The WCF and the passage of time

Presbyterians who hold to the WCF believe that Paul’s writings about women in the church were meant for the church for all time.  I don’t believe that.  I believe that Paul was writing for local conditions at the time he lived – practical solutions to solve problems in local churches. 

Also, at the time the WCF,  and even later, only the pastor was educated; so the relationship between the pastor and his congregation was consistent with that state of affairs.  Today, it is possible for anyone with a decent IQ and sufficient determination to learn and know as much theology as most pastors.  Churches adhering to the WCF do not make allowances for this (and other) changes that time has made to world societies.

Edmondson on The Death of Sigmund Freud

Early last month I referred to an article by Mark Edmundson, “The Ideal English Major” http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ideal-English-Major/140553/   And a couple of days later decided I disagreed with a lot what he said and was puzzled by much of the rest.  I sent for two of his books. The first was The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll, a Memoir.  It was a “coming of age” sort of thing so I set it aside.  The second was The Death of Sigmund Freud, Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism. 

I have a few quibbles with Edmundson’s text but as a final assessment decided he wrote a very entertaining and provocative book.  His “parallel lives,” Freud and Hitler, approach is very clever and perceptive.  Not only was Freud confronted by Hitler, by way of the Nazis in Austria in a physical way, but Freud advanced Psychoanalytical theories about the nature of “the Patriarch” which Hitler exemplified perhaps better than anyone in modern times. 

Freud spent his last years in England; which he loved above other countries.  He had the fame that he had never received in Austria.  Despite that he continued working on his Moses and Monotheism, a book he knew would antagonize Jews and Christians alike.  And here it seems that Edmundson is indicating that he finds in this book something beyond what has been described -- an even more subtle Freud and a kind of Freudianism worthy of being embraced by future followers (including it seems Edmundson himself).  Moses monotheism wasn’t simply “one God,” it was “one invisible God.”  God in Judaism had to be internalized and since he was this made the Jew more capable of dealing in abstract ideas than the non-Jew.  Jews make up a proportionally higher number of mathematicians, physicists and scientists in general as well as anything else requiring the ability to work well with abstractions.

While Edmondson doesn’t mention Fukuyama what he ends up describing is very like Fukuyama’s ending in The End of History and the Last Man.  Perhaps Liberal Democracy seems to be defeating all its competitors, but there is the Superman who may start history up again because “the Last Man” that lumpenproletariat Nietzsche describes is boring and worthless and incapable of being joined by the Ubermensch.  Freud said he never read Nietzsche because he was afraid he would find all his ideas in his writings, and his “Patriarch” sounds very like Nietzsche’s Ubermensch.  And the common people, both Nietzsche and Freud say, love him.

[From Edmundson page 241]  “Freud also warns against thinking that the fascist and fundamentalist are radically other.  Book after book, essay after essay, has come into the world trying to show what set the German Nazis apart from everyone else.  It was their political past, their culture, their military tradition; it was the debased Treaty of Versailles; it was the Depression of 1929.  The same scholarly ritual is visited on Japan . . .  We seem desperate to know how different these peoples are from ourselves.  Freud indicates that such thinking is delusory; we are all fascists, we are all fundamentalists, at least potentially.  Through authoritarianism we attain assurance and happiness – though of a certain sort.  It is only constant critical labor that keeps the worst political and religious possibilities from becoming fact. 

“Freud also suggests that fascism and fundamentalism, because of their amazing powers of attraction, will always constitute an emergency.  When a powerful or rich nation turns to either, something must be done, and the more quickly, the better.  One of the reasons that France and England may have been slow to act prior to the Second World War was that their statesmen did not understand the joy – no less a word should attach to it – that fascism offers people.  Inner strife dissolves and the people become powerful and strong.  They have never felt so good before and they will not readily give that feeling up.  Others see their joy and are drawn to it.  Such people make determined and potent foes.”

Edmundson, invoking Freud, is implying it seems to me that Fukuyama’s “end of history” should not have been emphasized in his book.  The “Last Man” cannot possibly be the ultimate last man because the Superman, the Patriarch, will always arise and give the people the joy of war.   There will always be clashes of civilizations because the people love war.

In referring to Islamic and Christian “patriarchal religions” that love nothing so much as a good war, Edmondson doesn’t deviate from history, but when he writes “The most powerful and most technologically advanced nation in the twenty-first century has a sizable constituency who wish for little so much as religious rule by the state, theocracy” he is misinformed.   That was advanced as a slur against Christianity a few years back but there was never anything to it.  The “constituency” referred to is called “Theonomy” by most, but there are other names.  It comprises a theological position maintained by a few theologians and their followers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church in America and a few others, but it was never a predominate or even very influential view in those denominations.  Also, it has never grown.  If Theonomy is what Edmondson is referring to it does not in my opinion comprise a “sizable constituency.” 

If on the other hand Edmondson is referring to those Christians who call themselves “Fundamentalists” then he is wrong if believes they seek “religious rule by the state, theocracy.”  They believe in the near-term return of Christ and have no interest in religious rule by the state which would involve Christians remaining on earth longer than their near-term eschatology provides. 

Edmundson weakened his book by bringing in Fundamentalism in near the end.  He wants to have Fundamentalism stand for something all men are tempted by but he doesn’t make that case.  A much better case exists for the Superman, e.g. Hitler.   But if Hitler is the ideal modern Patriarch/Ubermensch, what does that make Hitler’s ideal followers?  Certainly not Fundamentalists.

Injustices of all sorts on trial

I've been reading Curt Anders Injustice on Trial, Second Bull Run, General Fitz John Porter's Court-Martial, and the Schofield Board Investigation That Restored His Good Name -- not reading thoroughly, but moving through it. Why should I read too carefully when Porter's biographer can write, "Finally, I did not undertake this project to grind an ax for or against General Porter. I hold with General Lee that Porter might 'do well enough with someone to tell him [what to do]' It was Porter's misfortune, however (as had been William Franklin's and Charles Stone's) to have come under the influence of George McClellan instead of -- well, Henry Halleck, whose lieutenants included William Tecumseh Sherman and U. S. Grant and, by the way, John Schofield, but also, alas, John Pope."?

Anders read the many thousands of pages comprising the trial notes. Even though Grant had initially supported the trial verdict, he changed his mind once he read these notes.

Underlankers might suspect me of smelling blood in the water after reading "And Stephen W. Sears has written recently that 'An example had to be made, and General Porter was the not entirely undeserving victim." Perhaps the Sears-grinding-wheel is still spinning a bit, but I'm letting that pass.

Lee's comment about Porter reminds me of something that happened to me years ago. I was working in Engineering on the Skybolt program and had a small group responsible for creating a "Task Plan" that was to identify all the segments comprising the program and the steps needed to design and build them. There was a lady in my group named Betty B. She told me that she was for the first time working for someone younger than she was. She was a pushy lady and wanted to be promoted to salary. She said, "I can do anything. All you have to do is tell me how to do it and I can do it."

I recall at the time thinking that what she said comprised a good definition between an educated person and a non-educated person. The education doesn't need to be told "how to do it." Of course I didn't tell her that, and she was still on the clock when McNamara cancelled the Skybolt program.

But surely Fitz-John Porter was "educated." He graduated from West Point eighth in his class, which was higher than Meade managed: nineteenth. Of course class standing doesn't tell us everything. Stonewall Jackson was second in his class and his ability seemed commensurate. Sheridan on the other hand was last in his graduating class and by the end of the war was right underneath Grant and Sherman in status.

On page 37 Anders writes, "General Pope's presence in Washington in early July led to his standing aside while Secretary of War Stanton dictated . . . 'By special assignment of the President of the United States I have assumed the command of this army' . . . quickly enough, though, Pope and Stanton injected slurs obviously directed towered the Young Napoleon. . . "

After reading Pope's words, "Fitz John Porter wrote to a friend: 'I regret that Genl Pope has not improved since his youth and has now written himself down what the military world has long known, [as] an ass. His address to his troops will make him ridiculous in the eyes of military men . . .and will reflect no credit on Mr. Lincoln who has just promoted him. If the theory he proclaims is practiced you may look for disaster.'

"Four days after issuing his bombastic address to his troops, John Pope confirmed the correctness of Fitz John Porter's low opinion of him by circulating certain orders that clearly had a Stantonian ring. This provoked General Lee into condemning Pope as 'a miscreant who ought to be suppressed.'"

