and the nature of the experience is that it carries with it the immediate perception that it is to be avoided, a singularly powerful revulsion. That we so often do not avoid it does not change the experience, but speaks instead to the universal madness of our race, that we do the evil that we do not want, and we want the good that we do not do.
Belief in God, again, may provide an excellent theory of evil, and in fact be true; but no sane man should need the theory to know his experience.
Flory
It might seem ignominious to believe something on compulsion, because I can't help believing it; when reason awakes in a man it asks for reasons for everything. Yet this demand is unreasonable: there cannot be a reason for everything. It is mere automatic habit in the philosopher to make this demand, as it is in the common man not to make it. When once I have admitted the facts of nature, and taken for granted the character of animal life, and the incarnation of spirit in this animal life, then indeed many excellent reasons for the belief in substance will appear. (Santayana,Skepticism and Animal Faith, 186)
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
You can call me by my real name
Yeah you can call me humanity
Because it all seems just like human behavior
It all seems like human behavior to me
Put it down to the devil in me.
--Harding, The Devil in Me
First off, Archie, a.k.a. "Old 76" [Trombones], has really come through with the goods. It's like a big parade in my CD player, lo even two big parades, and the heavens rolled up like a scroll and a great voice spake unto me saying, "You're the last one standing / Lean and hungry with a fire in your eyes."
Second, a few weeks ago I sent off to an independent research laboratory and the report just came back. It's a great deal, all you have to do is write up a research program and they send back an invoice. You have to pay in full up front, but they refund half in case they fail to obtain usable results (since the Hume Act passed, you also have to indemnify them against liability for the basic fallaciousness of induction).
So the packet came today, and the summary is, they found that the distribution of women like my girlfriend is 1:3.5E+09 (p=.05). They also added, "Does she have any sisters?" but I thought that was a little unprofessional and not statistically sound.
Flory
Paul continues to absorb my attention, although I can only hope that some paper topic will come out of it, since nothing I've written about so far would be suitable. I finally had a chance to visit the graduate library proper (since the departmental library is not well equipped with biblical reference works) to look up the dikaio- root. Unfortunately I didn't find anything addressing the specifically Roman context of slavery and vindicatio that seems to me so much at work in Romans 6, but then again I only spent an hour researching.
Still, I found a lot of interesting information. First, the consensus is that "set free" or "liberate" or something quite similar is the meaning in Romans 6. The Analytical Lexicon of the New Testament (ed. Friberg, 2000) in its entry for dikaiow says, "[E]xperientially, of imparted right, as freedom from sin's power: make free, release, set free; passive, be set free (RO 6.7)." The Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Spicq, originally published 78 and 82) subordinates discussion of the meaning "to liberate" to an interrogative footnote; Spicq (a Dominican, as it happens) doesn't commit himself, but describes seven ways in which dikaiow has the sense of a concrete change (340). He makes clear that all the dikaio- words differ considerably from secular meanings in their N.T. use, because of the influence of the Septuagint.
The source of that difference is explained in detail by The Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period (eds. Neusner, Green, 1996). Because the Septuagint had to render into Greek Hebraic terms peculiar to Judaism, many Greek words acquired, first for the Jews, then for the Christians, meanings explainable only by reference to their Hebrew source. In this case, the dikaio- root matches the tzdk root in Hebrew (531-532). (Since I don't know any Hebrew, I am entirely dependent on these reference works, but they provide supporting citations from the O.T., which I'll pass on.) The tzdk root in the forms tzedek and tzedekah, corresponding to dikaiosunh, means "righteousness, justification, rescue, innocence" and good order within a covenant (531). All the sources agree, in fact, that the secular, juridical sense is only a small part of the biblical meaning. The D.J.B.P. adds that tzdk, mishpat, justice, and hesed, grace, are critical covenant terms. It cites Hos. 2:18-2:20 as an instance of a covenant declaration using all three terms:
18 In that day I will make a covenant for themThis use of "righteousness" in a covenantal declaration is clearly echoed in Rom. 1:16-17: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith” (NIV). Notice the same ideas recurring: safety, salvation, righteousness, faithfulness, and faith. There is no juridical element here at all, although to be sure the pantokrator (Rom. 2:16) later is obviously juridical. I think that Paul intends the two ideas to be separate, but, as I argued before, it is enough that they are logically distinct. Similarly, in the Pentateuch, the punishments attendant on violation of the covenant are logically distinct from the covenant itself, being consequences of the covenant and therefore logically subordinate. That is to say, the covenant comes first, by grace from God in His righteousness (salvific power) and the human response and resulting punishment or reward come after.
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.
19 I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in
righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.
