Eastern Orthodoxy Rebuking the PCUSA

Saving the World According to the Word

Stanley Fish's Save the World on your Own Time is a call to secular compartmentalization. Teaching is teaching and that's all. Saving the world doesn't belong. You can aspire to teaching for teaching's sake, but don't aim higher unless you are off the clock.

What?

It's true that the academy can't save the world, but the world is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Christians should laugh at Fish's paltry view of life and heed Christ's call to be "fishers of men."

Being Right for the Wrong Reason

In the parable known as the prodigal son, we celebrate with the younger brother and rightly so. He who was lost is now found! We don't want to be like the older brother who rejected the mercy of the father.

But we may forget that the older brother didn't sin in staying with his father. Unlike his younger brother, he had been faithful to their father. He did right, but he did it for the wrong reason. This was exposed when his younger brother came home:

Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!

His sin lay in his not having his father's heart for the lost. By choice he stayed outside the party his father was throwing for his brother's homecoming. The older brother's self-righteousness consoled him. That good-for-nothing brother was back and was given a heroes' welcome. What's wrong with the world! Am I the only one who sees this injustice?!

Would we rather feel superior or feel forgiveness? The parable makes us count the cost of the gospel. We should want to be faithful, but in being faithful their is a temptation to be prideful. Let's be faithful but love mercy, because we all need both.

Does Freedom of Religion Require the Separation of Church and State?

We assume that the only way to have religious freedom is to separate church and state, but we've had very mixed results. See a recent example here in St. Louis.

Peter Leithart, in his Defending Constantine, argues that Constantine achieved true religious freedom for pagans and Christians. He did this while cooperating with the Christian church to produce a Roman republic with ethical standards and moral development.

Constantine outlawed an ancient version of "no fault divorce," which led to the abandonment of women, gladiatorial games, which littered arenas with bodies, and the exposure of children, which usually resulted in infanticide. He also passed laws that would provide welfare for poor people who couldn't afford to raise a new baby. He reformed the justice system by eliminating they buying and selling of judgeships, and allowed those who couldn't afford an attorney to appeal to an ecclesiastical court.

It appears that the true pax Romana did not occur under Caesar Augustus but under Constantine, and that we often look positively barbaric next to the first Christian Emperor.

No Purpose for Plato's World

One of my students recently pointed out that the debate between Plato and Aristotle was over whether reality is essentially one or many. Plato argued that it is essentially one because all of the particulars of the created world come from the One and the Forms in His mind. Thus reality exists ante rem or before the things of the created realm. Aristotle argued that reality exists in re or in the things of the created realm. Thus ultimate reality isn't one thing but has many expressions in the things of the physical world. In other words, "treeness" doesn't exist before the oak, ash, and elm, as in Plato's understanding, but in them. In fact, according to Aristotle, the Form or ultimate reality is the cause of the particulars of this realm. It is what makes an oak a tree, an ash a tree, and an elm a tree.

Aristotle pointed out that there is no cause and effect relationship between Plato's concept of God, the One, and the created world (Metaphysics, 1.988.a-b; 1.991a-b). He overlooked Plato's Demiurge from the Timaeus who fashions the created particulars based on the Forms in the mind of the One. But Aristotle points out a problem with Plato's thought nonetheless.

The Demiurge is an independent contractor. Plato invented him for his "likely story" in order to keep the One from getting his hands dirty with physical matter. For Plato, the material realm is the lowest order of reality and unworthy of the pure spirit of the One.

The problem with this, from a Christian perspective, is that there is no purposeful link between this world and the One. People may correspond to the Form of the Human, but this is a far cry from being created by God, in his image, in order "to glorify him by enjoying him forever," to use John Piper's phrase.

Charles Murray in his Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950,  points out that in the ancient world, only Christianity gave people a divine purpose for their lives. The image of God lends dignity and his will gives purpose. But the One in Plato's philosophy lends no purpose to mankind except to give him something to contemplate, and only the philosophers were capable of doing this in a purpose driven way. Murray argues that it was Christianity that inspired the Western world with a sense of purpose that led to experimentation with the God given creation and the development of science and critical thinking.