This reminded me that I had yet to study Stanton; so I sent for a bio, not just because of the Stantonian influence on Pope. A few days ago I was checking the bibliography in Sears The Young Napoleon and discovered Margaret Leech's Reveille in Washington which I read back in 1997. On page 132 I discovered the sort of statement that offended me in Sears, but this one was not directed against McClellan: "Mr. Stanton was a physical coward. Fear drove him to bluster, sneer and rage." How on earth could she know that. I checked Leech on Wikipedia and she is highly thought of -- her book as well. I checked through my library for references to Stanton and everything I found was favorable. Still, Margaret Leech could assert, without referenced evidence that "Mr. Stanton was a physical coward . . ."

That made me wonder about Civil War scholarship in General. As Underlankers jokingly said, perhaps I have spent too much time studying theology. There may be some truth to that. Such an unsupported statement as Leech's would never appear in the writings of one of the better theologians. It might in the writings of someone who without qualification decided to sit down and write a Biblical commentary. That is why I went to Wikipedia, to see if Margaret Leech was in that category, but she is not. She is highly thought of. She won the Pulitzer prize for her bio of McKinley.

But back to Underlankers joke, While I didn't really look for that sort of thing before I got serious about studying the Civil War, I believe I would have reacted if I read a comment like Leech's in anything I read. I spent several years chipping away at Norman Cantor's "A Core Bibliography for Medieval Studies." I read Cantor's Civilization of the Middle Ages, and his Inventing the Middle Ages. The latter is an excellent introduction to Medieval Studies and his bibliographies provide lists of books he recommends. In Cantor's view very little prior to 1900 stands up to the high standards of work that were written later on, work he praises in his Inventing the Middle Ages.

I don't think the same sort of thing could be said about Civil-War histories. Historians are probably still too close to that war. Anders says he doesn't have an axe to grind in regard to Fitz-John Porter, but it was not meaningless for him to say this. Many who read Civil War history as well as some who write it do have axes to grind. The best writers should strive toward objectivity, but that is easier said than done, especially if one is passionate about her subject. Margaret Leech didn't provide a reference for calling Stanton a physical coward, but we can be sure she had something against him, something she felt passionate about.

McClellan and the Peter Principle

Someone commented that McClellan was an exemplar of the Peter Principle.

I think I have been wrestling too long with such matters as why McClellan would send such embarrassing notes to his wife to reduce him to a Peter Principle graduate. You may be right, but I had another thought that might explain him. If one reads his history one finds that he was extremely smart as a child. When he was sent to Sevastopol as an observer he spent his spare time teaching himself Russian and translated a 300 page book -- for sport. It does not stretch the imagination to believe that whenever he walked into a room, he was usually the smartest person there.

We know we should not think of ourselves more highly than is appropriate, but if we are really the "smartest person in the room," what purpose is served by assuming that we are not? But then McClellan moved to a new room. He looked at a President who had little formal education, who used homespun stories and maxims, and he assumed he was in a room like all the others he had been in. Perhaps one of the largest mistakes McClellan made was in underestimating Lincoln. With Lincoln in the room he was not the smartest person there, but McClellan had been taught formally and perhaps he wasn't equipped to properly evaluate a self-taught genius.

Gouverneur Warren was another general who was usually the smartest person in any room he walked into, but he thought lightly of Meade, Grant, and then to his regret, Sheridan.

On the other hand I have encountered individuals who were purported to have genius-level IQs but their actions didn't exhibit a commensurate level of common sense. They had a "potential ability" that was extremely high, but when they attempted to apply that ability, they failed. I might be tempted to think McClellan was in that category, but Rowland and soon-to-arrive Combined Operations in the Civil War by Rowena Reed argue that not only was McClellan's strategy really quite good, but he had the right idea in regard to application as well. I wouldn't term it "back-stabbing"; which implies an intent I don't find in the superiors and subordinates that failed McClellan at critical times, but his "application," judged by the plans he attempted to carry out, was good.

And yes, McClellan was very much a political general, but he wasn't alone in that. A lot of generals were appointed for political reasons. Many had powerful contacts in Washington and the same sort of thing was true on the Confederate side.

Grant on Sheridan's raid

Someone wrote, "I don't have any problem with Sheridan setting out to beat Stuart actually; I just think it was terribly neglectful for him not to leave a sufficient amount of cavalry with Grant when he did so. He took practically his entire Cavalry Corps, whereas Stuart left Lee with plentiful cavalry for his immediate needs; all Stuart had with him at Yellow Tavern was Fitz Lee's cavalry, and despite the numbers they still escaped reasonably intact."

Here is Grant putting this matter in an entirely different context. It is from the Library of America's edition of the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, pages 494-7: "On the 8th of May, just after the battle of the Wilderness and when we were moving on Spottsylvania I directed Sheridan to cut loose from the Army of the Potomac, pass around the left of Lee's army and attack his cavalry: to cut the two roads -- one running west through Gordonsville, Charlottesville and Lynchburg, the other to Richmond, and, when compelled to do so for want of forage and rations, to move on to the James River and draw these from Butler's supplies. This move took him past the entire rear of Lee's army. These orders were also given in writing through Meade.

"The object of this move was three-fold. First, if successfully executed, and it was, he would annoy the enemy by cutting his line of supplies and telegraphic communications, and destroy or get for his own use supplies in the rear and coming up. Second, he would draw the enemy's cavalry after him, and thus better protect our flanks, rear and trains than by remaining with the army. Third, his absence would save the trains drawing his forage and other supplies from Fredericksburg, which had now become our base. He started at daylight the next morning, and accomplished more than was expected. It was sixteen days before he got back to the Army of the Potomac.

"The course Sheridan took was directly to Richmond. Before night Stuart, commanding the Confederate cavalry, came on to the rear of his command. But the advance kept on, crossed the North Anna, and at Beaver Dam, a station on the Virginia Central Railroad, recaptured four hundred Union prisoners on their way to Richmond, destroyed the road and used and destroyed a large amount of subsistence and medical stores.

"Stuart, seeing that our cavalry was pushing towards Richmond, abandoned the pursuit on the morning of the 10th and, by a detour and exhausting march, interposed between Sheridan and Richmond at Yellow Tavern, only about six miles north of the city. Sheridan destroyed the railroad and more supplies at Ashland, and on the 11th arrived in Stuart's front. A severe engagement ensued in which the losses were heavy on both sides, but the rebels were beaten, their leader mortally wounded, and some guns and many prisoners were captured.

"Sheridan passed through the outer defences of Richmond, and could, no doubt, have passed through the inner ones. But having no supports near he could not have remained. After caring for his wounded he struck for the James River below the city, to communicate with Butler and to rest his men and horses as well as to get food and forage for them.

"He moved first between the Chickahominy and the James, but in the morning (the 12th) he was stopped by batteries at Mechanicsville. He then turned to cross to the north side of the Chickahominy by Meadow Bridge. He found this barred, and the defeated Confederate cavalry, reorganized, occupying the opposite side. The panic crated by his first entrance within the outer works of Richmond having subsided troops were sent out to attack his rear.

"He was now in a perilous position, one from which but few generals could have extricated themselves. The defences of Richmond, manned, were to the right, the Chickahominy was to the left with no bridge remaining and the opposite bank guarded, to the rear was a force from Richmond. This force was attacked and beaten by Wilson's and Gregg's divisions, while Sheridan turned to the left with the remaining division and hastily built a bridge over the Chickahominy under the fire of the enemy, forced a crossing and soon dispersed the Confederates he found there. The enemy was held back from the stream by the fire of the troops not engaged in bridge building.

"On the 13th Sheridan was at Bottom's Bridge, over the Chickahominy. On the 14th he crossed this stream and on that day went into camp on the James River at Haxall's Landing. He at once put himself into communication with General Butler, who directed all the supplies he wanted to be furnished.

"Sheridan had left the Army of the Potomac at Spottsylvania, but did not know where either this or Lee's army was now. Great caution therefore had to be exercised in getting back. On the 17th, after resting his command for three days, he started on his return. He moved by the way of White Hose. The bridge over the Pamunkey had been burned by the enemy, but a new one was speedily improvised and the cavalry crossed over it. On the 22nd he was at Aylett's on the Matapony, where he learned the position of the two armies. On the 24th he joined us on the march from North Anna to Cold Harbor, in the vicinity of Chesterfield.

"Sheridan in this memorable raid passed entirely around Lee's army: encountered his cavalry in four engagements, and defeated them in all; recaptured four hundred Union prisoners and killed and captured many of the enemy; destroyed and used many supplies and munitions of war; destroyed miles of railroad and telegraph, and freed us from annoyance by the cavalry of the enemy for more than two weeks."

