Here endeth the lesson

The New York Times

Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.

He has, through friends, put out inquiries, they said, and has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales’s case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government’s chief lawyer, are typically highly sought.

A longtime loyalist to George W. Bush dating to their years together in Texas, Mr. Gonzales was once widely viewed as a strong candidate to be the first Hispanic-American nominated one day to the Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he carried an impressive personal story as the child of poor Mexican immigrants.

Despite those credentials, he left office last August with a frayed reputation over his role in the dismissal of several federal prosecutors and the truthfulness of his testimony about a secret eavesdropping program. He has had no full-time job since his resignation, and his principal income has come from giving a handful of talks at colleges and before private business groups.

...

The greatest impediment to Mr. Gonzales’s being offered the kind of high-salary job being snagged these days by lesser Justice Department officials, many lawyers agree, is his performance during his last few months in office. In that period, he was openly criticized by lawmakers for being untruthful in his sworn testimony. His conduct is being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department, which could recommend actions from exonerating him to recommending criminal charges. Friends set up a fund to help pay his legal bills.

...
While he has not taken any full-time job, friends said he was probably receiving as much income from speaking engagements as he did as attorney general with its annual salary of more than $191,000. Places like Washington University in St. Louis, Ohio State University and the University of Florida have paid him about $30,000 plus expenses for appearances, and the business groups pay a bit more, said sources at the schools and elsewhere who are familiar with the arrangements. Pomona College debated inviting him and decided he was not worth the money, the college newspaper reported.

Jesus of Nazareth:

There was this rich man whose manager had been accused of squandering his master’s property. He called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Let’s have an audit of your management, because your job is being terminated.”
Then the manager said to himself, “What am I going to do? My master is firing me. I’m not strong enough to dig ditches and I’m ashamed to beg. I’ve got it! I know what I’ll do so doors will open for men when I’m removed from management.”
So he called in each of his master’s debtors. He said to the first, “How much do you owe my master?”

He said, “Five hundred gallons of olive oil.”

And he said to him, “Here is your invoice; sit down right now and make it two hundred and fifty.”

Then he said to another, “And how much do you owe?”

He said, “A thousand bushels of wheat.”

He says to him, “Here is your invoice; make it eight hundred.”

The master praised the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this world exhibit better sense in dealing with their own kind than do the children of light.

I tell you, make use of your ill-gotten gain to make friends for yourselves, so that when the bottom falls out they are there to welcome you into eternal dwelling places.—Luke 16:1-9 (SV)

Go, thou, and do likewise.

Either/Or: In Which God Dies (#2 in a series)

The central question of religion of philosophy in the 20th century and now the 21st seems to be the proof of the existence of God. This is the either/or on which so much rises or falls. Yet it's a curious pursuit, since we cannot prove the existence of a platypus or a ceolocanth: we can only produce an animal or a fish we can identify as a platypus or a coelocanth. We do not thereby prove it's "existence," but then the popular discourse seldom questions the definition of "existence" that it is demanding proof of. That way, of course, lies phenomenology: Husserl and Heidegger, Sartre and Levinas, and even, to some degree, deconstruction and Derrida. Too much idealism, and too Continental; so we content ourselves with equating existence with presence, and when adequate reports of the presence of platypi and coelocanths are obtained, we ask no more of them. No such reports of "God" can be obtained, of course, because all such reports are subjective, and none can produce an object for examination, so the "proofs" fail and the subject is considered closed against those who assert any faith at all.

The problem is one Johannes Climacus considered over 150 years ago, in a little noticed discussion of the issue. Climacus first puts the issue in the context of the paradox. He praises the paradox, asserting: "the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion, a mediocre fellow." But he quickly looks beyond that:

But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.

There is a buried epistemological assumption there, one we should not glide over lightly: thought "discovers," in proper Hellenistic fashion (we will leave the Platonists and Aristotelians to thrash out whether it is truly "discovery," or merely "recovery", and move on). Hebraic epistemology, at least as it pertains to matters of the God of Abraham, does not depend on discovery, but rather on reception. It is the revelation that enlightens; knowledge of God is given, not found, is revealed, not unearthed. The shift is a small but important one; indeed, it is central to the question of the importance of the will.

Thought, Climacus points out, wants most to think something it cannot think. It wants, then, to be able to think the existence of that which it cannot know except through experience. It wants to be able to discover, for itself, irrefutable proof of that which is by definition not subject to such proof. We cannot establish the existence of a platypus, but we can identify a specific monotreme as a platypus. We can dissect it, study it, classify it, discard it, and never prove the existence of it. But since we cannot do these things with Deity, we discard it. We demand proof of Deity's existence, even as we cannot imagine what that proof would be. We want to think the thought we cannot think, even if thinking that thought would be the downfall of the thought itself. So here is the first problem: we set ourselves a task we know is impossible and then, when it cannot be done, we declare the subject of the impossible quest responsible, and declare the impossible, at the very least, the question that must be answered and, since it cannot be, content ourselves with our paradox. Our passion can never be satisfied, never reach the collision, never face its downfall: and of how many passions in our lives can the same be said? Is it any wonder we are so passionate about the proofs of God's existence, and the inability of any of them to satisfy?

But that is only the beginning, and it still establishes nothing; it still leaves the passion waiting expectantly for a fulfillment it knows can never be, that it doesn't even want. Let's pursue the question, and find not what it's establishment would mean, but what the inability to establish it means. We have put so much on that issue, we have staked everything on its outcome. Even if we really don't want to know the answer, what answer do we presume there could be?

But what is this unknown against which the understanding in its paradoxical passion collides and which even disturbs man [sic] and his self-knowledge? It is the unknown. But it is not a human being, insofar as he knows man, or anything else that he knows. Therefore, let us call this unknown the god. It is only a name we give to it. It hardly occurs to the understanding to want to demonstrate that this unknown (the god) exists. If, namely the god does not exist, then of course it is impossible to demonstrate it. But if he does exist, then of course it is foolishness to want to demonstrate it, since I, in the very moment the demonstration commences, would presuppose it not as doubtful--which a presupposition cannot be, inasmuch as it is a presupposition--but as decided, because otherwise I would not begin, easily perceiving that the whole thing would be impossible if he did not exist. If, however, I interpret the expression "to demonstrate the existence of the god" to mean that I want to demonstrate that the unknown, which exists, is the god, than I do not express myself very felicitously, for then I demonstrate nothing, least of all an existence, but I develop the definiteness of a concept.

What is lurking here is the analytic/synthetic distinction from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Is "existence," in other words, an analytic truth (one where the truth is established solely through analysis of its meaning), or is it synthetic (one which "add[s] to the concept of the subject a predicate which has not been in any wise thought in it, and which no analysis could possibly extract from it,” i.e., one which can be based on empirical facts about the world.). The common assumption is that existence is synthetic; but the proofs of the existence of "the god" all presume the statement is actually analytical. Small wonder the result of all of these efforts is an epistemological black hole.

"It is generally a difficult matter to want to demonstrate that something exists--worse still, for the brave souls who venture to do it, the difficulty is of such a kind that fame by no means awaits those who are preoccupied with it. The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who indeed does exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to call existence an accessorium or the eternal prius, it can never be demonstrated.

The demands for proof of God's existence, of course, presume existence can be proven, and once it can, then proof of God's existence cannot be far behind. But the proof of existence itself is still wanting. As Climacus points out:

If one wanted to demonstrate Napoleon's existence from Napoleon's works, would it not be most curious, since his existence certainly explains the works but the works do not demonstrate his existence unless I have already in advance interpreted the word "his" in such a way as to have assumed he exists.

