agreatercourage

Christianity and the Logic of Capitalism (Part Three): The Theology of Money

2012-01-30T23:48:00.001-08:00

Butisn’t capitalism a secular phenomenon? many will ask. And isn’t it therefore a scientific enterprise (thus treating it as a religion is either ablatant category mistake or merely an inflammatory metaphor)? This is an excellentquestion which in many senses gets right to the heart of this paper, and bringsinto it a host of questions regarding just what “secularization,” is then, which goes quite beyond thescope of this essay. For our purposes wewill rely on other scholarship and note that it is far too simple to recordsecularization, as Milbank chides, “in merely negative terms as adesacralization.”[1] Rather than the mere “falling off” of beliefin favor of “science,” or “rationality,” or “humanity come of age,” and thelike, it is more akin to what William Cavanaugh describes as "the migration of the holy," which is not the disappearance of the Holy, but varieties of conceptual and practical transfer to entities other than God. Charles Taylor prefers to talk of secularization in terms of changes inthe modes and conditions of belief,[2]what Taylor calls the “social imaginary”:

What Im trying to get at with thisterm [social imaginary] is something much broader and deeper than theintellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social realityin a disengaged mode. I am thinkingrather of the ways in which they imagine their social existence, how they fittogether with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, and theexpectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions andimages which underlie these expectations.[3]

Thus“Secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding inwhich our moral, spiritual, or religious experience and search takes place,” sothat religion and secularity are not “rival theories,”but “different kinds of lived experience.”[4] Which is to say it is not a stark “belief vs.unbelief” (or even faith vs. science) dichotomy in “religious vs. secular,” butthe fact that beliefs about beliefhave changed. “Belief in God isn’t quitethe same thing in 1500 [as it is] in 2000,” because we are no longer“immediate,” believers. Rather “belief,”is now seen as a choice and this “breach of naiveté,” is itself constructed onthe basis of series of contingent cultural, philosophical, and theologicaldecisions.[5] Thus“secularization,” is not a story of “subtraction,” of religious “mythology”from concrete worldly practices (as in the narrative of the scientificdisenchantment of the world) but rather how alternate human “fullness,” becameimagined and believed in.[6] Indeed subtraction narratives are

bound up with the one-sidednegativity of the notion of desacralizing;a metaphor of the removal of the superfluous and additional to leave a residueof the human, the natural, and the self-sufficient. For this negative conception it is convenientthat there should always have been some perceptionof the pure [secular] remainder…[the secular] achieved acertain highly ambiguous autonomy with regard to theology. However autonomization was…only possiblebecause the new science of politics both assumed and constructed for itself a new autonomous object.[7]

So to speak, wading through Milbank’s thick prose, his point is thesecularization seen as “disenchantment,” is question-begging, since to“disenchant,” something one must leave its “natural,” remainder—but to identifythe “natural,” remainder is already to assume a space that has not been touchedand constructed by its previous “enchantment.” Secularism under this rubric of “the coming of age,” of man frommythological blindness is but the assumptionof the truth of naturalism and the re-narrationof history to demonstrate its inevitable emergence.[8]

One must immediately note however that historically the “turn to nature,”was not a step outside or against the theological but within it, and what subtraction narratives cannot account for isthat the “autonomization of nature” initially brought with it “its own kind ofdevotion.”[9] The transition as it is described by thesethinkers accords to how the world is conceived in relation to God. In earlier Christian tradition the world wasseen in various ways as an analogical expression of God’s own being; thusthings were “good,” or “beautiful,” or “true,” insofar as they were expressionsof God. Lewis Ayres in his magisterialbook Nicaea and Its Legacy notes forexample that pro-Nicene theologians (including the Cappadocian Fathers andAugustine) saw themselves “embedded within a cosmos that is also a semioticsystem that reveals the omnipresent creating consubstantial Word.” The world could not of course be “read,” byjust anyone, but rather “in our state of ignorance one of the tasks ofChristian life is the relearning of the language of the creation in the Word:this part of the relearning is itself part of the reimagining of ourselves inChrist.”[10]

During the early Medieval period however William of Ockham, aninfluential Franciscan theologian, “drawing on the work of earlierproto-nominalist thinkers such as Roscelin and Abelard, and the work of Henryof Ghent and [Duns] Scotus…laid out in great detail the foundations for a newmetaphysics and theology that were radically at odds with Scholasticism.”[11] If the earlier tradition (if one can lump ittogether thus) would say God makes things good because they are expressions ofthe Supreme Good, which is God Himself, Ockham and the Voluntarist traditionbelieved that God is limited by nothing, not even God’s own essence. Things are thus good simply because Godwilled them, He does not will them in submission to a previously establishedgood. Thus “God must always remain freeto determine what is good” (Voluntarism) and now as “the super-agent who is Godrelates to things as freely to be disposed of according to his autonomouspurposes.”[12] Things are thus no longer related to Godexcept as arbitrary instances of His will—everything can now only be spoken ofas fields of “pure power,” and the world no longer expresses goodness or truthor beauty, rather “we, the dependent, created agents, have also to relate tothese things not in terms of the normative [i.e. meaningful] patterns theyreveal…the purposes of things are [now] extrinsic to them. The stance is fundamentally one ofinstrumental reason.”[13]Moreover names and things named are no longer related to God’s essential unityas expressions of God; thus there is no essence “tree,” or “man,” or “dog,”etc…but only individuals, and the categorical names we use to link them (again:man, dog, tree, etc…) are not “real,” but “nominal,” (hence “Nominalism”) i.e.merely convenient subjectively created categories meant to aggregate in conceptwhat are in reality ontologically unrelated.

Thisis what Catherine Pickstock calls the worlds “spatialization,”[14]or what Conor Cunningham calls the “lateralization of space,”[15]by which they mean that places, objects, and bodies are no long related to“vertical,” transcendent purpose, but the “purely spatial” and immanent“horizontal,” field of space is merely an aggregate of individual thingsdefinable now only by geometrical-mathematical description (i.e. chemical,biological, physical, etc…). Existencewas no longer a semeiotic field of values related to God and uncovered throughspiritual growth (bread is, for example, not more itself when given to feed the hungry). Rather since all things are individual, andexpressions of arbitrary power, the world begins to appear as the site of vastuncertainty and conflicting powers (and God could, with his potentia absoluta or absolute power,re-create the world or fundamentally alter any given part of it at anymoment). Every existent at any givenmoment merely represents not an essence, but a logical possibility, which couldat any moment be otherwise than it is currently, and replaced by anotherlogical possibility by God’s will. Andhumanity, as Imago Dei of thisVoluntarist God now begin to be described by a trajectory of anthropology“which begins with human persons as individuals and yet defines theirindividuality essentially as ‘will’ or ‘capacity,’ or ‘impulse toself-preservation.’”[16]And this “willing individual,” is such precisely over and against afundamentally inert world ripe to be molded by acts of power. Thus political and economic thought starthaving to deal with the question of society and economic relations of a fieldof fundamentally unrelated individuals who are defined as essentially desirous,willing beings (one thinks, for example, of a Hobbes or a Locke or a Rousseau.)