20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD. (NIV)
This is all running on a bit, so I'll just mention another work, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology (eds. Richardson, Bowden, 1983), which says that the idea of "imputation" or a legal fiction is "not preferable" in translating dikaio- words (507). It also mentions that Luther is now (in 1983 at any rate) almost universally acknowledged to be right about Rom. 1:17 meaning that the righteousness of God meant deliverance of the wicked from guilt and sin and not the wrath of 1:18ff, which I take to mean that the Roman Church of his day disagreed. There was a very large series on Roman theology nearby but I'm afraid I didn't investigate what I suspect to be the case, that taking 1:17 as a reference to wrath led to the horribly works-oriented Catholicism of Luther's day. So you'll just have to take that as speculation for now, although if I remember I'll look it up. In any case, when in an earlier post I said Luther was probably all wrong, I was thinking of imputation only and so was wrong myself through overstatement.
To conclude, the D.J.B.P. cites a powerful example of "righteousness" (tzedakah) used in parallel with "salvation," (teshuah):
I am bringing my righteousness near,It compares well with Paul's use: "For anyone who has died is freed from sin [dedikaiwtai]" (6:7) and "You have been set free from sin [eleuqerwqentes] and have become slaves to righteousness [dikaiosunh]" (6:18). The last verse, I think, could reasonably be paraphrased "The righteousness of God, which is salvation, has freed you from sin and so you have come under His covenant." The parallel with entering into Zion (cf. Deut. 26) seems very strong to me. What I don't see is anything juridical at all.
it is not far away;
and my salvation will not be delayed.
I will grant salvation to Zion,
my splendor to Israel. (Isa. 46:13, NIV)
Flory
"To the master of my life, to the owner of my strength, to the praepositus [local ruler] Abinaeus: from Pallas . . . I earnestly beseech you that you . . . give my wife some sheep. . . . You know, my lord, that I have none. I am your servant forever." (A late Roman legal document [PAbin. 36] from a tenant to his landlord, qtd. in Whittaker, 259.)Everyone who does not bear in his heart thanksgiving and constant gratitude for our freedom, unparalleled in the history of man, from this kind of foul subservience of man to man, deserves only contempt for the blind fool that he is.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Finally a story about Lagado University, which I attend as a result of a considerable error of judgment on the part of the admissions office. The chief product of this academy is enthusiastic theorizing, called social and political on the same principle by which, in optical theory, objects are said to be a certain color, namely, that that color is the only one of which the object has no part. This principle easily escapes the casual observer and leads to confusion over the use of such terms to describe a highly developed hatred for society and the polity. Last week was an annual festival of thanksgiving called OutWeek, during which the academics gather to give worship to the gods of the body and to secure by their praise an abundant crop of orgasms in the following year.
On Friday I happened to observe part of one of these rituals; more usually I know of them by the paper votive tablets and chalk inscriptions they leave behind. On the broad steps of the research library, which faces a small square, three diminutive priests stood bracketed by very large loudspeakers. The religious dress of the priests was all black and close-fitting, as is seen in some other sects, but distinguished by enormous feathery plumes of bright green, pink, and yellow, which were attached to fillets bound about their jet hair. The priests themselves were, as their god demands, of ambiguous sex, and very well matched in slightness of size and build, which is considered auspicious.
As I arrived, they had begun the litany, which was of admirable simplicity and well received by the congregation gathered in the square. The priests were bouncing up and down on their feet and thus keeping a loose rhythm for the litany. One of the priests leaned forward and with a thin shout amplified to deafening volume, began:
"When we say FUCK
you say GENDER;
When we say FUCK
you say GENDER!"
Then all three together shouted "FUCK" and the congregation replied, "GENDER!" In their spiritual elation the congregation also include a second or two of hooting and whistling after their response. The call and response continued as the priest had prescribed, for four or five more calls, until he shouted,
"Now when we say GENDER
you say FUCK;
Now when we say GENDER
you say FUCK!"
It was then taken up by the congregation as before. Unfortunately just then the clock tower showed that my class was about to begin, so I had to leave before I could discover whether the liturgy was building towards a sacrifice, and what it might be.
Flory
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Regarding the conclusion of the last post, I should say that, applying the casuistic principles (an oxymoron if ever there were one) regularly used by Catholics to reconcile a tender conscience to a black lie, I have come up with no fewer than four distinct ways to render the oath "I believe all that the Catholic Church teaches is true" a tautology or little better. Nor do they require any outlandish steps, but instead rely solely on proven techniques. I should add that I learned these techniques from the Pope's Jubilee apologies; from Hardon, author of a popular catechism (as opposed to the official catechism, which is rather dry); from the oleaginous Cardinal Newman; from a Catholic professor; and from a priest, although I have to say that the priest's method was the weakest of the lot.