Praying and Paying

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shlaes uses William Graham Sumner's "forgotten man" to expose the problems with FDR's New Deal. To paraphrase Sumner, A sees the plight of X and says to B, "Let's pass some legislation to help X," and C gets the bill. Sumner wrote about C: "He works, he votes, generally he prays - but he always pays - yes, above all, he pays." The identity of A is the progressives and B is Congress. It is laudable that A wants to help X but tinkering with the economy at the expense of C only exacerbates the problem. Shlaes is not a shrill conservative on the rampage but a classic liberal.

Shlaes argues that FDR's intervention in the private sphere made the Depression worse, encouraged the government to bully and harass its citizens (see the Schecter case!), and introduced special interest politics. This messianic view of government is still with us and has come home to roost with Obama.

Ancient peoples established governments to stop people from taking too much land and gobbling up resources at the expense of others. Regulation is one thing, intervention is another, and the private sphere has got to be put into the hands of as many private citizens as possible, if we are going to be great again.


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Kurt Cameron's Mouth

As one who agrees with most of Lutheran theology, I simply adore this:

Did Peace in 1919 Lead to War in 1939?

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good read about the wrap up of WWI. MacMillan tries to revise the accepted wisdom that the Allies botched the peace, which lead directly to the second world war. It's true that Hitler would play to the German people's wounded pride and resentment after the war. It came to be known as the "Dictat" or "dictated peace." The Germans especially hated the "war guilt clause" of article 231, which laid all responsibility for the war at the doorstep of German "aggression."  Ulrich Brockdorff-Rantzau blew up and refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. When the allies rearmed, the Germans sent two representatives to pen their names to the treaty. Did this lead directly to WWII? MacMillan says this is too simplistic.

MacMillian argues that the Germans deceived themselves into thinking that they hadn't lost the war. MacMillan points out that it wasn't a mere armistice or cease fire. The Germans gave up all occupied lands and surrendered their navy. The Germans also allowed themselves to believe that Woodrow Wilson could deliver a non-punitive peace. Germany had taken Wilson's advice and become a republic. But Wilson was one of four on the supreme council, and he had to compromise to get anywhere. David Lloyd George, prime-minister of England, and Georges Clemanceau, prime-minister of France, were out for reparations, revenge, and security. Their people had lost more than America, and they stood to lose more in future elections. They convinced Wilson to shrink Germany and give the rhineland to France as a neutral zone. Wilson would compromise as long as he could get the League of Nations. Meanwhile the league was loosing ground in the US, and Wilson's own country would never join.

Lloyd George did change his mind about some of the reparations. "Treat them like the enemy and they won't disappoint." But Wilson had already reached his compromise limit. The treaty would have to stand as is. John Maynard Keynes famously said, "It was harder to de-bamboozle this old Presbyterian than it had been to bamboozle him.” Keynes wanted to rehabilitate Germany economically. A prosperous Germany would be a peaceful Germany.

The big four were more realistic than they've been given credit for. Lloyd George said: "The English public like the French public, thinks the Germans must above all acknowledge their obligation to compensate us for all the consequences of their aggression. When this is done we come to the question of Germany's capacity to pay; we all think she will be unable to pay more than this document requires of her."

MacMillan argues that the German sense of betrayal cannot account for the rise of Nazi Germany. Prior to the Great Depression, the German people wouldn't give the Hitler the time of day. He was too radical. Once they hit rock bottom, radical solutions were given a hearing and Hitler got his chance. MacMillan can write well and she shows how so much of modern history, including the formation of Iraq, goes back to Paris 1919.


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The Demise of Community, the Demise of Character

I recently listened again to a Mars Hill Audio interview with James Davison Hunter on his book The Death of Character: On the Moral Education of America's Children. He argues that the demise of character stems from the demise of moral communities like church and family. This has proceeded on the modern assumption that we are inherently good from childhood and Christianity is bad because it has taught us that we are sinners in need of redemption.