Comment: Grant sent his memoirs to his publisher on May 23, 1885 and wrote a brief preface on July 1, 1885. As I skimmed through Rhea's Bibliography I noticed that Grant's Memoirs have a more recent date than most of Rhea's references.

At this point, Grant being a primary source, I think the burden would belong to a detractor to prove that Grant is wrong and Rhea right rather than the reverse.

Escriva's Opus Dei & Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God

With John Frame’s The Escondido Theology and Evangelical Reunion in the back of my mind (but not the reason I decided to watch the movie There Be Dragons – I was skimming through the Netflix movies and thought it would be an action movie about the Spanish Civil War J. Instead, I discovered the movie to be based upon the life of the Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva. The “action” surrounds the relationship of Escriva and a perhaps fictitious childhood friend Manolo. The more important part of the movie describes Escriva’s saintly development and his influence on others.

In regard to the “Second Kingdom” and Frame’s “Escondido” conflict and debate, I noticed that Escriva was very-much involved with Christian “application.” Frame’s criticism of the Escondido professors includes his assertion that they teach that “Those who try to show the application of Scripture to the daily problems of believers are headed toward a Christless Christianity.” Did Escriva and his Opus Dei drive his followers toward a “Christless Christianity”? Without knowing fully what the Escondido Professors are arguing (or the effects of Opus Dei), and perhaps having them wrong, if we have our “eyes upon Jesus” which is something urged upon us through Scripture (and in countless sermons I can bear witness to), won’t we want to “behave” and “act” as He would? If so then we have entered the theological world of “application.”

On page 76-77 The Escondido Theology, Frame defends himself against R. Scott Clarke when he writes, “the application of God’s word” was his [Frame’s] focus in the first seventy-five pages [of the Doctrine of the Knowledge of God]. After describing this focus he responds to R. Scott Clark’s criticism by asking, “am I not permitted to make mention of what we do with God’s word? Even after speaking elaborately about the primacy of God in revelation? Theology is certainly something we do . . . and it is certainly the application of the revelation of the Word.”

Perhaps we can’t see it if we just look about us today, but we can learn about it from reading Church history, that is, the swing back and forth between faith and works, or more specifically between the extremes of “one needs only faith and needn’t at all concern one’s self about what one does,” and “one won’t make it to heaven unless his good works qualify him for the trip.”

In reading the excerpt from Escriva’s book it is clear that his works-like injunctions aren’t taught from the average Protestant, and probably not from the average Catholic pulpit. But surely, since we have been saved for good works, it isn’t out of line to describe some of them. [See an excerpt from Escriva’s book The Way at http://www.amazon.com/Way-Essential-Classic-Opus-Founder/dp/0385518293/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355755042&sr=1-1&keywords=escriva+the+way

I wouldn’t support all of Escriva’s injunctions, nevertheless it is refreshing that Escriva saw the lack of “application” in the church of his day and chose to do something about it. Also, it is notable that his superiors, perhaps up to the pope himself, allowed him to create his Opus Dei organization.

When I was in the Charismatic Church “Faith Fellowship” back in perhaps 1979 or 1980, a recent graduate from Talbot, Ron Galla Rini wanted to do something that I now take to be similar to what Escriva advocated (although Ron never mentioned Escriva as far as I can recall). I was influenced by Galla Rini and as a result started a Prayer Meeting at Douglas Aircraft Company. Galla Rini didn’t specify what we should do, and I don’t think Escriva did either, but he urged us to “do something,” to embrace “application.” I was as caught up in application as the movie portrays Escriva’s followers as being. The prayer meeting that resulted was remarkable. Everyone who attended at Douglas was as caught up as I was. We prayed for something one week and then the next week reviewed my notes and asked for a report on whether the prayer was answered. Week after week the prayers were answered. A Plymouth Brethren member (and skeptic) attended and couldn’t reconcile the answered prayer to his belief that his denomination comprised the only true church.

But when the Faith Fellowship eldership discovered what Ron Galla Rini had put in motion they demanded that it be abolished. I was very upset at the time, but years-later suspect that most protestant churches would have acted as the Faith Fellowship eldership acted. It is threatening to have a recent seminary graduate urge a group of church members to go out into their neighborhoods doing what Christ did, or might do. Yet the Catholic Church permitted Escriva to do what he did, and beyond that in 2002, canonized him.

Someone might at this point observe that the Catholic Church has always been more “works-oriented” and as a consequence a natural home for Escriva’s Opus Dei. This is probably true. One recalls that Luther had a lot of trouble with the book of James. But should we also have trouble with it? Is it for Catholics only and not for us? If it is for us as well, we must take seriously James 2:14-20, “What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, "You have faith, and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works." You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?”

If we think there is a conflict between Faith as we understand it and what James wrote in 2:14-20, then we don’t have an adequate grasp of Faith. I am not, by the way, accusing the Escondido professors of that. I haven’t read them as much as I’ve read Frame. I’m merely asserting this passage of James as relating to Frame’s beliefs -- and Escriva’s as well – mine too.

Mercersburgism, John Frame, Theonomy, etc.

 

If Steven Wedgeworth is accurate (see http://wedgewords.wordpress.com/category/mercersburg/) when he writes, “Another difference [between Modern Theology and Mercersburg Theology] is in their central idea. Modern theology makes the atonement or death of Christ, Mercersburg the person of Christ or the incarnation, its central idea. The importance of this difference can be seen in the fact, for instance, that the atonement itself, or justification by faith, cannot be maintained successfully by adopting the former. According to it, the atonement is made to rest primarily on what Christ has done, not on what he is. It apprehends Christ as a mere individual, God and man in one person, it is true, but yet as a mere individual. Mercersburg theology apprehends Christ as the embodiment of the universal life of humanity, the second Adam or federal head of the race’ and his obedience and death receive their atoning merits from this fact.”

If accurate Mercersburg theology as well as “Modern Theology” comes athwart something I encountered in New Testament Introduction in regard to the Synoptic Problem, it was never a problem for the first generations of Christians. They didn’t have the whole Bible, the New Testament or very likely more than one of the gospels. Neither were they concerned about the theology of the atonement. They were focused almost completely upon the Resurrection, the Easter message: Christ is Risen. For if he is risen then he is as he is the first born among many brethren; which includes us.

Others I read seem to think that Mercersburg Theology was headed in the same direction as Neo-Orthodoxy. Barth took the wind out of their sails because he did it better than they did. I have nothing against Barth btw, one of my few criticisms of Van Til is that he was too harsh on some philosophers and theologians that I admire, R. G. Collingwood for example, but also Barth . . . but whenever I’ve dabbled at reading Barth he is saying something that bears out Van Til’s criticism.

I read Frame’s Evangelical Reunion, Denominations and the Body of Christ back in 1993 just at the time that my OPC pastor asked me  to teach a study on “The Church.” I was heavily influenced by Frame’s ideas on Evangelical Reunion no doubt included some of those ideas in my talk.  Afterward an OPC missionary who happened to be visiting took me to task: There could be no merging with other denominations because there was something wrong with everyone of them.

“What about Christ’s prayer that all those in his Church would be ‘one’?” I asked him.

“That’s all well and good, but we can’t sacrifice sound theology for the sake of a merger. Why not go all the way and merge with the secular world. A merger should never be accomplished at the expense of sound theology.”

This missionary didn’t convince me, but neither did I convince him. Frame seems to have met with the same reaction on a larger scale. His enemies seem to be taking him to task for the same sorts of things. I haven’t pursued Frame’s idea in recent years, but Christ’s prayer is still out there. Something is wrong with the Universal Church if it doesn’t pursue reunion.

I thought about this matter when I began attending the EPC. What, for example, would prevent the merger of the OPC and the EPC. As far as I could tell from reading the EPC charter and listening to the pastor, the only differences were the use by the EPC of modern hymns and women elders, both of which were left open to individual EPC churches.