Toput it boldly then, what is actually a history of thought saturated withtheological concepts, is by naturalism and what Taylor calls “exclusivehumanism,” which abandon the grounds of their own inner conceptual justification,erased, and the theological historyin which they arose as possibilities from withintheological trajectories forgotten through their presentation as “naturalman.” Thus for our purposes the history of the present economic order whichpresupposes free humans as “individuals and yet defines their individualityessentialistically as ‘will’ or ‘capacity’ or ‘impulse to self preservation,’”[17]is not a “secular science,” in the sense of being neutral or empirical, ratherit was justified within the ambit of a theology increasingly pushed into thebackground to later be displaced altogether, where “the real moment ofmystification occurs, because here the ‘mythical’ character of sovereignty isforgotten.”[18]

The Unnaturalness of Freedom

Andyet once the theological does drop out, this also involves a large-scalere-envisioning of the “good life.”[19] So to speak, “the human as an individualsovereign will,” constructed theologically is unmoored from its traditionalcounterpoint to “humanity is a servant of God.” This is of course a complex process with a panoply of causes andassociated factors. In this senseMilbank’s narrative must be complemented by Taylor’s expanded analysis. The upshot however is that economictheorizing takes on the air of understanding the problem of “heterogenesis,”namely how fundamentally selfish, autonomous individuals nonetheless are beingordered together into a harmonious whole. Adam Smith for example merely appeals to a secularized vision ofProvidence in the “Invisible Hand,” to account for this. “What is striking about the Smitheaninvisible hand, from the standpoint of the old science, is that it is aspontaneous order arising among corrupt,that is, purely self-regarding actors.”[20]

Onecould begin to see the whole of society through quasi-economic metaphor, andeventually “economy” became more than a metaphor, “it came to be seen more andmore as the dominant end of society,” says Taylor.[21] Indeed as we already noted, Daniel Bellindicates “rights” discourse emerged parallel to the economic-imaginary shiftshere described.[22] Thus it begins a “drift in the socialimaginary,” towards an “impersonal order,” where economy is no longer merelythe management of needed resources, but “a way in which we are linked together,a sphere of co-existence which could in principle suffice for itself.”[23] Thoughthe whole system is set up under the pretense of universal rationality, it isreally more or less the result of attempting to fit together the remnantvestigial theology into an emerging post-confessional religious societal ideal.

Thisis an important point because part of the invisibility of many of Capitalism’snegative aspects are because, as Zizek,[24]Milbank,[25] andothers point out, proponents of capitalism often present it as the inevitable(and natural) culmination of human nature quahuman nature (e.g. rights are “natural human rights”). Writes Taylor: “All [these theories of modernsecularization] make a crucial move which they present as a ‘discovery,’something we ‘come to see’ when certain conditions are met…The elements of‘discovery’ seem unchallengeable because the underlying construction is pushedout of sight and forgotten,” or in other words “all these accounts [of theemergence of modern humanity] ‘naturalize’ these features of modern liberalidentity. They cannot see it as one,historically constructed understanding of human agency, among others.”[26]

And this is part of the mythical lattice whichallows it to present itself as science, since it is the systematic analysis andoutworking of the “naturally,” latent energies of man (that is, man envisionedas essentially individual desiring centers of consumption). Yet we must heretake MacIntyre’s caution under advisement that this is not science but anotherstory, “man without culture is a myth,” he says, “our biological naturecertainly places constraints on all cultural possibility; but man who hasnothing but a biological nature is a creature of whom we know nothing.”[27] Thus what has actually occurred is theperpetuation of a certain caricature of the traditional Christian Imago Dei concept within the ambit ofthe Nominalist and Voluntarist shift (that all of humanity is equal via atomicindividualism), unbounded from its more concrete moral implications and changedinto: all of humanity should equally have the chance to be consumers. David Loyhumorously comments that as such “economics is less a science than it is thetheology of that religion [of the market].”[28] Which is not to say that economics isirrational, or that somehow its mathematics merely conjure figures from theair. It is however, to suggest that itsrationality is based upon the contingent organization of a theorized domainwhose conceptual antecedents (and indeed, justifications) are theological. Unlike physics, whose descriptions andmathematical formula do not often alter the objects being described, the sameis not true for social theorization. Capitalism is as much a description of markets as it is their creation;so much the analysis of agents as it is the habituation of proper habits ofconsumption and sale. Again, this is nota call to abolish the free market. It isto ask: when is a market free? And for we who are Christians it is a clarioncall to realize that economics is permeated with theologically relevantdimensions—that “each time money is used, an epistemology, a metaphysics, apolitics, an ethics, and even a theology is invoked,”[29]—allof which are elements we all to often miss in our knee-jerk alliance withpartisan politics or liberal economics.

Thusas Christians we must not give in to the privatization of our beliefs, as ifthe economy represented a series of decisions and events that lay fundamentallyoutside the realm of theological practice or theorizing. This dichotomy of two realms, onetheological, one scientific, occurs only in a fundamental theologicalforgetfulness. This is not to say wemust have a nostalgic longing for some “pure,” age now lost to us or thatChristianity take on an air of superiority in an age of secularcommodification; on the contrary Christian engagement is a form of prophecy andrepentance which both calls toawareness the theological origins of (post)modernity and attempts to overcomemany deficiencies which have stemmed from Christian theological history thatnow often invisibly beset us. What it is to say is that we must (and I say we literally, I stand cut by my ownblade) overcome the solution of “inward piety,” in which we expect our beliefscoupled with a few dashes of self control and a sprinkling of sympathy for thehomeless woman on the offramp to allow us to keep a sort of “ironic,” distance fromthe tumult of consumption. By making itpurely a problem of individual piety it ignores the structural forces whichshape us and which we are caught within (and indeed that these forces arethemselves phantoms of religion). Metzger notes this is a particular problem for evangelicals since wehave a tendency to have an “antistructural bias,”[30]where sin and conversion are seen primarily along individual lines. As our brief analysis above shows, however,the individualistic strain in retrospect plays right into the new ethosundergirding the market, and thus in some sense the individualistic evangelicalstrain plays into the market in a way parallel to human rights discourse. Indeed this is the famous thesis of MaxWeber’s “Protestant work ethic.” Andwhile individual decision and piety are important values in themselves, “It’stough to hold on,” remarks Klein, “to that subtle state [of ironic detachment]when the eight-hundred-pound culture industry gorilla wants to sit next to uson the couch and tag along on our ironic trips to the mall.”[31] It is thus not a question of “does capitalismwork,” or “is it efficient,” but “how arewe, as moral, theological agents, implicated in its total operations as ethical, moral, theological agents?”

[1] Milbank, Theology and Social Theory p.9.

[2] Taylor, A Secular Age p.3

[3] Ibid p.171.

[4] Ibidp.5.

[5] Ibidp.19-20.

[6] Ibidp.27.

[7] Milbank, Theology and Social Theory p.10.

[8] Michael Allan Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2008) p.272.

[9] Taylor, ASecular Age p.92.

[10] Lewis Ayres, Nicaeaand Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2004) p.325. For some helpful surveys see: T.F. Torrance, TheGround and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia, 1980); Idem, Divine andContingent Order p.1-25. And for therise of the concept of person in theological discourse John Zizioulas in Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and theChurch (New York, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985) and Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York, NY: T&T Clark International, 2007) andWolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology inTheological Perspective trans. Matthew J. O’Connel (Philadelphia:Westminster Press, 1985).

[11] Gillespie, TheologicalOrigins of Modernity p.22.

[12] Taylor, ASecular Age p.97.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the LiturgicalConsummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1997) pp.47-101.

[15] Conor Cunningham Genealogy of Nihilism (London:Routledge, 2002)

[16] Milbank, Theologyand Social Theory p.14-15.

[17] Milbank, Theologyand Social Theory p.15.

[18] Ibid p.27. Milbankis, of course, not alone. C.f. thestudies of Brad S. Gregory, TheUnintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society(Harvard: Belknap Press, 2012); Louis Duprê, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Nature of Hermeneutics andCulture (Yale: Yale University Press, 1993); Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the LiturgicalConsummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1997); PhilipGoodchild, Theology of Money (Duke:Duke University Press, 2009); Gillespie, TheTheological Origins of Modernity; Taylor, A Secular Age.

[19] Taylor, ASecular Age p.474.

[20] Ibid p.183.

[21] Ibid p.177.

[22] Bell, LiberationTheology

[23] Taylor, ASecular Age p.181.