Napoleon, of course, is not necessary to his works, but the god is presumed to have an absolute relation to the god's works. So perhaps that is the difference that allows a proof of the god to be formulated:

But then, what are the god's works? The works from which I want to demonstrate his existence do not immediately and directly exist, not at all. Or are the wisdom in nature and the goodness or wisdom in Governance right in front of our noses? Do we not encounter the most terrible spiritual trials here, and is it ever possible to be finished with all these trials? But I still do not demonstrate God's existence from such an order of things, and even if I began, I would never finish and also would be obliged continually to live in suspenso lest something so terrible happen that my fragments of demonstration would be ruined. Therefore, from what works do I demonstrate it? From the works regarded ideally--that is, as they do not appear directly and immediately. But then I do not demonstrate it from the works, after all, but only develop the ideality I have presupposed; trusting in that, I even dare to defy all objections, even those that have not yet arisen. By beginning, then, I have presupposed the ideality, have presupposed that I will succeed in accomplishing it, but what else is that but presupposing that the god exists and actually beginning with trust in him.

Is it any wonder Rudolf Bultmann wrote his magnum opus on John's gospel with John open before him, and Johannes Climacus open beside him?

When he was in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many believed in him once they saw with their own eyes the miracles he performed. But Jesus didn't trust himself to them, because he understood them all too well. He didn't need to know more about humanity; he knew what people were really like. John 2:23-25, SV.

So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen everything he had done at the celebration in Jerusalem. (They had gone to the celebration too). Then he came back to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine.

There was an official whose son was sick in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had returned to Galilee from Judea, he approached him and pleaded with him to come down and cure his son, who was about to die.

Jesus said to him, "You people refuse to believe unless you see portents [semeia] and miracles [terata]."John 4:45-48

"Now my life is in turmoil, but should I say, 'Father, rescue me from this moment'? No, it was to face this moment that I came. Father, glorify your name!" Then a voice spoke out of the sky: "I have glorified it and I'll glorify it further."

The crowd there heard this, and some people remarked that it had thundered, others than an angel had spoken to him.

"That voice did not come for me but for you," Jesus rejoined.--John 12:27-30

In fact, after reading Bultmann, one wonders if Kierkegaard didn't have John's gospel in mind when writing the Philosophical Fragments. The Johannine distinction between semeion and dunamis seems almost tailor made for the philosophical concerns of his namesake Climacus. Either we see signs, proof, irrefutable evidence, or we do not believe! "The works from which I want to demonstrate his existence do not immediately and directly exist, not at all." They are signs, but only if we already see what they point to. If we don't see that, we don't see the signs, either, except as objects. And objects, no more than signs, can speak to us, and overcome our ignorance, our doubt, our lack of knowledge. Either we already know, and the sign merely confirms it for us, or we do not know, and at most what we hear is...thunder. Was it an angel who spoke to Jesus? Why didn't anyone in the audience get even that sign right? If that sign cannot demonstrate, finally and absolutely, the existence of the god, what can?

Climacus would leave the matter here:

The paradoxical passion of the understanding is, then, continually colliding with this unknown, which certainly does exist but is also unknown and to that extent does not exist. The understanding does not go beyond this; yet in its paradoxicality the understand cannot stop reaching it and being engaged with it, because wanting to express its relation to it by saying that this unknown does not exist will not do, since just saying that involves a relation. But what, then, is this unknown, for does not its being the god merely signify to us that it is the unknown? To declare that it is the unknown because we cannot know it, and that even if we could know it we could not express it, does not satisfy the passion, although it has correctly perceived the unknown as frontier. But a frontier is precisely the passion's torment, even though it is also its incentive. And yet it can go no further, whether it risks a sortie through via negationis or via eminentiae.*

But that simply leaves us where we began; although it explains rather nicely the energy some bring to this discussion, so determined are they to resolve once and for all the existence of the unknown; a resolution, of course, which can never be reached, at least not by the understanding.

And how do we understand this?

When we attend to the debates of philosophers and theologians about faith we are struck by the fact that every participant, no matter how he assails the faith of others, expresses some confidence of his own. And then we further note that confidence is usually professed not in one object only but in several and that often the effort to state this faith moves in a kind of circle from a first object to a second and perhaps a third and back to the first. The common, usually unanalyzed, association of faith with such terms as democracy, the people and education, or nature, experience, and reason, in popular statements about the things we can rely on has its counterpart in the more careful analsyses of academicians.

An example in philosophy of this expression of a pluralistic and circular faith is offered by A.J. Ayeer's radical book, Language, Truth and Logic...."We rely," he writes, "on our senses to substantiate or confute teh judgments which are based on our sensations." This is indeed a faith, an expression of sheer trust in what is not sensibly perceived, since the continuity and unity of sense-experience is not something that is sensed....A kind of structure of faith emerges in his confession. He relies on science because he is loyal to human life, not his own merely; and because science is based on sense-experience which he trusts. There are three objects of faith here: sense-experience, science and human values. And faith moves in a kind of circle justifying reliance on each of these objects by reference to the others.

And where does this lead? Back to the either/or:

In the midst of all these questionings and arguments about faith; in the controversies of the religious sects and philosophical schools; among the contentions as defenders of this and that faith attack others with different beliefs, we become aware of a strange fact. Belief and disbelief, trust and distrust, fideilty and infidelity toward one another is present in all those who contend or agree with each other as they argue about faith. Defensiveness of one's own beliefs and suspicion of those with other beliefs, distrust of their intellectual ability or honesty accompany men [sic] in all their encounters with each other. Confessions of loyalty to values of one sort or another and of reliance upon powers, no less than the implicit and explicit confessions of doubt or confidence in one another can be heard in the midst of all these arguments and analyses. Belief and trust and fidelity and their opposites are forever present as active attitudes in the very subjects who make them the objects of their inquiry or disputation.

So:

"Questions about faith, about its relation to action, to sight and understanding, about its objects and circular movements are important to us only because we have previously been required to answer the questions of faith."

When we are reduced to the either/or, the question of faith is put before us, and we have to answer. Faced with the unknown, we cannot explain it, but we cannot avoid it. And so we tried to see what would happen if we did without it; and so in the 1960's, a small group of theologians tried to proclaim God "dead." That theology alleged traced its roots back to Kierkegaard, to Bonhoeffer, even to Barth and to Tillich. There is a rather tedious revisionist history argument to be had about the length, breadth, purpose, and efficacy of the "God is dead" movement. But it actually asked a series of questions arranged around a central point: what is the metaphysical nature of God in a non-metaphysical world? One answer was to face the abandonment of metaphysics. The other answer was to reconsider the proposition that metaphysics had no meaning. And from that came reconsideration came phenomenology (out of German Idealism) and process theology (out of the ruins of the Principia Mathematica, following the acceptance of Gödel’s theorem of incompleteness.) But the clear question of the movement was: could we live without God? Could we reject the orthodox explanations of the nature of God (the heart of theology) and still practice theology? In what, in fact, did we have faith? What we could understand, if not see? Or what we could believe?

Was belief still an either/or? And could we ask that question without being accused of simply seeking publicity? (Ironically, Emory University shifted from an obscure college to a major research institution largely because of the notoreity of Thomas J.J. Altizer, a professor in the seminary at Emory, and one of the proponents of the controversial theology.) If we cannot prove God’s existence, must we necessarily lose faith in God? If we cannot establish the first object and then the second and perhaps a third and fourth, is it impossible for our faith to be generated by the movement among them? Or are: “Belief and trust and fidelity and their opposites …forever present as active attitudes in the very subjects who make them the objects of their inquiry or disputation”?, so that even the declaration that the ground of faith, God in this case, is dead, is gone, is simply another statement of belief and trust and fidelity or perhaps, its opposites? The argument of Climacus lingers, though: if God is “dead,” does that mean the unknown is no more? And if it cannot mean that, then how can the unknown, the god, be “dead,” destroyed, obsolete, removed from all further consideration? “But a frontier is precisely the passion's torment, even though it is also its incentive. And yet it can go no further, whether it risks a sortie through via negationis or via eminentiae.”