In regard to Mercersburg, I have been impressed by some of the publications coming out of Princeton & so looked especially at (and finally ordered) the following:

Speculative Theology and Common-Sense Religion : Mercersburg and the Conservative Roots of American Religion by Linden J. DeBie (2008, Paperback)

Synopsis

Evangelicals in nineteenth-century America had a headquarters at Princeton. Charles Hodge never expected that a former student of Princeton and his own replacement during his hiatus in Europe, John W. Nevin, would lead the German Reformed Church's seminary in a new, and in his mind, destructive direction. The two, along with their institutions, would clash over philosophy and religion, producing some of the best historical theology ever written in the United States. The clash was broad, influencing everything from hermeneutics to liturgy, but at its core was the philosophical antagonism of Princeton's Scottish common-sense perspective and the German speculative method employed by Mercersburg. Both Princeton and Mercersburg were the cautious and critical beneficiaries of a century of European Protestant science, philosophy, and theology, and they were intent on adapting that legacy to the American religious context. For Princeton, much of the new European thought was suspect. In contrast, Mercersburg embraced a great deal of what the Continent offered. Princeton followed a conservative path, never straying far from the foundation established by Locke. They enshrined an evangelical perspective that would become a bedrock for conservative Protestants to this day. In contrast, Nevin and the Mercersburg school were swayed by the advances in theological science made by Germany's mediating school of theology. They embraced a churchy idealism called evangelical catholicism and emphatically warned that the direction of Princeton and with it Protestant American religion and politics, would grow increasingly subjective, thus divided and absorbed with individual salvation. They cautioned against the spirit of the growing evangelical bias toward personal religion as it led to sectarian disunity and they warned evangelicals not to confuse numerical success with spiritual success. In contrast, Princeton was alarmed at the direction of European philosophy and theology and they resisted Mercersburg with what today continues to be the fundamental teachings of evangelical theology. Princeton's appeal was in its common-sense philosophical moorings, which drew rapidly industrializing America into its arms. Mercersburg countered with a philosophically defended, churchly idealism based on a speculative philosophy that effectively critiqued what many to this day find divisive and dangerous about America's current Religious Right.

In regard to Kuyper, it seems to me he was a natural ally of both Theonomy and the Escondido Theology. He believed very strongly in the Christian’s role in modern States. I do as well, but could never embrace Kuyper, although he was urged upon me by the first OPC (sort of) pastor we had in Moreno valley. I can’t recall his name but he was ordained in some denomination not approved of by the OPC (or something line that); which didn’t bother him because he was semi-retired and when they cut him loose he retired completely.

In regard to Theonomy I was attracted to it initial and read Rushdoony’’s Institutes, for  if we considered a future in which the Postmillennial time arrived where everyone was Christian (some nominally but most sincerely) then we would be able to create laws consistent with Christianity. What sorts of laws should they be? 

However, I didn’t get very far with this before learning that the Theonomists thought they were in position to know what these laws should be and  furthermore had decided to urge them at once upon the Church and even the nation at large.

A failure Theonomy but also of several other points of view, including the Escondido School, is a lack of appreciation for the fact that God does not create language or societies out of whole cloth. He deals with people as they are and with what they know and believe. Thus, the Mosaic food laws, for example, were appropriate for the people that Moses led into the Wilderness but aren’t appropriate to subsequent social situations.

God deals with people where they are, using their language and their societies as they are. He does not urge a change of language or society. I read Dabney’s biography of Stonewall Jackson in which is a very well-reasoned defense of Slavery. The fact that Paul didn’t urge the abolition of Slavery, I believe, doesn’t mean that he, let alone God, was advocating that economic practice. God’s (and Paul’s) interests lay elsewhere.

The same sort of thing is true, in my opinion, of Paul’s injunctions against women in the Church in his day. That society was a patriarchal society in which women were not educated. But in these modern times women receive the same education as men; so in my opinion Paul’s injunction against women in the church was not intended to be a universal principle. In looking at Paul’s concern we might very well embrace a universal principle against poorly qualified people ascending to important positions of responsibility in any modern denomination.

The Protestant Work Ethic in the U.S. & the West

In 1513 Luther nailed his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Door (1513). In Luther's day they fought wars for religious principles. In fact they wore each other out, economically and in most other ways and gave up fighting each other (Catholic against Protestant) and subscribing to the "Peace of Westphalia" in 1648.

In a way, the Peace of Westphalia was a victory for the Protestants because it in effect established that religion was not something that we in the West are willing to die for anymore. Every man after that could indeed be "his own priest" without having to worry about some Church authority taking his head. The Founding Fathers were probably all alive in 1648 and while they didn't invoke the Peace of Westphalia they adhered to its principles. They would not fight over religious principles. The principles they were willing to fight for were "Enlightenment Principles."

However, as sociologists such as Max Weber, Karl Durkheim and Karl Marx argue, in effect, "enlightenment principles" are Christian principles cleansed of God. Thus, we Christians and non-Christians alike agree that we should take care of the poor; provide for the elderly, care for widows and orphans; forgive those who sin against us (at least in terms of our laws), etc. Karl Marx and Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin after him made a good living promising to provide the material blessings promised by Christianity more efficiently than they had been by the Church (whether Catholic or Protestant). An excellent modern statement of that concept is provided by Marcel Gauchet's The Disenchantment of the World, A Political History of Religion.

Thus, we can see that the war to establish Liberal (more or less) Democracy in America (1776) occurred not so long (in historical terms) after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and not so much prior to the war over "Economic Management of the people") (1917).

Most Sociologists today would probably agree that the U.S. is the most Christian of all Western nations and would probably attribute that fact to our Founding generations (not necessarily "fathers") being more intensely religious than those remaining behind in Europe. It is a truism that the West became an economic powerhouse because of its "Protestant Work Ethic." (a term first coined by by Max Weber.) Puritan Protestants especially believed that God would economically bless those who did their duty, and for farmers and others that meant working as hard as they were able to.

Obviously the Protestant Work Ethic isn't as popular as it once was. In France for example workers aren't willing to give up entitlements or tax themselves to pay for them. We see some of that in the U.S. as well but the "Protestant Work Ethic" is perhaps more alive in the U.S. than it is in Europe, (probably) accounting for America's slightly better economy.

But back in the years leading up to 1776 no one was worrying about Social Security, public supported hospitals and other such entitlements. They worried about such enlightenment principles as "freedom," "democracy," and "equality." It needs to be understood, as Marcel Gauchet tells us, that "Enlightenment Principles" are not antithetical to Christian Principles, they are merely principles that have been excised from Christian dogma.

Take "equality" for example. You won't find the words "all men are created equal" in the Bible, but the New Testament is shot through with that principle, e.g., in the heaven the first shall become last and the last first. Powerful religious leaders such as the Pharisees were despised by Jesus and his disciples not because of their political positions but because they thought themselves better than "lesser" people. Thank God, a Pharisee prayed, that I am not like that beggar over there. And perhaps most tellingly, is the beatitude "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

In the twentieth century, the Fascists denounced Enlightenment Principles by declaring that they were better than others. The Communists gave lip-service to them by declaring themselves the "meek," i.e., "workers," but they never gave up the idea that the "workers" needed a "vanguard," i.e., a group of superior people to rule over the workers.

In the West, on the other hand, Enlightenment principles are still held sacred. No Western politician would dream of standing up before the people he wanted to vote for him (or her) and saying, "you should vote for me because I am more competent than you are" even though he might think that. Instead he will present any modest & meek attributes he can dig up from his past and present them for public approval.

So is the matter of which of our Forefathers was Christian a non-issue? In the Max Weber and Marcel Gauchet sense it is. Even if we ask whether the Forefathers were members of the mainline churches extant in the days before 1776 we are on shaky ground. Were these Forefathers members of those churches, such as Presbyterian and Episcopalian sincere believers or were they members in order to show that they were no better than those they wanted to vote for them?

In days prior to the Civil War (1861-1865) there were a lot of mixed marriages. Catholics and Protestants married amicably in the West at least, but there wasn't much softening of sincere Christian belief. The father of Christian Liberalism (Liberal here meaning "less than orthodox") in Europe is generally considered to be Frederick Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) brought the ideas "higher Criticism" to England; so who would have brought them to America prior to the Revolution?

Various Americans such as Thomas Jefferson were very well read for the time; so there may have been a "climate of opinion" in Europe that was giving rise to "higher criticism" that Jefferson was aware of and even influenced by, but it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that those ideas were widespread in America prior to the Revolution. Could there have been something equivalent taking place in America: our own "higher criticism"? I doubt it.

God, Religion and the Lost Cause

"God and General Longstreet" is the title of the First Chapter of the book God and General Longstreet by Connelly and Bellows, first published in 1982. In it they provide insight into the religious element of the "Lost Cause" myth. Through the first ten years after the Civil War, Lee was considered to have been to blame for the loss of Gettysburg and no one was saying anything negative about Longstreet. The Myth changed all that. Why?