[24] Zizek First asTragedy pp.26-27.

[25] Milbank, Theologyand Social Theory p.41.

[26] Ibid., 571.

[27] MacIntyre, AfterVirtue p.161.

[28] David R. Loy, “The Religion of the Market,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion65 (Spring, 1996): 275.

[29] Goodchild, Theologyof Money, 20.

[30] Metzger, ConsumingJesus p.58ff.

[31] Klein, No Logop.83.

Christianity and the Logic of Capitalism (Part Two): The Invisible Catastrophe

2012-01-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

Inhis seminal book, After Virtue,Alasdair MacIntyre closes his fascinating survey of intellectual history bysuggesting that “a new dark ages,” are already upon us.[1] These dark ages of which he speaks aresymptomatic of a “disquieting suggestion,” with which his book opens: that wehave suffered “a catastrophe…of such a kind that it was not and has notbeen—except perhaps by very few—recognized as a catastrophe.”[2]Though MacIntyre is dealing specifically with moral theory, I want to use his“disquieting suggestion,” of an invisible catastrophe silently inscribing,altering, and indeed undermining from within our discourse, our affections, ourvery orientation to the world, and apply it to the phenomenon of capitalism. The disaster of which MacIntyre speaksregarding moral discourse argues even our most sophisticated moraldeliberations are only “simulacra of morality,” because they are a bricolage offragmentary leftovers “which now lack the contexts from which theirsignificance derived.”[3]

Thus,again analogously, I want to suggest that while capitalism offers and sustains many seemingly Christian impulses in ourorientation to and construction of time and space—the spread of personalfreedom, affirmation of the goodness of the body, the breaking down of borders,global community, the value of humankind, mastery over creation—capitalismactually often fragments Christian discourse and re-inscribes meaning upon Christian terms and practices subtly (andnot so subtly) altering them: “the unitsof [capitalism’s] grammar are also the instruments of its coercion”[4](what I described above in the term “simulacral”). As Daniel Bell suggestively puts it:

Neoliberal government aggressivelyencourages and advocates the extension of economic reason into every fiber andcell of human life. Economic or marketrationale controls all conduct. Capitalism has enveloped society, absorbing all the conditions ofproduction and reproduction. It is as ifthe walls of the factory had come crumbling down and the logics that previouslyfunctioned in that enclosure had been generalized across the entire space-timecontinuum…now [we] must submit every aspect of [our] lives to the logic of theeconomy…[we] must be entrepreneurs of [ourselves].[5]

Forour purposes one of the major transformations of logic as we have said is thatof freedom. This can be seen in thebasic idea of freedom as “rights.” “In the newer tradition,” says Bell, “God’sright established discrete rights possessed originally by individuals…accordingto this [new] conception the individual occupies the central position as rightis associated with human power to control and dispose of human things.”[6] We will see a bit of how this came about inthe next section. For now the point isthat this picture of rights “far from marking a milestone in the struggle toovercome ‘all that keeps human beings from self-fulfillment’…it is moreplausibly understood as but one component of the host of technologies thatdeveloped for the sake of governing persons ‘through freedom,’ in accord withthe demands of emerging market forces.”[7] Thus whether we side with the historiographythat says “rights” language was co-opted by the market, or the other side(which Bell takes, following the analyses of Alasdair MacIntyre, AnthonyArblaster and Ian Shapiro)[8]which states that rights discourse was formulatedby an emerging bourgeois class “intent [on] securing new forms of wealth andproperty…against traditional feudal forms of wealth embodied in the[inheritance based] aristocracy,”[9] theultimate point is that the concept of freedom and human fulfillment are nowseen along essentially individualistic and acquisitive lines. “To emancipate,” is only to say: “maximizenegative freedom of choice,” and to say “freedom” is to say “arbitrary power[for consumption].”[10] And thus, as we shall turn to in a moment,“rights” discourse, far from providing a barrier to the excesses of capitalism,is often the undergirding logic of those very practices.

Forthe moment we can see how this has invaded Christian discourse in certainways. Dave Ramsey as a small example canadmirably help people out of crippling debt, and yet troublingly couch thewhole thing in quasi-Christian redemption, where one passes through the deathof hard-work to emerge into the second-birth of salvation as personal economicliberty. Of course neither hard work noreconomic liberty are in themselves pejorative, but they are veiled in thenarrative of his mantra “live like no one else,” that is, to be in a financialposition to do whatever one wants. Self-sacrificeparadoxically becomes self-security and charity becomes a philanthropy seenalmost purely through the lens of giving money out of one’s personal financial reservoir,rather than in forms of self-emptying servanthood and personal relation. I had the opportunity to attend one ofRamsey’s recent seminars, and perhaps the most ominous note in Dave Ramsey’s presentationwas “you can only help others if you have money.” Of course persuasive lies are those that arepartially true. To state the obvious: relationshipscan (and most often do) involve money (I in fact attended Ramsey’s seminar onlybecause my wonderful parents generously paid my way). What is troubling is thatRamsey’s (perhaps unguarded) declaration became an almost unilateral commissionto first get to a place of financial self-satisfaction and then, if one felt soinclined, to give. Charity and Christianmission from a position of personal vulnerability in this instance became(despite Ramsey’s obviously good intentions) subservient to an alien logicwhere money and efficient power are king. Indeed the mantra “to live like no one else,” is inscribed into the verynotion of freedom-as-rights and thus freedom as consumption: I have the rightto be myself (thereby be like no one else) and I do this through the gesture ofbeing able to consume in my own way.

Notto pick on him too much because I truly believe he is doing a great thing inhelping debt-stricken families, but he related the story of how oneof his wealthy friends ran into a woman whose power was turned off, and he verymagnanimously (and in secret) paid for her power bill a year and a half inadvance. This is of course a story to beapplauded. But it was not said if the manever spoke to the woman again. Notannouncing one’s charity is of course a great way to avoid Pharisaictriumphalism, and yet as the single instance of charity in Ramsey’s entire sixhour presentation it appeared that charity had degenerated into being a“ghostly benefactor,” who can help while simultaneously paying little personalinvestment. At the same time Ramsey usedit as a pillar supporting his hypothesis that only if you have money can youhelp others. Again, who can deny thatmoney is useful? Yet this logic ofmoney’s usefulness, and its specific sortof usefulness appears to have become something of a universal acid for Ramsey,eating away the distinctiveness of all other forms of thought and action. Not a week later, however, my Pastor told asimilar story of a man who couldn’t help a woman pay for her electric bill,himself being poor, but every day he came to her apartment and helped herprepare food in the dark, prayed with her, and gained a new friendship. It isof course helpful to have money, who can deny that? But the “success,” of both men in theirefforts is only disparate when judged by what John Howard Yoder calls a“politics of technique,” and an obsession with “effectiveness,” as judged by animmanent logic of efficient causality. The true judgment of Christian effectiveness, says Yoder, is not “causeand effect,” but “cross and resurrection” [11] which is to say personal giving, community, and sharingin fellowship.

Ofcourse Ramsey is not unique here. Stephen Webb recently arguedin his interesting (though alarming) book AmericanProvidence[12]on the basis of the same logic of the efficacy of money and capital champions atype of American exceptionalism. Whilehe says we should not baptize every American action, nonetheless, “that Americais doing more than any other nation to spread the kinds of political structuresthat can best prepare the globe for God’s ultimate work of establishing thefinal kingdom is not insignificant.”[13] This is, of course, partially true. America hasdone a lot of things which have let the gospel be heard, and for that we shouldbe grateful. But a Faustian gambit doesnot go away because one just looks at the good. Moreover it seems quite reasonable to ask by what standards Webb isjudging both “Christian flourishing” and that “America is doing more than anyother nation,” to establish this. Ithink all of us who live in plush safety as Christians in America canappreciate that the odds of us being martyred while picking up milk and eggsfrom the local market are quite low. Ithank God for my own, and especially my family’s safety. Yet, is thisChristian flourishing? What is the index being used here? A crucified messiah, a God whose strength wasdisplayed through weakness to bringsalvation and communion with Himself? Or something else? The supposition thatAmerica is spreading the kinds of political structure “that can best preparethe globe” for God to establish the kingdom ignores both the damage caused bythe spread of our particular brand of freedom, and just as significantly thechange in the modus operandi of terms(freedom, choice, liberation, etc…) employed once they are contextualizedwithin American nationalism or global capitalism. Jesus and Milton Friedman might utter thesame sentence, but it stands to reason they would not thereby mean the same thing.

