Author: Lee M.

Camassia on creationism, evolution, animals and original sin! (see here and here)

“A Nation of Competing Christs” (via Get Religion)

Confessing Evangelical: Christmas, Paganism and the Genetic Fallacy

Deism and Cash Value from Matthew Yglesias

I neglected to comment on this last week, but what’s up with “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott being murdered in cold blood by some crazed (ex?) fan?

For those of you not up on your speed metal (or is it thrash metal?) history, Abbott was the guitarist for Pantera, arguably the most popular heavy metal band of the 90s. In my former life as a metalhead, I certainly enjoyed me some Pantera.

Nothing profound to observe about all this. Just a sad and bizzare event.

Requisat In Pace.

It is worth asking ourselves what this tableau [i.e. the scene of Jesus’ meeting with Pilate], viewed from the vantage of pagan antiquity, would have meant. A man of noble birth, representing the power of Rome, endowed with authority over life and death, confronted by a barbarous colonial of no name or estate, a slave of the empire, beaten, robed in purple, crowned with thorns, insanely invoking an otherworldly kingdom and some esoteric truth, unaware of either his absurdity or his judge’s eminence. Who could have doubted where, between these two, the truth of things was to be found? But the Gospel is written in the light of the resurrection, which reverses the meaning of this scene entirely. If God’s truth is in fact to be found where Christ stands, the mockery visited on him redounds instead upon the emperor, all of whose regal finery, when set beside the majesty of the servile shape in which God reveals Himself, shows itself to be just so many rags and briars.

This slave is the Father’s eternal Word, whom God has vindicated, and so ten thousand immemorial certainties are unveiled as lies: the first become last, the mighty are put down from their seats and the lowly exalted, the hungry are filled with good things while the rich are sent empty away. Nietzsche was quite right to be appalled. Almost as striking, for me, is the tale of Peter, at the cock’s crow, going apart to weep. Nowhere in the literature of pagan antiquity, I assure you, had the tears of a rustic been regarded as worthy of anything but ridicule; to treat them with reverence, as meaningful expressions of real human sorrow, would have seemed grotesque from the perspective of all the classical canons of good taste. Those wretchedly subversive tears, and the dangerous philistinism of a narrator so incorrigibly vulgar as to treat them with anything but contempt, were most definitely signs of a slave revolt in morality, if not quite the one against which Nietzsche inveighed—a revolt, moreover, that all the ancient powers proved impotent to resist.

In a narrow sense, then, one might say that the chief offense of the Gospels is their defiance of the insights of tragedy—and not only because Christ does not fit the model of the well-born tragic hero. More important is the incontestable truth that, in the Gospels, the destruction of the protagonist emphatically does not restore or affirm the order of city or cosmos. Were the Gospels to end with Christ’s sepulture, in good tragic style, it would exculpate all parties, including Pilate and the Sanhedrin, whose judgments would be shown to have been fated by the exigencies of the crisis and the burdens of their offices; the story would then reconcile us to the tragic necessity of all such judgments. But instead comes Easter, which rudely interrupts all the minatory and sententious moralisms of the tragic chorus, just as they are about to be uttered to full effect, and which cavalierly violates the central tenet of sound economics: rather than trading the sacrificial victim for some supernatural benefit, and so the particular for the universal, Easter restores the slain hero in his particularity again, as the only truth the Gospels have to offer. This is more than a dramatic peripety. The empty tomb overturns all the “responsible” and “necessary” verdicts of Christ’s judges, and so grants them neither legitimacy nor pardon.