We know that it was widely if not totally believed in the South that God was on its side. From the pulpit and newspaper Southerners were regaled with the theological certainty that their cause was righteous and God would not let it fail. Fighting on the side of the South wasn't merely a military experience; it was a Religious experience as well. "The Great Revival that swept the Confederate camps in the winter of 1863-1864," Connelly & Bellows tell us "has never been appreciated fully by observers of the southern mind. It was a massive outburst of evangelical religion. . . In army camps from Virginia to Texas, Rebel soldiers by the tens of thousands became religious converts. In Virginia, whole brigades stood barefoot in several inches of snow to hear chaplains warn that the military reverses proved that Jehovah was angry with the Confederacy. Log tabernacles were erected in the lines of General Joe Johnston's army in Georgia. Before Sherman's bluecoats advanced on Johnston in the Atlanta campaign, the religious fervor had touched even the high command of the Army of Tennessee. During the spring of 1864, Episcopal Bishop Leonidas Polk, one of the army's corps leaders, baptized almost everyone in the upper echelons, including Johnston and Generals John Bell Hood and William Hardee."

Connelly and Bellows go on at some length developing the theological evolution in the South that provided the underlying assumptions demanding that they account for their failure to win the war after being assured by their Religious and Political leaders that God was on their side.

James G. Leyburn in The Scotch Irish, A Social History, tells us that King James in the 17th century in one of his attempts to subdue the warlike Irish transported Lowland Scots to Northern Ireland. These Scots had been evangelized by the Presbyterian John Knox. This is one of the ways one can tell whether his ancestors were Scot or Irish. If they came across the Atlantic as Presbyterian, they were most likely Scot. If they came across as Catholic then they were most likely Irish, although Highland Scots (too incorrigible to be sent by James to Northern Ireland) were also Catholic.

As Leyburn tells us, the Scots in Northern Ireland became very proficient in the making of cloth and managed to outperform and undersell British clothiers. That was intolerable to the British so they created taxes to favor the British and discriminate against the Scotch-Irish. As a result huge numbers of Scotch-Irish immigrated to the "New World." The Pennsylvanians were the only group who would take them in -- as long as they took land on their western border to provide a buffer against the Indians.

The Scotch-Irish thrived on that border. Fighting the Indians was no worse than the sort of fighting they'd done back in Scotland and Ireland. Their population grew and they moved south into Virgina and the Shenandoah Valley. It wasn't until they began moving west that they encountered religious difficulties. They started out as good John Knox-Presbyterians, but Knox demanded that pastors and preachers be educated; which took a long time, too long for the anxious Scotch-Irish who were seeking land and wives in the West. There was a dearth of Presbyterian Pastors that young Scotch-Irish men and women could go to to be married.

Enter Baptists, Methods and other "Arminian" pastors who didn't need to study for years to be a pastor. All they needed was "the call" to be a pastor or evangelist. And it was no longer God who decided who was to be saved (as John Knox taught) but the individual who must choose to accept "the call" (via an evangelist) to be saved. Then, if you did your part, God would do His. If you worked and fought, ye fellow Christians, God will make you victorious.

So when it became apparent to most that the South was losing, "nurse Cumming" wrote that Confederate sins "must have been great to have deserved such punishment. "Her conviction," Connelly & Bellows tell us "was no different from that expressed by Robert E. Lee in the winter of 1863, when he could see the tide turning on the eastern front. Lee mused, 'We do not know what is best for us. I believe a kind God has ordered all things for our good.' The same theology was expressed in 1863 by an Atlanta editor who mourned that while for a time the South must endure Yankee victories, 'we still believe, nay, have an abiding faith that HE chasteneth those whom he loveth, and that in HIS own good time, HE will deliver the South from its oppressors.'

"When God did not grant the deliverance, southerners felt that they were experiencing a vast calamity. Reading through the political and patriotic rhetoric of postwar military apologies or historical justifications for secession, one views something far deeper than the literary polemics of men who were confused, angry, and frustrated by defeat. In essence, the South was spiritually unprepared for Appomattox."

Comment: I had read the account of Hood being baptized by Polk in several books but not until reading this account by Connelly and Bellows did I read that this was part of a widespread "revival." Historians, objective though they strive to be are, most of them, not equipped to deal seriously with religious matters, but by not dealing thoroughly with the situation surrounding Hood's baptism, we are left with the false implication that Hood had lost his nerve. That this was a widespread revival puts an entirely different light on the matter.

Some Southerners seemed to be thinking (even during the Reconstruction period) that if they could cleans their hearts from iniquity, then God might even yet provide them a victory. I don't recall reading that the "iniquity" they believed they were guilty of was slavery. They looked elsewhere, and where many of them looked would have been declared theological heresy by their better-education Presbyterian compatriots (or maybe not. One wonders about Dabney). It was after Lee's death in 1860 that Jubal Early, Fitzhugh Lee, Charles Marshall, Walter Taylor, Reverend John William Jones and others began seeing and describing Robert E. Lee as "the invincible military leader," acquiring in the process an enthusiastic cult of followers.

Connelly and Bellows tell us that "The Inner Lost Cause movement . . . lasted for over fifty years although the prime emotional drive was demonstrated in the two decades after Appomattox.

". . . unlike the standard Calvinist [Presbyterians were Calvinists in those days] faith, the southern version, born out of frontier individualism, made man the prime agent of his own salvation [alluded to above as "Arminianism"]. The southern concept of the Trinity was not the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but God, man and Satan."

What these Southern religious folk did with Robert E. Lee would have been declared "idolatry" in sounder Christian times. Whenever I think of Dabney contributing to the exhalation of Lee I wonder what he could have been thinking -- or did the myth-makers take his honest respect for Lee & Jackson out of context?

R. L. Dabney's Defense of Slavery

 

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R. L. Dabney in 1865 wrote Life and Campaigns of Lt. General T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson. Dabney was Jackson's Chaplain and after the Civil War became a renowned theologian at Union Theological Seminary. Since assumptions are being made about what Southerners believed about "slavery" it seems useful to consider what R. L. Dabney, a very intelligent and articulate advocate has to say on the subject. I'll comment below:

Page 166: "When pointed to the rest of Christendom, they boldly declare, that this results from an exclusion of the Southern people form a hearing in their own defence and a perverse and indolent reception from their enemies, of the most monstrous tissue of slanders and falsehoods, which ever confounded a human mind. The world has been told a myriad times until the world believes it, that Virginian slavery makes a human being a chattel, a piece of property, thus violating the first intuitions of justice. Yet, all this is absolutely false; every slave-law of Virginia treats the slave as a person, a responsible, reasonable being; and not a thing; the only property which the laws recognize in him, is the property in his involuntary labor. . ."

Page 168: "And when we look into the ethics of the relation, we find that it was never suspected of immorality by any of the great masters of moral science, classic or scholastic, nor by any of the luminaries of the Church, patristic or reformed, until the dogma of modern abolition was born of atheistic parentage, amidst the radical disorganizers of France, in the Reign of Terror. In the Word of God, the only infallible standard of morality, that doctrine finds no support. Moses legalized domestic slavery for God's chosen people, in the very act of setting them aside to holiness. Christ, the great Reformer, lived and moved amidst it, teaching, healing, applauding slaveholders; and while He assailed every abuse, uttered no word against this lawful relation. His apostles admit slaveholders to the church, exacting no repentance nor renunciation. They leave, by inspiration, general precepts for the manner in which the duties of the relation are to be maintained. They command Christian slaves to obey and honor Christian masters. They remand the runaway to his injured owner, and recognize his property in his labor as a right which they had no power to infringe. If slavery is in itself a sinful thing, then the Bible is a sinful book.

"Strong in the truth of God and history, the people of the Confederate States therefore calmly breast the adverse opinion of the world. They fortify their position by the fact that their right to the labor of their slaves is not only protected by the laws they inherited from their fathers, but by the laws of God, and by eternal rectitude. Had they been unable to assert the latter truth, their resistance to anti-slavery aggressions would have been proper; because the Constitution, which alone united the States, recognized and protected it. But now their attitude is in every respect impregnable; for God protects it as well as the Constitution. To infringe the rights of slaveholders under the laws, was therefore a usurpation, and a violation of the primary compact. But a covenant broken by one party is broken for the other. The Southern States therefore had the clearest right to select their own redress. And especially is their secession justified, when the malignant intentions of the aggressors, and the ruinous nature of the wrongs they sought to inflict, are considered. . . ."