Yet Webb, for all of hisstrengths, seems unaware or unconcerned by these issues. He believes that Christian evangelization ofthe world will be completed when the world is open to American style freedoms.[14] The problem here is not with “freedom,” (whowould object to less totalitarianism and religious oppression?) but with a sortof unthinking equation that “Americanstyle freedom” (his shibboleth for free-market capitalism) is automatically africtionless structure for Christianity to reside within. Elsewhere Webb notesthat he believes that democracy and free markets ultimately are a product ofChristianity, specifically the “great Protestant theme of freedom.”[15] While this is certainly historically quiteplausible, here again Webb is showing a remarkable insensitivity to howdifferent modes of Christian (andProtestant) discourse—not just Christian discourse in the abstract—produced,and then was produced by, this economic theory. Webb not only does not really examine these possible differences, hedownright rejects that this “Americanstyle freedom” has any ontological implications for any worldview: he writesthat we [i.e. American Democracy] have no “coherent social vision” to impose onothers, that “our very respect for freedom, in other words, both fuels ouroverseas endeavors and inhibits us from developing the kind of ideology that couldresult in global domination.”[16] This naiveté deconstructs itself when later, in the same book Webb writes that “forcing [my emphasis] Muslim nationsinto democratic political orders can accomplish much good in the world, but itneeds to be recognized that this goal is theological as well as political.”[17] The mind boggles. Yet perhaps the most telling feature is thatWebb values the power of American democracy and capitalism precisely because “Godmoves nations by working through history, not against it. By definition thepoor are not effective agents of significant historical change.”[18] To feel the full force oftwo different types of freedom, one need only imagine these words being spokento a currently-being-crucified Christ.

Hencewe here present capitalism as an ontology, and as a set of practices derivingand informing that ontology, which orient us, our desires, and our identities intime and space by engaging what Charles Taylor calls our “social imaginaries,”[19]which direct us—often at pre-theoretical and even emotional levels—in how wecollectively envision society and how our terms and concepts are invested withmeaning. Or in the words of Gordon Bigelow “Economics, as channeled by itspopular avatars in media and politics, is the cosmology and the theodicy of ourcontemporary culture…it is economics that offers the dominant creationnarrative of our society, depicting the relation of each of us to the universewe inhabit…”[20] Ifcapitalism acts like a religion (or perhaps isone) then in the words of Eugene McCarraher, we can “critique it as a religion,a form of enchantment, an ensemble of rituals, symbols, moral codes, andiconography,”[21] inorder to uncover some of its oppressive mechanisms we have unthinkinglyaccepted, and perhaps move towards rendering visible the often very invisible catastrophethat has not just affected Webb, but many of us as well.

[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory 2^nded. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) p.263

[2] Ibidp.3

[3] Ibidp.2.

[4] Milbank, Theology and Social Theory p.141

[5] Daniel Bell, LiberationTheology After The End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering (London:Routledge, 2001) p.31.

[6] Ibid p.105.

[7] Ibid p.126.

[8] MacIntyre, AfterVirtue; Anthony Arblaster, The Riseand Decline of Western Liberalism (New York: Basil Blackwell Publishers,1984); Iain Shapiro, The Evolution ofRights in Liberal Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

[9] Bell, LiberationTheology p.126.

[10] Milbank, Theologyand Social Theory p.275.

[11] John Howard Yoder, ThePolitics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids:Eerdman’s Publishing, 1994) p.232.

[12] Stephen H. Webb AmericanProvidence: A Nation with a Mission (New York: Continuum, 2004)

[13] Ibid p.8.

[14] Webb, AmericanProvidence p.78.

[15] Quoted in William Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of theChurch (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing, 2011) p.98.

[16] Webb, AmericanProvidence p.85.

[17] Ibid p.139.

[18] Webb, AmericanProvidence p.62.

[19] Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: DukeUniversity Press, 2004) pp. 23-30; and in more detail, Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2007) pp.171-176.

[20] Gordon Bigelow, “Let ThereBe Markets: The Evangelical Roots of Economics,” Harper’s 310, no.1860 (May 2005): 33.

[21] Eugene McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon: NotesTowards a Theological History of Capitalism” Modern Theology. No. 21, vol. 3 (July 2005): 449.

Christianity and the Logic of Capitalism (Part One)

2012-01-26T23:27:00.000-08:00

The following is a (rough) essay I wrote comparing Christianity's concept of freedom with that of the logic of free-market Capitalism. The whole essay will be posted in parts due to length. This was my first foray into an essay that examines economic philosophy and Christian theology and it barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to say, and is certainly crude and underdeveloped in many areas. Nonetheless I felt interested in posting it. As always I welcome feedback as long as it is charitable, constructive, and above all commiserate with me in the complexities of the topic at hand.

There are two ways by whichthe spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first—the Orwellian—culture becomes a prison. In the second—the Huxleyan—culture becomes aburlesque…In America, Orwell’s prophecies are of small relevance, but Huxley’sare well under way toward being realized…[Indeed] an Orwellian world is mucheasier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan. Everything in our background has prepared usto know and to resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us…we takearms against such a sea of troubles…But what if there are no cries of anguishto be heard? Who is prepared to takearms against a sea of amusements?

Neil Postman[1]

Money is a great breeder ofunreality.

TerryEagleton[2]

Thereis a hidden double meaning in the word utopia. The first meaning is, of course, a sort ofideal paradise, a place of total human contentment and freedom. Sir Thomas More coined the English term in1516 for his book of the same title, in which utopia described a fictional self-contained island in theAtlantic. In this sense the word appearsto stem from the Greek eu-topia, orgood-place. Yet the word is carved alsowith an inner negative core. This canbest be illustrated by (among many examples) what Naomi Klein describes as“hollow corporations.”[3] In the mid-1980’s, she explains, there was ageneral sea-change among major companies who understood that the path tofinancial success was now primarily about producing brands, as opposed toproducts. Such a shift in focus caused a“race toward weightlessness,” namely, whoever “owns the least, has the fewestemployees on payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed toproducts, wins the race.”[4] Anyone can manufacture a product, theyreason. Such menial tasks laboring withbulk and earthen husk should therefore be contracted out, sent elsewhere. “There is no value in making things anymore,”says Nike CEO Phil Knight.[5]

Theserestructured companies’ goals seemed to be “to transcend the corporeal world ofthings so they could be an utterly unencumbered brand.” They were thus hollowed out of anything butthe image. Shorn of connection tospecific earthbound products, the companies were free to allocate nearly allresources to becoming vast engines of mythology, and the brand was free to soarand become not just product hocking but a lifestyle, an orientation of ourdeepest desires. Indeed the erstwhilemarketing director of Starbucks Scott Bedbury puts it plainly: Starbucks wants“to align ourselves with one of the greatest movements towards trying to find aconnection with your soul.”[6] This is the zen of the brand: the brand isone, the brand is all. Thus with apologiesto Marcus Aurelius, today’s marketing gurus sound like revised pantheists: “Youare a fragment of [Brand]; you, within you a part of [It]…whenever you mix insociety, whenever you take physical exercise, whenever you converse, do you notknow that you are nourishing [Brand], exercising [Brand]? You are bearing[Brand] about with you.”[7] Noting that “brand” has been substituted for“God” in the quote gets us one step toward realizing the problem. Another step is the recognition that thismarketing logic, coupled with capitalism, is an attempted realization of a freedomdefined merely as being unencumbered by limits. The brand is contained in no site (though it has its temples) and in noproducts (though it has its totems). Thus branded utopia finds utopia’s true root: ou-topia. Nowhere.

