Month: November 2005

New contributor at Right Reason, Christopher Tollefsen, offers an intriguing argument that (a certain kind of) opposition to abortion has nothing to do with conservatism per se and, in fact, might be best seen as a legacy of modernity and liberalism

Tollefsen suggests that “conservative” arguments against abortion, such as those that rely on tradition or emphasize the value of having children and families, don’t get at what’s really wrong with the practice, namely that it commits an injustice against a human being. But the idea that individual human beings are intrinsically deserving of protection from harm is in many ways a liberal notion (though one with a Christian pedigree):

It is true, however, and I think important, that abortion is linked with a host of bad social consequences, though it is also true that such consequences are not all recognized as bad. These consequences should be seen as symptoms and signs of the deeper wrong of widespread feticide. As deep a pathology as the widespread acceptance and practice of abortion must, I should think, corrupt any number of the practices, institutions, and attitudes that surround it. It is clear, for example, that it has made it very difficult for candidates to the Supreme Court to speak openly and honestly on certain matters. But it is important to get the order of explanation right here – abortion is not bad because of its consequences. Rather, it has bad consequences because it is bad.

But our ability to recognize the particular evil of abortion – that it is a killing of human beings, and wrong for that reason – seems to me modern, and even liberal. For the view that all human beings are owed equal respect just as persons is arguably a consequence of the Enlightenment’s appropriation of what was otherwise a primarily Christian viewpoint, not widely shared outside the Christian world. And the biological evidence that allows us to see that abortion is a killing of human beings, rather than an offense against human life more abstractly, or against the good of marriage, is evidence only available to us in the last century. It has always been possible to see, with right reason, that abortion is gravely wrong; but recognition of the true nature of that wrong has deepened in these two ways in the modern era. Being pro-life for the right reasons is not really a matter of being conservative.

The ensuing comment thread is also full of good discussion.

I’m generally sympathetic to the line of thought Tollefsen discusses here. If you think that all human beings deserve, simply in virtue of being human, protection from unjust harm, then I find it impossible to see how you can draw a non-abritrary line after which a fetus comes to deserve protection other than at conception itself. In other words, I can’t see any good grounds for exempting fetuses from the general rule that human beings have a right to life.

Obviously that doesn’t settle the issue of what laws are desirable or feasible regarding abortion, since not everyone perceives it as a gravely immoral act. Effective laws, it seems to me, require a certain degree of underlying moral consensus. And ironically, the absence of such a consensus may also be a legacy of modern liberalism.

Camassia is talking about Original Sin and children, and points to some of the difficulties many people have with the idea that children are capable of evil. Whatever we may think about his doctrine of Original Sin, I think Augustine was closer to the truth than many moderns in seeing that children are capable of consciously choosing evil.

In fact, I suspect many of us have observed, in ourselves or others, the ability of children to be cruel in a way that is somewhat shocking. I remember with shame times as a kid when I picked on or made fun of someone else, for no discernible reason other than that I could. (And I was not exactly one of the “cool kids,” shocking as that may sound, so you’d think I would be more sensitive to taunting others.)

Of course, there are at least two questions surrounding the issue of Original Sin – the question of an inherited or innate tendency to commit sin, and the question of an inherited guilt for sin. The Western tradition has generally held to both (with some exceptions), while the East seems to take the view that we inherit a propensity to sin, but not guilt.

For instance, here’s Bishop Kallistos Ware of the Orthodox Church:

For the Orthodox tradition, then, Adam’s original sin affects the human race in its entirety, and it has consequences both on the physical and the moral level: it, results not only in sickness and physical death, but in moral weakness and paralysis. But does it also imply an inherited guilt? Here Orthodoxy is more guarded. Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms, as if it were some physical ‘taint’ of guilt, transmitted through sexual intercourse. This picture, which normally passes for the Augustinian view, is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The doctrine of original sin means rather that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider. It is here, in the solidarity of the human race, that we find an explanation for the apparent unjustness of the doctrine of original sin. Why, we ask, should the entire human race suffer because of Adam’s fall? Why should all be punished because of one man’s sin? The answer is that human beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, are interdependent and coinherent. No man is an island. We are ‘members one of another'(Eph. 4:25), and so any action, performed by any member of the human race, inevitably affects all the other members. Even though we are not, in the strict sense, guilty of the sins of others, yet we are somehow always involved.