In fact now that I think of it, I have to record it here. I have to say, I really like this priest and in fact tried desperately not to argue about infallibility, but nevertheless ended up hearing this. His answer to the manifold contradictions of infallibility is to "see each doctrine in its context in history," because "one thing is needed at a certain time or in a particular place" but not necessarily elsewhere.
There are, of course, a great many problems with this explanation. I'm going to leave aside the basic problem, that this explanation is not remotely what the infallibilists believe, and a fortiore not what Pius IX believed. That is a failure common to all attempts to explain the dogma away, so it's not very interesting. Apart from that, the first thing that struck me was that either the priest had not considered the moral problems of infallibility, instead sticking only to the historical contradictions (e.g., Unam Sanctam vs. Unitatis Redintegratio), or he believes morality also to be localized. Because, of course, the popes many times over taught murder, which is indeed a teaching on faith and morals, in its special way. He could, possibly, not see a moral conflict, but as I say, he's a nice guy and better than that.
The second problem is that it turns the eternal absolutes of infallibility into ephemeral and local statements. It is possible that the current formulation of infallibility does not explicitly refer to the lasting nature of infallible statements. That is merely the implication of the word "true." And, unfortunately, the formulation, at the first Vatican Council anyway, was "Romani Pontificis definitiones esse ex sese, non autem ex consensu ecclesiae, irreformabiles" (Plummer, 10). That is, "That the pronouncements of the Roman Pontiff are, from him and not from the consensus of the Church, unalterable." Possibly the second Vatican Council changed this formula, although that would itself be pretty funny. Still, the meaning of "true" is pretty hard to get around, so long as words are allowed to mean what they do; and "infallible" means at least "true." (Although the Catechism does imply and state that there are different degrees of truth; not of certainty, but of truth; this is in itself a contemptible enough doctrine to sustain a great empire of casuists for millenia.)
The third problem is that the popes were not so obliging as to word their pronouncements in ways that leave room for such localizing. Since it was the priest's own example, I'll quote from Unam Sanctam.
A spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one. This authority, moreover, even though it is given to man and exercised through man, is not human but rather divine, being given by divine lips to Peter and founded on a rock for him and his successors through Christ Himself whom He has confessed; the Lord Himself saying to Peter: "Whatsoever thou shalt bind," etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God, unless he makes believe, like the Manichean, that there are two beginnings. This we consider false and heretical, since by the testimony of Moses, not "in the beginnings," but "in the beginning" God created the heavens and the earth.I don't know, but "every human creature" sounds pretty universal, as does the imprecation against Manicheans with their two beginnings and the argument from the creation of the world itself. This new explanation (also offered by the honest fellows over at the Catholic Encyclopedia) posits really any number of beginnings as this ordained power flickers in and out of existence to suit political need. Is this a hyper-Manichaeism?
Indeed we declare, say, pronounce, and define that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
Again, as I say, the frustrating thing is that on the whole the experience of Catholicism can be quite a bit better than this and even very appealing (although the culture of Catholicism is a deadly blight); the Mass has preserved a very fine and thoroughly Christian form of worship, and there is never any call to undergo any more. It's just necessary for mental health to amputate the gangrenous limb of papal authority.
Ugh, illness and procrastination caught up with me at once, hence the dead air. I am still severely behind so this will be a bit rushed. I will come back to the use of dikaiow to mean "set free" or something very similar. For now I'll just say that my little N.T. glossary includes that definition, specifically for Romans 6. Not a scholarly source then, but given the way vindicatio (the legal means of testing and transferring ownership of slaves and other property) worked in the Roman world, it seems a very reasonable extension of "judged to be right," in the context of Paul's slave and master imagery. But as I say I'll come back to it after doing some more research. Still, even if it turns out to be insupportable, it will hardly change the point of the last post.
Because I don't have any time, and I've already got the materials at hand, I'm going to return to Catholicism. It's particularly a good idea now, too, because I'm afraid the last couple of posts must look like giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Well, the Vaticanists (as Acton called them) are out of luck. First, on the matter of infallibility, its limits, and the moral danger it poses: here is what Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621) had to say about papal authority:
Si autem papa erraret praecipiendo vitia, vel prohibendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona et virtutes mala, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare. (Acton, Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality, 285)But that's fine, after all that was then and this is now; like Huck, let's just take no stock in dead people. Unfortunately, Bellarmine is quite an important theologian; he was canonized in 1930 and made a Doctor of the Church in 1931. Here is what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about him:
But if the pope were to err by prescribing vices or by prohibiting virtues, the Church would be bound to believe that vices were good and virtues evil, unless it wished to sin against its conscience.