So for all that effort, where have we gone, except to the place where we began? And is it possible yet to know it for the first time?


*The via negationis is the way of negative theology; i.e., we can only speak of what God is not, not of what God is. It is a theology that has its own satisfactions and limitations, and while it much appealed to Luther, it is not the final word on the nature of God, or even the best word. The via emenentiae is the way of idealization, essentially the ground of Anselm's ontological "proof," i.e., that God is all that can be best possibly conceived, which ultimately is no more definitive nor satisfactory.

All the quotes from Philosophical Fragments, by the way, are from: Kierkegaard, Søren, Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus, tr. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985). Quotes from Niebuhr are: Niebuhr, H. Richard, Faith on Earth, ed. Richard R. Niebuhr (New Haven: Yale University Press 1989).

Irrationality is a force that gives us meaning

I realize I've been down this road once or twice before (and I really need to go back and tag all the 2746 posts in this blog; maybe when I can afford to hire a secretary...), and some will disagree with me, but Anthony McCarthy, in comments here, put me onto Chris Hedges new book, I Don't Believe in Atheists. I have to admit I hadn't heard of it, and I missed this interview with Hedges in Salon last March. I am correcting that oversight now, because I love what Hedges has to say.

I would say that the fascist agenda was Utopian, and that it adopted the cult of science. That's what leads Hitler to try and breed humans and apes to try to create an oversized warrior or to send expeditions to Tibet to find a pure, Aryan race. I mean, that's not science. It's the cult of science, and I think the New Atheists also make that leap from science into the cult of science, and that's a problem.

The Enlightenment was both a curse and a blessing, because it was really a reaction to the kind of superstition, intolerance, bigotry, anti-intellectualism of the clerics, of the church. But it also ended up with the Jacobins, [who said] well, if we can't make certain segments of the society "civilized," as we define civilization, then they must be eradicated, in the same way that you eradicate a virus.

I write in the book that not believing in God is not dangerous. Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don't believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it's the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they're great supporters of preemptive war, and I don't think this is accidental that their political agendas coalesce completely with the Christian right.

Now, the most interesting thing from a blogging point of view, is the reaction to the Hedges/Hitchens debate on the intertubes. I Googled "Chris Hedges Hitchens" and found this Salon interview. I also found a lot of other stuff, most of which seems quite impressed with Hitchens rhetorical skills, but paying no attention to what Hedges or Hitchens actually said. My favorite is this one:

The arena where this pivotal re-alignment took place was the King Middle School auditorium in Berkeley, where far-left "progressive" journalist Chris Hedges formally debated iconoclastic "neocon" pundit Christopher Hitchens. (Videos of the debate and photos from the event can be found below.) The topic of the debate was "Is God...Great?", a riff on the title of Hitchens' new book, God Is Not Great.

Surprising as it might seem in a contemporary political landscape where mocking religion is an established liberal pastime, and where Christianity and spirituality are most often associated with conservatism, it was Hitchens -- now loathed by the left for not toeing the party line over the Iraq War -- who attacked religion, while the neo-Socialist, anti-patriotic, radical Hedges volunteered for the seemingly topsy-turvy position of having to defend spirituality and the existence of God.

How did this strange state of affairs come to pass? In one word: Islam.

The left -- of which Hitchens was a part until recently -- has always been anti-religion. But now, they've become caught in a philosophical bind: how can they promote multiculturalism -- and by extension all non-Western cultures, such as fundamentalist Islam -- if they condemn religion in general? Neocon pundits have since 9/11 frequently accused the left of being in bed with Muslim extremists, a charge which the left has vehemently denied. But with every denial their position was becoming more and more untenable, as the verbiage and narratives of Islamic radicals and "anti-war" progressives have grown to become virtually indistinguishable.

Someone had to take the lead and resolve the dilemma that the left had created for itself. And so it was Hedges who stepped forward in this debate to test the waters for the first time, taking what is for him (and the left) a revolutionary position: that spirituality and religion -- with the noteworthy exception of organized Christianity -- is good.

Now, at no point did Hedges state that he was performing this amazing flipflop specifically due to Islam. He didn't need to say it -- because Hitchens said it for him. In fact, Hitchens repeatedly tore the roof off of Hedges' carefully constructed rhetorical edifice, saying aloud the exact thoughts that Hedges and the left didn't want anyone to hear.

"Pivotal re-alignment"? How did I miss that? Anyway, follow that reasoning carefully, because you won't find it in the Hedges interview. In fact, here is what Hedges says:

A lot of the book is devoted to making this comparison between Christian and what some call secular fundamentalists, but you are pretty hands off when it comes to fundamentalist Islam.

The only reason I go after Christian fundamentalists and New Atheists is because they're here and I'm an American. Fundamentalism -- whether it's Hindu fundamentalism or Jewish fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism or Islamic fundamentalism -- is the same disease. Karen Armstrong has explained that brilliantly. Fundamentalists, no matter what their religious coloring -- bear far more in common with each other than they do with more enlightened members of their own religious communities. I'm an enemy of fundamentalism, period. And if I'm not going after Islamic fundamentalism in this book, it's because what I've tried to do is talk about these two very dangerous ideological strains within American society, although the New Atheists are peddling this under the guise of enlightenment and reason and science in the same way that the Christian right tries to peddle it as a form of Christianity.

It seems to be, from scanning those entries on Google, the standard take on this debate (which, below, would not surprise Chris Hedges, nor does it surprise me). And I will admit I haven't watched those debates and carefully analyzed them for coherence by either party; life is simply too short. But taking that comment as representative of the pro-Hitchens side of the Hedges/Hitchens debate (and is it any coincidence that the neo-con line is that any sympathy for Islam is sympathy for the devil?), consider this by Hedges on his debates with both Hitchens and Sam Harris:

Do you think the new atheists are similarly uninterested in their impact? It seems that what the New Atheists write and say is somewhat a performance.

Well, not Harris. Harris is just intellectually shallow. Harris doesn't know anything about religion or the Middle East. For Hitchens, it's about a performance, and that was true when he was on the left. He hasn't changed. It's all about him. It's all about being a contrarian. He reminds me of Ann Coulter, he's that kind of a figure. He's witty, and he's funny and insulting. You know I debated him, and in the middle of the debate he starts shouting, "Shame on you for defending suicide bombers!" Of course, unlike him, I've actually stood at the edge of a suicide bombing attack. That kind of stuff is just ... it's the epistemology of television. They make a lot of money off it, but it's gross and disgusting and anti-intellectual and not at all about real discussion.

Do you think Hitchens really believes what he writes?

I think he's completely amoral. I think he doesn't have a moral core. I think he doesn't believe anything. What's good for Christopher Hitchens is about as moral as he gets.

It's actually the "suicide bomber" line I want to focus on. That is a classic (pardon the pun) "bomb throwing" technique, the kind that is Hitchens stock and trade. It's also, as Hitchens says, "the epistemology of television." When was the last time any of us stood at the edge of a suicide bombing attack? I think at the very least, before we start throwing such claims around, we should consider our own authority on the subject. Hedges makes this point a bit earlier in the interview, in even better language:

I spent so long in war zones that I think we don't know what we would do under repression and abuse -- you know, if somebody killed my father. That's the brilliance of the great writers on the Holocaust, like Primo Levi and [Bruno] Bettelheim. They understood the humanity of their own killers. That line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin. We all carry within us the capacity for abuse, and I think that's the most disturbing lesson you walk away with when you cover wars. We're all capable of evil, under the right circumstances, and very few of us are immune.

