To be is to do? Or to do is to be?

You can assess any position in philosophy by the relationship it proposes between being and knowing. Some traditions, like the Greek one of Plato and Aristotle, place ontology in the center, while others, like the modern period inaugurated by Descartes, put the emphasis on epistemology. Clearly, however, a complete philosophy will have to do justice to both. Unfortunately, there is a deep and irreducible tension between the two perspectives that makes a reconciliation difficult to achieve. The ontological perspective, "the view from nowhere" (to exploit Thomas Nagel's evocative phrase) seems to leave no room for "the world as I found it" (to borrow an expression from Wittgenstein). If we note further that the world as we experience it, "our world," is essentially temporal, whereas the logical and empirical conditions for experience as such are more spatial, in the most general sense, than temporal, we begin to take a true measure of the problem Godel set for himself. (Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time. I'm away from my home computer; the page no. will show up this afternoon).

This is the dividing line now between "Continental" philosophers and "analytical" ones. By nationality, the former is primarily French, the latter primarily Anglo-American, which is as convenient a place to draw the line as any other, actually, and in some ways more illuminating. Napoleon is supposed to have dismissed the British as "a nation of shopkeepers," and in some ways he was certainly right, and that is certainly the heritage carried to fullest flower in American culture where the only way to determine the value of anything is by what it will fetch in the marketplace. But that, too, reduces to an issue of ontology, or epistemology; if you care to look at it that way.

Epistemology concerns the questions of what we can know, while ontology concerns the questions of what we are. Obviously the two overlap each other, and it is impossible to consider one apart from the other; the question, as usual, is one of emphasis. But it is also a question of practice, praxis as the seminaries teach us to call it. And that, to me, is the most interesting issue. With the elevation of a new Pope, questions of religious comity and ecumenism are suddenly in the air; hopes and questions about reconciliation abound. But, as Yourgrau says, "there is a deep and irreducible tension between the two perspectives that makes a reconciliation difficult to achieve." That tension is over the issue of belief: is religion a matter of faith? or is it a matter of practice? What we know? Or what we are?

The Western emphasis, going back to Hellenestic Greece, has been on epistemology. What we know, determines who we are. This is the stance of Socrates in the Phaedo, where he elucidates the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and of reincarnation, and of learning enough to achieve the "good" (the parable of the cave, usually considered the "heart" of Plato's epistemology, seems to me to be a refinement of thought from the Phaedo, although scholarship may prove my conjecture completely wrong). It is our knowledge that perfects us, that makes us more wholly who we are meant to be. "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free," says Jesus in John's gospel, the most Hellenistic of the four canonicals. By our age, via Romanticism, this becomes the doctrince of "self-actualization," one paved in part by that most Romantic of religious thinkers and theologians, Søren Kierkegaard. As Romanticism taught us, itself reaching back across the centuries to, like the Enlightenment, to the Greeks, our solitary goal is to become most wholly who we are. The twist Romanticism supplied, in the face of the dehumanizing of humanity because of the rise of the machines, was to separate the individual even from society, to set the Byronic figure even against the gods themselves. The Industrial Revolution shattered the Great Chain of Being, and the Romantics kicked it away defiantly. Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer after him, and countless Protestant theologians in between, despised the trappings of Christendom that required no personal commitment on the part of the individual. Christendom that flowered into a world religion because of the conversion of Constantine was now to be seen as the domain only of those faithful enough to struggle with the paradox and the pain of seeing themselves in the hands of the living God. "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die," Bonhoeffer famously stated (and later reconsidered). Kierkegaard, who had written his aesthetic and religious works and planned to retire to a rural Danish Lutheran church (he was a Lutheran seminary student), instead wrote his brutal assault on Bishop Mynster following the latter's death, and upon the state church itself, in his Attack upon 'Christendom.' "What comes out of a person" became the most important thing; but what good could possibly come out of a person with no faith? Faith without works is dead, but works without faith is surely without justification, too.

Which was not, and has not been, the only understanding of Christianity in the world. It has been, rather, the primary Western understanding. The tension has actually been between practice (though not necessarily praxis), and belief. The "liturgical" Western churches, following more or less on the lines of the Roman Catholic church, have always felt a tension between theology (matters of belief) and liturgy (matters of prayer and practice). Even now, a question already arising from the nascent papacy of Benedict XVI is: will he reinstate the Latin mass? A question of practice, informed by questions of theology. But does the practice inform the theology; or the theology, the practice?

Protestant churches feel the same tension, but prefer to emphasize practice arising from belief. The true believer expresses their belief in the practice of worship, preferably by the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions, although in vigor, not tranquility. The emphasis is on the practice, which in turn informs the theology.

But the Eastern churches have followed a different course. The Eastern worship, to begin with (and to speak most generally) centers not on the experience of the individual, but on the atmosphere appropriate to the one being worshipped. Western liturgy tries to recreate, anew and again, the vision of the throne room from First Isaiah. Eastern worship assumes the throne room, and proceeds to honor the presence of the cosmic King. Emphasis is not on personal experience so much as presence. What is in the heart, as God tells Jeremiah, is a mystery even to God. But the person who can practice the prayers and discipline of the religious life is never very far from the true presence.

You may ask: but what if the practice is hollow? But that is a very Western question. Even Tariq Ali, a self-described atheist, says that growing up in Pakistan he was a Muslim simply because everyone was a Muslim. This offends our Western sensibilities, because we consider religion a "private" matter but one the individual must accept or reject. In Eastern cultures, however, the question of acceptance, and its obverse coin face, rejection, simply never occur, says Ali. He was an atheist; and he was a Muslim; and he sees no contradiction in those positions.

Which brings us back to Yourgrau: is it a question of being, or a question of knowing? Most criticism of religion in the Western world focusses on the question of knowing. If we don't know God exists, or don't know exactly what God wants, or don't know for sure which rules of God apply, or how to interpret them, how then do we claim as Christians to know anything at all? Likewise, if we do know these things, how do we restrain from imposing them on everyone else, from defining our truth as the truth absolute and even if we are tolerant of other truths, of not measuring them against ours and finding them, inevitably and if we are honest, wanting?

But what if it is a question of being, instead?

Steppenwolf

This one is for NYMary:

Then the door of the box opened and in came Mozart....He sat there and began busying himself with an apparatus and some instruments that stood beside him. He took it very seriously, tightening this and screwing that, and I looked with wonder at his adroit and nimble fingers and wished that I might see them playing a piano for once. I watched him thoughtfully, or in a reverie rather, lost in admiration of his beautiful and skillful hands, warmed too, by the sense of his presence and a little apprehensive as well. Of what he was actually doing and of what it was that he screwed and manipulated, I took no heed whatever.

I soon found, however, that he had fixed up a radio and put it in going order, and now he inserted the loudspeaker and said: "Munich is on the air. Concerto Grosso in F Major by Handel."

And in fact, to my indescribable astonishment and horror, the devilish tin trumpet spat out, without more ado, a mixture of bronchial slime and chewed rubber; that noise that owners of gramophones and radios have agreed to call music. And behind the slime and the croaking there was, sure enough, like an old master beneath a layer of dirt, the noble outline of that divine music. I could distinguish the majestic structure and the deep wide breath and the full broad bowing of the strings.
"My God," I cried in horror, "what are you doing, Mozart? Do you really mean to inflict this mess on me and yourself, this triumph of our day" the last victorious weapon in the war of extermination against art? Must this be, Mozart?"
How the weird man laughed! And what a cold and eerie laugh! It was noiseless and yet everything was shattered by it. He marked my torment with deep satisfaction while he bent over the cursed screws and attended to the tin trumpet. Laughing still, he let the distorted, the murdered and murderous music ooze out and on; and laughing still, he replied:

"Please, no pathos, my friend! Anyway, did you observe the ritardando? An inspiration, eh? Yes, and now you tolerant man, let the sense of this ritardando touch you. Do you hear the basses? They stride like gods. And let this inspiration of old Handel penetrate your restless heart and give it peace. Just listen, you poor creature, listen without either pathos or mockery, while far away behind the veil of this hopelessly idiotic and ridiculous apparatus the form of this divine music passes by. Pay attention and you will learn something. Observe how this crazy funnel apparently does the most stupid, the most useless and the most damnable thing in the world. It takes hold of some music played where you please, without distinction, stupid and coarse, lamentably distorted, to boot, and chucks it into space to land where it has no business to be; and yet after all this it cannot destroy the original spirit of the music; it can only demonstrate its own senseless mechanism, its inane meddling and marring. Listen, then, you poor thing. Listen well. You have need of it. And now you hear not only a Handel who, disfigured by radio, is, all the same, in this most ghastly of disguises still divine; you hear as well and you observe, most worthy sir, a most admirable symbol of all life. When you listen to radio you are a witness of the everlasting war between idea and appearance, between time and eternity, between the human and the divine. Exactly, my dear sir, as the radio for ten minutes together projects the most lovely music without regard into the most impossible places, into respectable drawing rooms and attics and into the midst of chattering, guzzling, yawning and sleeping listeners, and exactly as it strips this music of its sensuous beauty, spoils and scratches and slimes it and yet cannot altogether destroy its spirit, just so does life, the so-called reality, deal with the sublime picture-play of the world and make a hurley-burley of it. It makes its unappetizing tone-slime of the most magic orchestral music. Everywhere it obtrudes its mechanism, its activity, its dreary exigencies and vanity between the ideal and the real, between orchestra and ear. All life is so, my child, and we must let it be so: and, if we are not asses, laugh at it. It little becomes people like you to be critics of radio or of life either. Better learn to listen first! Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest."

--Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, tr. Basil Creighton (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963, pp. 240-243).

And now I'm going to go find my old Deutsche Grammophon phonograph of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra. For some reason, I feel the need to hear it.

Pope Benedict XVI

A few rash thoughts on the elevation of Cardinal Ratzinger to the Papacy.

What I know of Ratzinger, I know from the last few days. But it certainly appears that his elevation is a signal that the reaction to massive social change that began in the 1960's in America and Europe, has crested. I just heard Tariq Ali and Laura Flanders on the local (Houston) Pacifica station, where they were being interviewed. They agreed on the principal of: "The worse the better," meaning, as I took it, the more harshly Ratzinger tries to centralize control, the more likely he is to fail, and that attempt at "returning to normal" will finally be boiled in its own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through its heart.

I speak metaphorically, of course.

I was actually thinking of this while writing the post below, but I was distracted by other thoughts. Looking strictly from the outside, and understanding somewhat the desire to consolidate whatever power your position of responsibility assigns you, with whatever power you can accrue, the urge to consolidate power is powerful. However, where there is a center of power, there are always margins, and nowhere more than in an international institution like the Roman Catholic church. The irony, of course, is that the modern age which has made skepticism and apostasy so widespread and acceptable, has also fostered the illusion that, through communication one can exert control. The Roman church originally placed substantial control in the Bishops, the episcopacy of the church, who had to make decisions "on the ground" with little or no opportunity to communicate with the Papacy, except on the most fundamental and boundary setting issues. As communication has grown, so has grown the perception that if it can be heard, it can be directed; and if it can be directed, it can be enforced. But what can be directed and enforced, is not necessarily what should be.

The other problem is that we have world cultures now, not one culture. This has always been true, of course, but the single culture of Europe has lost almost all control over "indigenous" cultures. This, too, is a consequence of communications technology as much as it is changed perceptions about cultures and "superiority." And yet we all see more clearly that the culture we grew up with, does not necessarily provide the answers for another culture a world away. Consider Karol Wojtyla, raised under the authoritarian regime of Poland, trying as Pope to understand the liberation theology of the Jesuits in Central America. Centralized authority appeals to the Pope culturally, spiritually, and ecclesiastically. But the authority from Rome has no concept of the situation in Latin America. Liberation theology, ironically, is probably the best response to the "health and wealth gospel" of America, which easily travels south, and easily insinuates itself with its promises that God not only cares about you, but cares about how many material goods you can amass. Ironically, for reasons unclear to me from so far away, the spiritual Pope misses the spiritual power of liberation theology, and moreover wholly misses the material appeal of the "health and wealth gospel." We get too soon old, and too late smart.

And still the further away from the margins the center of power is, the less able it is to hear the cries of God's people. But perhaps that is simply the Protestant in me. [N.B. left rev.'s comment pointed out my egregious error in this sentence, i.e., it made no sense; and now it has been corrected. Gratias.]

What will Pope Benedict XVI do? It is difficult to imagine he will change anything done under John Paul II. It is not difficult to imagine he will extend John Paul's most restrictive, most reactionary policies. Which, again, is an institutional problem. Except institutional problems create spiritual, and even political, problems.

As John Fowles said: "Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation." We can only pray for the new Pope, and for ourselves, and for each other: that our sight may be whole, and so God's will be done.

So, it's not just us....

Start with news of the world and the ekklesia:

To understand the crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, visit the Seminary of St. Sulpice in Issy-Les-Moulineaux outside Paris.

The vast 100-year-old structure, built on the ruins of a 17th-century chateau, contains vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows and hundreds of rooms. Pope John Paul II visited here in 1980 on a trip in which he chastised the French for abandoning the church.

But the seminary's corridors are dark, the individual living quarters largely empty. Only 52 seminarians are studying this year, a decrease of 50 percent from a decade ago. Many of them come from as far away as Vietnam and Rwanda.

When I entered Eden Seminary, in St. Louis, before classes started the new students held a weekend retreat at Kenrick Seminary. Well, it had been a seminary, for Catholic priests. Despite the fact that St. Louis, as the RC priest who taught us Pastoral Care said with a smile, had "more Catholics than you can shake a stick at," the Seminary had long ago converted to a retreat center.

The building was built to house about 200 men, and house them comfortably. The cells were small, but the hallways were huge, long and wide. It's no exaggeration to say I could have driven my MG Midget down those halls, and turned it around at either end to go back. There were classrooms, a chapel, kitchen and dining room; it was completely self-contained, under one roof. In fact, there were two groups using it that weekend, and we never ran into each other. It was, of course, almost completely empty.

If the requirements for the priesthood were as high for many Protestant denominations, those churches would have the same problems described in this article (many do, anyway). Most Protestant seminarians now are married, probably retired, or on a second career. Eden Seminary was built originally to house single men. It was still adjusting to families with children from near-college age to nearly new-born when I was there. And some of the professors were still used to dealing with young college graduates, not people changing career in mid-life. But that's another story, and only fits in here as an example of the changes society is forcing on the churches worldwide.

Perhaps it is because the world is finally more attractive than the church, that this question of competition arises. Ekklesia meant those called out of the world, gathered together out of the marketplace, literally. Maybe the marketplace is just a more comfortable place to stay than it was before. In earlier ages the world offered little in the way of advancement or even placement, and the church took in many who were simply willing to do the work. The notion of "calling" didn't gel until Martin Luther was forced to form his own church rather than allowed to reform the only church he knew. Where once the church filled a cultural niche, either as a secure employer or as a source of some social status, it has fallen now not only in the wake of the ebb of the post war boom, but more deeply, in the backwash of the Enlightenment.

That, at least, is the usual diagnosis. A.N. Wilson's God's Funeral popularized that idea a few years ago, and it's become the reigning explanation for the decline of the church in Europe. But things are seldom as simple as that. I was struck by this passage in the New York Times article:

Only 21 percent of Europeans say that religion is "very important" to them, according to the often-cited European Values Study, conducted in 1999 and 2000 and published two years ago. A similar survey in the United States by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put the number at nearly 60 percent.

The trend away from regular participation has been so noticeable that it has even been given a name: European apostasy.

"European Catholics are not against the Catholic Church," said Ulrich Ruh, editor of the Catholic monthly Herder-Korrespondenz, based in Freiburg, Germany. "They go to church at least once or twice a year and bring their children to be baptized and confirmed. Rather, they have made their own personal arrangements with the church and do not want to be disturbed. They do not want to be evangelized. That is why the pope failed to make the church more attractive."

Part of the problem is the church's emphasis on punishment and sin rather than on inclusion and community.

The first two paragraphs sound like the Europe I "know" from anecdotal evidence and work like Wilson's. That's the Europe of the intelligentsia, the Europe that has turned away from notions like "faith." But the second two paragraphs indicate that is not the whole picture, any more than Pat Robertson or Robert Schuller, or even Jesse Jackson, speak for all American Christians.

And perhaps there is a philosophical bias here, as well. Wilson is British, schooled at one level or another in the Anglo-American philosophies of empricism and positivism. The "analytical" school of philosophy is almost exclusively Anglo-American, and distinguished from the "Continental" schools, which are largely variations of phenomenology, and largely thought of as "French:" Derrida, Levinas. Or perhaps still rooted in German Idealism, as with Heidegger. But then I reflect that Derrida, a Jew by birth, was a Professor of Religious Studies and wrote so many works on religion that he was credited with trying to create a "negative atheology," a decidedly Christian pursuit. And how work in philosophy of religion is a thriving enterprise in Europe (at least in philosophical circles), whereas in this country, as Palle Yourgrau points out, one cannot afford to have even the taint of "piety" among the analytical philosophers. Yourgrau tells the story of Charles Parsons, a philosopher and logician at Harvard, who in 1955 was being interviewed for membership into the Society of Fellows. He made the mistake of mentioning that he had read theology and found Pascal interesting, though he was not a Christian. This prompted W.V.O. Quine to murmur "Good grief, Parsons is pious." (Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time, New York: Basic Books 2005, pp. 155-156) So the two schools are divided on several levels, not the least of which is the suspicion and distrust of religion widely held by the analytical school. Small wonder any work in religion is being done on "the Continent."

So what is "the problem"? Is it as simple as the Enlightenment slowly but surely sweeping away "superstition"? Or is the problem institutional? Is the church, in other words, the problem?

Grant that thy Church may be delivered from traditions which have lost their life, from usage which has lost its spirit, from institutions which no longer give life and power to their generation; that the Church may ever shine as a light in the world and be as a city set on a hill.

HEAR OUR PRAYER, O LORD.