All we really need, it's dogmatically asserted, it a good self-esteem and an opportunity to define ourselves as children, teenagers, or adults. The rest will take care of itself. All parents and teachers need to do is facilitate this moral revelation by calling it out with psychological techniques like values clarification.  We think we can develop moral character in the young without wielding moral authority. We are reaping the whirlwind and shrugging our shoulders, "What can you do?"

On the adult level, radical individualism continues to sever ties between people and their God given authorities.

"Hey teacher! Leave us kids alone!" 

"Tell my mother, tell my father; I've done the best I can; to make them realize, this is my life; I'm not angry, I'm just saying; Sometimes goodbye is a second chance." 

It's true that some communities abuse their moral authority or exercise it hypocritically and ties must be cut. But this has become an excuse to define the self apart from Christ's moral order. Like Joshua, we must be "strong and courageous" again and again and again (Joshua 1). Children do not respect what they can kick around, even if we think we're being their friend. Parents are called to teach the word of God diligently to their children:

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). 

This is part of loving God and loving our children and our neighbor as ourselves. Rule apart from relationship will breed hatred. Relationship without any rules will breed disrespect. Rules revealed by God and applied in a loving relationship will bring order. Love covers a multitude of sins.

Sophocles Rex

The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oedipus Rex is both the best and the worst tragedy ever told. The plot and its execution show a master at work. It's also the worst in that it's the most tragic tragedy of all. But don't stop there. Read Oedipus at Colonus. Just when you thought it was impossible to help Oedipus, he has a redemption of sorts. You haven't understood Sophocles if you stop at Oedipus Rex. Antigone is not to be missed either. She is pro-family at a time when her uncle was trying to replace family and religion with the state. Sophocles is more relevant than ever.

Fagles translation is both accessible to the modern reader and compelling, which is no small feat. Bernard Knox's introduction to Oedipus Rex is worth the price of the book. Here's my take: The older generation represented by Herodotus still believed in the gods and prophecy, while the younger generation represented by Thucydides and Euripedes mocked it. Jocasta tells Oedipus that we make our own way in a world of chance. The chorus says: "If the prophecies don't come to pass ... the gods, the gods go down." No more trips to Delphi. We'll go back to homo mensura (man is the measure of all things) and Protagoras.  Well, guess whose side Sophocles is on? He gives the ancient secularists what they want: a play where the gods do not make an appearance. And yet he  frustrates them by vindicating prophecy. Who needs the Deus ex machina? Man knows the god who is there whether he's willing to admit it or not.


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Bottum's Up or the Forgotten Reformation

Joseph Bottum has reviewed Pascal Bruckner's Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy in the recent Books and Culture (March/April 2011). Here's Bruckner:

From existentialism to deconstructionsim, all of modern thought can be reduced to a mechanical denunciation of the West, emphasizing the latter's hypcrysy, violence, and abomination.... The whole world hates us and we deserve it. That is what most Europeans think.

Bottum comments:

Much of Europe--much of America, as well--has simply lost its nerve, unable to maintain the delicate balance of self-critique and self-confidence that was the gift of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. 

The Middle Ages was not perfect and it knew it. The medievals knew enough however to accept the claims of Christ that all things hold together in him. The Renaissance was diverse, but every humanist agreed on going ad fontes (to the sources). The Enlightenment agreed on one thing--the church was out. They chanted aude sapere (dare to know) to each other, but it was Eden all over again: "Hath God said ... ? ... He knows that in the day that you eat, you will be like him knowing both good and evil."

Dare to know the difference between good and evil for yourself. Protagorus returned with a vengeance. The familiar homo mensura (man the measure) was shouted from the rooftops. Man is the measure of all things "visible and invisible." Dare to be your own god. That's confidence, but terribly misplaced. Where's the self-critique? What about semper reformanda (always reforming)? Who came up with that? Oh ya! That pesky little movement called the Reformation. Self confidence? Who spoke truth to power? Wasn't it Luther who told Charles V and the papal nuncio:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen

Always reforming? Why not? The Word of God must have its say no matter how imperfectly we read it.  How could Bottum have forgotten that? The Enlightenment idols of Darwinism and rationalism die hard and slow, but they are dying.