Such understanding, of course, is anathema to Hitchens. As Hedges says, and it could be said about the entire "New Atheists" debate as conducted by Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens: "it's gross and disgusting and anti-intellectual and not at all about real discussion."

But these debates, as he points out, are seldom about listening; they are just about shouting:

We had over 1,500 people at the debate at UCLA, and I think that the people who came liking Sam Harris left liking Sam Harris. I don't think that they heard a word I said, and it's just insulting ... I've debated Christian fundamentalists, and it's the same. I can get up and say, look, I grew up in the church, I went to seminary. No, I'm part of the forces of godless secular humanism that are trying to destroy Christians, and they just repeat it like a mantra -- half of their audience which came to hear them hears it, and the same is true of the New Atheists.

Now I will say I haven't encountered too many "audiences" like that in left blogistan, mostly because you can avoid them as easily as encounter them. I pick where I read and comment, as life is too short and I don't have the public platform Chris Hedges does. Still, it is nice to read something like this once in awhile, to hear a truly rational voice that not only has knowledge, but reasoning to support it. It's almost like being back in seminary.

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?

The Engine of Hope

Nothing was going to make me break my series this time. Then I went to the New York Times, and opened this op-ed by Taylor Branch:

Many of Dr. King’s closest comrades rejected his commitment to nonviolence. The civil rights movement created waves of history so long as it remained nonviolent, then stopped. Arguably, the most powerful tool for democratic reform was the first to become passé. It vanished among intellectuals, on campuses and in the streets. To this day, almost no one asks why.

Take that in for a moment, alone; then move on to Mr. Branch's second paragraph:

We must reclaim the full range of blessings from his movement. For Dr. King, race was in most things, but defined nothing alone. His appeal was rooted in the larger context of nonviolence. His stated purpose was always to redeem the soul of America. He put one foot in the Constitution and the other in scripture. “We will win our freedom,” he said many times, “because the heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.” To see Dr. King and his colleagues as anything less than modern founders of democracy — even as racial healers and reconcilers — is to diminish them under the spell of myth.

Several things going on there at once, not all of them compatible with the prevailing sentiments of left blogistan. Take the center of that paragraph: "He put one foot in the Constitution and the other in scripture." We are told, over and over again, by many voices, that such a stance is not only impossible, it is flatly unconstitutional. I suppose that throws out the baby with the bathwater, because, as Branch goes on to say in the very next sentence: "Dr. King and his colleagues [are nothing] less than modern founders of democracy," and to see them as anything less, "is to diminish them under the spell of myth."

Which is not to say religion is essential to the defense of democracy, or to its founding; but perhaps, again, it is. Perhaps religion that teaches that all people are equal under God, that all are children of God and that in the kingdom of God the first will be last and the last first, is a core belief necessary to embrace democracy. It isn't necessary that all those in the democracy embrace that belief, anymore than it was necessary that all who lived in Israel in the time of the judges and kings embraced the God of Abraham. It was enough that those who did, understood that God to be the God of all, and concerned with all. There are more than a few stories of non-Hebrews in the Hebrew Scriptures, and they are not despised. There is no superiority in Christians in a democracy, but there is certainly a power in Christian belief that can make democracy what it should be, that can make the goal of freedom Dr. King proclaimed was the goal of America, possible.

Or it can selfishly destroy it, under the leadership of unrepentant and unreconstructed racists like the late Jerry Falwell. Every coin always has two sides. Which is, of course, also the great lesson of Iraq. This morning NPR tells me President Bush and Prime Minister Putin made at least public statements indicating they want less tension, not more, between the US and Russia. The statement is clear: Iraq or Iran the US can push around; but Russia is another matter, so let's be nice to them. Anyone else remember how quickly North Korea slipped off the 'Axis of Evil' once it had a nuclear weapon? As Mr. Branch says:

There is no more salient or neglected field of study than the relationship between power and violence.

We've had another object lesson in that field of study for the past 7 years. Whether we have learned anything from it, or not, remains to be seen. What we have learned, sadly, is that power is more important than right, that authority trumps democracy, and that control is the whole point of politics. Dr. King thought otherwise, and for those thoughts, at the end of his brief 39 years, he was labeled "Chicken à la King" and "one of the most menacing men in America today." We truly don't like the lessons of non-violence, because they put us out of the center, they leave us without control. And that thought terrifies us more than the consequences of violence itself. But consider where Mr. Branch ends his speech; with the story of Lazarus and Dives, from Dr. King's last sermon at Riverside Church.

Dives is the rich man, who wouldn't even feed Lazarus the scraps from his table. When they both die, Lazarus goes to heaven, to sit with Abraham, and Dives is sent to hell, to suffer eternal torment. Dives pleads with Abraham to send Lazarus back to life in order to warn his still living brothers of this fate, that they might avoid it, but Abraham says they have the prophets, they should listen to them:

Dr. King said Dives was a liberal. Despite his own fate, he wanted to help others. Abraham rebuffed this request, too, telling Dives that his brothers already had ample warning in Torah law and the books of the Hebrew prophets. Still Dives persisted, saying no, Abraham, you don’t understand — if the brothers saw someone actually rise from the dead and warn them, then they would understand.

Jesus quotes Abraham saying no. If the brothers do not accept the core teaching of the Torah and the prophets, they won’t believe even a messenger risen from the dead. Dr. King said this parable from Jesus burns up differences between Judaism and Christianity. The lesson beneath any theology is that we must act toward all creation in the spirit of equal souls and equal votes. The alternative is hell, which Dr. King sometimes defined as the pain we inflict on ourselves by refusing God’s grace.

Equality, of course, means vulnerability. It means I don't have as much power as you do, and what does that do to me? It is a vision well beyond that of the "Founding Fathers," with their restriction of the vote to white property owning males, and with a republic, not a pure democracy, in their Constitution. It isn't too much to say today that Republic is going the way of Rome, with the diktator of Roman law becoming the "unitary Executive" who, in time of "war," has all powers necessary not to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution," but to declare enemies on every phone line, and the power to discover them and imprison them without trial or warrant. It is the very fear of vulnerability that our government has played on since September 11, 2001. It is that fear that a man with one foot in the Constitution, and one foot in Scripture, would show us how to overcome.

For Dr. King, to answer was a patriotic and prophetic calling. He challenges everyone to find a Lazarus somewhere, from our teeming prisons to the bleeding earth. That quest in common becomes the spark of social movements, and is therefore the engine of hope.

Amen.

Either/Or (#1 in a series...)

Driving home the other day, find myself behind a pickup truck adorned with magnets on the tail gate reading (left to right): "Pray for our Troops;" "God Bless Our Troops" (this an oval with a candle in the center, adorned with red ribbon, all against a green background; I assume it was a Xmas item), and "Support our Troops." On the radio as I drive: testimony from US soldiers at Winter Soldier. I learn, among other things, that we have multiple launch rocket (MLR) weapons designed to destroy a grid 1000 meters by 1000 meters. The soldier tells me that's about a square block, and I'm imagining how far around my neighborhood the damage from such a weapon would spread. The truck, though, in this context, makes me think of the "either/or."

In modern politics, the preference is toward the either/or. Perhaps it's unfair to blame that on modernity; perhaps it has always been that way.