In the Hymnal for the Evangelical and Reformed Church, that is part of the prayer for Church Anniversary. It's a good prayer, because it reminds the church that sometimes, the institition is not the answer. And that the answer is never simple, and it comes from the future. Now, of course, as Alfred North Whitehead said, "It is the business of the future to be dangerous." And institutions despise risk; just as most people do. But that's the proclamation of the church, too: that there is no risk anymore, that in Christ all things have been done that need to be done.

Which gets us back to the theological problems. Like, for example, Central America. The "health and wealth" gospel, which is a theology, is taking countries by storm there; and the only valid response to it I know of, the soundest critique possible, is a good offense. That offense would come in the form of liberation theology. It speaks to the same concerns, but in a wholly different way. There are, in other words, theological, as well as spiritual, answers. And I still have no reason to believe people are not fundamentally spiritual; not culturally, but fundamentally. And I have no reason not to offer the closing words of that prayer for Church Anniversary, because they are true, and can be trusted:

O eternal God, who didst send thy Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, we pray that as thou didst strengthen their hearts with daring and fortitude, so thou wouldst confinn in us their faithful labors, their high vision, their holy purpose. Grant us so to live, that the generations to come may find their memorial not alone in graven tablets, but may read it in the living record of an active faith, an unswerving loyalty to truth, a self-forgetting service of mankind. Be this the gift of thy grace bestowed upon us; be this the memorial of the just, transmitted to their children's children through the long centuries to come: and thine shall be the kingdom and the power and the glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end.

AMEN

Veggi Monster?

Is this wrong, or is it just me?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/07/tv.cookie.lessmonster.ap/
Sigh. As a vegan and an advocate for children's health, I can't help but applaud any movement in the entertainment industry to promote healthy lifestyle choices for children, particularly in light of the epidemic of childhood obesity and rising type 2 diabetes. Still...

My ten year old's take on this was: "If Cookie Monster can't eat all the cookies he wants, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

Cookie and the rest of the gang at Sesame Street were a huge formative part of my childhood. I was born the same year the show debuted, and I rememebr when Kermit was a sock and the cartoon interludes were so freakingly psychedelic my perpetually stoned uncle would sit and watch it with me every afternoon. There is nothing like it on today, and that includes the current iteration. Heck, I about lost it when they decided to make Snuffleupogus visible to the grown-ups. Why has it become more important to take the magic out of childhood instead of celebrating it?

I know this is of little importance in the grand scheme of things. Still, where have all the cookies gone....long time passing...

Breaking News: Pot Calls Kettle Black!

You can't make this stuff up:

In 30 years of culture wars, few conservative Christian standard bearers have traveled further in American politics than Ralph Reed. The former head of the Christian Coalition has been a high-priced communications consultant, a top Bush campaign adviser, chairman of Georgia's Republican Party and now a candidate for lieutenant governor here.

......
In Washington, federal investigations of Mr. Abramoff, a close ally of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have revealed that Mr. Abramoff paid Mr. Reed's consulting firm more than $4 million to help organize Christian opposition to Indian casinos in Texas and Louisiana - money that came from other Indians with rival casinos.

Mr. Reed declined to comment for this article; he has said publicly that he did not know that casino owners were paying for his services and that he has never deviated from his moral opposition to gambling. But the episode is a new blemish on the boyish face that once personified the rise of evangelical Christians to political power in America.

Some of Mr. Reed's past patrons - including the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Christian broadcaster who set Mr. Reed on the national stage by hiring him to run the Christian Coalition - say his work with Mr. Abramoff's Indian casino clients raises questions about how he has balanced his personal ambitions with his Christian principles.

"You know that song about the Rhinestone Cowboy, 'There's been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon,' " Mr. Robertson said. "The Bible says you can't serve God and Mammon."

Addendum: Later this morning I remember Mr. Robertson's involvement with diamond mines, and Greg Palast tells me there was so much more involved.

One of Robertson's former business partners recalled that, although he often travelled in the minister's jet, he never saw Robertson crack open a Bible. 'Everywhere we were flying he had the Wall Street Journal and Investors' Daily.'

Well, as he said: you can't serve God and mammon.

Walter Cardinal Kasper

I am "stealing" this from Prior Aelred because I don't have the ready access to this information that I should have, or the time to seek it out and put it here on my own. And it answers a few issues that have been percolating with me, regarding the gap between Christian doctrine and the general perception of Christian doctrine.

As Prior Aelred says, we need some hope for a Christianity for grown ups. These are some steps toward that hope:

• "Faith does not mean a believing-to-be-true of wonderful facts and sets of beliefs that have authoritatively been put before us."

• "Dogmas can certainly be one-sided, superficial, bossy, dumb, and rash."

• Christ "presumably did not call himself either Messiah or Servant of God or Son of God and probably not Son of Man either."

• The dogma that Jesus is "completely man and completely God" is able to be superceded.

• Kasper writes "that we must call the many miracle stories in the Gospels legendary."

• Although Kasper admits Jesus performed healings: "On the other hand, with some probability one need not consider [the] so-called natural miracles as historical."

• The Resurrection of Jesus is "no objectively and neutrally ascertainable historical fact."

• Regarding the oldest account of the Easter event (Mk 16:1-, Kasper comments "that here we are not talking about historical characteristics but [linguistic] means of style which are to get people's attention and create excitement." Other New Testament factual claims about the Easter and Ascension accounts, too, are mere "means of style" for Kasper.

• Statements about the immanent Trinity or about the pre-existence of Christ are, according to Kasper, "not direct statements of faith but theological statements of reflection."

• Kasper also speaks of the "Resurrection of each individual at death." Hence "any talk of life after death is misleading." In addition, any talk of heaven, hell, and purgatory is "a very inappropriate, indeed misleading way of speaking."

• By the "not very fortunate expression 'infallibility of the Church'" is meant "that the Church . . . cannot definitively fall back to the status of synagogue and cannot deny Christ definitively."

• The dogma of the Church's universal mediatorship of salvation, clothed in the words "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" ["no salvation outside the Church"], which is most important for ecumenical conversations, Kasper calls a "most misunderstandable phrase.”

Bringing the Free Market to Iraq

They aren't even trying to hide it now:

Equipment plundered from dozens of sites in Saddam Hussein's vast complex for manufacturing weapons is beginning to surface in open markets in Iraq's major cities and at border crossings.

Looters stormed the sites two years ago when Mr. Hussein's government fell, and the fate of much of the equipment has remained a mystery.

But on a recent day near the Iranian border, resting in great chunks on a weedy lot in front of an Iraqi Border Patrol warehouse, were pieces of machine tools, some weighing as much as a car, that investigators say formed the heart of a factory that made artillery shells near Baghdad. Military equipment, including parts for obscure armaments used by Mr. Hussein's army, is also turning up in Baghdad and Mosul in the north, they say.

...
Interviews with people who identified themselves as arms dealers or members of the resistance in Baghdad, Falluja and other Iraqi cities indicate that a parallel black market operates in the explosives looted from some of the same sites. In fact, sketchy descriptions by members of the Iraqi resistance suggest that the arms market is also a highly developed enterprise with brokers, buyers and looters who have stockpiled their products, including artillery shells, mortar rounds and Kalashnikov rifles. One former Iraqi army officer who said that he had joined the mujahedeen said that in Sadr City, for example, a few trusted brokers would take prospective buyers to weapons caches that ranged in size from a few rounds buried in a garden to whole rooms of ordnance. If the broker and the buyers agreed on a price, the buyers would arrive a day or two later with a vehicle to drive their purchases away. The broker and the stockpilers would have worked out their respective cuts in advance.

Witnesses described looters of varying degrees of sophistication, from local people who stormed the sites in search of precious metals after Mr. Hussein's security forces fled to highly organized operations that arrived with cranes and semitrailer trucks. Some of the most organized groups arrived earliest and drove away with largely intact equipment.

When it comes to buying run-of-the-mill equipment and spare parts that were obviously looted in the past, the American military appears to have adopted some version of a don't-ask, don't-tell policy concerning where the materials originated. The materials, after all, are now being sold openly in street markets. So the Americans appear resigned to buying the equipment back rather than seizing it.

Well, I guess we can say that before the invasion, ordinary Iraqis were denied their right to bear arms; or arm bears; or to sell spare parts bac to us for our invastion. Or something. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, huh?

Tradition is the living faith of the dead-Jarislav Pelican

Every year, my local church has a symposium in the spring called At the Table and in Conversation. A topic is selected of relevance to our community at the time and we explore together our understanding of in the context of a worshipping community. The first such symposium concerned homosexuality and the church, so these are not issues such as how the roofing fund is being spent. These issues are ones that go to the heart of how we see ourselves, how we understand our calling as Christians and how we are in relationship within our community and with the world. We’ve addressed issues such as institutional and individual racism, Christians and the political process, war, and covenential relationships. This year, the topic is "The Good Book," and the subject is the use and abuse of Scripture. More specifically, it concerns our understanding of ourselves as a church that is "bible believing," what that is, and how it is enacted.

We are pretty liberal on the scale of United Methodist Churches, but there is a wide range of individual thought and belief within our church family. One year, we explored our faith in light of personal belief, using the "Belief-O-Matic," found at Beleifnet.com, to ascertain where each of us stand personally in our beliefs on a continuum that ranged from extremely fundamentalist to atheistic. Only one person from our entire group had no problems with the resurrection and virgin birth. We are a congregation of, well, liberal elitists, and damn proud of it, as a general rule.