Orthodoxy has sometimes been accused by Western theologians of having a quasi-Pelagian view of sin, while the Western tradition has been criticized for embracing a morally objectionable notion of inherited guilt. Whatever the accuracy of those criticisms, both traditions agree that we need God’s grace to move from sin to blessedness, and deny that we are capable of living morally acceptable lives independently of God. I think this may be why both the West and the East have insisted on infant baptism (and in the East infant communion) – they both realize that we are helpless to do good without God’s grace and need all the help we can get.

Turns out Paul’s Letter to the Romans is, well, hard to understand. I read it, and it’s like the words are just bouncing off my brain.

Can any readers recommend a good commentary or other secondary literature? I’m thinking something substantial, but not so scholarly that it requires facility in three or four ancient languages (and preferably clocks in at under 300 pages or so).

Any suggestions?

Millinerd has an excellent post that almost exactly matches my take on “postmodernism”:

DesCartes’ all-or-nothing philosophy thought that any knowledge not based on absolute certainty was worthless. And because Descartes thought he could establish such certainty, the light switch of absolute knowledge was flipped on… yielding the Enlightenment. Postmodernists swing to the opposite pole, claiming that because Descartes was wrong (which he was) the only possible solution is to turn the light of knowledge completely off.

Funny, in summer months in the Ford Focus when I turn on the air conditioner full-blast my wife says “You know, there is a middle setting.”And she’s right. The espistemological light does not have to be on or off. There’s a dimmer switch, called humility, that can carefully consider our claims to knowledge without putting us completely in the dark. Sure there are those who continue to claim absolute Cartesian knowledge is a possibility. They give rise to postmodernists who insist on no knowledge (except of course for the startlingly ambitious claim to know that we have no knowledge). Between them are those who neither claim purely objective knowledge nor deny it completely.

Read the rest.

The Christian Century has an article on the “new monasticism” – a budding movement of Christians forming intentional communities, pooling resources, and trying to act as witnesses in some of the poorer areas of the U.S. (see also this article from Christianity Today).

As much as I admire people who do things like this, I have to say that I have no desire of any kind to live in such an arrangement myself. Maybe I’ve been co-opted by the bourgeois values of the American empire, but I just don’t want to live in such close quarters with other people (my dear wife excepted, naturally).

I still don’t know much about Judge Alito, but this collection of quotes from accross the political spectrum indicates that he’s not the “Scalia clone” he’s been made out to be.

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State are concerned about President Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court:

[Barry] Lynn noted that research by Americans United’s Legal Department uncovered two cases dealing with government-sanctioned display of religious symbols, with Alito upholding the religious displays both times. In another case, Alito ruled that a public school was required to post flyers and distribute materials for a fundamentalist Christian group on the same basis as secular community groups.

Ooo! Scary! A nativity scene on the town square! I assume one of the cases they’re referring to is this one. Decide for yourself, dear reader, if this sounds like the erosion of constitutional freedom:

A federal appeals court panel has ruled that a revised holiday display in front of a government building in Jersey City, N.J., does pass constitutional muster.

In 1995 the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, representing a group of citizens, sued the city arguing that a holiday display in front of City Hall violated the separation of church and state.

A U.S. District Court barred Jersey City officials from maintaining the display that included a menorah and a Christmas tree, ruling that the display did flout the First Amendment’s establishment clause. After that ruling, city officials erected a modified holiday display that included a crèche, menorah, Christmas tree and large plastic figures of Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman. The new display also featured Kwanzaa symbols on the Christmas tree. Eventually, the federal district court also found that display to be constitutionally suspect and ordered the city to take it down.

A panel for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals released a decision Feb. 17 in favor of the city and its modified holiday display. Voting 2-1, the panel found that Jersey City officials could not be prevented from erecting the modified display in the future.

Citing U.S. Supreme Court decisions involving government-sponsored holiday displays, Judge Samuel Alito ruled that “government may celebrate Christmas in some manner and form, but not in a way that endorses Christian doctrine.”

According to Alito, Jersey City’s modified display with various religious and secular symbols could not amount to an endorsement of Christianity or any other organized religion. Alito, furthermore, dismissed the New Jersey ACLU’s argument that the city’s original, unconstitutional holiday display had tainted the modified one.

Look, I don’t doubt there are things not to like about Judge Alito, but the scaremongering of Americans United is getting a bit ridiculous.