Comment: How do we understand his arguments while at the same time believing that it was right to abolish slavery? Jesus said, "in this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world." Slaves of the past endured the tribulation, but the world has been overcome in that respect.

Also, while Dabney is correct in saying that Slavery is not condemned in the Bible, neither is there evidence that the world is to remain static and that Slavery is to be retained. Christian theology must apply itself to the changes in the world that are not counter to important doctrine. Difficulties arise when the Bible is used for purposes never intended. For example, it was once used as evidence that the world was flat. It was also used as evidence for a geocentric universe. There are still groups using the Bible as evidence that the universe is only 7,000 or so years old.

The eschatological view called Postmillennialism makes room for increased understanding and the elimination of inequities such as slavery. There is a never-ending theological debate between those who advocate theological change to accommodate some change in the world and those who consider any change whatsoever counter to the (in their view) never-changing nature of Scripture.

Christians would be on safe ground, in my view, if they said "if you are a slave in a slave society, you should behave thus and so." They would be wrong if they said the Bible commands a slave society.

On the Wisdom of Madness

The Middle ages closed, Foucault tells us with the end of leprosy as a major concern. He traces the decrease in the number of leprosariums throughout Western Europe. He speculates upon the “strange disappearance, which was doubtless not the long-sought effect of obscure medical practices, but the spontaneous result of segregation and also the consequence of the Crusades, of the break with the Eastern sources of infection. Leprosy withdrew leaving derelict these low places and these rites which were intended, not to suppress it, but to keep it at a sacred distance, to fix it in an inverse exaltation. What doubtless remained longer than leprosy, and would persist when the lazar houses had been empty for years, were the values and images attached to the figure of the leper as well as the meaning of his exclusion, the social importance of that insistent and fearful figure which was not driven off without first being inscribed within a sacred circle.”

“Leprosy disappeared, the leper vanished, or almost, from memory; these structures remained. Often, in these same places, the formulas of exclusion would be repeated, strangely similar two or three centuries later. Poor vagabonds, criminals, and ‘deranged minds’ would take the part played by the leper, and we shall see what salvation was expected from this exclusion, for them and for those who excluded them as well. With an altogether new meaning and in a very different culture, the forms would remain – essentially that major form of rigorous division which is social exclusion but spiritual reintegration.”

At the Marine base at 29 Palms years ago I subscribed to “The Classics Club” and read every book the Black company sent me. One of them was Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly. How could Erasmus get by with such a book I wondered when enemies of the church, heretics, were being put to death? Was his prestige so great that he was immune? The Middle Ages transitioned into the Renaissance at the same time that Leprosy transitioned into The Ship of Fools. Many, Foucault illustrates, wrote as Erasmus did.

Why “does the figure of the Ship of Fools and its insane crew all at once invade the most familiar landscapes? Why, from the old union of water and madness, was this ship born one day, and on just that day,” Foucault asks? “Because it symbolized a great disquiet, suddenly dawning on the horizon of European culture at the end of the Middle Ages. Madness and the madman became major figures, in their ambiguity: menace and mockery, the dizzying unreason of the world, and the feeble ridicule of men.

“First a whole literature of tales and moral fables, in origin, doubtless, quite remote, but by the end of the Middle Ages, it bulks large: a long series of ‘follies’ which stigmatizing vices and faults as in the past, no longer attribute them all to pride, to lack of charity, to neglect of Christian virtues, but to a sort of great unreason for which nothing, in fact, is exactly responsible, but which involves everyone in a kind of secret complicity. The denunciation of madness (la folie) becomes the general form of criticism.”

Foucault takes la folie as a substitute for death. Instead of being faced with an external death that leprosy reminds us of, we are faced with the internal death of an empty mind. It could as well be said, based on the illustrations Foucault provides that madness, rather than the denunciation of madness, becomes (at least in later times) the general form of criticism (of society, societies members, and societies leaders). Mort Sahl was once a comedian whose prop was the morning’s newspaper. He would find humor in whatever he read and was very popular at “The Hungry Eye” and later on Television. Was he not a fool? He was certainly tolerated as a fool until he became very serious about the second gunman on the grassy knoll. Don’t most comedians bear some resemblance to the fool who is so mad he can insult the king (or Pope) and make him laugh?

Also, the Humanism of the Renaissance deviated from the Medieval (Judeo-Christian) teaching, “raise up a child in the ways of the Lord and when he is old he will not depart from them.” We still raise up a child to respect law and order and hope he will conform to them, but the madman doesn’t conform. He has his own way of seeing thing. He may ridicule Judeo-Christian teaching and modern law and order. And the madman has a great following.

Or think of Heidegger. When he graduated from University he was considered a great treasure by the Catholic Church. It offered him security and a good paying position if he would teach Thomistic Philosophy (the ways of the Lord), but he didn’t want to be constrained in that way. He wanted to follow the humanistic (madness) of being able to think at variance with these ways.

Certainly the scientific method has followed the ways of the madman. We take the old way of thinking and attack it to see if it has flaws and perhaps find a new and better way of doing science.

No doubt it is “early days” in terms of following the great advancements that have come from such madness. But if it is wonderful to be able to find wisdom by thinking at variance with all that was previously considered wisdom, where is there a standard we can teach our children?

Thomas Hart’s “Reading”

http://web.mac.com/tehart/Jurassic_Rants/Books_and_Rants/Entries/2011/10/16_Reading.html

I attempted to respond to Thomas Hart’s blog note on “Reading” but his blog wouldn’t let me; so I’ll respond on mine. The first difference I noticed is that Hart’s reading program is much more organized than mine. Also, he seems to have mapped out the reading he expects to do in the next ten to twenty years he expects to live (barring accidents). I haven’t any such schedule but my doctor leads me to believe I can expect to accompany Hart through most of the next twenty years – barring accidents and illnesses such as cancer which doctors can’t always anticipate.

Hart is a Carmelite secular, we read in his note “About Me” at http://web.mac.com/tehart/Jurassic_Rants/About_Me.html . He maps out the books he expects to enjoy through his remaining years which savors of monastic order, and a resting in secure belief. I on the other hand am Presbyterian, of a denomination consistent with the early American Presbyterians whom George III accused of starting the American Revolutionary War. The early Presbyterians were Calvinists and it was Calvinism, according to Max Weber, that gave rise to the “Protestant Work Ethic.” I didn’t become a Presbyterian until I was in my early 40s, but I always had something like the Protestant Work Ethic. I wouldn’t have been out of place in Pre-Revolutionary America.

I have a library like the one Thomas Hart has in his basement. Perhaps we have some of the same books. I have a substantial number of Catholic Theologians on my shelves, but perhaps not the same ones that Hart has. I had a very brief interest in Aquinas after having been called a Thomist by a Process Theologist (Process Theology was derived from the Process Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead). At the time I knew little about Aquinas and nothing about Process Theology. In the course of debating this fellow I rectified my lack of knowledge about the latter. My counter arguments caused this fellow to resort to insult in lieu of anything better. I set out on a mild quest to read Aquinas, but in the absence of a strong incentive my interest waned. I respect Aquinas and have nothing against him. I would probably have studied him at greater length were I Catholic. I recall that Martin Heidegger was offered a permanent position if he would agree to being a Thomistic philosopher. He rejected the offer believing it would confine him too much. I had no such worry in my own study of theology. I was doing it on my own without oversight.

While I haven’t too terribly much about theology on my blog, I studied it for about eight years back in the 80s. When I retired to San Jacinto in 1998 I may have had one of the largest theological libraries in town. Mine was larger than the pastors of the Presbyterian churches we were members of. I came to Presbyterianism because it was closest to what I believed not because I was brought up in it. I was never interested in restricting myself to Presbyterian writers. On Church history I was very impressed by Jaroslav Pelikan, especially his five-volume series on The Christian Tradition. In an on-line discussion at the time a Professor at Westminster Theological Seminary (the seminary which educates most of the conservative Presbyterian pastors) asked me why I spent so much time with Lutherans so I asked him for the names of some alternatives. He mentioned Heiko Augustinus Oberman. I appreciated Oberman but I appreciate Pelikan as well. As to Catholics, I have appreciated among others Aloys Grillmeier’s series Christ in Christian Tradition, although I have not read Grillmeier in a systematic way.

My theological presuppositions, a la Cornelius Van Till, were centered on the canon. I accumulated a wide variety of points of view on each book of the Bible and would pit them against each other as I studied. After several years and numerous debates, the aforementioned professor asked me why I kept on. I wasn’t going to be a pastor or teach in a seminary, so why did I keep studying? I didn’t have a good answer.