I’ve found it interesting that this year’s topic has generated more interest and response than any since our first on homosexuality in the church. To a participant, they are pissed off at how they see Scripture being highjacked and are interested in "reclaiming," them from those who would use them as a weapon of exclusion or oppression. I maintain, of course, that we have nothing to reclaim. We’ve had it all along and just didn't see the necessity of screaming about it.

The first session examined in some detail what authority is, and how the bible can be seen, or should be seen as an "authority." We determined that there are several questions that must be asked of anyone who says that they "believe" in the bible: 1) What kind of authority does the bible have? 2) For what is this authority used? 3) How is this authority used? 4) Why is this authority used? We broke into small groups to consider these questions, as well as to discuss which aspect of authority the bible should hold for Christians, or, at least, held for us.

There are two types of authority mainly associated with the bible. The one most commonly articulated is that of executive authority, that the bible has the capacity to guide us or direct us because of some inherent understanding that deepens our own. This is also known as canonical or normative authority. The other authority is causative authority, that the bible makes things happen to us and in us by some virtue of bringing us beyond the text and leading to a new understanding.

The dangers of considering the bible to have authority lie in understanding the authority to be a property of the text, or that the bible personifies authority in some way. This effectively eliminates an entire tradition of biblical interpretation and study. It is a sacred text, but one that is accessible to reason and open to examination. "Bible believing" churches claim to be returning to an earlier (therefore meaning closer to Jesus’ intent) tradition of understanding the bible as the literal word of God, or, at the very least, that the writers of these texts were divinely inspired to the point of being stenographers to the Deity. In fact, there has never been a period prior to the 1800’s wherein the tradition of biblical scholarship assumed any inherent innerrancy in the text, or that some sort of authority was attached without question to any literal understanding of the text. It’s just not there for them to "re-discover."

The bible is more a library than a book. It is an unruly collection of writings representing many different voices. The texts live when they are interpreted within the context of community and tradition, bearing in mind the quote form Jarislav Pelican used in my header. For Christians, the bible has authority when God is involved in the life long process of understanding and celebrating it. God uses our uses of the bible.
To say that there is a definitive understanding of the bible that everyone can and should know makes as much sense as saying everyone should know God in exactly the same way. Those who claim it to be so should consider the other quote Jarislav Pelican was want to throw around:

"Conventional wisdom is the dead faith of the living."

Power is the new Golden Calf

Dr. Frederick Hertzog was a long time systematic theology professor at Duke Divinity School and is one of the first to advocate and help define "Liberation Theology." To Hertzog, theology itself needed to "move away from the needs of the anxious middle class person to the needs of the wretched of the earth as starting point of theology. The first issue of theology…is not the bourgeois question, ‘I am anxious, what’s the answer?’ but God’s question, "Your neighbor is oppressed, what’s your responsibility?" (Theology from the Belly of the Whale-A Frederick Hertzog Reader, pg. 170-171).

I hear cries from deep within people of faith, and from those who profess no faith, who desperately want to address the political maneuverings, which threaten to destroy us all. As we struggle today with the poisoned atmosphere in our communities and our nation, it might be worth hearing Hertzog’s words in a previously unpublished letter to Jurgen Moltmann (please forgive the lack of umlauts), June 22, 1976.

For countless people in the United States, democracy and capitalism are still indistinguishable. I cherish the civil liberties of democracy, and will defend them tooth and nail. But on the level of ideas the first thing that needs to be done is to disengage democracy from capitalism. A complicating factor is civil religion as ideological undergirding of the fusion between capitalism and democracy. The disengagement of capitalism from democracy on the level of ideas, however, will not go very far unless we get deep into the nitty gritty of party politics. I read the New Testament—and compared with our socioeconomic system the clash is absolute. The first thing we still need to work on is opening our eyes to the difference between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of profit. Jesus’ gospel dare no longer be used to legitimize our socioeconomic and sociopolitical systems. It involves a radical change in theological education and the use of money by the churches. Rejection of capitalism implies for theology commitment to a new socioeconomic and sociopolitical rationality (ibid,pg. 175).

Perhaps you can tell where he is headed with this. "Being liberated to a new rationality we has better first of all develop alternative futures. But within the perimeter of this rationality I need to commit myself to a political base which includes scientific socialism (pg. 176)."

Is Socialism still a dirty word? Could we get away with it if we call it "a return to the ideals of Christ?" Probably not. Nevertheless, disengaging religion from capitalism would be a good place to start. Hertzog draws on the example of Europe’s experience to frame a starting point for discussion.

1) How does one at least in principle define the connection of theology with the people? 2) How do we avoid abusing the gospel for legitimizing socialism rather than capitalism, and instead make the choice for socialism as the more humane economic and political system on rational grounds (pg. 176)?

Hertzog was observing the same thing we are now in America almost thirty years ago. This is not a recent phenomenon, and addressing it will take time and concerted effort. Hertzog seems to think the place to start was with the theologians and the academy. Maybe if this had really taken hold thirty years ago, things might be different today. Or maybe not.

The "religious right" needs to be called what it is- a political ideology and rank idolatry. Ideologies come and go, be it capitalism or socialism. Idolatry, when those who claim to worship God place their faith in something else, does not go over well in God’s reality. I refer you to the Prophets, major and minor, for the details.
They need to be reminded that it’s really quite simple. "The Lord has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the morning paper....

Just to back up what left rev. said:

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

But even Frist is not entirely comfortable with this line, nor should he be:

The telecast, however, will put Dr. Frist in a very different context. Asked about Dr. Frist's participation in an event describing the filibuster "as against people of faith," his spokesman, Bob Stevenson, did not answer the question directly.

"Senator Frist is doing everything he can to ensure judicial nominees are treated fairly and that every senator has the opportunity to give the president their advice and consent through an up or down vote," Mr. Stevenson said, adding, "He has spoken to groups all across the nation to press that point, and as long as a minority of Democrats continue to block a vote, he will continue to do so."

And maybe this is why:

"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and organizer of the telecast, wrote in a message on the group's Web site. "For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."
...
"What they have done is, they have targeted people for reasons of their faith or moral position," he said, referring to Democratic criticisms of nominees over their views of cases about abortion rights or public religious expressions.

"The issue of the judiciary is really something that has been veiled by this 'judicial mystique' so our folks don't really understand it, but they are beginning to connect the dots," Mr. Perkins said in an interview, reciting a string of court decisions about prayer or displays of religion.

"They were all brought about by the courts," he said.

Time to take back Jesus, and our religious freedoms, and our religious heritage. Because these people represent none of that, and are destroying all of it, in the name of power and control, which has nothing to do with the God of Abraham, Isaac, or Jesus.

"An Atom Smasher for the Mind"

To pick up on a thought that got started in the comments. (BTW--you can't imagine how much fun it is to open this blog and see something I didn't put there. It's kinda like Christmas! Anyway....)

From ProfWombat:

Well, no, human thought isn't so limited, and therefore requires additional physical explanations than have so far been offered. That's Penrose's and Searle's point. The human mind, whatever it is, they say (and I agree) isn't a digital computer. Further, it demonstrably can do things a digital computer can't. Marvin Minsky once gave a 'trivial' problem to a graduate student: to have a robot do some fairly rudimentary takss of pattern recognition and manipulation. No success yet.
A computer can't go beyond its axioms (essentially what Turing proved).
Ray Kurzweill famously described a thermostat as having some degree of consciousness. Doesn't pass the Potter Stewart test: I know consciousness when I see it, or, at least, I think I do, and my 120 lb fluffy white Pyrenees dog has consciousness, and a thermostat doesn't.
Goldstein makes the case well, I think, that Godel placed limits, not on human thought, but on axiomatic reasoning; that Godel felt not that he'd added to the uncertainty of the world but that he'd established a Platonist reality. Not the 'new age' (with due respect--no snark) take on Godel at all.

I'm inclined to say "No, of course human thought isn't so limited," but then, how do we know? Is our thought axiomatic, or isn't it? It's a question of proof, not just of assertion. And this raises the real question of robots (i.e, machines that can mimic humans): if they acted like us, would they imitate our violence, too? That seems to be the basis of the robots in the new "Battlestar Galactica," and it's a fascinating idea. They have religion (ours; or at least a recognizably human one); and while they may think axiomatically (as a computer must; that's not what Turing established, by the way, but what his logic lead to: the use of axiomatic programming, algorithms, to make computer programming function), do they realize that's what they are doing? In fact, are they violent, or simply following their axioms? Since they can't "think" beyond them, to us their actions seem rather, well, one-sided. But are ours any less simplistic to, say, dolphins? Or to "god." For if there is an entity that does not think axiomatically at all, we would call it "god." At least, unless we can establish conclusively that we don't think axiomatically. (That quote from Wang below, BTW, citing Godel, is not "new age," but a fellow mathematician and close colleague in the later years of the logician's life).