Bruckner's Perpetual Euphoria takes a shot at our happiness entitlement program. He thinks it's about the  right to pursue happiness rather than demanding to have it. That's not bad, and we should even give two cheers for Mr. Bottum. But there's so much more offered by the one who came so that we might have life, and "have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). 

Trends Change, Truth Changes

Kenda Creasy Dean, author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, recently appeared on Mars Hill Audio Journal and gave a great insight into our culture. I paraphrase:

Our consumer culture breeds attitudes of low commitment. This is because the consumer fix is a quick fix. When it runs out we go get something else.

Could this be why so many of our churches are revolving doors? What's even more alarming is when the gospel is packaged in the cheap gleam of top-ten lists, movie clips, trendy beats, and lousy drama. Whatever happened to the "permanent things:" preaching, sacraments, confessions, creeds, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs? David Wells once quipped, "What you win them with, is what you win them to." Trends change but truth changes.

Thinking About Our Thoughts: The Mind-Brain Distinction

I've lately been reading James LeFanu's Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves. LeFanu is a British medical doctor and science journalist who doesn't buy the materialist line that we are merely biological machines programmed by our genes and running on chemical reactions in the brain. My college philosophy professor argued that the mind is an allusion. The brain is all. Thought is nothing more than biochemical reactions in the brain. He pointed out that scientists can see the brain lighting up as they process information from the sense. I was stumped or should I say my chemical reactions were curbed.

LeFanu points our that we don't experience the world like a machine, but as a self. We don't just process sense impressions, but we tell ourselves what to think and how to think. This is how we "take every thought captive" (2 Cor, 10:5) and overcome disorders like OCD. The brain doesn't work like a computer storing information and pulling it up out of digital files.

The brain constructs the world we experience from neurons bombarding our senses. That world of color, sound, smell, taste, and touch comes from the impact of colorless, mute, odorless, tasteless, and intangible neurons. Our brains translate the interaction into a lively world for the self to navigate. The self presides over all this by giving attention to certain impressions, thinking about them, and then "presumably" storing those thoughts somewhere in the brain.

Using brain scans, cognitive scientists have show that the brain memorizes in one part but recalls that memory from another part. So where was the memory stored and how can it be conjured up decades later from a part of the brain that was not lighting up during the act of memory creation? This has baffled researchers.

There is a qualitative difference between computation and consciousness. Ever increasing levels of programming and computation by ludicrous speed computers will only ever be able to simulate consciousness.

The optic nerve doesn't simply photograph an image from the outside world but creates the images of  world outside. Lefanu says, "The brain perceives the world 'out there' by fragmenting the visual image into thirty separate specialized 'maps' scattered throughout the visual cortex ... arranged in a hierarchy of fourteen different levels" (202-03). One map might clarify what it is, say a cat, by noting its color, shape, and size. Another map might tell where it is located, say in a tree. If the cat is moving, say from the limb above to the earth below, the brain has to repeat this process moment by moment. Since the cat is never the same as it twists through the air in order to land on its feet, the brain must continually be able to categorize it as a cat.

"Attributes such as form, colour, and movement" are "handled by separate structures of the brain" but how is it all assembled into the same image and categorized by the brain? One scientist says, "It obviously must be assembled, but where and how, we have no idea" (206). It must also associate the images of the cat with mewing or in this case screeching received by the auditory nerve. It seems the brain is hardwired to know the world. It must "be born with an innate knowledge of how the world works." It seems that Descartes was correct about us being born with innate ideas. The linguist Noam Chomsky asserted that children must be born with a "'language acquisition device', ... by which they could make sense of the babble of sounds around them" (189).

It turns out that the brain has billions of neurons and creates trillions of synapses and can do upwards of a quadrillion computations per second. We don't just have the equivalent of one supercomputer in our heads that will soon be surpassed in our cyborg future. Charles Jonscher, a computer scientist from Harvard says, "The true comparison would be a figure more like twenty billion computers" (187). Daniel Levitin, the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, has speculated that there are more states of mind possible than there are atoms in the known universe.

All this begs the question of how we know that the rich experience of the outside world of cats and trees and mountains and oceans is true. If it is subjectively created by the brain from interactions with subatomic particles, then how do we know it is a reliable representation of the objective world outside ourselves. How can we trust our senses? How can we believe our eyes and ears?