Our first reaction is, perhaps, to take thisas harmless wordplay. It is thecontention of this essay that it is much more, however. It is the nature of the Brand, as it is thenature of capitalism, both as a potentially limitless ideal, to expand. (“Absolutedeterritorialization is the essence of capitalismitself,”[8] as JohnMilbank puts it). It will be arguedthat the Brand’s sinister nature is precisely the utopian logic noted above: it is idolatrous in that it seeks, likein the revised Aurelius quote, to saturate our lives and (re)orient us and ourdesire and emotion to its own visions of the “good life” contained in itsimages—to have us, in other words “bear it about,” with (and in) us. And the expansive logic contained in the“nowhere,” (and so everywhere) of the Brand idea is beginning to colonize,crowd, and dis-place the “real” places of our lives. “There is a certain logic to thisprogression,” says Klein, “first, a select group of manufacturers transcendtheir connection to their earthbound products, then, with marketing elevated asthe pinnacle of their business, they attempt to alter marketing’s social statusas commercial interruption [of culture] and replace it with seamlessintegration [of Brand producingculture].”[9] Unbrandedspace is disappearing quickly. Thisisn’t merely about logos appearingeverywhere. It is much rather that theyare beginning to produce and drive self-contained worlds. The logic and lifestyle of capitalism and marketingare thus prone to make “microcosms” of themselves by (subtly and not-so-subtly)inscribing other forms of life and discourse and replacing their original logicwith its own, creating “simulacra.” “Thesimulacra are just like the real thing,” says Graham Ward, “except that theycan be identically replaced…the real itself is commodified and thecommodification becomes the new benchmark for what is real.”[10] The simulacral is thus an image (or activity,discipline, etc…) which has survived beyond its own symbolic death—and whichhas its symbolic meaning secretly replaced while its surface remains apparentlyuntouched. Which is to say, more simply,that if as Christians we still often soundChristian, and want to speak of freedom, charity, and love, these are oftenmere traces, now secretly filled inwardly with another logic—the logic of themarket.

Thusthis essay can be read as a rough sketch of two ontologies of freedom often atodds with one another—capitalism and brand marketing on the one hand, and Christianityon the other. It is an attempt moreover,to expose the false logic of the market’s freedom. It is thus not an attack onthe “Free Market,” as such, so much as it asks “when is a market free?”[11] In the process of this disentangling of thetwo sorts of freedom it will be argued that definitions of freedom which regardit merely as “freedom from” limits (as offered by the market) is actuallyfraught through with invisible limitations and aporias. These limitations andaporias can be described as capitalism’s and image marketing’s “Gnostic,”impulse: in the flight toward limitlessness, the virtual begins to be valuedover the embodied (capital over labor, money over goods, image over substanceetc…) and can shift over into the bodily being denigrated for the sake of the virtual and simulacral. Just what this means we shall come to betterunderstand, and then be able to pose the alternative Christian idea of freedomas a freedom for others, not arestrictionless expanse but a harmony with a higher good, expressed in embodiedservanthood and community centered around the singularity of Christ and hismission.

[1] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discoursein the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1985) pp.155-156.

[2] Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflectionson the God Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) p.41.

[3] Naomi Klein, NoLogo (New York: Picador, 2009) p.xvii.

[4] Ibid p.4.

[5] Ibid p.xxi.

[6] Ibid p.138.

[7] As quoted in John Cooper, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers (Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2006) p.38.

[8] John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond SecularReason 2^nd ed. (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006) p.274. Emphasis in original.

[9] Klein, No Logop.35.

[10] Graham Ward, Citiesof God (London: Routledge, 2001) p.59.

[11] William Cavanaugh, BeingConsumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’sPublishing, 2008) p.2ff.

The Bauer-Ehrman thesis

2012-01-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

You probably know the rudiments of the Bauer-Ehrman thesis, even if not the names of these two scholars. In its simplest form, it is the argument that Christianity, far from an original unitary "Orthodox" tradition that then fragmented and degenerated into various schisms and "heresies", was actually an originally diverse movement of equally legitimate conceptions. These "equally legitimate" conceptions then eventually became suppressed by various political plays and arbitrary fiats of the powers that be, to create a rigid form of Christianity which came to be known as "orthodoxy." This calcification and codification of a particular strand then reinforced its own pretensions to singularity by revising history. Through the creation of a canon of literature which agreed with its views (and possibly even modification of accepted works), excommunication of dissidents, political coercion (through Constantine, etc...), and just as importantly the very creation of the categories of "orthodoxy" and "heresy," what we know today as Christianity emerged. History, as they say, is written by the victors.

As I said, you most likely have heard this theory, or one of its various forms. It plays particularly well to the pluralist sensibilities embedded in our culture and thus has had ample occasion to leave the stodgy halls of academia to show up at much livelier parties: from the DaVinci Code, to a small cottage industry of various History Channel specials, going on up the ladder of academia to popularized works by Bart Ehrman (who has the special honor of having his name on the latter half of this theory's hyphenation) to Elaine Pagel's work on the so-called Gnostic Gospels, to the Jesus Seminar, and beyond.

Without getting into the details (of which there are legion) I have two "philosophical" thoughts on the issue which I think need to be addressed. These aren't home-run or knock-down arguments, and are hardly comprehensive of the debate. I bring them up because I think they are helpful to think about, and because I rarely seem them discussed. I just picked up The Heresy of Orthodoxy by Andreas Kostenberger and Michael Kruger on the whole debate over the Bauer-Ehrman thesis, so perhaps I will follow up with some posts citing specifics of the debate (dating, textual variations, manuscript traditions, and on and on...). But for we will keep it broad. Without further ado:

1.) Rhetoric: Favoring the Under Dog

Lets face it: most of us love the underdog. Whether its the Karate Kid giving a giant wounded crane-kick in the big bully's stupid face, or a Jamaican bobsled team (Ive been watching older movies lately) we route for the impossible because its easy to identify with. I remember in highschool we read Howard Zinn's wonderful A People's History of the United States, and the reason we all loved it so much was that it really was presenting a narrative from the margins of the previously forgotten. If history was written by the victors, its about time we go back and try to search out the little people who lost out and write them back in.

And I fundamentally agree with this ethos. The saying that we should learn history to avoid repeating its mistakes is certainly true, but not radical enough: often learning history is a deconstruction and questioning of the very people we are who could make mistakes or achieve success at all. History is always messier than its representations and I think to avoid hubris or triumphalism it does us wonders to investigate it as thoroughly as possible.

Yet--and here is the crux--this fundamental favoring of the underdog has subtly come to be applied to this Bauer-Ehrman narrative, both in generalities and particulars. The fundamental drive moving its awareness in the popular consciousness or imagination is the idea that with the discovery of things like the Gospel of Judas, and all other sorts of Gnostic literature, coupled with the Bauer-Ehrman thesis we finally have the ability to re-write the history written by the hegemonous and often tyrannically oppressive "orthodox" Christian church. Now, let me be the first to say that Christianity has done a lot of bad things (an understatement). But that is a different (albeit important) discussion for another time. What is important here is how it does not apply to gnostic forms of Christianity.