And no, Godel did not think he'd added to the uncertainty of the world; he was a devoted Platonist, but, as Goldstein is at pains to point out, the Platonism preceded the logic (Yourgrau, in a separate book, seems to think the reverse is true, but Goldstein makes a compelling case that Godel's theorem proceeded from his Platonism, and not the reverse). And I'm not sure he did, either; nor do I mean to imply he did. My interest is the limits of epistemology. In fact, my interest is in boundaries, altogether.

Yourgrau, in fact, uses a metaphor that is apt here: an "atom smasher for the mind." He writes:

In subatomic physics, one can submit particles to the extreme forces of an accelerator, or "atom smasher," which results in particles that are indistinguishable under less-extreme conditions revealing themselves as distinct. Godel would devise a method for subjecting the concept of space-time to similarly extreme conditions-in this case, geometrically, not dynamically, extreme-so that invisible differences between the two concepts would become manifest. This too was a continuation of a methodology G6del had employed in his incompleteness theorem. The method consists in creating what can be called limit cases, formal constructions that by design are so extreme that they limit, mathematically, the possible intuitive interpretations they will admit. For his incompleteness theorem, Godel devised a formal system together with a series of ingenious definitions and cooordinations for which it could be demonstrated that the concept of formal proof, as it appeared in the system, could not, on pain of contradiction, be interpreted as representing intuitive mathematical truth. He did this by constructing a formula that was provably unprovable, but intuitively true. Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time (New York: Basic Books 2005, pp. 114-15)

This is the level of proof I'm talking about. Not all questions, obviously, can be subjected to that level of scrutiny. But here again, we're up against an epistemolgical question: how do we know what we cannot know?

Classical theology (thanks to Luther) admits of a "negative theology," of that about God which we cannot know, or claim to know, or even speak of. It is an acceptance to the limits of our knowledge, and the basis for Kierkegaard's famous "offense," the "absolute paradox:" that eternal God could also become temporal, that that which is both the basis of existence and has no limits, could come into existence and be limited in time, subject to the limitations of mortality, which are of course beginning and end, birth and death. This we simply cannot comprehend. Does that mean it is beyond our abilities? Or that it is false? How do we determine?

One answer is to decide, or not be able to decide, the existence of God. But Kierkegaard meets us there, too. That, he says, is "the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think." Johannes Climacus (Soren Kierkegaard), Philosophical Fragments, tr. Howard H. Hong and Edna V. Hong (Princeteon University Press: Princeton, New Jersey 1985, p. 40) But does the inability to think it necessarily negate the existence of anything? No; nor does it establish it. As Johannes Climacus goes on to point out, we never reason in conclusion to existence, but rather in conclusion from existence. So any attempt to prove the existence of God presupposes the existence of God; and any attempt to disprove the existence of God presupposes the non-existence. Which makes both attempts tautological, in the end, and not really establishing anything.

And we're back up against the question of the limits of our knowledge. Unfairly, I admit; but all I can do here is poke the issues around, rather like stirring a fire to keep it going through the night. (And I never even got back to the question of consciousness!)

Lets get Jesus back

I may have a few more Eckhart posts floating around in the upper stories, but I thought I'd bring this article in the United Methodist Reporter to your attention. www.reporterinteractive.org/news/040605/cm040605.htm

The United Methodist Church has always had a strong voice in social justice and a liberal attitude towards doctrine. Its one of the main reason I'm where I'm at-enduring the ordination process. There are some voices in the Methodist Church, getting a tad shrill I'm afraid, who call for a return to "Scriptural Authority." This means, of course, tightening the understanding of scriptural authority (another post for another time-don't worry; I'll get there) and the role it plays in the doctrine and polity of the church. I won't go into our internecine issues here, but suffice it to say, like most mainstream Protestant churches, we have voices from all over the spectrum. I hope some of the more shrill voices take a listen to Bill Moyers and join the body politic to re-examine our priorities.
Here's a little taste of Mr. Moyers:

Over the past few years, as the poor got poorer, the health care crisis
worsened, wealth and media became more and more concentrated, and our political
system was bought out from under us, prophetic faith lost its voice. The
religious right drowned everyone else out.
And they hijacked Jesus. The very
Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach
the good news to the poor." The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all
of you will be fed, not just some of you. The very Jesus who challenged the
religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered
kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who said the kingdom
of heaven belongs to little children, raised the status of women, and treated
even the tax collector like a child of God. The very Jesus who drove the money
changers from the temple. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned from a
champion of the disposed into a guardian of the privileged. Hijacked, he was
made over into a militarist, a hedonist, and a lobbyist ... sent prowling the
halls of Congress in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful,
costly new weapon systems that don't work, and punitive public
policies.
Let's get Jesus back.

In the words of Bugs Bunny:

"Of course you know, this means war!"

Deflecting all questions about his ethical conduct and political future, Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, on Wednesday stepped up his crusade against judges, announcing that he had instructed the Judiciary Committee to investigate federal court decisions in the Terri Schiavo case and to recommend possible legislation.
....
Mr. DeLay was not specific about what legislative changes, if any, he would like to see emerge from the Judiciary Committee's review. But in announcing that he had asked Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and the committee chairman, to examine the actions of federal judges in the Schiavo case, Mr. DeLay said the House had previously passed legislation limiting the jurisdiction of the courts and breaking up the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a bill that died in the Senate.

"We set the jurisdiction of the courts," Mr. DeLay said. "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts."

Why do I think this will garner about as much popular support as the intervention in the Schiavo case.? On the other hand, it may have the salutary effect of reminding the American public why we have a "separation of powers" doctrine.

This should be interesting.

Creation: A Flowing Out, But Remaining Within

It is an amazing thing that something flows forth and nonetheless remains
within. Words flow forth and yet remain within-that is certainly amazing! All
creatures flow outward and nonetheless remain within-that is extremely amazing.
What God has given and what God promises to give-that is amazing, inconceivable,
and unbelievable. And that is as it should be, for if it were comprehensible and
believable things would not be right. God is in all things. The more he is in
things, the more he is outside of things. The more he is within, all the more is
he without. I have often said God is creating this entire world full and entire
in this present now. Everything God created six thousand years ago-and even
more-as he made the world, God creates now all at once.

Is Meister Eckhart of Hochheim (c. 1260-c.1329) a spiritual theologian whose time has come? The magisterium of his milieu certainly didn’t think so, as he was posthumously condemned by papal decree soon after his death, which occurred after he had traveled to Avignon to defend himself against charges of heresy, which he did vigorously. He was greatly influenced by the theology of another Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, and influenced a broad range of people from Martin Luther to Roger Fox, up to Thomas Merton and Annie Dillard today.

An interesting exchange over RMJ’s post on dualism prompted my re-examination of Eckhart. My own Creation Theology is not very well developed, and I began to wonder why. So I dug out my copy of Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality in New Translation, and began to look at it again. As the passage I just quoted indicates, Eckhart is "chewy," and must be mulled over a bit. Nevertheless, I was taken aback by his claim that "God is creating this entire world full and entire in this present now." I was taken aback because I rarely think of Creation Theology as anything but a one-off event, and as something to bicker about with those individuals who refuse to consider that six days and six thousand years could be anything other than a literal truth and scientific fact. Whenever I think of the continuing action of God, I think of Providence and Sanctification, not necessarily Creation. Eckhart gets even better:

God is in everything, but to the extent that God is Godly and to the extent
that he is intelligible, God is nowhere as much as he is in the soul and also,
if you wish, in the angels. He dwells in the innermost dimension of the soul and
in the highest aspect of the soul…There where time never penetrates, where no
image shines in, in the innermost and highest aspect of the soul God creates the
entire cosmos. Everything which God created six thousand years ago and
everything that will be created by God after thousands of years-if the world
lasts that long-God is creating all of that in the innermost and highest realms
of the soul. Everything which is past and everything which is future God creates
in the innermost realm of the soul.

God creates us as creative activity and God creates creation in us, in our innermost depths. Why? So we can perhaps know God in both the within and the without, and learn that these are separate places only to us, and not to God? And if Eckhart had his way, two ways of thinking (God and creature) would become one (God). We would hear creation and listen to the Creator at the same time. Dualism need not apply.
And perhaps that’s why we, as humans who can comprehend of God and participate, or not as we choose, in God’s reality, are so determined to retain a lingering sense of duality that sets ourselves apart from creation. There are many aspects of Eckhart’s theology and spirituality that I haven’t begun to address, but one thing you will never find there are barriers between creation and a divine Creator. If we can conceive of no barriers between Creation and the Divine, than how could it be possible to conceive of barriers between ourselves and the rest of Creation? We feel safer behind the barriers we erect. We feel in control behind the barriers we erect. We make an identity by throwing up a barrier and keeping others outside of it.
We don’t want to give up our barriers and our dualism, even if the result is an understanding of our own divinity, the Creator/Creation in our innermost being.
Hmmm. Scary stuff.

"Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart"

Why "do" theology?

Why bother with this welter of words, this declaration of definitions, this cascade of concepts and avalanche of ideas? Is it all just "mental masturbation" after all, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing?

Enter lectio divina.