Lefanu doesn't go there, but the only basis for confidence in the senses is the Christian doctrine of creation. Our senses can reliably know the world we experience, if and only if they were created to know that world by a loving creator who made both to correspond. I suppose that one could say that we know it is true because it is successful. But that begs the question of why we would find success between two separately evolving systems? G. K. Chesterton wrote:

Reason itself is a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young skeptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old skeptic, the complete skeptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There is a thought that stops thought (Orthodoxy, Chap. 3).

Materialism is self-defeating and cannot explain something as basic as self consciousness. The mind cannot be reduced to the brain without calling self consciousness an illusion. A brain thinks but the mind tells it how. With all of our intelligent design capabilities we can only mimic the self with our "artificial" intelligences. Even if we could create self-conscious beings like ourselves would it disprove intelligent design? Not unless we are sub-intelligent.

How the Pioneers Felt

My wife found one of the funniest things I've heard in awhile on Facebook. It was the status of one of friends Ruth Akers.

My cable is out so I can't watch TV on the big screen and I'm forced to use my iPhone as a tether to watch Netflix on my iPad. 

Now I know how the pioneers felt. 

This strikes us as funny because we think we have it hard sometimes. But when we compare our place in history to any other place in history, we realize that we have comforts and capabilities that nobody could've imagined fifty years ago. I only pray that we will use them wisely, even when the cable goes out.

Plot and Character

Poetics by Aristotle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Aristotle says that the exercise of any capacity brings pleasure. He defines poetry as language made pleasurable in verse form. Aristotle distinguishes the poetic genres of epic poetry (like Homer's Illiad and Odyssey) and tragedy (like the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles) and comedy (like the plays of Aristophanes). Aristotle only mentions lyric poetry, which is what we normally think of as poetry (like a sonnet). When Aristotle is talking about poetics, we should think of stories in verse form like Shakespeare's plays.

Aristotle explains that we enjoy poetics because of their imitation (mimesis) of reality. Thus Aristotle doesn't believe that our enjoyment of good poetry is purely subjective or only a matter of taste. The better the imitation of reality and the more pleasurable the language, the more our enjoyment will increase. I suppose that the subjective element is our own version of reality, which dictates whether we agree with the author's vision of reality. While Aristotle might have conceded this, he focuses on standards for imitation and pleasurable language.

Comedy is "an imitation of inferior people.... The laughable is an error or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction" (3.4). When we laugh we recognize something ridiculous in others. Hopefully we can do this when we recognize our own silliness, but Aristotle doesn't "go there." Epic poetry, on the other hand, "is an imitation in verse of admirable people," like the hero Odysseus. "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete and possesses magnitude ... effecting through pity and fear the purification (katharsis) of such emotion" (4.1). Thus we come to one of the main differences between Aristotle and Plato.

Plato criticized the poets in Book Ten of Republic, because he considered their work a mere representation of reality, which also stirred up the emotions. Plato considered reason the highest human faculty, whose job it was to tame the passions of the heart and discipline the appetites of the body. Thus poets were guilty of creating escapist fiction. Conversely, in his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote:

For example, fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity and in general pleasure and distress can be experienced in greater or lesser degree, and in both cases wrongly. To feel them at the right time, in response to the right things, with regard to the right people, for the right reason and in the right way--that is the mean and optimum, which is the characteristic of virtue (1106b.18-23; cited in Introduction xxxviii).

According to Aristotle, the emotions weren't necessarily inferior to reason. They merely needed to be exercised and trained, just like reason. This happened during katharsis or "purification" by experiencing emotion through tragic stories. Thus if tragedies could release and train the emotions in a positive way, we need quality stories with good plots. A good plot imitates reality accurately and presents characters that we can recognize.

A defective plot was one in which "the sequence of episodes is neither necessary nor probable.... they draw out the plot beyond its potential" (5.6). We tend not to love books or movies whose plots or actions are not believable or inaccurate. But we must also take into account the genre of the story. We wouldn't expect the driver in "Driving Miss Daisy" to suddenly put on a wizard's hat and wave a staff to avoid a car accident, but such actions in a fantasy story would not be unrealistic.