In a larger sense, then, the entire sacrificial logic of a culture was subverted in the Gospels. I cannot attempt here a treatment of the biblical language of sacrifice, but I think I can safely assert that Christ’s death does not, in the logic of the New Testament sources, fit the pattern of sacrifice I have just described. The word “sacrifice” is almost inexhaustible in its polysemy, particularly in the Old Testament, but the only sacrificial model explicitly invoked in the New Testament is that of the Atonement offering of Israel, which certainly belongs to no cosmic cycle of prudent expenditure and indemnity. It is, rather, a qurban, literally a “drawing nigh” into the life-giving presence of God’s glory. Israel’s God requires nothing; He creates, elects, and sanctifies without need—and so the Atonement offering can in no way contribute to any sort of economy. It is instead a penitent approach to a God who gives life freely, and who not only does not profit from the holocaust of the particular, but who in fact fulfils the “sacrifice” simply by giving his gift again. This giving again is itself, in fact, a kind of “sacrificial” motif in Hebrew Scripture, achieving its most powerful early expression in the story of Isaac’s aqedah, and arriving at its consummation, perhaps, in Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones. After all, a people overly burdened by the dolorous superstitions of tragic wisdom could never have come to embrace the doctrine of resurrection.

I am tempted to say, then, that the cross of Christ is not simply a sacrifice, but the place where two opposed understandings of sacrifice clashed. Christ’s whole life was a reconciling qurban: an approach to the Father, a real indwelling of God’s glory in the temple of Christ’s body, and an atonement made for a people enslaved to death. In pouring himself out in the form of a servant, and in living his humanity as an offering up of everything to God in love, the shape of the eternal Son’s life was already sacrificial in this special sense; and it was this absolute giving, as God and man, that was made complete on Golgotha. While, from a pagan perspective, the crucifixion itself could be viewed as a sacrifice in the most proper sense—destruction of the agent of social instability for the sake of peace, which is always a profitable exchange—Christ’s life of charity, service, forgiveness, and righteous judgment could not; indeed, it would have to seem the very opposite of sacrifice, an aneconomic and indiscriminate inversion of rank and order. Yet, at Easter, it is the latter that God accepts and the former He rejects; what, then, of all the hard-won tragic wisdom of the ages?

–David B. Hart, “Christ and Nothing”

I am genuinely puzzled by the Social Security “crisis.” Not that I doubt that, if present trends continue, there won’t be enough money to fund benefits at current levels for all retirees in the not-too-distant future. That seems plain enough.

What I do doubt is that this “crisis” requires anything as drastic as Social Security “privatization.” Why couldn’t we raise the retirement age, trim benefits, or even (shudder) raise taxes?

But more to the point, maybe we need to be honest about what Social Security is. It’s not a “retirement” plan; it’s welfare for old people, i.e. a wealth transfer from one group of people to another. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Surely supporting our elders is a fine and noble undertaking. In fact, I believe it was Irving Kristol, the “godfather” (as he is for some reason always called) of neo-conservatism who said that old people are the best welfare recipients: they don’t generally get hooked on drugs, have children out of wedlock, etc.

On this (accurate) understanding of what Social Security is, maybe it makes sense to ask if we should restrict Social Security benefits to people who are, you know, poor. Surely that would save some money.

In any event though, Social Security means guaranteeing sufficient money for retirees to live in dignity. I think this has to be one of the least objectionable uses of the welfare state. Can it really be that at a time of unprecedent wealth we are incapable of making good on this commitment?

ADDENDUM: Blogger Kevin Drum estimates, based on current projections, that the Social Security “doomsday” is 38 years away, and in 1994 it was estimated to be … 35 years away!

Drum continues:

That’s right: even though ten years have passed, doomsday is now farther away than it was in 1994. As every year goes by, the doomsday schedule moves out another year too. Why? Because the doomsday predictions are extremely sensitive to the economic assumptions behind them, and if those assumptions are off by a little bit, so are the predictions.

In other words, Social Security doom mongering has a pretty checkered past — which means that perhaps the current doom mongering isn’t quite on target either. In fact, maybe Social Security is in perfectly good shape and doesn’t need “rescuing.” The most prudent course might be to wait a few years and find out.

From Frederica Mathewes-Green (via Mere Comments – permalinks aren’t working; scroll down to “Young & Pro-Life: Get Used To It” ):

The other night a couple of dozen young professionals and college students, mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians, crowded into my house for dinner. We played a current events party game. We divided the group in two and assigned one side to favor, and the other to oppose, five controversial issues.

At the end of the discussion we went around the room and voted. One after another, these twenty- and thirty-somethings said that one issue was more important to them than any other. They were strongly opposed to abortion.