Not the practice, but the concept; the focus on the word. What are words, anyway? Sounds? Phemes? Morphemes? Ideas, abstractions, signs pointing toward signifieds? Symbols of reason?
"In the beginning was the logos...." Christianity is one of the three great religions "of the Book." What is a book, but words? and what are words? The organizing principle of the universe? Was there, then, chaos, upon which order was imposed, and that order was the logos, the sign and signifier of reason, which connects us directly to God? And if not, what is? How do we concieve of it?

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Funny thing about the first Creation story of Genesis: from a culture a world away from Hellenistic Greece, the originating principle of the world is still speech, is still intimately connected to words: "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." The very act of creation is a speech-act. The speech of God is itself creative. God does not command light into creation, or direct someone else to carry out the task (not even light itself has that burden): the act of speech itself is the act of Creation. So the opening hymn of John's gospel is right: in the beginning was the word.

Words, then, are how we know God. We learn about God from hymns, prayers, psalms, worship, other people. God is idea, first. The experience may come to us prior to anything else, but understanding and appreciating that idea comes through words: through questions and answers we put to friends and family; through scripture and study and reading and even praying. Sometimes our sighs are too deep for words, but words are always the gateway and the pathway toward understanding what those sighs mean, where they originate and what they portend. the goal of the mystic communion of a Christian may be the "Cloud of Unknowing," but the way there, and the way back, and the explanation of what the way is, are all bound up with words. Words are our most intimate connection with the creation, which us itself idea beyond splendor and even beyond reality. Why, then, do they seem to alienate us from Creation? Made in our Creator's image, why are we not as our Creator in what we say?

Are words, then, the purpose, the goal? Julian of Norwich had her visions early in her life; then spent the rest of her life arranging and re-arranging just the right words to express them. Without the words, the visions would have remained hers alone, and we would have lost them. St. Thomas Aquinas reportedly said that God had blessed him to understand everything he had ever read (a great blessing indeed!); and then, after a controversy, he stopped writing. When his friend Reginald (as G.K. Chesterton records it) asked him to return to writing, Aquinas simply replied: " 'I can write no more.' There seems to have been a silence; after which Reginald again ventured to approach the subject; and Thomas answered him with even greater vigour, 'I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw.' " And he didn't. Chesterton records that, at his death, "we may be sure that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy."*

Why do we do theology? Because it is faith seeking understanding; and understanding, seeking faith. And sometimes, because it is bitter; and sometimes, because it is our heart. And perhaps the point of theology is simply to climb the ladder, until we can kick it away.


G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 'The Dumb Ox,' New York: Doubleday 1956, pp. 141-42

Let Us Now Praise Canada

No, seriously.

Dragged out an old Linda Ronstadt album, "Heart Like A Wheel" (don't tell NYMary, she'll think I'm poaching her territory!), which reminded me of all my Kate and Anna McGarrigle albums, and all their songs that Ronstadt performed, and then Leonard Cohen and his albums, and all his songs that Judy Collins performed....(and yes, I have all of these, recorded on one medium or another).

Any country that can produce Cohen and the McGarrigle sisters is deserving of a ranking with Ireland, England, and Greece for great literary artists. Although producing either one would be sufficient.

"And it's only love, and it's only love/That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out."

Radix einem omnium malorum est cupiditas

This confirms my longheld opinion that the attacks on 9/11 were not made because "they hate our freedom:"

Three men have been indicted on charges they targeted for attack financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The three men, whom authorities have not yet identified, already are in custody in England. They had been picked up there last year in a separate investigation that yielded evidence they scouted the New York Stock Exchange and Citicorp Building in New York, the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, said two officials who discussed the case at this sensitive juncture only on grounds they not be publicly identified.

Better, of course, to describe the cause as something abstract, rather than something concrete. In this sense we are indeed culpable for the attacks on 9/11, and any made after: not because we are the rape victim who entices our assailant, but because we refuse to acknowledge the fact that our foreign policy now serves the interest of capital alone. And that is truly an unholy arrangement, one that can only be called a deal with the devil.

Who is calling the tune, and now demanding payment for our evening's entertainment. I'm glad these attacks were thwarted; but let's not delude ourselves about what prompts them.

Consulo, ergo sum?

I used to use the movie AI in my Intro Philosophy course, to introduce the question of the self and the issue of the Cartesian split. The movie raises fascinating questions of what it means to be human, especially in its implicit acceptance that true "human" thought requires emotional responses as well as "intellectual" ones. The clear implications of the film are that rules alone do not define human intelligence. In fact, it is the lack of "emotional rules" (which the film assumes are a learned, not a defined, response) that sets the story in motion.

"Cogito, ergo sum," is the touchstone for modern philosophy thinking about what is the self, or even what is human, and I used the film to zero in on that issue. Descartes distinguished "rational" thought (which he considered the foundation of the "self") from emotions (which he considered "bodily" functions); but he was not just thinking about thought itself with his cogito. He was speaking of the consciousness of thought. Turing's famous "test" of AI is valid if the question is only the appearance of thought. Descartes' very statement, the one that turned his skepticism into certainty, is a statement of awareness of being aware. It is a "meta" statement about the process of thought itself. And it is on this point that the incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel enters the discussion.

Gödel's theorem, put simply, is that formal systems are incomplete, because the axioms upon which they are founded do not lead to a system powerful enough to eliminate the generation of propositions that are not both true and formally undecidable within the terms of the system. In other words, any formal system can generate a statement which it cannot establish as true within the terms of that system. The truth of the statement, if it can be established, must be established through recourse to terms from outside the system. That is, within a formal system such as mathematics, certain statements can be generated which cannot be established as true within mathematics. The truth of these statements can only be decided outside of mathematics, or meta-mathematically.

It's important to understand this fully before going further, because the easy answer here is: "Well, of course we can't decide all truths within any one system." The critical point here is that the system can generate the statement, so the statement itself does not come from wholly outside the system. It comes, in fact, from the axioms of the formal system itself. But the system, built upon those very axioms, cannot decide within the terms of that system, the validity or truth of the statement. It is, therefore, formally undecidable, and any decision on it must be made by appeal to source wholly outside the system.

As a matter of logic, in other words, no formal system of thought, being one founded on axioms which in turn generate the system of thought, is complete. It is, despite its rigor or complexity, essentially incomplete. Which brings us back to artifical intelligence.

Human thought is a complex subject. Is emotion, for example, a component of it? A complement to it? An obstruction that blocks it? Is thought only equivalent to reason? And does reason occur in spite of emotion? What, then, of curiousity? Is that an emotion? Could be build a curious machine? These are not idle questions: they challenge the notion that thought is simply a rules process, and that human thought can be replicated in computer software when enough of the rules are understood and anticipated to be reproducible as tools for a progam. (This idea is leveled as a criticism against Wittgenstein's concept of "language games," that he merely tries to reduce language to a set of acquired rules, and each "game" plays according to a different rule book.) But Godel's theorem challenges that very notion. Palle Yourgrau puts it this way:

The complete set of mathematical truths will never be captured by any finite or recursive list of axioms that is fully formla. Thus, no mechanical device, no computer, will ever be able to exhaust the truths of mathematics. It follows immediately, as Godel was quick to point out, that if we are able somehow to grasp the complete truth of this domain, then we, or our minds, ar enot machines or computers. (Enthusiasts of artificial intelligence were not amused.) A World Without Time, Palle Yourgrau (New York: Basic Books 2005) p. 3

However, Rebecca Goldstein brings us to a slightly different conclusion:

According to Wang, Godel believed that what had been rig-orously proved, presumably on the basis of the incomplete-ness theorem, is: "Either the human mind surpasses all machines (to be more precise it can decide more number the-oretical questions than any machine) or else there exist num-ber theoretical questions undecidable for the human mind."

What exactly did Gödel have in mind with this second dis-junct? I think that what he is considering here is the possibil-ity that we are indeed machines-that is, that all of our thinking is mechanical, determined by hard-wired rules-but that we are under the delusion that we have access to unfor-malizable mathematical truth. We could possibly be machines who suffer from delusions of mathematical grandeur. What follows from his theorem, he seems to be suggesting, is that just so long as we are not delusional as regards our grasp of mathematical truths, just so long as we do have the intuitions that we think we have, then we are not machines. If indeed we truly have the intuitions that we do, then it is impossible for us to formalize (or mechanize) all of our mathematical intu-itions, which means that we truly are not machines. Of course there is no proof that we know all that we think we know, since all that we think we know can't be formalized; that, after all, is incompleteness. This is why we can't rigorously prove that we're not machines. The incompleteness theorem, by showing the limits of formalization, both suggests that our minds transcend machines and makes it impossible to prove that our minds transcend machines. Again, an almost-paradox. Incompleteness, Rebecca Goldstein (New York: W.W. Norton 2005), p. 203

Which reminds us that Descartes settled upon his 'cogito' because he placed an artifical limit to his thinking. Skepticism, as Kierkegaard after him also understood, is an acid that will destroy everything eventually, including itself.

All of which leaves us still with the question of the self, and the question of reason in pursuing the question of the self. Does reason, rigorously applied, lead us to the limits of our knowledge? Or the limits of our reason? Are the two coterminous? And is it because we think, that we know we have being? Or because we question, because we can ask, and discover answers?

"Much study is a vexation."