"Either/or" is a phrase which has taken on a particular meaning following Kierkegaard's use of it in the 19th century. Many early evaluators of the melancholy Dane's thought considered it the metaphor of the ethical "sphere," the one, supposedly, that mature and properly socialized adults live in. The term comes from one of the "aesthetic" works (S.K.'s term for them), Either/Or. Almost more a literary work than a philosophical one, Either/Or consists of two unequal halves. The first part is the "Diary of a Seducer," the journal of a young man whose sole interest in others is in their benefits to him. It is the adolescent's point of view, the man-child with money and social power, but little appreciation of the otherness of people who seem to exist only to service his pleasures. The "Judge" presents the bourgeois position of Danish society, counseling this young man, in a series of letters, to accept the mores and ethics of Danish society, the better to understand his obligations to something larger than himself and his selfish interests. That something larger, of course, is the "ethical," which requires one to think of others as others. If you read the book as a statement by Kierkegaard, it's a remarkably conservative and placid one, although rich in psychological insights. However, if you read it as one of the pseudonymous works, and recognize that the "Judge" means to exert power over the "Seducer," means to literally sit in judgment over the young man and call him to account on the basis of Danish society's ethics (which aren't necessarily S.K.'s), the book takes on a very different cast. And if you consider that one of S.K.'s "edifying discourses" (which were always published under his name, never a pseudonym) is: "Judge for Yourself!," you might begin to reconsider the importance of the Judge to Kierkegaard, altogether.

"Either/Or" refers to the bright line of ethics, the one we all claim a special privilege and access to, when push comes to shove. "Either/Or" means there is right, and there is wrong, and once we recognize the value of the other (the move from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere, according to the early interpreters of Kierkegaard), we recognize, too, the restrictions on our actions which necessarily accompany the "either/or." The "either/or" bifurcates the "both/and" of the aesthete (both eat your cake and have it, too). It splits that selfishness into self and other, and demands a decision, a choice be made. Of course, the choice is thoroughly bourgeois. The Judge is no different from the accountant who is Johannes de Silentio's Knight of Faith, save that the Judge fails wholly to make the invisible movements of eternity, the movements which set the Knight of Faith apart from the Knight of Infinite Resignation, the Judge trapped in the social web of the either/or, in the ethical which binds each person to each person and permits no longer the "both/and" of the aesthete, having replaced it with a "both/and" in which society is the beneficiary above the individuals (so could S.K. become a stern critic of the state church of Denmark, and utter his Attack upon 'Christendom,' the while himself remaining a beneficiary of his father's bourgeois achievement, which made Kierkegaard's life and publications, possible. S.K. resembled Socrates in more ways than one.)

However, there is an escape offered. If we truly self-actualize and achieve spiritual purity, we transcend even the ethical and achieve it's teleological suspension in the name of the true Authority behind the ethical itself. We become the Knight of Faith. Or we would follow that path, if Fear and Trembling were not itself one of the "aesthetic" works, published not by S. Kierkegaard, but by Johannes de silentio. A name which always reminds me of the final statement of Wittgenstein's Tractatus: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." There is much in Fear and Trembling which is central to Kierkegaard's thought, but central only as an examination of the ways we convince ourselves how very, very important we are in the grand scheme of things, especially in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. In fact, the central conclusion of Fear and Trembling is that either/or (the world as seen by traditional ethics) is not the right way to divide human existence in order to understand it. But neither is both/and (Hegel or Kant). Because what lands right in the middle of either/or or both/and, is the paradox of the teleological suspension of the ethical (which is impossible, but undeniable for Christians) and the Absolute Paradox of the Incarnation (equally impossible, but also undeniable for Christians). So the "Either/Or" is not one of the "Stages on Life's Way" (another of the aesthetic works), it is a way in which we determine our own importance. The "either/or" and the "both/and," the ethical as well as the aesthete, are simply two sides of the same coin. Which is why "either/or" is very important to us: it is our identity, it is the very composition of our Self. To begin to give up the either/or is to begin to admit the importance of Other; and to begin to define and understand the self in relationship to Self, not as the boundary against Other. As Anti-Climacus puts it:

A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way a human being is still not a self.... In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.

Now if that isn't as dense as a Christmas fruitcake and as dark as the inside of a dog, you simply weren't paying enough attention. But one key to unlocking it is to follow D. Anthony Storm's lead and consider "self" here as a verb, not a noun. Anti-Climacus has a bit more to say on the subject, though, first:

If the relation that relates itself to itself has been established by another, then the relation is indeed the third, but this relation, the third, is yet again a relation and relates itself to that which established the entire relation.

The human self is such a derived, established relation, a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another. This is why there can be two forms of despair in the strict sense. If a human self had itself established itself, then there could only be one form: not to will to be oneself, to will to do away with oneself, but there could not be the form: in despair to will to be oneself.

The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be oneself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.

I tend to read this language in light of Hume's description of the self, i.e., that he can't find one, but merely a reception of stimuli which somehow create the illusion of a self observing objects empirically which are known via such stimuli, which in turn are known because...well, because they stimulate the sense organs, and this knowledge gives the illusion of a "self" observing same. There is clearly some relationship in Hume's idea, between the world percieved and the stimuli received, but that relationship is merely the creation of our erroneous assumption of a causal relationship between observation and observed, or perhaps more precisely between observation and the seeming awareness of the act of observation. Hume puts the self under his epistemological microscope and fails to find anything to look at. Kierkegaard puts the self at the center of all relationships (the beating heart of existentialism), and finds it to be the place where all the ladders start; although it is not necessarily the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. Indeed, it is the relationship which creates relationship by relating first to itself, and in so relating, can relate to others. The either/or of the Judge and the Seducer comes back around again; because the Judge's either/or, and the Seducer's both/and, are both products and creations of relationships between Self and others.

Which is the language of later phenomenology, specifically, in my usage, of Levinas and Derrida. But there is also, in Kierkegaard's language, one of the great topics of 19th century Europe, one of the central themes of Romanticism, from Wordsworth to Hegel to Byron to Nietzsche to Schopenhauer to the present day: the centrality of the will. Kierkegaard put this front and center himself, declaring in one of the signed (not pseudonymous) works that: "Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing." It is will, according to Romantic thought, which can purify the heart and cleanse it even of despair (despair is the central concern of Anti-Climacus, not the self itself). Here, then, is the great challenge: we escape the dichotomy of the either/or both/and by purity of heart. But do we will that purity, or do we achieve that purity precisely by abandoning the will? Is God revealed to us, in other words; or do we discover God?

Lord, when did we see you?

I said "self-actualize" back there, and thought long and hard about re-writing that, because it isn't accurately Kierkegaardian at all. "Self-actualization" belongs to modern "pop" psychology, not the densely pre-Freudian insights of the Dane; it has much more to do with Deepak Chopra than with Johannes de Silentio or Anti-Climacus. But it has, since the Romantic movement and then the "Oprah" movement (not an accurate start date, but an apt metaphor), become the ne plus ultra of human existence. At least, for human existence as lived by the petit bourgeois who inhabit the world reached and affected by the likes of Chopra and Oprah and the "Gospel of Wealth."

It's very hard to read about Christianity's relationship to the self, to the individual, at least since Kierkegaard, without understanding it in terms of "self-actualizing." That it is not what S.K. considered the "road" to Christianity is clear from the break between the pseudonymous works and the signed works. Even the "will to be oneself" is simply a recognition of human reality, a rejection of the Hegelian Geist which controls human affairs; it is an acceptance, not an abdication, of responsibility. Self-actualization is all about me, but living as a Christian is all about living in a community, as Bonhoeffer said:

It is the mystery of the community that Christ is in her and, only through her, reaches to men [sic]. Christ exists among us as community, as Church in the hiddenness of history. The Church is the hidden Christ among us. Now therefore man [sic] is never alone, but he exists only through the community which brings him Christ, which incorporates him in itself, takes him into its life. Man in Christ is man in community where he exists is community. But because at the same time as individual he is fully a member of the community, therefore here alone is the continuity of his existence preserved in Christ. Therefore man can no longer understand himself from himself, but only from Christ.