Later I thought the best answer was that I was a sort-of lower-case polymath who believed in the ethic presented in Proverbs which isn’t inconsistent with the Protestant Work Ethic, “whatever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might.” I haven’t just studied theology. I mastered engineering well enough while working in aerospace. At one time I was interested in geology and went on rock and mineral expeditions in Southern California. At another time I was interested in astronomy and cosmology. I had an even greater interest in archaeology and anthropology. Later I became interested in genetics. I am very interested in European, Medieval, and Military history. All the while I have been interested in writing. I have written a good deal of poetry and seven novels, although I haven’t tried in any more than a perfunctory way to get any of them published.

Unlike Hart, after 9/11 I studied Islam, Islamism, and the histories of the most of the Muslim nations. I tend to do everything with “all my might”; which sometimes translates into a great deal of thoroughness.

Most recently I have taken up an interest in photography. One can see a number of these photographs at www.lawrencehelm.smugmug.com A few people asked if I intended to become a “professional photographer.” I understand that to be asking whether I intended to sell any of my photographs. I told them I did not. I am pursuing photography with the same intensity I have pursued everything else. Perhaps because of this I have become a better photographer than most people are willing to become, but so what? Christians are taught not to compare themselves with others but to compare themselves with themselves; which I take to mean an evaluation of one’s gifts and then a determining through self-examination whether one is exercising them to the fullest extent. I haven’t the comfort of a Carmelite framework. When I expire during the next twenty years, I hope to be “about my father’s business.”

RE: Trilling on T. S. Eliot, III, (the Christian State)

Someone challenged me a bit about Kaczynski.  I read Kaczynski’s Manifesto & commented on it to some extent at the time.  I was amazed that anyone could hold those thoughts in this present age.  Later, in 2005, I read Harvard and the Unabomber, the education of an American Terrorist.  Kaczynski was building himself a better revolution and working at Berkeley while he did it.  He left the Berkeley milieu with the Leftist-Environmental mindset that is probably still significant at that University (as well as at Harvard where he was education).   

Alston Chase, a former professor of philosophy with degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Princeton specializes in “intellectual history.”  Kaczynski was a fitting subject for his study.  He was passionate about his beliefs and logical and coherent in his argument for them.  He hypothesized a disestablishing of human civilization to such an extent that what succeeded it would be consistent with the balance of nature – something Al Gore and many others hope for in a vague way without drawing the conclusions Kaczynski did. 

I tend to think he saw himself as having the courage to take the “next step” in a Leftist-Environmentalist revolution.  He hoped others would see his example, his sacrifice for the cause and follow him.  Anders Behring Breivik’s “massacre” of Norwegian civilians was like that.  There are all sorts of philosophies and philosophical nuances floating around and it isn’t surprising that some become fanatical converts and decide to take them to excess.  Another example is the anti-abortionists who decide to kill doctors.  Doing that is repudiated by every organization that opposes abortion, but the murderous “next step” isn’t illogical.  The death of doctors who perform abortions will save babies.  My opinion about this is that people who propagate philosophical and religious positions that can readily be taken to excess should take responsibility for what they are teaching and at the very least argue persuasively against excess such as Kaczynski’s, Breiviks’s & those who murder abortion doctors.  Some people cannot hear about environmental, immigration, and abortion concerns without wanting to do something with them.

Alston interviewed Kaczynski and remained in contact with him.  In 1998 Kaczynski wrote, “I suspect that you underestimate the strength and depth of feeling against industrial civilization that has been developing in recent years.  I’ve been surprised at some of the things that people have written to me.  It looks to me as if our society is moving into a pre-revolutionary situation.  (By that I don’t mean a situation in which revolution is inevitable, but one in which it is a realistic possibility.)  The majority of people are pessimistic or cynical about existing institutions; there is widespread alienation and directionlessness among young people. . . .  Perhaps all that is needed is to give these forces appropriate organization and direction.”

No, something more is needed.  Your revolution needs sociopaths who aren’t subject to the Christian morality that gave rise to Western civilization.  You, Breivik & the murderers of abortionists fit this description but not enough of Western Civilization has been ripped away for your numbers to be anything but small

Trilling on T. S. Elliot, IV (the good life)

Trilling writes, “Yet when we have recognized all the inadequacies of Mr. Eliot’s conception there still remains a theoretical interest which in the long run has, I think, its own practical value, and this lies in the assumption upon which Mr. Eliot’s society is based.  Mr. Eliot . . . in his essay on Pascal makes clear what the grounds of his belief are.  Mr. Eliot is talking about the ‘unbeliever’s’ inability to understand the way the ‘intelligent believer’ comes to his faith; the unbeliever, he says, ‘does not consider that if certain emotional states, certain developments of character and what in the highest sense can be called ‘saintliness’ are inherently and by inspection known to be good, then the satisfactory explanation of the world must be an explanation which will admit the ‘reality’ of these values.’  This sentence, which could not have been carelessly written, indicates that Mr. Eliot is perhaps closer than he would admit to the pragmatic theology of Matthew Arnold which he so much disdains.  But the exact nature of Mr. Eliot’s theology is not for the moment important.  What touches our problem of a whole new intellectual world and what I should like to take hold of, not only for itself but for what it indicates beyond itself, is the morality with which Mr. Eliot is concerned.  ‘I am inclined,’ he said some time ago, ‘to approach public affairs from the point of view of the moralist,’ and over and over again he has insisted that to think of politics and economics as independent of morality is impossible:  impossible in an ethical sense – the political and economic theorist should not so consider them; and impossible in a practical sense – the theorist cannot construct his theories except on the ground (often unexpressed) of moral assumptions.  ‘I feel no confidence in any scheme for putting the world in order,’ Mr. Eliot said, ‘until the proposer has answered satisfactory the question: What is the good life’

“Everybody, of course, approves of morality.  Even Leon Trotsky, who was suspicious of the morality of all moralists, spoke well of it.  But, like Trotsky, most people think of morality in a somewhat ambiguous fashion: it is something to be cultivated after the particular revolution they want is accomplished, but just now it is only in the way; or they think of it as whatever helps to bring the revolution about.  But Mr. Eliot thinks of morality as absolute and not as a means but an end; and, what is more, he believes that it is at every moment a present end and not indefinitely postponable. . . When he says that he is a moralist in politics he means most importantly that politics is to be judged by what it does for moral perfection, rather than for the physical easement, of man.  For the earthly good of man . . . is moral perfection; what advances this is politically good, what hinders it is politically bad.”

COMMENT:  Bernardette Dohrn at the SDS Reunion on November 30 2009 (available on YouTube) conceded that their attempted revolution had failed but expressed hope that a future revolution would succeed.  Dohrn was a member of the most radical faction of Students for a Democratic Society, but many in the SDS and in the Left in general believe that the U.S. would be best served if its Liberal Democracy were eliminated and replaced by “something better.”  I don’t recall Dohrn’s precise words but “something better” is probably a serviceable paraphrase.  What this “something better” is to be she doesn’t say.  If one was of the Left back in the Vietnam Days then “something better” was what they had in the USSR.  Failure of “the revolution” in the thoughts of Dohrn probably includes failure of the USSR.  The SDS by the way has been revived.  There are 150 chapters protesting the war in Afghanistan.  While few would argue that Dohrn’s Weather Underground favored a high-view of morality, other experiments were gentler:

The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education was founded by George Ripley in 1841 as an experiment in communal living inspired by the ideals of Transcendentalism.  The experiment was later revised after the ideas of Charles Fourier.  Ripley gave it up as a failure in 1846.  It was poorly financed and managed, but did it achieve any moral benefits?  Some enjoyed the atmosphere.  Nathanial Hawthorne didn’t.  Henry David Thoreau hated it.  George Ripley’s wife later described the Brook Farm optimism as ‘childish, empty, and sad.”

Someone who had the luxury of creating an experiment in his imagination and not actually having to put it to the test was Edward Bellamy.  His Looking Backward: 2000-1887 portrayed a Socialist society in which all moral evils had been eliminated.  Yes, there is still a bit of crime, but it is considered a medical rather than a criminal matter.  Bellamy’s social paradise approximates.  Utopians share the idea that man is born good and corrupted by inadequate societies. 