His spirit of prayer, his singular delicacy of conscience and freedom from sin, his spirit of humility and poverty, together with the disinterestedness which he displayed as much under the cardinal's robes as under the Jesuit's gown, his lavish charity to the poor, and his devotedness to work, had combined to impress those who knew him intimately with the feeling that he was of the number of the saints.It is nice to see that the Catholic Encyclopedia maintains the same commitment to the pious lie as ever. That, or so calloused are their consciences that to them Bellarmine can really seem to have "a singular delicacy of conscience."
Then again, what can you expect from those wholeheartedly attached to the idea that the teaching of a man such as Innocent IV could be infallible in any circumstances. One of his teachings on faith and morals was that "every priest was bound to obey him, even in unjust things" (Acton, 285). Of course there would be some casuistic response, probably that an immoral teaching cannot be a teaching on morals; but that principle, that private conscience can determine what is infallible, is directly contrary to the will and intention of the popes. It also blows infallibility to bits, reducing it to the tautology, "When the pope teaches truly, he teaches truly," and putting the judgment of the truth of a teaching in the conscience of the believer. As nice as that would be for those Catholics whose conscience is still so tender as to shrink from calling vices good and virtues evil, yet who cannot reject the words of the dogma of infallibility, the intellectual corruption required is very nearly as bad as the moral corruption of going along with the dogma as stated.
Or else the defense might be that Innocent IV did not teach it from an ecumenical council. This defense unfortunately fails on two counts; first, the Catechism repeatedly enjoins the believer to obedience in all things, regardless of their status regarding infallibility (e.g., section 892). Second, the Catechism clearly states that the pope is infallible in himself, without reference to the bishops or the people of the church (cf. section 891). Well, I say clearly, but in fact it's scattered around such that it must be hard for less legalistically minded people to follow it. The really painful blow to the idea that there are limits on the pope's infallibility is dealt by sections 97 and 100, in combination with 895. I don't have time to paste in the text, but the result is that the Word of God is defined to be Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, and the interpretation of the Word of God is reserved for "the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him"; then the nature of that reservation is spelled out to mean "the Pope alone; or the Pope with the bishops." Although it's fairly obvious once the sections are assembled, it's still reassuring to hear from Pio Nono himself what Sacred Tradition meant to him. During the Council, after being criticized for pointing out that in the first fourteen centuries of the Roman church, the doctrine of infallibility was unknown, "[Cardinal] Guidi replied that he had merely held fast to the doctrine of tradition; to which Pius made the famous and characteristic rejoinder, 'La tradizione son'io.'" (Plummer, 11 fn. 5). That is, "I am the tradition."
Most unfortunate, then, that the current pope beatified Pius a few years ago. The comprehensive moral and intellectual corruption of Catholicism revolts me so strongly that it is scarcely possible to contain at times; this is all the worse for knowing from experience that one could attend Mass every day for a lifetime and not be called on even to think of any of the problematic dogmas. Except, of course, that to be confirmed you have to say that you believe that all that the Catholic Church teaches is true; so the filthy lie touches everyone, even if most people are protected by their innocence of history and theology.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Just a little more on justification. I didn't define my terms, and as a result someone referred me to one of the many passages where Paul is talking about the importance of justification. The trouble is this: in considering justification, there are actually three different meanings (at least). First, it can mean "being set free to be right with God"; the Greek word-stem in question is said to mean, in addition to "justification" and "righteousness," something like "being set free," which is supported by the passages in Romans where Paul pairs one of the noun forms with the verb unambiguously meaning "having been freed" (eleuqerwqeis; e.g. 6:18). Quite apart from what being set free actually means, the clear intention is to describe what the result in life of justification is: the individual is free. Second, justification can mean the eternal result, which has a very concrete sense in Paul: the individual will escape the universal judgment unscathed. Third, justification can mean the explanation for how all this happens.
The first two meanings can easily be complicated by an attempt to derive a system from them, but as they appear in Paul they are not actually tremendously complicated, in themselves. The first meaning, of being set free, is part of his extended metaphor of slavery. Except that it probably wasn't a metaphor to him. Sin really was an evil spirit, an enemy, something dwelling in the individual. The Qumran community apparently had worked out a similar idea, although I haven't read about it, so I don't know for myself. At any rate, Paul is so bloody-mindedly literal about his "metaphor" that I really can't see the point in trying to soften the blow. You are literally a slave of a literal spirit of sin that controls you against your will (cf. Romans 7, although who is being described at this point is controversial; probably not Paul himself, and possibly only a hypothetical Gentile listener). The second meaning is also not complicated; very soon, when the end times come, Christ Pantocrator will judge everyone (each by his works, awkwardly enough for some theories), but you'll escape the "wrath" (orgh). If you had never heard about Christianity and Paul came up and started reeling off Romans at you, you wouldn't think these two points were cryptic--although maybe crazy.