The basic outline of the narrative is again a familiar one: these "lost" forms of Christianity eventually got bullied out of existence, excommunicated from participating in the greater Christian body, and their scriptures were torn out from cohabitation with what eventually became the standard canonical list. Banned, berated, and burned, the gnostics went the way of obscurity, disenfranchised by a church that would not accept them. And so on. This narrative is quite unstable, however. It has a little fault line undermining it called being completely false. Well, maybe not completely. Certainly there were some similarities between Gnosticism and Christianity, and certainly it is true that Christians did not accept gnosticism into their canon.

Yet it is a sort of perverse trick of historiography to paint a picture of the gnostics as the poor and oppressed spiritualists who, when Orthodoxy had to get all truthy and butt in with their own spiritual deal, went the way of the Dodo. The actual truth of the matter is, first, that "Gnosticism" as a title is more of a heuristic label, used for convenience to organize a variety of diverse expressions which nonetheless harbor some of the same basic sensibilities. That the church "excluded" these scriptures from their own may be true, but trivially so: the Gnostics (however much that term is accurate to collectivize them as a group) would want nothing to do with what became the "canonical" scriptures anyway. Marcion of Sinope, for example (though he was not a full-fledged Gnostic) cut out the entire Old Testament and most of the New Testament, keeping only a few Pauline epistles and a revised Gospel of Luke. Moreover their varieties excluded one another. Gnosticism was more of a distinct form of speculation than a coherent orthodoxy of its own; and though it may frequently have taken up the garb of "Christian-ese" it was essentially more of a trans-religious theosophy, neither specifically Pagan, nor Jewish, nor Christian, but an eclectic and somewhat typical mixture of the mystery cults and the general spiritual longings of the age where release from the cruelty of the body--not Incarnation, not Resurrection--and transcending up the hierarchy of divine emanations was the preferred form of salvation.

While Gnosticism was not an intentionally subversive movement of orthodox Christianity, they were nonetheless bound to certain affirmations that the Orthodox were fundamentally bound to reject: that this material world is completely evil, that the God of the Jews was an evil demiurge, while Jesus Christ was the messenger of a different, Higher God and so on. In fact the basic nature of what Gnosticism was would have separated it from any extended overlap with early Christianity. Gnosticism (which stems from the Greek word for "knowledge") based itself (whatever the pluriformity of its manifestations, whether in Simonian, Valentinian, Basilidean or other flavors) on the idea that it, not "orthodox" Christianity, carried the true secret wisdom of God passed down from Christ. Even pagan observers of the day could tell the difference: Plotinus and Porphyry each attacked gnosticism, but not as a species of Christianity (which they also found ridiculous) but as a system of thought in its own right. All of this without even mentioning the very pertinent fact that nearly all scholars now accept much later dates for gnostic scriptures anyway. Whereas earlier scholars like Harnack and Bultmann could theorize that gnosticism was quite early so that in some sense orthodox Christianity borrowed from it, most scholarship now posits the reverse: gnosticism was a sensibility that borrowed images from Christianity for its own purposes.

2.) The Assumption of Untruth

All of that aside, lets for a minute assume the Bauer-Ehrman thesis is true, just for the sake of argument. Which means, to refresh, that we are assuming a variety of early Christianities that then became a more homogenous Christianity. An interesting observation would be that for any other area of inquiry--history, science, philosophy et al--this picture of plurality-into-a-relative-homogeneity could be spun as a good thing. Why? Because, while the truth of postmodern philosophy certainly has taught us that perspective means a lot, nonetheless in the sense that any of us are still committed to truth, increasing precision is usually viewed as a generally agreeable thing. If the B-E thesis is true (which I do not think it is, but again for the sake of argument) then theoretically it is plausible to argue that the reason for the emergent (relative) homogeneity was due to an increasing precision in awareness of its religious commitment, that is, of a greater realization of what is or is not implied by faith in Jesus Christ. That it is not seen as such, is, I argue, because of the utilization of the assumption that there can be no single legitimate expression of religious belief. It is only by this assumption that the picture as a whole (as opposed to specific case studies) can be represented as an arbitrary suppression of legitimate forms. I am wholly open (though obviously skeptical) to the possibility that my beliefs are wrong. What must be recognized however is that the B-E thesis is often represented as based on the best "empirical" studies of early Christianity. Yet one of its major principles and working assumptions is the thoroughly non-empirical (for better or worse) assumption of the equal legitimacy of all forms of Christian expression, or, worded in a weaker form, the equal legitimacy of an indefinite array of religious beliefs loosely connected to the figure of Christ.

Here again we see that the narrative representation of the B-E thesis turns on some questionable rhetorical maneuvers which are in one way or another playing on current sensibilities of pluralism. The description of the emergence into a single Christianity is by, e.g. an arbitrary act of power (Constantine) or by a rigid dogmatization. Yet if one substitutes these pejoratives with: the emergence of a single Christianity was by an increase in precision, or the elimination of extraneous hypothesis, then we can see a lot of the sexiness of the B-E thesis turns, not on logic, but on rhetoric. The only reason "precision" would be objected to is a.) if underhanded means were used to achieve it (which yes, did happen, so insofar as that is a complaint it must be noted) or b.) there is the assumption up front that there really can be no increase of religious precision (because it is ultimately subjective, or cultural, or whatever). Ergo any movement towards singularity will always by a matter of necessity be an act of coercion, and never precision (because precision implies the possibility of an increased acuity in understanding the true nature of an object).

Indeed a keyword of the B-E thesis is that there existed a host of legitimate expressions of Christianity that then became excluded. But what criteria is the B-E thesis, and those like it, using to judge how these expressions approximate a legitimate "adequacy" to their object? Given the very real and irreconcilable differences between Orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism, that these were all possibly legitimate expressions of Christianity either strains the analytic usefulness of "Christianity" as a term that could pick out any particular phenomena while excluding others and/or (and what I take it to be) it is the assumption of the "truth" of pluralism in the sense that none of these individual expressions could encapsulate any fuller the truth of their content than any competitor, thus the any exclusions on the part of any parties could only be an arbitrary act of power. Even if there was pluralism de facto, this does not translate into the legitimacy of pluralism (i.e. de jure pluralism) it merely points to the fact of pluralism (if indeed it is even a fact, which again I think the B-E thesis has radically overplayed its hand here).

Obviously these two points I have made in no way exhaust the philosophy (and certainly not the empirical claims) of the B-E thesis. Yet I think they are nonetheless quite important in the sense that they reveal how much presupposition can play in the debate. This is important too because Christian scholarship in this area is often demonized because the scholars at its command are also believers--thus it is supposed their research is blemished by the taint of belief and presupposition. Certainly this can be true. Yet it is equally true on the part of the opposition. Just because they are not "religious" in the same sense, does not mean they do not have their own "faiths" which guide their research.

Hopefully in the next weeks or so I will have time to get into the more nitty-gritty empirical discussions on actual texts and geography and transmission history, etc...

Six Things I Learned From My First Publishing Experience

2012-01-15T01:58:00.000-08:00

I am an aspiring theologian, philosopher, and writer. And by "aspiring," I mean something more like hoping I dont suck at the one thing I really like doing. I have not published many papers. In fact, I have published only one (which you can read here, if you feel so inclined) though hopefully there are a few upcoming in the future that I am working on currently. And though it was by no means a significant article, I certainly learned a lot from it, and thought I would share the story with you, for what its worth. Hemingway (who will show up a few times here) said that its no business of others that you had to learn how to write, and you should just present yourself as always having been able. Maybe someday. But today I ignore his advice.