Doug Bandow reviews Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics. He accuses Wallis of making the same error as the Religious Right, namely trying to read a political program straight out of the Bible (caveat: I still haven’t read GP, so I leave it to the reader to decide if Bandow fairly characterizes Wallis’ views):

WALLIS PRESENTS HIS VISION as a fourth option to conservatives, liberals, and libertarians. In his view it “follows from the prophetic religious tradition.” In sum, “it is traditional or conservative on issues of family values, sexual integrity, and personal responsibility, while being very progressive, populist, or even radical on issues like poverty and racial justice. It affirms good stewardship of the earth and its resources, supports gender equality, and is more internationally minded than nationalist.”

One can make good prudential policy arguments on behalf of all of these positions. But while God says much about people’s relationship to him and each other, he says very little about when people should coerce each other — that is, what government should do. And this failure to distinguish personal moral imperatives from prudential political concerns places him squarely where he does not want to be: standing between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

[…]

Still, Wallis deserves praise for his effort. Today’s political debate is impoverished since Christianity does not mandate conservatism. And a truly prophetic stance by the church would confront all citizens and politicians in their behaviors, attitudes, and policies.

But Wallis is better at issuing a challenge than providing an answer. He closes God’s Politics by arguing that “we are the ones we are waiting for.” The leaders are here. Yes we are. But the right religious-political synthesis has not yet arrived, at least in God’s Politics. Unfortunately, neither the Religious Right nor the Religious Left understands that God is nonpolitical as well as nonpartisan. Instead of giving us policies, he gives us wisdom so we can work together to develop good policies. Using that wisdom is our responsibility.

My hunch is that you simply can’t get by without some kind of political philosophy. Even if you want your politics to be “biblical,” you need some way of applying those principles to circumstances that are very different. Roman Catholics and magisterial Protestants may have an advantage here because they have richly developed traditions of political philosophy that go beyond biblical proof-texting.

A prayer for All Saints:

O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one Communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those indescribable joys which thou hast prepared for those who truly love thee: through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, in glory everlasting.

Almighty God, who by thy Holy Spirit hast made us one with thy Saints in heaven and on earth: Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to thy power and mercy. We ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whom all our intercessions are acceptable through the Spirit, and who liveth and reigneth for ever and ever.

Almighty and everlasting God, we yield unto thee most high Praise and hearty thanks for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all thy saints, who have been the chosen vessels of thy grace, and the lights of the world in their several generations: for Abraham, the father of believers, and Sarah his wife; for Moses the lawgiver, and Aaron the priest; for Miriam and Joshua, Deborah and Gideon, and Samuel with Hannah his mother, and for all the holy patriarchs; for Isaiah and all the prophets; for the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God; for Peter and Paul and all the apostles; for Mary and Martha, and Mary Magdalene; for Stephen, the first martyr, and for all the martyrs; and for all other thy righteous servants, known to us and unknown; and we beseech thee that, rejoicing in their fellowship, encouraged by their examples, and aided by their prayers, we also may run with steadfastness the race that is set before us, and finish our course in faith; and that at the day of the general resurrection, we, with all those who are of the mystical body of thy Son, may be set on his right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Grant this, O Father, for the sake of the same thy Son Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate.

CT interviews Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis’ stepson, who’s just written a biography of Lewis.

Snippet:

Americans have latched on to C. S. Lewis, and yet here’s a guy who was a chain smoker, who liked his pints, who told ribald jokes, and in general, wouldn’t fit what we think of as the “typical evangelical.” And yet we’ve all wrapped our arms around him. Why is that?

Gresham: One of the reasons is that through the—if you can excuse the expression—the bulls— that has come to be taken so seriously in American Christianity, through all of that, they can still see the essential truth that Jack represented. The problem with evangelical Christianity in America today, a large majority of you have sacrificed the essential for the sake of the trivial. You concentrate on the trivialities—not smoking, not drinking, not using bad language, not dressing inappropriately in church, and so on. Jesus doesn’t give two hoots for that sort of bulls—. If you go out and DO Christianity, you can smoke if you want, you can drink if you want—though not to excess, in either case.

But I think that even past the trivialities, many evangelical Christians can see the ultimate truth to what Jack wrote. I think that’s why he’s so popular.

See also this somewhat critical article on American evangelicals’ idolization of Lewis.

See the trailer for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe here.