I gather that the third meaning, which is the explanation of how you come to be justified in sense one (free) and sense two (wrathless and fancy free), is the one that so bitterly divided believers. That was before near-defeat by secularism taught them to smile while they called each other idiots. In any case, I think that the complication here is still missing the point. The answer to how you were justified is, Paul or one of his associates, who derived their authority ultimately from the Pentecost (or, for Paul, direct from Christ), came along, persuaded you of the truth of Christ's gift, and then baptized you. Then all you had to do was be perfect until the end times came, which were scheduled for sometime not long after tomorrow.
I'm sure that sounds horribly anti-intellectual, because there is no theory in it anywhere, and answers everything with an action: be baptized to go free and escape wrath. But this is pretty obviously the answer to the question, "What did Paul mean by justification?" Remember that belief has both objective and subjective elements, and it is always at least valid to answer a question about someone else's belief by pointing to what he says and does. Systematizing, though, is an attempt to supply the subjective element, to answer the question, "How did this all hang together for Paul; what sense or order did he perceive behind his actions?"
I think systematizing is a mistake. The actions here have two characteristics that suggest that systematizing is exactly the wrong thing to do. First, they are crazy. Fine, I believe in them, but they are pretty nuts; let's call them mystical. At any rate it's a horrible place to start insisting on systematic reasoning. Second, the actions themselves are crystal clear. Be baptized that you may go free and avoid the wrath. There is nothing hard to understand about that, if you look just at what is asked of you and what you are to gain, i.e. if you look at what matters to a real human being. So, mystical source, completely lucid actions: in sum, avoid systematizing.
Of course Paul's plain and simple action ran into trouble. Christ did not return as scheduled and two complications arose. First, the people Paul baptized couldn't quite keep up the being-pure. This problem would plague the Church until it was finally settled that "we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sin"--what was that, at Nicaea, 250 years later? Although, of course, that still left the question of forgiveness after baptism, whence penance, in the 7th or 8th century. Second, now there was a very long time between gaining justification in the first sense of going free and the second sense of avoiding wrath. In fact, people came to live whole lives and die in the interval between those two states. So what do you do with yourself? It's not a given that gaining justification in the first sense means gaining it in the second sense; Paul is pretty vague, almost certainly because his sense of the imminence of the end made the difference very small. Do you have to keep working at sanctification in some way to gain (or keep) justification in the second sense, which definitely has some support in Paul, or can you just hang on to your manumission-stub and show it to the Pantocrator later for a free pass?
I don't care. What sane person could? You will live the same life and do the same things in either case; the slight differences in actions are imperceptible from anywhere but inside a systematized explanation, which will be crazy itself. I know theologians aren't allowed to answer questions like this, because You Must Have System as a theologian, but we aren't theologians, thank God, nor philosophers, and are free to be rational about our mysticism.
Flory
Philosophers have no field-work to do, or laboratory-work, or studio-work. They occupy themselves exclusively with words. As everyone is apt to overestimate the importance of his own occupation, delusions about the power of words are an occupational hazard with philosophers. In fact that is putting it much too mildly. The truth is that a difficulty in distinguishing words from the world, or from God or God's words, is a weakness to which philosophers as a class are peculiarly and painfully prone. . . . If this fact gives philosophy a deep affinity with lunacy, I am sorry for it, but it cannot be helped. David Stove, The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, 31
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
The two great principles deriving from the Reformation, to me, are the liberation of the Bible and liturgy to be in the common tongue and the permanent destruction of the Church's temporal power, direct or indirect, weak or strong. Those two principles express one goal: an end to tyranny over mind, spirit, and body. Of course some of the Reformers, having sought necessary political backing against Roman persecution, went on to establish their own smaller tyrannies; those who did, deserve condemnation, too. In the end, although sometimes much later, the work of all brought about true liberty for men; in the meantime, in the regional fractures, there was at least liberty for peoples.
I leave out the doctrine of justification. Quite apart from the near assurance that Luther was simply wrong root and branch in his reading of Romans (Augustine, too), it is a mystery to me how anyone, now, so far removed from the political and ethnic divisions that then enlivened the debate and spiced it with the fear of death, can attach great weight to this refinement of theology. Studying Paul lately, I have kept a close watch out for the part where he says "Through Christ's death I have died to death, through His resurrection, I have gained new life; He has made me a part of His Body and when this age passes away, as it even is now, I, and the entire world, will be eternal and uncorrupt under His Lordship; this is my gospel for you; but if you don't figure out exactly how God does this, you're off to Hell."