Good plots, for Aristotle, create astonishment through reversal, recognition, and suffering. Aristotle cites Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex," as an example. At the end of the play, when understanding dawns and the great king falls, the reader is amazed. A modern example would be the movie "The Sixth Sense," in which a reversal occurs at the end of the action. We then “recognize” what’s really going on and are surprised to find that we have been watching the movie the wrong way from the beginning.

The goal of character is goodness, appropriateness, likeness, and consistency. This means that characters, once established, must not act out of character. Concerning goodness, Aristotle says, "The character is good if the choice is good" (8.1). In the movie “Shadowlands,” the following words are put into the mouth of C. S. Lewis: "Aristotle’s solution was simple and radical, plot is character. Forget psychology; forget the insides of men’s heads. Judge them by their actions." This insight into Aristotle is in sharp contrast to our post-modern movies, which often try to reconstruct villains by creating sympathy for them.

From a Christian point of view, sympathy for a bad character is sinister, unless it creates a desire to redeem the bad character. This happens in Lord of the Rings with Gollum, when we are given a peek into his background. As Frodo begins the "taming of Smeagol [Gollum]," we begin to feel pity for him Gollum and hope that he can change. There are examples in the Bible like Jacob's brothers, but the norm in Scripture is bad guys are bad guys, and they will be judged by their actions. God will call us all to account, and good plots do the same, rather than making excuses for badness or trying to create sympathy toward sin.

Also contrary to Hollywood is Aristotle's dictum "no unnecessary badness" (8.1). The gratuitous, the explicit, and the shocking pass for realism today instead of the true, the good, and the beautiful. There are endless examples of this in recent movies and books. Aristotle provides some from the ancient world, and they are quite tame in comparison to our own. An example of a terrible villain who isn't “unnecessarily badæ is Kevin Bacon's character in "The River Wild." I think he says about two cuss words in the whole movie and there is little to no sexual innuendo. Oh, to read and watch without feeling the need afterwards to take a bath!

Aristotle also discusses poetic style:

The most important quality in diction is clarity, provided there is no loss of dignity. The clearest diction is that based on current words; but that lacks dignity. By contrast, diction is distinguished and out of the ordinary when it makes use of exotic expressions -- by which I mean non-standard words, metaphors, lengthening, and anything contrary to current usage.... So what is needed is some kind of mixture of these two things: one of them will make the diction out of the ordinary and avoid a loss of dignity ... while current usage will contribute clarity (9.4).

Aristotle gives plenty of examples to illustrate his points and Homer is praised beyond the rest as "he excels everyone in diction and reasoning" (10.2). Constructing quality plots is not easy but Aristotle advises: "nature itself teaches people to choose what is appropriate to it" (10.3). Nature, not artifice, is the standard for Aristotle.

Aristotle also addressed strict imitation vs. poetic license: "Impossibilities should be referred to poetic effect, or idealization of the truth, or opinion. With regard to poetic effect, a plausible impossibility is preferable to what is implausible but possible.... It is probable that improbable things will happen" (11.3). When we think of or experience an improbability, we might have the basis for an interesting plot. I'm afraid that many moviemakers today start with special effects they want to create, and a screenplay is concocted artificially to present it. A return to Aristotle would mean a much needed return to plot and character.

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What We Should Already Know

G. K. Chesterton wrote:

The cinema boasts of being a substitute for the tavern, but I think it a very bad substitute. I think so quite apart from the question of fermented liquor. Nobody enjoys cinema more than I, but to enjoy them a man has only to look and not even to listen and in a tavern he has to talk. Occasionally, I admit, he has to fight; but he never need move at the movies (What I Saw in America, 102).

Current research supports the common sense notion that reading, learning languages, and social interaction improves memory function and prevents cognitive decline. It also shows that watching TV reduces memory function and contributes to decline in both the young and old ("Maintaing Your Mental Edge," Lecture 29 in "Lifelong Health: Achieving Optimum Well-Being at Any Age," The Great Courses [The Teaching Company, 2010]).