I suspect the idea that if a perfect society can be created perfect morality will follow must be laid at the feet of Rousseau.  Rousseau in his “Discourse on Inequality,” held that uncorrupted morals prevailed in the state of nature.  Assuming this to be correct, what was needed to create a society in which perfect morals prevailed was to construct it on the pattern of nature.   His model man was the independent farmer.  The Unabomber proposed something like that in his manifesto.  Societies were largely agricultural in Rousseau’s day, but in the day of Ted Kaczynski society would have to be deconstructed to put the independent farmer back in a key role.  Kaczynski, a Leftist idealist from Berkeley, was happy to begin his revolution in his own small way, letter bomb by letter bomb. 

What these revolutionary utopias have in common is 1) Details of the destruction of Liberal Democracy are described and in some cases begun, but not the details of how to build the perfect state that is to follow.  And 2) Moral standards are not described.  What the good life is to consist of isn’t addressed beyond physical care, control and maintenance.  

[I needn’t mention but I will anyway, that Communist states have been constructed, and while there may have been some of benign ideals in the minds of some of the creators, what was actually created could be distinguished from other tyrannies by name only.]

Trilling on T. S. Eliot, III, (the Christian State)

Eliot [in his The Idea of a Christian Society] “projects a society which will exist in three aspects – what he calls the Christian State, the Christian Community, and the Community of Christians.  This more or less Platonic triad exists, as we cannot help observing, on a rather minimal Christianity.  For the heads of his Christian State Mr. Eliot demands no more than that they be educated to think in Christian categories; for the rest, the criterion of their value is to be the same to which statesmen have always submitted – not devoutness but effectiveness.  ‘This may,’ Mr. Eliot says, ‘frequently perform un-Christian acts; they must never attempt to defend their actions on un-Christian principles.’  The State, we are told, is Christian only negatively and is no more than the reflection of the Christian society which it governs.  Yet this society itself is not permeated by a very intense Christianity.  The mass of its citizens make up the Christian Community and their behavior is to be ‘largely unconscious’ – for, because ‘their capacity for thinking about the objects of faith is small, their Christianity may be almost wholly realized in behavior: both in their customary and periodic religious observances and in a traditional code of behavior toward their neighbours.’

“What is left, then, to give the positive Christian tone to the Christian Society is what Mr. Eliot calls the Community of Christians, a group reminiscent of Coleridge’s ‘clerisy’ but more exclusively an elite, constituted of those clerics and laymen who consciously live the Christian life and who have notable intellectual or spiritual gifts.  It is they who, by their ‘identity of belief and aspiration, their background of a common system of education and a common culture’ will collectively form ‘the conscious mind and conscience of the nation.’  They are not to constitute a caste and so are to be loosely joined together rather than organized, and Mr. Eliot compares them in their possible wide effectiveness with the segregated in intellectuals who now write only for each other.”

COMMENT: While Eliot’s Christian-State “solution” may be naïve and impractical, his recognition of the problem is valid.  I recall a great number of discussions and debates where an act or a course of action was asserted to be good or evil, but when I questioned the basis, the set of assumptions, the standards that must or at least ought to bear upon such an assertion, the discussion lapsed into smoky vagaries.  Some of what Eliot is advancing is based upon solid ground, that is, the principles that have been developed through the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian moral tradition. 

The Marxist-Left has no such system of principles.  Consequently when they gained power in Russia they “winged it,” they made up principles as they went along.  We saw the effects of that in the U.S. known as “the party line.”  There was no univocal “principle” but merely a “line,” what happened to be believed at the present time, and could be, and frequently was, changed during Stalin’s reign and that of the leaders who followed him.  This “Left” was negatively constructed.  They attempted to set up a Leftist society based on a Marxist oriented Party Line, but it succumbed to raw human nature with its desire for power.  Nietzsche’s “will to power” provided a better description of the mature Soviet society than Marx’s Communism.

Rampant Christianity gave rise to Western Civilization as we know it.  Christian moral principles remain good and reasonable.  Lest I be accused of vagueness, consider the Ten Commandments (using the KJV) which comprise the great foundation and example of Christian morality:

I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.  Gloss:  While belief in God cannot be mandated, those how do believe in the Christian God will have no “other Gods” and that in today’s terms would include such beliefs as Fascism and Communism.  We might observe from a practical standpoint that Liberal Democracy, which rose out of Christianity in the West has proved more effective than anything developed from those who ran after “other gods.”  Fukuyama’s “End of History” is consistent with having “no other Gods” from a pragmatic standpoint.  Fukuyama may be an atheist, I don’t know, but on this one point, he is consistent with the idea of having no other gods.  More specifically we see Marcel Gauchet’s The Disenchantment of the World, describing Christianity as the necessary foundation of the West.  It was during the developmental period monotheistic.  Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, this commandment has been weakened in the West.  Not only are nations prevent from mandating Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, they are prevented from mandating any religion (or God).

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”  Gloss:  This two might best be considered applicable only to practicing Christians.  In a Liberal-Democratic Society, non-Christians should be permitted to create graven images if they like.

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.  Gloss:  Again, belief in God cannot be mandated in a Liberal Democratic society, but it seems to be a demonstrable fact that beliefs are handed down from father to son and one generation to the next.  And if an erroneous or impractical belief is handed down, there will probably be consequences.  I think here of the anarchism that arose in Europe prior to WWI (see Shattuck’s The Banquet Years, The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I), and the pacifism that developed later.  Those erroneous and impractical beliefs resulted in destructive consequences to those nations who most strongly held them.  People who inherited these beliefs were of the third and the fourth generation of those who originated them.  France in 1940 was perhaps the most pathetic example of the consequences of following the erroneous beliefs of ones’ foolish ancestors. 

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”  Gloss:  This applies to believers.  Someone who speaks frivolously of the God he claims to believe in would not be seen as sincere in his belief by other believers.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”  Gloss:  This applies to believers in different forms.  Some Christians follow the Jewish tradition and keep a literal day as holy.  Some Christians say the Jewish Sabbath was translated into the “Lord’s Day” by Jesus.  Some Christians invoke Hebrews Chapter Four and see the entire Christian era as “the Day of the Lord,” as we rest from our own works and trust in Christ for our salvation.

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”  Gloss:  This commandment in a Christian Society would be applicable to all, believers and unbelievers. We can see it at work in many of our social programs.  We in the West have taxed ourselves in order to provide Social Security and Medical aid to our old people. 

“Thou shalt not kill.”  Gloss:  Pacifists have used this commandment to justify their position, but a majority of theologians exegete this commandment to mean “Thou shalt not murder,” and murder is against the law throughout the West.  We cannot say it is a universal law because many societies do permit murder.  For example, consider the “honor killings” practiced by Conservative Muslims.  Judicial executions and killing in war are not considered (by a majority of theologians) to be proscribed by this commandment.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  Gloss:  This commandment is applicable to believers.  No Christian church I know of condones adultery.   Some churches may excommunicate those who commit adultery, probably not for a single lapse that is repented of, but in perhaps all denominations the serial adulterer will have difficulty remaining a member in good standing.  In some churches adultery, adultery leading to divorce, remarriage after divorce considered as adultery are treated as “unforgiveable sin”; however, the only sin described as unforgiveable in the New Testament is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is usually interpreted as repudiating an act of the Holy Spirit when he is urging someone to turn to Christ and be saved. 

“Thou shalt not steal.”  Gloss:  This seems to be a universal principle, applicable to believers and non-believers alike.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”  Gloss:    This is often considered to mean “thou shalt not lie,” but that would be true only if it was expanded to say “thou shalt not lie in such a way that someone else is harmed.”  Going to court and lying about someone in such a way as to cause them to be convicted of something they didn’t do would be a violation of this commandment, but any lie that hurt someone else would also be a violation.  On the other hand if you said to the Gestapo in 1943 “there are no Jews hiding in my cellar,” when your cellar was chockablock full of them,” you would not be in violation of this commandment.  We have laws against slander that are consistent with this commandment.  Telling your sensitive aunt Margaret that her ugly hat looks great would not be a violation of this commandment (unless your false statement caused her to injure herself or someone else).

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbours.”  Gloss:  While this commandment has not been translated into law in any Western nation as far as I know, most of us can appreciate that it is wise advice (even for those who don’t accept it as a commandment).   “Keeping up with the Joneses is a cliché for bankrupting oneself in pursuit of neighborhood status.  Coveting someone else’s wife has led to many a divorce, not to mention ruined lives and the occasional murder.  Coveting a neighbor’s car might cause one to buy a car he really can’t afford resulting in eventually having it repossessed or perhaps resulting in personal bankruptcy.  Being content with what one can afford and what one has is an attitude to be cultivated as a wise alternative.