Which is all to say, that reading Paul and hearing him thunder eschatological mysticism and make promises that stun reason, the question of justification must dwindle to a jot or note, if the reader has any imagination at all. How can you stand in front of him as he promises that a man, Jesus, the Christ, Kyrios, and Huios Theou, died and lives again, and now has an uncorrupt body and dwells in Heaven; not only that, but that He and the power of Sin which rules this world have begun a mortal combat fought with angels and demons in which all will be overthrown, and the world made new; and that you, the person standing there, are called to be part of Christ's Body and to share in all that He has done and will do; and that it is no metaphor, but physical, real, happening twi nun kairwi, in the moment ordained by God, now, for the night is far spent, the day is at hand—how can you stand before him and say, "Well, I don't know, that part about being judged righteous is pretty fishy, I want to settle that first"?
Shows a lack of discernment, is what I'm saying. Theology matters, but come on people, get a grip. If this is all true and not the raving of a tentmaker in need of medication, then we have bigger problems than whether or not our assent is needed in some way.
But only a moral cripple can fail to see the evil of tyranny, and only a fool needs biblical support before he resists it.
Flory
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. (Rev. 19:11-16, and a good reminder that careful thinking about the Bible starts with frank acknowledgement that it's not exactly transparent and that the people who wrote these things were not like us.)
Monday, October 06, 2003
Today I picked up Conversations with Dr. Dollinger and Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality, by Acton. The latter has his essays "The Pope and the Temporal Power" and "The Pope and the Council" (the review of the book co-written by Dollinger), so I'm looking forward to it. I'm finishing a short survey called Varieties of Ultramontanism, edited by Jeffrey von Arx, S.J.; several historians take one Ultramontane bishop each, covering all the important western nations in the period immediately before and during the Vatican Council. The bishops varied a fair bit in how tolerable they were; at least a couple seem to have missed the creak of the rack, although of course all of them wanted the complete ascendancy of the Pope.
The most interesting thing is how much variety there was in Catholicism before the Vatican Council (which Arx calls the triumph of Ultramontanism). In Germany, Dollinger, as one of the greatest theologians of the century, represented the scholarly, open German Church. Germany even had a vital pastoral movement based on a Catholic theology worked out in keeping with Enlightenment thought. I really want to see what that looked like, but will probably not get to it for a while. It was condemned by the blessed Pius IX, of course. Dollinger himself was eventually excommunicated for resisting the innovation of infallibility.
Meanwhile in Ireland, the Catholic Ireland we assume today to be traditional was being created. The native Catholic church was substantially different from the Roman church in its devotions and relation to the state. In fact most of the devotions that I think of as typically Catholic turn out to be almost exclusively Roman practices that were exported by Rome through the Ultramontanists in the mid-19th century. The new practices
included the rosary, forty hours, perpetual adoration, novenas, blessed altars, Via Crucis, benediction, vespers, devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Conception, jubilees, triduums, pilgrimages, shrines, processions, and retreats. . . . [P]ublic exercises were also reinforced by the use of devotional tools and aids: beads, scapulars, medals, missals, prayer books, catechisms, holy pictures, and Agnus Dei, all blessed by priests who had recently acquired that privilege from Rome through the intercession of their bishops. (Larkin, qtd. in Varieties of Ultramontanism, 81)The Mass was also standardized, wherever the Tridentine changes had not taken hold (as in Ireland) or local variation had occured (as in Germany). I hope to read more about the Mass soon, because despite current Catholic prejudice, which declares all Catholic practices to be eternal and unchanging, there have been at least three major recensions of the liturgy, and in the first two (at Trent and at the Vatican Council) there was the express purpose of eliminating local traditions. Vatican II apparently granted more local autonomy, as well as the welcome admission of worship in the common tongue, so I also wonder how much it was a tacit acknowledgment of the persistence of local traditions despite the earlier efforts.