Why don't we make common sense a little more common? Then perhaps we won't spend millions funding research to demonstrate what we should already know. We can knock off early and go to the tavern. Maybe instead of a fist fight, a verbal brawl, in Christian love of course, might do us some good. Even taking in the occasional movie might prove a good field for battle.

Economics to the Glory of God Pt. 2

Proverbs 28:8

Whoever multiples his wealth by

interest and profit

gathers it for him who is 

generous to the poor.

According to God's economy tithes, offerings, and giving to the poor is simply the best investment. Savings is second and Wall Street is much further down the list. This shows just how screwed up we've become.

Proverbs 28: 19-22, 26-27

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread,

but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.

A faithful man will abound with blessings,

but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.

To show partiality is not good, 

but for a piece of bread a man will do wrong.

A stingy man hastens after wealth

and does not know that poverty will come upon him....

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,

but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

Whoever gives to the poor will not want, 

but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.

Are we working our land and giving to the poor? That is a perennial question in Scripture. Whether we are diversified is also important, but doesn't receive the same emphasis.

Nominal Nominations

After seeing "The King's Speech" last night I would like to go ahead with my Oscar nominations:


Movie of the Year:

• "The Kings Speech" (compelling)
• "Nanny McPhee Returns" (Inspirational)
• "True Grit" (Grisled Realism, except the rattle snakes)
• "Despicable Me" (Redemptive)
• "Inception" (Dreamy)

Best Actor:

• The young girl in "True Grit" 
• Colin Firth "The Kings Speech" 

Best Supporting Actor:

• Geoffrey Rush "The Kings Speech" 
• Jeff Bridges "True Grit"

Special Effects:

• "Inception"
• "Voyage of the Dawn Treader"
• "Tron Legacy"

Screen Play:

• "Inception"
• "The Kings Speech"

Worst Hack Job:

• "Gulliver's Travels"
• "The Actual Nominations of the Academy"

Economics to the Glory of God

Proverbs 22:16

Whoever oppresses the poor to 

increase his own wealth,

or gives to the rich, will only

come to poverty.

We have had our share of economic woes lately in America. Could they be related to the truth of that verse? The rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer for a long time. In the 1970's a CEO was paid twenty times more than the lowest paid worker. Today he's paid over 300 times more (Goodzward, Hope in Troubled Times)!

The Mondragon Corporation in Spain is based on Distributist principles so that the highest paid is remunerated at only six times more than the lowest paid worker. It is a billion dollar company (William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed).

When will we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves?

Republic of Thought

Plato: Republic by Robin Waterfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my second dip, and this time I swam from one end to the other and read almost all of Waterfield's notes. There are things to be said about Plato and about Waterfield as a translator and commentator. Plato first.

The republic is an empire of thought. Plato knows that it is a mere thought experiment and that it will never take. That said "Ideas have consequences" and Plato certainly tries to make his mark on political, philosophical, and theological policy. What is refreshing about this ancient air that blows off every page is that Plato's goal is to convince that in order to have an orderly civil order laws and behavior must be grounded in the absolute or what he calls "the Form of the Good." In the argument between the Christian and the secularist Plato is firmly in the camp of the Christian. He knows that a robust morality cannot be brewed from the grounds of "enlightened self-interest."  Enlightened self-interest is like the shifting shadows on the "cave" wall - just "shadows of morality" (517.d). There must be an absolute standard to even distinguish good and evil, much less be able to legislate it for a community. Today we expect morality to spontaneously generate apart from moral authority. Plato argued that the Form of the Good not only casts light for the mind's eye to see all of reality but it was the source of all reality and thus everything good. It is even the source of 2 + 2 = 4, so that it would actually be immoral to teach that 2 + 2 = 5. We can't have morality on any other terms but a knowledge of God, whom he called the One, and his true Ideas. Plato wrote:

"It isn't only the known-ness of the things we know which is conferred upon them by goodness, but also their reaity and their being .... It's my opinion that the last thing to be seen -- and it isn't easy to see either--in the realm of knowledge is goodness; and the sight of the character of goodness leads one to deduce that it is responsible for everything that is right and fine, whatever the circumstances, and that in the visible realm it is the progenitor of light and of the source of light, and in the intelligible realm it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge. And I also think that the sight of it is a prerequisite for intelligent conduct either of one's own private affairs or of public business" (509b, 517c).