Abortion was the stealth factor in the recent election. It hadn’t been in the spotlight for a while. Many people may have thought it went away. Yet some polls show the pro-life position is quietly growing, especially among young people.

Perhaps opposition to abortion was underestimated because pro-choicers began to believe their own propaganda. Perhaps they assumed pro-lifers were poor and uneducated, knee-jerk opponents of women’s rights. They didn’t make room for people like me.

I was the first feminist in my dorm, thirty years ago. I fought for abortion rights. But then I came to see that abortion is wrong. I learned that in the most common method the unborn child is sucked into a tiny tube. Well, you can picture the results. Advocates of abortion rights may see it as a medical procedure. My stand against abortion is a stand against violence, and I voted for the only candidate who gets this.

Same with my friend who works at a big-city newspaper. He was very angry about the war, and for awhile swore he’d vote against Bush. But in the end the abortion issue, and related biotech fears, caused him to pull the Republican lever. Another friend, a college professor and life-long Democrat, says his party ought to stand for the weak, the poor, and the threatened. That includes unborn children. He crossed over to vote for Bush. …

In comments to this post asking to what extent pacifist Christians should participate in the functions of the state, Camassia directed me to Telford Work’s blog where he addresses this and other related issues. From the looks of things, Prof. Work was doing yeoman’s work (no pun intended) back in the summer of 2002 defending Christain pacifism in the face of some harsh criticism from various warbloggers.

Prof. Work adheres to what he calls “church pacifism,” which is the view that it is only Christians who, as part of their life of discipleship, are called to nonviolence. The state is instituted by God to use force in the service of justice (per Romans 13), but Christians, following the example of their Lord, may not participate in the use of force (per Romans 12 among other NT passages), even for just ends. This rules out, among other things, Christians holding offices that require them to use lethal force (soldier, executioner, probably police officer, etc.).

What I found most interesting about Prof. Work’s position is that he seems able to combine pacifism with a quite positive evaluation of the state’s job of using force in the pursuit of justice. For instance, he says:

Not only am I not “sorry we are not more accomodating of” Osama bin Laden, I am delighted that the United States is pursuing him militarily.

Prof. Work compares the role of Christians to that of medics or journalists; they are not “anti-war” per se, it’s just that they have a special vocation that precludes their participation in war. In the case of Christians, that vocation is witnessing to the new age that God has inagurated through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

It would seem then that for Prof. Work there is a division of labor between the church and the state; the state’s job is to enforce justice with the sword, and the church’s job is to incarnate the reign of Christ in a new kind of community.

Now, I may be reading too much into a few scattered blog comments, but this position seems to differ significantly from what I take to be the position of someone like John Howard Yoder. Yoder agrees that pacifism is primarily the vocation of the church, but he also seems to hold out the possibility that the church can convince the state to moderate its use of violence.

In fact, in at least some places, Yoder indicates that even under the strictures of Romans 13, war is still an illegitimate activity for the state as well as for the church. For instance in this (admittedly early) essay Yoder says:

Our general thesis is that the policing function of the state is to a certain degree legitimate, and that war is illegitimate, for the clear reason that the police function can fit the prescriptions of Romans 13 and I Timothy 2; it can distinguish the innocent from the guilty and can preserve a semblance of order, whereas war cannot. (Yoder, “The Theological Basis of the Christian Witness to the State,” p. 22-23)

This would seem to imply that in addition to refusing participation in war, Christians should also be actively “anti-war” in calling the state to abjure the use of lethal violence. Once war has begun or become inevitable, Yoder says that Christians should advocate the least violent means of prosecuting the war.

The difference (assuming it is a difference and that I haven’t misinterpreted anyone) seems to be that Prof. Work thinks that a Christian pacifist can approve of the state carrying out its (God-ordained) task of using violence in a just cause, even if she can’t wield the sword herself. Yoder, on the other hand, seems to think that Christians should speak out against every use of lethal violence, and that the state’s commission to wield the sword does not extend to killing in war.

So, I guess this leaves my initial question unresolved: Can Christian pacifists, while opting out of war themselves, ever support the state in its use of the sword? Much turns on how we interpret Romans 13: Is it a reference simply to the “police function” of keeping domestic order, or does it extend to war?