The first book I mentioned, which is a journal of conversations with Dollinger kept by the Catholic New Testament scholar Alfred Plummer, has already yielded a little treasure. First, the preface quotes Plummer's excellent epitome of the problem with authoritarianism: "In the whole history of human thought, it has never happened, and never will happen that a question once raised has been settled or silenced by authority" (xliii; his italics). Second, and astonishing even given all the terrible things Pius IX did, is this footnote Plummer includes:
Pius IX is firmly convinced of two things: 1. that he, like his predecessors, is infallible; 2. that over and above this he is under the special guidance and protection of the Virgin Mary. He has a personal illumination in addition to his official infallibility. In 1866 he said to a crowd of admiring pilgrims, "Seul, j'ai la mission de conduire et de diriger la barque de Pierre. Je suis la voie, la verite, et la vie." Monde, Apr.i.1866; also in Union and Observateur Catholique of that date. (Conversations, 4 fn. 1)The translation of the French is, "I alone have the commission to conduct and direct the ship of Peter. I am the way, the truth, and the life" (cf. John 14:6, where it is merely Jesus who speaks). It is clear that in Pius IX the always thin idea of vicariousness had given way to outright identity.
All in all, it is extremely imprudent for people to say (as Chesterton did in his book on his conversion, and as, I think, Newman also did) that the Roman Church is either the [sole] Church of Christ or else the Antichrist. I think any faithful Catholic would be looking for a tertium quid here.
Flory
A witty member of the Italian nobility said of him [Piux IX], "The other Popes believed they were Christ's Vicars on earth, but this Pope believes that Christ is his Vicar in heaven." (Plummer, 4).
Sunday, October 05, 2003
I'm not planning to write about current events much, but this story is great; who would have thought that even today there would still be Resurrection Men?
"FRENCH VALLEY, California (AP) -- A crematorium owner who removed heads, knees, spines and other parts from dozens of bodies and sold them to medical researchers was sentenced to 20 years in prison."
What next? Wreckers and piss-prophets?
Flory
so if it's true that love will never die
then why do the lovers work so hard to stay alive?
The Cardigans, "Please Sister"
The Cardigans' "Long Gone Before Daylight" is like being electrified by a Valium-powered generator; you're held rigid by the sheer release. Get the import "[+1 Bonus Track]" version (well, all versions are imports, I think); the price isn't great but it's worth it.
I've got this idea that Sweden is just full of women with knock-out voices. I have got to go there.
and if you want me I'm your country
if you win me I'm forever, oh yeah
'cause you're the storm that I've been needing
and all this peace has been deceiving
I like the sweet life and the silence
but it's the storm that I believe in
come and conquer and drop your bombs
cross my borders and kill the calm
bare your fangs and burn my wings
I hear bullets singing
and if you want me I'm your country
if you win me I'm forever, oh yeah
Flory
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Speaking of beliefs, I was reading about ancient sexual beliefs yesterday, and wound up reading Augustine's "Marriage and Concupiscence." That's where he says that Original Sin is passed on by the pleasure in sex. In another work (I'm afraid I didn't note the title) he assures us that should sinless men and women ever have had sex, they certainly wouldn't have enjoyed it. Hilariously, the translation I was reading (the 19th century collected Church Fathers) found that passage so racy that it left it in Latin. I'm told that the old Loebs would sometimes translate into classical Greek or Italian particularly spicy passages in Latin classics.
Anyway the most interesting thing is that while for the most part the ancient Greeks believed that human conception was analogous to a seed falling on soil, the Hippocratic writings (so, Greek) and then the Romans generally believed in some kind of mingling of seeds. They had a basic idea of heredity too, with stronger and weaker seeds determining the child's sex and how much the child would take after each parent.
The seminal elements themselves somehow derived from the bones and flesh of the parents, although there was no agreement on the actual organ of seminal generation. A lot of people thought the spine was the source, since spinal fluid is (somewhat) like semen; others thought the brain, and others other things. At least one person thought that sexual pleasure itself generated the seeds. Augustine roundly attacks that:
The exceptional statement to the general truth, which I do not deny belongs to this passage, is untrue for this reason, because the pleasure in question of carnal concupiscence does not form the seminal elements. These are already in the body, and are formed by the same true God who created the body itself. They do not receive their existence from the libidinous pleasure, but are excited and emitted in company with it. Whether, indeed, such pleasure accompanies the commingling of the seminal elements of the two sexes in the womb, is a question which perhaps women may be able to determine from their inmost feelings; but it is improper for us to push an idle curiosity so far. (Marriage and Concupiscence, chapter 26)Besides the interesting light that quotation shines on Roman sexual beliefs, it is really entertaining to hear Augustine say that of course it can't be pleasure that creates the seeds because (obviously) God created them. And it's even funnier for him to wind it up with a pious little declaration on reining in idle curiousity, after thousands of pages of speculation on all manner of things.
Flory
Friday, October 03, 2003
What is belief? In classics scholarship, the idea of belief itself is held to be "Christianizing," the reading back into antiquity of an anachronistic sense of subjective assurance, or something like that. One should never ask at all what the ancients believed, then; the only problem being that then their religious actions are motiveless. A plaque is dedicated on which a prayer appears asking for aid from the divinized emperor; well then, that is all that is relevant.