But what does this mean? Surely if we had a sign, all would be clear:

What is to be understood by a 'sign?' A sign is the negation of immediacy, or a second state of being, differing from the first. It is not thereby affirmed that the sign is not something immediate, but that what it is as a sign is not immediate, in other words, that as a sign it is not the immediate thing it is.

I would stop right there, but Anti-Climacus goes on to clarify his meaning:

A nautical mark is a sign. Immediately it is a post, a light, or some such thing, but a sign it is not immediately, that is a sign is something different from what immediately is. This [viz. this failure to observe the distinction] lies at the bottom of all mystifications by the help of 'signs'; for a sign is a sign only for one who knows that it is a sign and in the strictest sense only for one who knows what it signifies; for everyone else the sign is only what it immediately is. Even in case no one had erected this or that into a sign, and there was no understanding with anybody that it was to be regarded as such, yet when I see something striking and call it a sign, it is qualified as such by reflection. The striking trait is the immediate, but that I regard it as a sign (a reflective act, producing something out of myself) expresses my conception that it must signify something, but the fact that is must signify something means that is is something else than that which it immediately is. So I am not denying the immediacy of the thing when I regard it as a sign without knowing definitely that it is a sign or what it should signify.

Deconstruction arose from structuralism, which arose from and alongside semiotics, all three of which are fields originated and dominated by French intellectuals. The fields are peculiarly French because they can trace their immediate cultural roots back the French Symboliste poets, rebels against the French bourgeoisie who felt a great affinity for the American Romantic, Edgar Allan Poe. It is not too much to say that Kierkegaard's prediction of his influence is proven true by this snippet of chronology. Writing in an obscure European language from a tiny and often overlooked European country (aside from fairy tales and Isek Dinesen, what is Denmark known for?), it was the mid 20th century before his works were translated widely enough to be known outside his native country. Interesting that he foreshadowed semiotics and structuralism and pointed toward deconstruction, almost 150 years too early. Interesting, too, that these considerations are, again, not the signed work of Soren Kierkegaard, but the pseudonymous work of "Anti-Climacus," he who wrote The Sickness Unto Death, and examined the reason, even the need, for despair. It cannot be overemphasized when considering the works of Kierkegaard: the pseudonymous works are not Christian works; and the signed works, the "Edifying Discourses," are not philosophical ones. The two realms, for Kierkegaard, simply do not overlap.

Which is not to say they exclude each other, but to point out Kierkegaard has different concerns which he addresses in forms as distinct and separate as the ancient Greek distinction between comedy and tragedy. As Aristotle observed of tragedy, one of its many aspects must be its seriousness. Greek tragedies were never leavened with humor, their comedies never darkened with serious consequences. Just so S.K.'s works hightlight the distinction emphasized in the Gospel of John, between the believing community (those with the "gnosis," according to many scholars, exemplified in the popular mind by Elaine Pagels) and those without. Except "gnosis" is not the bright dividing line it might seem to be, either. the "either/or" is a determinate for the culturally Christian pseudonyms; but it is not one for the pious and passionate author of the edifying discourses. Somewhere along the way we pass well beyond any teleological suspension of the ethical.

What, then is the sign we would accept? John's gospel is all about this issue. What the Synoptic writers call dunamis, works of power, John calls semeion, or signs. These signs are supposed to indicate the true nature of the Almighty and of the Christ, the Anointed One. But, as Anti-Climacus points out: "when I see something striking and call it a sign, it is qualified as such by reflection." And reflection requires some knowledge of the second state of being of the sign, some information that tells us how it can be more than the immediate thing it is. so is the conversion of water into wine at Cana nothing more than an act of power? If so, it merely makes us bow to the superiority of the wielder. And how is the kingdom of God like that? Does it matter who is first and who is last, if we are sll just subdued beneath the guy who can perform such transformations? If it is a sign, what does it point to? If it is more than what it immediately is, what does it mean? What reflection do I bring to bear upon it?

The Jesus of John's gospel is the worst at explaining these things. "You are a teacher of Israel and you don't understand this?," Jesus says to Nicodemus almost immediately after the wedding in Cana; and the fact is, none of us understand it. John turns us all into the cloth-headed disciples present in Mark and Matthew's gospels, and the Rabbi mocks our confusion. He doesn't explain what "born again" means, to Nicodemus or to us. He explains some of his signs, such as the raising of Lazarus: "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." And, just before calling Lazarus from the tomb: "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." But the sign clearly points in two ways at once:

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
"What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." John 11:45-48

Some see it's second being as the presence of God in Jesus; others see it as an act of power which threatens their power, and the power of the State. What should it signify? Well, that's the problem, isn't it? "[F]or a sign is a sign only for one who knows that it is a sign and in the strictest sense only for one who knows what it signifies." And we are always quite sure we know what a sign signifies; but on what do we base that assurance?

The statement of signs having a "second being" is not accidental. A sign is not a symbol. So when John writes of Jesus’ actions, he is not writing about symbolic events. The resurrection of Lazarus may foreshadow the resurrection of Jesus later in the story, and so be a literary device. But it is not merely a symbol of the triumph of the God of the living over death, or those who sleep, as Jesus puts it. It is a sign: but a sign as dunamis, or a sign of something more ethereal, something more akin to the metaphor of being “born again” (and is that a metaphor, or a sign? Apparently in John’s gospel semeion must be active, not rhetorical. The logos may have been the performative of Creation (but neither the performer nor the performed), but the logos here is the indicator, the one (as Bultmann says) who points toward the sign; and the sign points toward…? Or does it point at all? If the sign has a second being, what being is that? And what does any of this have to do with self-actualization or the validity and nature of the self, or for that matter the ethical burden of the either/or?

Well, I’m getting to that…..

The Peacock Spreads His Fan

I agree with Atrios: our public discourse is usually pretty stupid. That depends, though, on who gets to control the discourse; and while that control has seemed to be in the hands of the MSM, the Corporate Media, FixNews, or Chris Matthews, of late that control is clearly slipping.

Take the case of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was supposed to outrage all of white America with the selected bon mots replayed ad nauseum on 24 hour cable news. Didn't exactly set America on fire, even when one of the more outrageous things he was supposed to have said was that America was complicit in 9/11. Of course, he wasn't the only person to have said that, but the "frame" was that this was an outrageous notion no "true" American could countenance, and certainly none of the usual suspects among pundits did. As Josh Marshall said, the Rev. Wright was on the way to being radioactive among the pundit class.

So how do we explain this?

When it comes to the Axis of Evil, a little diplomacy can go a long way. According to the latest Gallup Poll the number of Americans who view North Korea as our greatest enemy has dropped by half in the last year. In fact, North Korea isn’t even any longer in the top three. Thanks to diplomatic agreements reached concerning their nuclear weapons program, the percentage of Americans viewing North Korea as our biggest threat has dropped from 18 percent to 9 percent.

North Korea’s Axis of Evil partners, Iran and Iraq still top the enemies list. 25 percent of Americans see Iran as our biggest enemy and 22 percent say it’s Iraq.

Who’s the new number three? China with 14 percent. North Korea has dropped to number four with its nine percent rating. Number five is a tie between Afghanistan and us! That’s right, three percent of the people surveyed see the United States as its own worst enemy.