1.) Take Unexpected Opportunities

A few may have whispers or rumors of memory of an event that happened a long time ago (and seemingly in a galaxy far away) when I wrote a post in response to a blog by Donald Miller. Donald "The Genuine Draft," Miller (which he is called by precisely no one except by me right now), is a Portland local Christian author of very engaging and authentic reflections on struggling with faith and Christianity. If one looks at the hit counter of my little blog, and wonders how it could be so relatively high for such a dusty little corner niche of the theo-blogopshere (and in perspective, even 15k is chump change to the larger theo-blogs) it is because somehow my blog response made it through the gateways and circumvented the jewel-encrusted hoops one imagines normally impede such things, and gained audience with the eyes of the Don himself. In response he graced my little backwater of binary with an impatience channeled through the 140 character limit of twitter and voila: I was granted instant miniature fame (or infamy). However it happened, the Don, to use the horrible word spawned by recent technology, "retweeted" my blog post to his 50,000 or so followers at the time, all of whom flocked with the frictionless haste that the digital affords to defend their leader.

2.) Take Constructive Criticism, Ignore the Rest

And when they found themselves here I can only imagine they looked around a little confused at this backwater station they charged into. My blog was, as many of them pointed out, completely obscure, unknown, and (gasp!) unpopular. Perhaps expecting something big, flashy and arrogant along the lines of Mark Driscoll's haircut, what they found was so unimpressive the internet it was attached to might as well have actually been made of tubes. Or perhaps some string and old soup cans (But not Campbell's, thats like the designer label of canned soup). But here they were, nonetheless, pitchforks and torches ready and thirsting for blood. Though the rumors of my having barbecued their sacred cow were greatly exaggerated, they came for a fight, and thats what they were going to do, charity and logic be damned! There were a few thoughtful responses to be sure. But certainly the most memorable were the crazy insults. One even suggested that I get some sense punched into me (though he prefaced this with something like "I mean this in the best way possible," so I rest assured of his genuine concern for my education) while another gripped me with the iron vice of logic by noting that, from his analysis of what I wrote, it followed I had no friends. QED.

3.) Don't Be Afraid

Anyway, a short story even shorter, the whole thing blew over in a day or so. I invited Don out to beer on twitter to discuss our differences, he politely declined but apologized for any trouble he caused on my part, and that was that. However Halden over at Inhabitatio Dei was kind enough to invite me to write an article on Donald Miller for the Other Journal which was running a series on theology and celebrity at the time. I had mixed feelings about it: both because it was not a subject I would ever have chosen to be the first article I ever published, and because it was the first article I would ever publish. However steamy a turd I might accidentally write, it would have my name stamped on it forever. Presumably for some future alien civilization to chance and uncover, thereby judging our whole species' intelligence by this brain brick of an essay somehow preserved through whatever holocaust ended humanity. Needless to say I was slightly paralyzed by the fear of such a bloated significance. Nonetheless I figured that being invited to write an article was a rarity in and of itself, and how much more rare it must be for a nobody such as myself to be invited to write one, so I gratefully accepted. Even if it was a turd, it would be a publicly recognized one. No press is bad press, as they say.

4.) Don't Overthink

So I began writing. Only--I wasn't quite sure what to write. Like I said this wasnt exactly a topic I would have chosen. I wasn't a "specialist" in Donny M (if one could be). I had read Blue Like Jazz, sure, and a few blog posts, but that was it. And following the nature of a blog, his posts weren't exactly meaty representations of his thought (they were Miller Lite, one might say. I am officially going to suggest that as a blog name to him via twitter). Mercifully The Other Journal donated several of the Don's other books to me so I could read them while also avoiding the inevitable bankruptcy that would be inflicted on the precarious $8.50 equilibrium of my checking account. Father Fiction, Through Painted Deserts, and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years arrived at my doorstep and I furiously began to read.

I say furiously, but even reading three of Miller's books in a short span (I think it was about a week) is more of a pleasurable than a taxing experience. But they say you have to suffer for your art, and since I wasn't suffering I sure need to make it seem like I was. But the basic problem remained. I was chosen to write the article presumably both because of the somewhat undue fanfare of my blog post, and under what was becoming as I continued to read the Don the more and more unreasonable expectation I would write something coherent and interesting on him. I say unreasonable because a theology paper is supposed to usually a.) pick a theme in a thinker and synthesize/run with it or b.) trace the unity in a thinker's thought or c.) find a criticism or weakness and exploit it. There are other options but these are the basics.

The problem was, and this is not meant as an insult, that Miller's books themselves were not exactly ripe picking for those approaches. What they are really, are fragmentary reflections woven together and allowed meander here and there. It is a very stream of consciousness sort of writing, and it carries all the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. Which is to say the coherence of Miller's books are the coherence of a life; only, as with life there are only a few places here and there in the day to day that actually make an impact. Thus when you write like you live the scenes jump between the semi-significant points without the benefit of the lived experience of traveling between them. It makes for an interesting reading experience, sort of like drifting down a winding stream in a Disney ride: you get to see a few interesting sights here and there and you get to your destination eventually but your not quite sure how the different diorama scenes interconnect. Miller's works were no Summa Theologia, they werent even useable nuggets like Pascal's Pensees. A theology paper this did not make, and so I felt stuck. I was staring at a blank page endlessly. On the upside I think this qualified me as a real writer. Whatever thats worth.

Yet in overcompensation at this aporia, I wanted to flood the white page with digital ink. So I started turning every nitpick into a thesis. But as they say you shouldnt confuse movement with action, and suddenly I found myself over the word limit without having said anything. So I began to delete things and revise them; I sewed some threads back into the overstuffed jumpsuit that my essay was becoming, and pulled at some other threads. It was a great bulky mess. On top of that in my panic I began to have something akin to stage fright as I wrote. Instead of concentrating on what to write, I was concentrating on my concentration of what to write. Even worse, in lieu of content, which was as of yet nowhere to be found, I began an over concentration on style. Which redoubled my effort to burst the word limit without so much as having a coherent thought on the page. A friend who read an early draft made the analogy of the young David struggling with all the bulky armor before he fought Goliath: my essay was in there somewhere but it couldn't breath under the weight. Like David, I had to take the armor off because it wasn't natural. It inhibited movement. I was overthinking.

5.) Do Strive For Simplicity

Not over thinking on what was meant to be an academic essay seems counterintuitive. But when you think about it (but not too much, now), over-thinking doesnt mean your paper is complex, it means its confused. Some of the best papers or books Ive ever read are at their core simple, but become complex because of rigorous application or investigation of that simple idea. Just think of your favorite book, academic, novel, or otherwise. They all start from some simple premise. The Lord of the Rings is a huge masterpiece, but at its heart its about good and evil, friendship and loyalty, temptation, corruption, etc... These are all simple themes that then manifest in complex ways. Or take an obscure example: Aloys Grillmeier's multi-volume Christ in Christian Tradition or Behr's three volume history of early Christian theology both focus on a simple theme: who is Christ? Yet the history both cover through that theme are arrays of enormously complex proposed answers.

Hemingway once said "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." So I decided much like David, I needed to shed all the armor and move freely as myself. The armor metaphor was doubly apt: both because it represented the bulk slowing David down, and because, quite frankly, I was trying to protect myself by looking and sounding academic. But in the end, however good or bad my essay actually turned out, the confused and torturous landscape of prose I eventually managed to discard was just garbage getting in the way.

In fact a lot of it stemmed from the fact that I had abandoned what landed me this assignment in the first place. I went into this piece with the assumption that whatever I wrote before was not good enough for whatever I was about to write. This both caused me to freeze up, as I mentioned, and start giving undue thought to the form of my writing, but it also caused me to try and search for something that wasn't there. It gave me the impression that I had to look for some magisterial thesis, however chimerical it might be, in order to put it forward as an academic sounding opus. But the fact is, even if such complex things exist, they werent for me as a novice writer to trifle with. And at any rate, I was writing on Donald Miller (no offense Don, I like your books, but I think we can both agree the genre describing them is not "academic theology."). Coming back down to earth, however, I realized that what I had written on my blog post was actually moderately interesting, and could be developed. I had disagreed with a very simple faith/theology split that the Don seemed to be working with which had originally caused my bristles to, well, bristle. I had figured it too simple to be of any use in a real essay. But the more I looked at it, the more the simple theme wove in and out of all of his books. Finally I could set myself to writing something.