Philalethes passes this to me, and I don't really know what to do with it.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I'll get back to you on that one.
(Humming: "Proust in his first book wrote about, wrote about...Proust in his first book wrote about, he wrote about...!")

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes. Thursday Next, from the series by Jasper Fforde. And Jennifer Government, from the eponymous novel by Max Barry.

But alas, it wasn't meant to be.

The last book you bought is:

I'll have to go look. I'll get back to you on that, too.

The last book you read:

Zorro, by Isabelle Allende. And Dante's Inferno. Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, by Rebecca Goldstein. I never read one book at a time.

What are you currently reading?

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, by Umberto Eco. Given Time, by Jacques Derrida. For Self-Examination, by Kierkegaard. Re-reading Fear and Trembling, too. And one of the new books, but I don't remember which one. Let me check.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Big ones. Starting with the Annotated Sherlock Holmes. And the complete Shakespeare. Upholding Mystery, I think, which is a wonderful volume of poetry. Time to get serious, the ship sails soon. Hmmmm....The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller. One more? Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard. Or...no, I'll stick with that.

Although I'd sneak in Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Years with Pogo. And the Last Whole Earth Catolog. They're the same size, almost, no one would notice. And scratch Upholding Mystery, replace it with Thomas Merton's Wisdom of the Desert Fathers.

Okay, I'm ready to sail now.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?

You assume I have three friends. With blogs. I'm afraid that buck may stop here.

If I come up with anyone, I'll let you know.

Oh, getting back to the Fahrenheit 451 question: tough to decide. Either The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. Or A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle. Or A Day with Wilbur Robinson, by William Joyce (though it's not the same without the pictures). Or probably, Montag's choice: Ecclesiastes.

After all, all is vanity. And of the making of books there is no end.

P.S. Last book(s) I bought: The Hermeneutics of the Subject, by Michel Foucault. Two Worlds are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism, by John Macquarrie, and A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, by Palle Yourgrau.

Returning to the scene of the crime, or: Concluding Unscientific Postscript:

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?

Athenae, at First Draft.
Rexroth's Daughter, at Dharma Bums.
Watertiger, at Dependable Renegade.

And Why?

Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.

No, wait, that's not the right answer. What was the question again?

Oh, yeah. Because I think the answers would be fascinating. And because Thersites pulled rank on me and already chose NYMary (and I'm not telling who the substitute is!).

And because I think the answers would be fascinating. And I have hopes they will come by and see they have been selected.

Now when do I get my $10.00?

Woolgathering

"The sense of the world must lie outside the world....in it no value exists..."Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §6.41.

"A man may sing a song with expression and without expression. Then why not leave out the song--could you have the expression then?"--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief*

The problem of trying to "escape" the world, is that we can't think except in terms supplied to us by the world. On the other hand, we can think, or experience, matters that are not explicable in terms that can codify and capture all meanings identifiable merely as objects or relationships of the world. To do so is to engage in a reductio ad absurdum. "Selfish gene" theory, for example, may provide an "objective" explanation as to why I love my child. But it cannot explain why, having provided me with a child (from the gene theory point of view), I continue to love my wife. In fact, there is no adequate "objective" explanation for love, without subjecting that experience to a reductio argument.

Which brings us back around to Wittgenstein, and "language games." Wittgenstein actually makes two uses of the concep: one derives from Hume, the other from what can only be called common sense.

The idea derived from the empiricism of Hume is that we really cannot talk about anything, because our words are ultimately betrayed by the fact they have no essential connection to reality. Hume explained this by reversing the analytic/synthetic distinction that had held sway in Western philosophy.

An analytic proposition is one made a priori, that is, prior to observation. But Hume said such observations were in fact based on a posteriori knowledge, that is, precisely on the experience of the observation. That is, we encounter bodies in our experience (physical objects with mass), find them to be heavy, and from that synthesize the idea that all bodies are heavy, which we then generalize into a "truth." There is analytical knowledge for Hume, but it is of the nature of "2 + 2 = 4." True a priori, but a statement only of relations of ideas, with no real effect on the world. (You may object that mathematical relationships reflect reality, but only very partially. In biology, for example, 1 + 1 =3, at a minimum; and perhaps more. In fact, if it didn't, there would be no biology). Analytic propositions, then, are pointless in the examination of reality (the subject of empricism), and synthetic propositions are either true or false. But if true, they are virtually meaningless, because no exception to them can be found; and if false, well, obviously they are meaningless. If they cannot be proven, then they are pointless (a much reduced way of introducing Hume's "proof" against the existence of God.). Which leaves us, obviously, with not much to say about anything of importance, such as, well, reality.

This lead, through various steps, to a turn toward language: "What do we mean when we say....?;" to the field of semiotics, of signifiers and signified; and logical positivism, and Wittgenstein's eventual concern that all philosophy was caught up in "language games," which produce a plethora of confusions because language is not, ulimately a formal system such as logic, or even dependent on a formal system, like scientific inquiry.

But this doesn't mean language doesn't get used in useful ways.

Suppose I say that the body will rot, and another says "No. Particles
will rejoin in a thousand years, and there will be a Resurrection of you."
If some said: "Wittgenstein, do you believe in this?" I'd
say: "No." "Do you contradict the man?" I'd say:
"No."
...
Suppose someone were a believer and said: "I believe in a Last
Judgment," and I said: "Well, I'm not so sure. Possibly." You
would say that there is an enormous gulf between us. If he said "There is
a German aeroplane overhead," and I said "Possibly I'm not so sure," you'd
say we were fairly near.
It isn't a question of my being anywhere near him, but on an entirely
different plane, which you could express by saying: "You mean
something altogether different, Wittgenstein."
...
Whether something is a blunder or not--it is a blunder in a particular
system. Just as something is a blunder in a particular game and not in
another.

Most modern philosophy today betrays a fascination with language, from Wittgenstein to deconstructionism. Semiotics, for example, plays a big role in Biblical hermeneutics, especially in exegeting the Gospel of John, where the miracles of Jesus are uniformly called "semeia," the Greek word for "signs." Scholars even posit that the author of John had a separate "signs gospel" which contained all the miracle stories. However, the author of John doesn't use them to point toward the divinity of the Christ, but as something of a test: if you believe because of the signs, you are not a "true believer" (think of Jesus telling Thomas "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!," which is in John's gospel). Of course, it isn't that simple in John's gospel, but the ambiguity of relationship between sign and signified is already there. But the focus on words, like the focus on the signs, tends to be misleading: it directs our attention away from the signified and onto the signifier.

Or that was, in part, Wittgenstein's concern. He thought for example, that paradox, that beloved concept of Kierkegaard ("the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion," says Anti-Climacus) was nothing more than a confusion of language. The essence of the question is: does language "point to" anything, or is it merely a formal system we use for certain purposes, and one which is so central to our thinking that we confuse it with reality?

Certainly it has been confused with reality. To "spell" is both to correctly arrange letters of the alphabet into a word, and to "cast" a "spell," or perform magic. What is magic, in the popular imagination, except an exertion of power of an object (thing or person, both are objects for the purpose)? To "spell" was once considered a magical act (in a world of illiterate people that's easily understood), because it gave you power over the word, and the word defined the essence, in fact was the essence, of the object (one reason no one can know, pronounce, or even spell, the name of the God of Abraham).

But can we escape the world that provides language to us? Certainly every child, as Augustine recognized, learns language first in relationship to objects, and only later in connection with abstractions (which, after all, and this was the basis of Hume's critique, consist entirely of language). Or rather, can we use language to provide us with a higher view, or at least experience, of the world?

Enter lectio divina.

In a marvelous "X-Files" episode, a writer interviews Scully about a story of a young couple who think they've been captured by aliens. The story gets stranger and stranger as the writer reveals the contents of other interviews he's done surrounding the incident, and at one point he and Scully discuss hypnosis in the context of recovering memories (a key part of the story). And he mentions the amazing power of hypnosis: how simply words, nothing more than sounds, can so control the human mind. This is, in a nutshell, one of the central conundrums of modern philosophy: how much of what we know, of even who we are, is caught up with words? What is language, that it should have such a power over us?

Enter lectio divina.

Lectio is an ancient Christian meditative practice. It involves reading scripture, and then allowing one word from that scripture to capture the consciousness, and then meditating on that word, allowing it to do whatever it will in a contemplative state of mind. Adepts at the practice say it brings them into the presence of God, even into mystical states of being. Now, from an empirical or positivistic point of view, this of course establishes nothing. How, indeed, can you establish anything of importance from mere words and subjective experience?

But, as Kierkegaard points out, how can you claim to establish anything outside of words and subjective experience? That puts you in the position of the thinker who so concentrated on cultivating an objective point of view that he awoke one morning to find he no longer existed! As Wittgenstein would say: "If you say this, the contradiction already lies in this."

(*edited by Cyril Barrett, Berkeley, University of California Press,)

"Send in the Clowns

There ought to be clowns."

We have, it seems, reached a landmark of sorts.

Since February, when the Site Meter was installed, Adventus has recorded just over 5000 visitors, and well over 7600 page views.

Which means a lot of people have almost as much time to waste as I do. Or find cable TV isn't all that interesting, after all. Or something.