The only answer to what the dedicator meant by the action is that he meant to dedicate a prayer asking for aid, etc. The prayer itself can be analyzed literarily and the inscription epigraphically, but the mind of the human who put it up remains a cipher, all to avoid "Christianizing." The difficulty is that the ancients were constantly acting as if their rituals and religious actions actually meant something to them in a personal way; for instance, I just read, in passing, about a 4th century Roman who was horrified to find an imperial cult statue in disrepair.
At the same time, though, Christians do have a distinctive idea of belief, because the overwhelming closeness of God to man seems to demand an emotional response. Not that Christians have a uniform understanding of what that means, since Roman Catholicism has built up a mass of devotional practices that multiply mediators and intercessors and reflect a slightly more classical image of God as a distant king. In any case, through Paul especially, belief is made essential to salvation, although here too there is little enough agreement about what that means in practice. Is belief knowledge (passive, ineluctable) or acceptance of knowledge (active, volitive), or, indeed, both? Or is it even separable from action?
More to the point, given how extensively people lie to themselves and how hard it is to know anything at all about one’s own subjective state, is subjective assurance even a meaningful measure of belief? Someone who cognitively understands the meaning of a belief (that is, the belief as a proposition) and who acts in accordance with it, but who never has any subjective attachment to it all--does he believe?
Thinking about all the different meanings "belief" can have, I’ve written out an outline of "pistiology." I’ve thought of examples for every entry but most of them are pretty obvious, so I’ll only put them in for the less common definitions. Also, any use of "belief" problably implies more than one definition at once, of course.
I. Subjective senses
A. A belief B is believed if the person experiences
1. a negative emotional response when (these are likely in ascending intensity and cumulative)
a) B is not shared by another person.
b) B is rejected by another person.
c) B is insulted by another person.
d) B is rejected by the person himself.
2. a positive emotional response when
a) B is confirmed by another person.
b) B is shared by another person.
c) B is flattered by another person.
d) B is confirmed by the person to himself.
(1) e.g., by the conclusion of a new line of thought.
B. A belief B is believed when it forms an element of the person's thought and
1. B is foundational/axiomatic.
a) e.g., "Reality is purely physical."
2. B is supplementary.
a) e.g., "Good fences make good neighbors."
3. B is decorative.
a) e.g., in Our Lady of Guadalupe; any belief motivated by the aesthetic impulse described by James.
4. B is amusing.
a) e.g., an idea that sustains recurrent daydreams, such as the Mormon belief in the (male) believer's future godship over a planet.
C. A belief B is believed when it provides a principle of action:
1. B guides moral action.
a) e.g., "Murder is wrong."
2. B guides practical/technical action.
a) e.g., the principles of standard accounting.
3. B guides ritual action.
a) e.g., "The Eucharist should be taken every service."
4. B guides amusement.
a) e.g., the rules to a sport.
D. A belief B is believed mystically when
1. B is identical with a mystical experience.
2. B is immediately derived from a mystical experience.
E. Ineluctable "beliefs"? Physical sensations, logical relations, mathematical results, etc.
II. Objective senses
A. A belief B is the name for the motivation of
1. a moral action/inaction
a) possibly distinguished by the cost of action to the doer
2. an association with fellow believers or an exclusion of non believers
a) cf. the beliefs of lodges, where beliefs seem to function merely as devices for inclusion/exclusion.
3. participation in a ritual
4. a habitual action.
B. A belief B is the name for abstaining from a certain action
1. as with II.A.
C. A belief B is the rationalization of a non-rational impulse I.
D. A belief B is the rationalization of a suppressed belief X.
I think all these senses of "belief" are used; the question is what is meant in any particular context. What if, in relation to a proposition "The Spirit proceeds through the Father and the Son," II.A.3 holds: the proposition reasonably describes his participation in ritual, i.e. he says it as part of the creed; but he subjectively has no response to I.A.1-2; and I.C.3, the felt principle of participation, is really "It is wrong to abstain from only one part of a ritual"? What if he does have a subjective response in favor of the proposition, but the subjective response is a conditioned response resulting from years of associating the creed with the overall experience of the liturgy? Is the proposition more or less believed in that case?
Really, I suspect that the only two reliable measures of belief are cognitive and active; if one knows and does, then emotional response is irrelevant. And the cognitive is mostly optional, given that words are fairly plastic (and people rarely understand them anyway) and, especially, many people reliably act according to principles they could not enunciate and might not recognize if given. But it feels very odd to say that one believes in something if there is no subjective attachment at all.