Read the comments: most agree the greatest threat to the US is...us. For various reasons, but the finger pointing out means three more pointing back, and yet no one seems to consider themselves a subersive or a terrorist lover. 3% is hardly a majority, of course, but it's interesting that it shows up at all. Will anyone cry foul? Will this become evidence of perfidy among patriots? Will the pundits chew this over endlessly, and demand the traitors be ferreted out and removed from civilization?

Of course not. Cafferty already made the obvious reference, on air, to Pogo's dictum about the enemy and us. 3%, in fact, seems like a darned healthy number to me. Not too many, but not too few; and ahead of Russia. I'm not sure what to make of those who think Iraq is a threat, except as perhaps it saps our resources, both human, material, and financial, a rat hole of waste and perpetual destruction for no purpose. In fact, put those two numbers together, and you get a picture of a very wise and worried body politic.

Which might make you think the stupidity of our national discourse isn't so persuasive or pervasive, after all.

"If there when Grace dances, I should dance."

Starting with Auden to explain my purpose in quoting Derrida earlier. My interest was in the word "performative" that he used. Derrida marks this off, making it clear his reference is to Speech Act Theory and its emphasis on the performative nature of some kinds of speech, But my interest was in the connection to the greatest speech act of history, according to Genesis: the Creation.

"Performative" is the voice of command in grammar. It is the second person, the implied "you" that directs another to act, to respond, to do something. The performative is in the speech itself: the command itself is meant to be the act, although of course the command requires a respondent. And this is where the speech/act of Genesis becomes absolutely incomprehensible.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Very simple, very straightforward, very incomprehensible. God speaks, creation happens. There is a presumed response to the command, but by what? God says "Let there be light," and light there is. Language has a problem here, and it isn't the problem of mythological concepts being taken literally. It is the problem of trying to describe the ineffable, of trying to explain what is without parallel in human experience. This is creation ex nihilo, but not really ex nihilo, either. This is creation out of, but whereas our language insists creation be out of "something," this creation story simply says Creation is out of. And it is out of the speech/act, the "word" of God.

Which brings us back around to Derrida:

It is announced wherever, reflecting without flinching, a purely rational system of analysis brings the following paradox to light: that the foundation of law--law of the law, institution of the institution, orign of the constitution--is a 'performative' event that cannot belong to the set that it founds, inaugurates, or justifies.

A rational system of analysis brings the paradox to light: the performative event of the Creation cannot belong to the Creation that is founds, inaugurates, or justifies. The first chapter of Genesis, of course, does all three. It founds, inaugurates, and justifies the Creation: "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." God is wholly other to Creation, but it cannot be otherwise. God cannot be the foundation of Creation (the "Ground of Being," in Tillich's formulation) if God is creator of Creation. And just so, no creation by humans, be it the blogosphere or a political party or a religion, can be anything but "other" to its creator(s). So we are back to the issue of this post: if we critique a system and by our critique seek either to reform it, or to create an alternative (two conditions that often appear alike: ask Martin Luther), we cannot avoid being other to what we have created. But if we engage in this act of creation in order to exert power, or to establish a structure over which we can exert power, do we not always create yet another structure which walks away from us, and pursues its own ends?

"D'you know," he said, "how God made man? D'you know the first words this animal, man, addressed to God?"
"No, how should I know. I wasn't there."
"I was!," cried Zorba, his eyes sparkling.
"Well, tell me."
Half in escstasy, half in mockery, he began inventing the fabulous story of the creation of man.
"Well, listen boss! One morning God woke up feeling down in the dumps. 'What a devil of a God I am! I haven't even any men to burn incense to me and swear by my name to pass the time away! I've had enough of living like an old screech-owl! Ftt!' He spat on his hands, pulled up his sleeves, put on his glasses, took a piece of earth, spat on it, made mud of it, kneaded it well and made it into a little man which he stuck in the sun.
"Seven days later he pulled it out of the sun. It was baked. God looked at it and began to split his sides with laughter.
"'Devil take me,' he said. 'It's a pig standing on its hind legs! That's not what I wanted at all! There's no mistake I've made a mess of things!'"
"So he picks him up by the scruff of his neck and kicks his backside.
"'Go on, clear off! All you've got to do now is to make other little pig's; the earth's yours! Now, jump to it. Left, right, left, right...Quick march!...'
"But, you see, it wasn't a pig at all! It was wearing a felt hat,a jacket thrown carelessly over its shoulders, well-creased trousers, and Turkish slippers with red tassels. And in its belt--it must have been the devil who'd given it that--was a pointed dagger with the words 'I'll get you!' engraved on it.
"It was man! God held out his hand for the other to kiss, but man twirled up his moustache and said:
"'Come on, old 'un, out of the way! Let me pass!'"

You'll notice Kazantzakis goes for the second creation story, in Genesis 2. Much easier to grasp creation through manipulation of objects, than creation as speech/act theory. But I like the way God continues to speak in declaratives and commands. And the lesson is plain: what you create remains other to you, otherwise it is not a creation. So the gathering of those with power (to travel, to access the internet, to contemplate other subjects than their own immediate daily survival, to consider other than the quotidian necessities) is a gathering of those with a creative ability, but what they create, in an effort to attain control, is not theirs to control. A gathering of the ptochoi, the destitute, the powerless, the despised, the broken, the forgotten, the invisible: what would that look like?

And what would they create? Jesus called it the basiliea tou theou. It's what got him in so much trouble with Rome. It's what gets him in so much trouble today. Because there must always be a desert within the desert, otherwise: "there would be neither act of faith, nor promise, nor future, nor expectancy without expectation of death and of the other, nor relation to the singularity of the other."

The Story of Isaac

The door it opened slowly,
My father he came in,was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, Ive had a vision
And you know Im strong and holy,
I must do what Ive been told.
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
And his axe was made of gold.

Well, the trees they got much smaller,
The lake a ladys mirror,
We stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
And he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
But it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
He looked once behind his shoulder,
He knew I would not hide.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my fathers hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
Forgive me if I inquire,
Just according to whose plan?
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
Man of peace or man of war,
The peacock spreads his fan.--Leonard Cohen

Oh, the prickilie bush!

It is announced wherever, reflecting without flinching, a purely rational system of analysis brings the following paradox to light: that the foundation of law--law of the law, institution of the institution, orign of the constitution--is a 'performative' event that cannot belong to the set that it founds, inaugurates, or justifies.

Jacques Derrida

By all accounts, a splendid time was had by all. And mucho muscles were apparently flexed (well, by some accounts). Which left me wondering: if these gatherings, other than for the fun of meeting people "live," are about gatherings of the powerful and would-be powerful, what would a gathering of the powerless be like? And what would they extol?

Congratulations, you poor!
God's domain belongs to you!

Congratulations, you hungry!
You will have a feast.

Congratulations, you who weep now!
You will laugh.

Damn you rich!
You already have your consolation!

Damn you who are well-fed now!
You will know hunger.

Damn you who laugh now!
You will learn to weep and grieve.

What would a gathering of the ptochoi look like?

Wherever this foundation founds in foundering, wherever it steals away under the ground of what it founds, the very trace of itself and the memory of a secret, 'religion' can only begin and begin again: quasi-automatically, mechanically, machine-like, spontanously. Spontaneously, which is to say, as the word indicates, both as the origin of what flows from the source, sponte sua, and with the automaticity of the machine. For the best and the worst, without the slightest assurance of anthropo-theological horizon. Without this desert in the desert, there would be neither act of faith, nor promise, nor future, nor expectancy without expectation of death and of the other, nor relation to the singularity of the other. The chance of this desert in the desert (as of that which resembles to a fault, but from a Graeco-Judaeo-Christian traditions) is that in uprooting the tradition that bears it, in atheologizing it, this abstraction, without denying faith, librates a universal rationality and the political democracy that cannot be dissociated from it.