5000 visitors in just over 2 months. And such a small car, too. I don't know what to say.

Except: "Thank you."

I'll have my Sally Fields moment in private. You can enjoy the Sondheim/Judy Collins moment (two of my favorites) here.

"There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. "

Sarah Deere was kind enough to include this link in the comments to the post below. Since I used her comment at Eschaton to start a conversation, I can use her comment here to keep it going in a good direction.

Of Cupidity and cupiditas

It's probably the places I hang out, but getting hounded about not being "Christian" because I don't lead the charge to put a cork in the mouth of James Dobson or Jerry Falwell or Randall Terry (and I choose that link only as this morning's example) gets tiresome. But it also led me to a reflection on my chilhood.

The major problem of James Dobson or Randall Terry, is that they have literally put their money where their mouth is. This is supposed to be the highest and best good in America; but the road to hell is paved not just with good intentions, but also with definitions of the "highest and best good." Their money is there, but that leaves no trace for any kind of Christianity. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your soul, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus calls these the great commandments, on which hang all the law and the prophets. No room for money, there; or at least, not for the love of money.

"The love of money," the letter writer says in 1 Timothy 6:10, "is the root of all evil." I grew up on that verse, and the older I get, the more wisdom I see in it. Its wisdom was quite limited when I was young. Good, well-educated, well meaning people, with absolutely no background in biblical exegesis or hermeneutics or even koine Greek (including my own father), assured me that the original said "cupiditas," and the "cupiditas" was to be distinguished from "agape" and "philos." There were, they assured me, types of love: agape was the "pure" love one had for God; "philos" the love one had for a brother; and of course, eros, of which no one wanted to speak to teenage boys and girls. Cupiditas was, compared to these, a minor love, one that could easily go astray, like young love that becomes foolish obsession. So what 1 Timothy condemned was not the love of money, but the excessive love of money.

There were only two problems with this explanation: (1) cupiditas is Latin, not Greek; it comes from the Latin translation of the Greek New Testamnt; (2) the original Greek word is "philarguria." You can see the root "philo-" in it, the same root as in "philosophy," the lover of "sofia," or wisdom. Philaguria, then, means love of money. Covetousness. Greed.

Perhaps that is the "excessive love" of money. But the fineness of the distinction is an attempt, perhaps even an honest one, to let love of money stand side by side with love of God. And yet, as the commandment makes clear, there is no room for that.

No room for love of position, either, or doctrine, or creed. No room for anything in the commandments Jesus praised above all others, except for love of God, and love of neighbor. Even when your neighbor is Randall Terry, or James Dobson.

Which makes it hard for me to condemn them. Because I am also reminded that it reflects the beam in my eye.

Jerusalem, by William Blake

AND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

The Christian supremacist model based on nationalist identity is neither uniquely American, nor unique to 20th century fundamentalists.

The struggle with God is from everlasting to everlasting. It is, in fact, that struggle which should define us.

Third Sunday in Easter

Psalm 116

I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.

2. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.

3. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.

4. Then called I upon the name of the LORD; 0 LORD, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.

5. Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.

6. The LORD preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me.

7. Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul; for the LORD hath dealt bountifully with thee.

8. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.

9. I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.

10. I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted:

11. I said in my haste, All men are liars.

12. What shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits toward me?

13. I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.

14. I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people.

15. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

16. 0 LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.

17. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD.

18. I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people,

19. In the courts of the LORD'S house, in the midst of thee, 0 Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.

The Long Emergency

Sometime back, I mentioned that I'd seen the write up on this book. Now I find an excerpt from it at Rolling Stone. It's making the rounds now (I found the link at Wolcott's blog), and it raises an interesting question for me.

The thesis of The Long Emergency is that life as we know it, at least in the "First World," is impossible without cheap energy. Moreover, this cheap energy has shifted our thinking about life in ways the Industrial Revolution couldn't imagine (and no, the computer has not been the most important vanguard of that shift). In brief, as cheap energy runs out, so does the way we live. Food shipped in not just from South America, but from other parts of the country, will become prohibitively expensive, if not impossible. Agro-industrial farming itself will collapse, and with it will go cities that chew up farm land and cover it with concrete and asphalt (like much of Houston where I live, where neighborhoods now were farmland as recently as 50 years ago). Development, highway construction, urban sprawl, all will obviously be affected, but so will "simpler" things like electricity consumption. As Kunstler puts it: "Imagine Phoenix without air conditioning." Or Houston, for that matter.

I practically grew up on "doomsday" scenarios in the 60's and 70's: nuclear war; overpopulation; food shortages; water shortages, etc., etc. But when you think about it, the very way we live, the way we think about life, is based almost wholly on cheap, plentiful fuel. Fuel to transport goods to us; fuel to run power plants; petroleum to make the ubiquitous plastics of our daily life. It is not like this for many parts of the world. It won't be like this for us, much longer; especially as China and India decide they have the capacity and the right to consume as much fuel as they can pay for. The discovery and use of petroleum has literally changed the way we live and the way we relate to each other. It has certainly made Houston, Texas the fourth largest city in the country.

It's easy to look back and see how we let this happen. Now, literally right now, we have to start looking forward, and think about how we respond to it. Kunstler is pessimistic, perhaps with good reason. But does it have to be difficult? Do we have to respond to every crisis with violence and civic unrest? Do we have to allow things to unfold as if they were pre-ordained? There are clearly other ways available to human beings. Spain in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings comes to mind. A social philosophy, a social theology, will be desperately required. To not even try to have one, it to abdicate all responsibility to the irresponsible.

I mentioned the "interesting question." That question is this: have we really fundamentally changed since Spindletop? Did humanity fundamentally change after the Industrial Revolution, or did we just shift our perspective? Two views came up side by side in the upheaval: Romanticism, and what we call today "market capitalism," identified on a spectrum from the "invisible hand" to "neo-liberal economics" to Social Darwinism. What's coming now? Phenomenology? Deconstruction? A new theology or social philosophy? If history is any guide, the seeds are already sprouting. Which plants will we cultivate?

Irrational Man

So I’m reading Umberto Eco’s soon to be released novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, which is about an Italian man who, in his late ‘50’s, suddenly loses his personal memory, and spend the novel trying to reconstruct it from the comic books and magazines left in his childhood home. And 2/3rds of the way through it, I’m thinking how badly the novel has fallen, a victim of its genetic heritage (like all things human made, seemingly). From it’s late 18th century beginnings to now, novels have always been about individuals more than about nations (Clarissa; Pamela). Romanticism gave them their purpose, and arguably the best of the 19th century were about the education of the individual within the society, whether in England (David Copperfield) or France (A Sentimental Education), or even Russia (Anna Karenina comes to mind first; undoubtedly a better choice could be made). Eco is continuing that vein, of course, except the society is shattered now, and all attention is on the individual. We don’t think of people finding their place in the world; at best, we think of them not finding their place (a perversion of the Romantic purpose, but such perversion is the inevitable result of exhausting the original principles). Where Dickens or Flaubert gave us a picture of national life in the life of an individual, Eco, like most modern novelists, gives us a picture of individual life in the life of an individual: a limited canvas, indeed, and not entirely his fault. To say he is not the novelist Dickens or Flaubert is, is not to say he’s no novelist at all.

But all of that rumination led me, higgledy-piggledy, to an episode of the “new” Battlestar Galactica I saw last night. Happened to see, in truth, since I’ve never followed the series (I remember Lorne Green too well, I suspect), and I only saw the last few minutes, so I don’t know the context precisely. But it struck me, thinking about the primacy of individuals in our literature, when I realized there was no “Dirty Harry” in this situation, that what happened occurred precisely because of a “chain of command,” not in spite of it.

Let me explain:

The situation is this: a passenger ship, presumably carrying 13,000 people (though there is some question of that) is heading toward the rest of the fleet, answering no calls, not slowing down, and revealing signs of nuclear weapons aboard. A huge floating bomb, in other words, and the only choice for the majority, is to destroy the ship and possibly kill a minority. The decision to fire must be made, but it must be made by the President, on advice from the Commander (Lorne Green never had problems like this!), and then the pilots must decide to open fire. They do, the day is saved; but all are haggard from the responsibility. The commander tells his son the pilot it was his responsibility for giving the command; but the son says, ruefully, “I pulled the trigger.”

The individual within society, acting on behalf of the society, for the “greater good” of the society; but all painfully aware of the cost to both the society and their own humanity. A weak reed on which to rest so much weight, I know, but a telling picture nonetheless. Telling, too, in that there is a clear chain of command here, a clear sense of responsibility, and no one shirking from that responsibility.

Which leads me to realize there are other ways of seeing these relationships: of what individuals owe society, and society owes individuals, and what each can expect from the other. The "Lone Ranger" image is still enticing; witness the popularity of Sin City now, a work I would argue stems directly from the parody of Romanticism we now are participating in (and that this is a peculiarly American theme is no accident). Which, in turn, stems from a misunderstanding of the responsibilities of existentialism (we are all existentialists now; but most of us take that as license, not burden). But there are alternatives afoot, even if they simply reaffirm the conservative notion that all our problems ultimately rely on military solutions.

Well, you've got to start somewhere, right?