Ben Stein on the difference between celebrity and heroism (via the Pertinacious Papist)

American Christians’ Persecution Complex (via Morning Retort)

Marcus responds to my Pascal post.

Thomas Hibbs reviews Sideways (such a great film!)

(also see Noah Millman on Sideways here)

The Confessing Evangelical on evangelical “anti-Incarnationism” and the importance of Christmas.

One story making the rounds today is that philosopher Antony Flew has gone from being a renowned defender of atheism to embracing some kind of theism or deism.

While interesting, this shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a victory for Christianity. Even if we could “prove” the existence of some kind of limited deistic god, that’s a long way from the God of the Bible. I like to recall these words from Pascal:

I admire the boldness with which these persons undertake to speak of God. In addressing their argument to infidels, their first chapter is to prove Divinity from the works of nature. I should not be astonished at their enterprise, if they were addressing their argument to the faithful; for it is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, and in whom we purpose to rekindle it, persons destitute of faith and grace, who, seeking with all their light whatever they see in nature that can bring them to this knowledge, find only obscurity and darkness; to tell them that they have only to look at the smallest things which surround them, and they will see God openly, to give them, as a complete proof of this great and important matter, the course of the moon and planets, and to claim to have concluded the proof with such an argument, is to give them ground for believing that the proofs of our religion are very weak. And I see by reason and experience that nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt.

It is not after this manner that Scripture speaks, which has a better knowledge of the things that are of God. It says, on the contrary, that God is a hidden God, and that, since the corruption of nature, He has left men in a darkness from which they can escape only through Jesus Christ, without whom all communion with God is cut off. Nemo novit Patrem, nisi Filius, et cui voluerit Filius revelare.*

This is what Scripture points out to us, when it says in so many places that those who seek God find Him. It is not of that light, “like the noonday sun,” that this is said. We do not say that those who seek the noonday sun, or water in the sea, shall find them; and hence the evidence of God must not be of this nature. So it tells us elsewhere: Vere tu es Deus absconditus.**

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*Matt. 11:27 “Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.”

**Is. 45:15. “Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself.”

Max Sawicky responds to Peter Beinart’s “get tough” article:

Whether a closer Democratic adherence to a “muscular” foreign policy would win elections is an uninteresting question. More important is whether such a policy is commendable in its own right. Beinart envisions a reconstruction along the lines of the late 1940s Truman/ADA crusade against communism, with “Islamist totalitarianism” taking the place of the Reds. He cites Clinton’s toppling of Milosevic and the Afghan mission as precursors of his Trumanesque revival. He attributes Kerry’s primary victory and electoral defeat to the Senator’s ambivalence about Iraq. Kerry acted to placate the party’s liberal base and compromised his commitment (itself problematic, in light of his Senate record) as a liberal interventionist hawk. Bad politics and maybe bad (inconsistent) policy, but is an anti-war posture wrong on the merits? […]

Beinart wants to conflate opposition to dictatorship and terrorism with the projection of U.S. military force. If you are skeptical of the latter, you are inadequate on the former. If you are prone to recount the historic calamities wrought by the U.S. in the name of Wilsonian interventionism, you are in solidarity with anti-Americanism around the world. PB approvingly cites John F. Kennedy’s escalation of defense spending, glossing over his role in the debacle of the Bay of Pigs, and the disaster that became Vietnam. Similarly, there is no restraint occasioned by TNR’s own endorsement of the Iraqi venture. Never let empirical evidence restrain the enunciation of principles! As I have harped on here ad nauseum, the moral case for liberal interventionism does not imply the practical feasibility of any such project. The moral case borders on triviality: elsewhere in the world, people are doing awful things and somebody ought to stop them.

With the benefit of hindsight, how many U.S. military interventions could be said to have turned out well? I would say damn few. (Warning: Godwin’s Law is in force.) The same goes for foreign aid in ostensible support of Third World democracies. By my lights, democracy is not a common sight in under-developed countries. There are lots of voting systems, but to me democracy requires a great deal more than that.