It's true that Plato was an elitist, dividing society into the castes of guardians, who are philosopher kings, auxiliaries, who oversee the military, and workers who farm, build, buy, and sell. He believed that the guardians must be given an education in what T. S. Eliot called the "permanent things:

"Imagine someone who really lacks the ability to recognize any and every real thing and has no paradigm to shed light for the mind's eye. He has nothing absolutely authentic to contemplate ... and use as a reference-point whenever he needs to, and gain a completely accurate picture of, before establishing human norms of right, morality, and goodness (if establishing is what is required), and before guarding and protecting the norms that have already been established."

This means that those who govern need an absolute standard or transcendent basis for law. Laws must transcend individuals if they are to bind all individuals and thus whole communities. Are we the first civilization, where most of the elites think we can dispence with the transcendent and still have a moral order? Every time someone declares someone else in the wrong he assumes something binds them both. Where does he get this moral authority over other people?

Plato has his problems as well. He would like for the government of the philosopher kings to take over the role of the family and all children to call older men father so that the family fades into the larger community. The Philosophers are to arrange marriages of the best and brightest of both classes in order to improve the race and men are to share the women and have multiple marriages. The Philosophers are to tell everyone the noble lie that some are made of gold and meant to govern, while others are silver, and the rest are copper and iron and meant for manual labor. But all are rational enough to accept this as corresponding to their nature and thus good for them. Plato would abolish private property and personal possessions among the guardians in order to get rid of envy and ambition. The workers are allowed to own and possess and thus they might not be jealous of the guardians unless they were rational and wanted to rule for the right reasons. These could be recognized and moved up to the philosopher class and others could be demoted if they weren't interested in philosophy.

From a Christian point of view Plato is still playing with the "shadows of morality" since he doesn't know God's special revelation, but he does better than most with general revelation. It's not until we read the best of the ancient world that we realize what an effect Christianity has had on the West and just how much of our morality that we take for granted as rational, such as marital fidelity and equality of women and children, was actually revealed by the God of the Bible.

Now on to our translator Robin Waterfield. Waterfield doesn't go with the traditional translation of "eidos" as "form" but uses "type" instead. For some reason modern translators can't leave well enough alone and go for worse. The type of the good doesn't have the same force as the "form" of the good. On top of this Waterfield is a materialist who can't understand Plato at points.

Plato apparantly stands out in Greece for believing in the minds immortality. He argues that a things disease always destroys it like when rust reduces metal to dust. The mind must be immortal however because its disease, which is immorality, doesn't destroy it. In fact most, like an early character named Thrasymachus, become clever and vivacious in their promotion of immorality. Waterfield calls Plato's argument circular and here's why:

"There is no reason to suppose that physical death and psychic death are not identical, or that what destroys bodies does not also destroy minds, unless one already believes that the mind is different in substance from the body."

If the mind is reducible to the brain, which is grey matter and chemicals, then explain self-consciousness. Computers aren't self-conscious. If all we have is nerves and synapsis then how are we able to tell ourselves how and what to think? Explain the longing for transcendent meaning in this bag of chemicals that we call man. There's no reason to suppose that our minds die when our brain function stops unless one already "believes" that the mind is reducible to the brain.

In another place Plato says, "It's goodness which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge." Waterfield says, "what is the meaning of the assertion that goodness is responsible for truth and knowledge? (Truth means little ore than just knowability here) .... It cannot be merely that to know a thing is to know in what way it is good, because Plato envisages knowable types of immorality and evil." Why can't Plato be saying that knowledge of the good is the source of our knowledge of all things and even our knowledge of bad things because the bad things are a perversion of the formerly good thing. Knowledge of the good means we know 2 + 2 = 4, and we know that it would actually be immoral to teach that 2 + 2 = 5.

That said Waterman's translation is a good read and his notes are certainly more than worthwhile.




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