Call it Derrida's version of Godel's theorem of incompleteness.

A Shaker Song

For no reason, other than that it came to mind this morning:

I Will Bow and Be Simple

I will bow and be simple,
I will bow and be free,
I will bow and be humble,
Yea, bow like the willow tree.

I will bow, this is the token,
I will wear the easy yoke,
I will bow and will be broken,
Yea, I'll fall upon the rock.

Speaking of "Absence of Malice"

Truth is stranger than fiction; harsher, too:

Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack's spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, "What is that in your hand?," that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it "in his hand." Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.

As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack's taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed "sound byte" and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation's first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.

Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama's "Spiritual Biography." Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of "Hannity and Colmes" is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.

The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or "spin" because you are more interested in journalism than in truth.

Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party's national "blog." The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.

Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ

Absence of Malice

So now its come to this, here in Houston. On Sunday March 30, Pastor Jeremiah was to guest preach at Wheeler Ave Baptist Church as he has done for the past 20 years. Because of death threats and fears for the church and its congregation, he has had to cancel. I was looking forward to hearing him myself in person. Certainly the sermons I have read were excellent and I hear that type of prophetic teaching in a more toned down "frozen-chosen" version here at my Lutheran Church. Because of the fears of a few and their threats, the rest of the people of God loose out. Damn shame that.
bluemeadow

I didn't realize it had been 20 years that Houston had been subjected to this "hate speech." Odd we haven't erupted in violence yet, huh? But it has:

Wright, who until February was minister of Sen. Barack Obama's church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, was scheduled to preach three guest sermons in Houston on Sunday.

The theologian who Obama has said strengthened his Christian faith has been a regular revival preacher at Wheeler for about 20 years.

Wheeler's pastor, the Rev. Marcus Cosby, said Wright cited three reasons for his cancellation — "the safety of the institution to which he has been invited; ... the safety of his family, which has been placed in harm's way; and for his own safety.".

Cosby said he would reverse that order and put the safety of Wright and his family above any thoughts of protecting Wheeler Avenue.

The church had arranged for increased security for Wright's visit, he said, including contacting the Houston Police Department and coordinating a security detail in conjunction with Wright's Chicago church.

The Rev. Myron Cloyd of the Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ in Houston has known Wright for more than 20 years.

"As much as I hate for him not to come I think it's probably prudent," said Cloyd, noting that Wright does not normally travel with bodyguards or assistants.

"There have been threats against his life and the last thing he would ever want is the potential for someone to be hurt," said Cloyd.

Cloyd, who has had Wright speak at his church in the past, said he wished that Wright could have the opportunity to "set the record straight" to Houstonians.

Widely publicized recorded excerpts from Wright's past sermons, in which he quoted a former Iraq ambassador as saying that U.S. actions prompted the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that the government created HIV to target people of color and harassed blacks through "three strike" laws, prompted Obama to address race issues in a speech last week.

The threats of violence are bad enough, but here's a funny thing: the Rev. was quoting an Iraqi ambassador about 9/11? Did anybody else get that from the earlier news coverage? Huh....

As for that long tradition:

The long-standing relationship between the Chicago and Houston congregations and their pastors stretches back to Wheeler's first pastor, the Rev. William Lawson, pastor emeritus at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church.

A confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Lawson started the tradition of bringing Wright to Wheeler to reinvigorate the congregation during winter revivals with topical sermons that espoused black liberation theology.

"Part of what we do traditionally as African-American preachers is combine current affairs with religious affairs," Cosby said."We put the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other."

Cloyd said Wright's comments come from that tradition and have been taken out of that context.

"As pastors our goal is to teach and inspire and (Wright) uses a variety of strategies— he's certainly very passionate," Cloyd said. "We energize and mobilize not to hate but to recognize injustice, encourage change, to go out and vote, for example."

The Rev. Cosby's comment is straight from Karl Barth, the great neo-orthodox German theologian of the 20th century who set out to re-write Christian dogmatics. Interesting to hear that in connection with "black liberation theology," especially since there's such a misunderstanding abroad as what that is. In America, of course, there's no point in asking a theologian, when a celebrity or politician will do:

BECK: Ken, I wanted to have you on because you are a former U.N. ambassador -- U.S. ambassador at the U.N. And you have seen this black liberation philosophy or theology before. Explain. I think this is even more frightening than the stuff that I've already read on television. Explain what you've seen.

BLACKWELL: Well, essentially, liberation theology took root in Africa and Central America. It was often offered up by Marxist regimes that knew that they couldn't uproot the church, so they tried to weaken the doctrine of the church. So it is an alternative doctrine of the church that embraces big government. It advances a collectivist ideal and idea, and it says the state, not the individual, is central to society.

And that is very disquieting. But it also gives you a better understanding of the undergirding of Senator Obama's big-government liberal philosophy that would increase spending, increase taxes, weaken our military and our position in the world.

BECK: I tell you, it explains the comments of his wife. It explains -- you're exactly right, his big-government ideas. If you understand what this theology is, you do begin to understand Barack Obama, but it is in a -- I believe, in a frightening way. However, I'm being labeled the one that's the hate-monger for asking these questions. How is this theology out there and it not be labeled racist and hate-mongering?

BLACKWELL: Well, it's part of a -- it's part of a series of parts. You know, here's a guy who says that he studied the doctrine of Saul Alinsky, who was an anarchist, a radical. Here is a guy who basically said that, while he was in Reverend Wright's church, he embraces Louis Farrakhan.

More foolishness there than you can shake a stick at. Which has it's affect, because the Rev. Wright didn't cancel just in Houston:

The Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth will go ahead with its plans to honor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright this weekend, even though Barack Obama's controversial former pastor decided to skip the ceremony.

The divinity school announced on its Web site Wednesday that it had "received notice" that Wright will not attend its 4th annual State of the Black Church Summit and awards banquet. Wright had been scheduled to appear there Saturday evening, following a luncheon panel at Paul Quinn College, a historically black school in South Dallas.

Wright has also canceled plans to speak at three services Sunday at Houston's Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. Wright cited security concerns, the church's pastor told Houston television station KTRK and the Houston Chronicle.

Wright also canceled his appearance Tuesday at a Tampa-area church at the request of church officials, who had security concerns about the pastor's three-day appearance there.

Brite is not exactly a hot-bed of liberalism, nor a school that teaches "hate" And they know more about the good Reverend than what's been played on FixNews.

The Brite Divinity School had decided months ago to recognize Wright for his "forty-year ministry linking divine justice and social justice," according to a statement on the school's Web site. Wright was the lead speaker at a 2001 continuing education event at Brite and no such speaker "in recent years has been better received than Dr. Wright," the statement said.

"Contrary to media claims that Wright preaches racial hatred, church leaders who have observed his ministry describe him as a faithful preacher of the gospel who has ministered in a context radically different from that of many middle class Americans," the school's statement continued.

The target of this malice was Barack Obama. Funny thing: nobody's buying. So all the efforts of the "liberal" media to render Rev. Wright "radioactive" and so damage Mr. Obama's candidacy, failed. However, the history of violence against blacks, the history of intimidation through violence, goes on.

Maureen Dowd thinks Rev. Wright is "wackadoodle." Clearly judgments like hers are entitled to more weight in this matter than whose who know the Rev. and his words and work. Geraldine Ferarro is displeased that, because of the Rev. Wright, she gets mentioned in Obama's speech on race and racism. But who cares about Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, or Brite Divinity School, or a church in Florida? It's celebrities who matter; not real people. And it's journalism that counts, not reality.