6.) Do Come Back Later

So after a few other torturous revisions, some great continual consultation by The Other Journal's editor, some rocking and muttering in dark corners, and a few final readings from friends, the essay was finished. I sent the final draft to Andrew, the editor, and that was it. The next day it was online, "published," (or whatever the digital approximation to that term is) and that was that. The article didnt get much response, of course. I dont even know how many people read it. In fact nearly the instant that it was published I felt embarrassed about it, because it had so much prior significance for myself and yet in the ultimate scheme of things it was really just a small, even a silly article. In fact the reason that I am writing reflections on it now, over a year later, is that I havent even looked at it since then. All I kept thinking and remembering over the course of the last year was the awful, convoluted mess that led up to the final draft. And my memory started to bleed that mess into the final draft itself. I had published that steamy turd I was worried about, I thought. Best to just let it fade away. Best just to not look at it again.

But I looked.

And...well, it wasn't as bad as I remembered. In fact, some of it was downright ok. I guess I didn't totally botch my first publication after all. But still, for next time (hopefully many other next-times), Ill know to stock up on aspirin first. And maybe some whiskey. It will be less painful that way. Like Hemingway wrote: "write drunk; edit sober."

Ordinary Christmas

2011-12-25T12:24:00.001-08:00

A well known philosopher once wrote that in his homeland insouthwestern Germany, there is a saying that when an event happens so long ago,it becomes no longer true. For Truth isnot merely an idea, a fact, but also its effect. An effect often lost, as Isaac Watts wrote inhis poem, because “time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away,they fly forgotten, as a dream . . .”

For Christians though, the problem is perhaps the reverse:that there is an event that is so true, it no longer really occurs. In ourseminars or colloquiums or cutting edge youth events with tattooed speakers anda properly coifed worship leader, we pine after a “relevant” faith—or evencruder of making faith relevant,whatever that means—yet we are always already too relevant now, it seems. Christmas is everywhere, murmured between lights, in tacky sweaters,Christmas carols, in the great roots of presents like the very shoulders of theearth holding the pine and tree-topping angel aloft by magnitude and manycolors. Where the wise Nietzsche spokeof Christianity’s utter “transvaluation,” of all antique values in the name ofsympathy, charity, forgiveness, grace, we speak now of these things with thebrusque impatience of one invoking domains of common sense proper. Ofcourse we are supposed to love others, even strangers, foreigners, thedisabled, the weak. Of course we can have hope in a future better than now, which makesnow possible.

The Nativity stands in the twilight, a truth so recognizableto be subsumed precisely in its comfortable and general familiarity; alien enoughto remain idiosyncratic in its particulars and at arms length. Christ became so True, we no longer have needof Him.

We forget by all earthly standards, this story makes God outto be an idiot. This is not an impiety,remember, but the very heart of prayer. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom; the weakness ofGod stronger than man’s strength.” (1 Cor. 1:25)

The world itself had been hewn from its proper course, tiltingnow and listing towards the nothingness from which God called it in all Hisglory and omnipotence. Iniquity? Rebellion? Violence? Yes. And the solution? In the face of our war machine and bloodbathsGod became this beautiful, fragile little hill of clay. To the cries yelling into the desolate skiesas questions of God’s presence, or whispered in the desperate and long watchesof night, God replied, “In a moment I will be with you, but it will be of adifferent kind.” Any analogous move in the business world would causestockholders to ask for a change in management. When you ask a CEO to act, he doesn’t usually become the janitor to doit. We asked for a king, and we got asuffering servant. In the slaughterbench of history we get—a God who cannot even control his own bowels for thefirst few years? A God whose nowgossamer eyes are the peering of an infant into an infinite empyrean sky, noteven recognizing the heavens as His own handiwork? Where we all hope against hell He eventuallyremembers what He came for?

God walked between the lights in the void; now he liesbetween the stench of animals and hay. And as Melito of Sardis wrote so long ago, eventually “he who hung thestars is himself hung upon the cross.”

But it has its own elegance, doesn’t it? I think any parent can tell you how the smallfingers of an infant, tender and pliant, whose grip like a small giant wrapsaround your fingers, can still any storm of life and put it in its place. And where we called for the act of a personlike us only much much bigger, thetrue Infinite said the answer was much, much smaller. It is not the devil who is in the details,but God. Where the act of our salvationis not the supernal but in the hope a child gives to a husband and wife.

And we sometimes lose this little light. We speak frequently (rightfully) of theIncarnation. That great mystery whereGod came near. And we all (at least, Ithink, those who took the time for a Christmas sermon) formally, and more or lessfirmly, believe in miracles. And soaccept the (still insane) notion of a virgin with child, born from the Spiritof God hovering over her; much like the Spirit hovered over the waters whenCreation commenced. But how many of us believe in a man and a woman stayingtogether despite a curious pregnancy? When all evidence screams infidelity? When a child cries into the light, shining through the dim and unknownas something not expected, and the husband says “It is alright. I will stay”? Where supernatural hope is also the renewed charge between lover’sglances? That God became man, in our American, “Christian,” culture, is amazingbut (seemingly) old news. That a man anda woman could stay together through hardship. Few events boast more credentials of a true miracle.

And in our age of security and secrets; of stealth anduncompromising method deposing amongst worldviews: who among us has seen agenuine act of the representatives of the religious paying their respects toanother religion? Let alone an enemy? But this is the very cause of the Wise Men whobring myrrh and frankincense and gold. The Babylonian astrologers came as someof the first believers. How much more should our American angsts beremedied to remember this, and Paul in Galatians: “There is neither Jew norGentile, neither slave nor free, male nor female, but you are all united inChrist.” (3:28)

And who among us has seen the resources of an empire broughtto its knees to search and destroy a child? To ask: my technology, my panopticon, my power—could a childdisplace it? Do I worry, amongst swordsand coups, about a child whose rumorwhispers of a remote power? Will an empire be undone by that little lump offlesh and tears? But Herod sent his menwith swords amongst the children. Goddemonstrated the futility of an empire even to stand against one child.

And so here we are on Christmas. God did not override theworld because what He wanted to redeem were not just great powers, butpersons. Persons who were already beingdepersonalized by big things. By empireand census and taxes and death and war and famine and plague and sin. We are here because God says “I will act andbecome small, so you who are small can act.” One little star amongst all the glowing flame of heaven announces him; the angelic host comes, sure, but to shepherds isolated in a dark wilderness; Christ lay in a manger instead of an inn, Bethlehem instead of anywhere else. Christmas is in the ordinary. It is in the ordinary where God's interruption to the world comes. Where the stars, for example, were thought to be fixed amongst their crystalline causeways, a tiny little rebel star appears, incalculable, unprecedented. The heavens are not fixed, it whispered. There is something new. Where the orders of empires held sway, a child defies them.

We do not need to abstract from the world to transcend to the truth ofthings; nor need our individuality and love and hope in all their complexitiesand irreplaceable little moments fear to become nothing because death and timebear us all away. Our ordinary life with all its extraordinarylittle beauties where paradoxically we so often do not feel the need for God, is preciselymade possible in its ordinariness by God Himself. In this one little person is the wedding oftime and eternity, where God Himself now stands as absurdly human before theworld so we who are human and absurd, with all of our little quirks and smilesand idiosyncrasies, do not have to be dissolved to be saved, but stand in allour particularity in relation to God who became a person among persons. As Karl Barth wrote

“The man who is God’s own Word, does not send forth His radiantlight from afar, encountering the “darkness” of other men as a king, hero orsage; but the Light that “shines in the darkness” is an ordinaryman and gives light to ordinary people. This is incomprehensible,and yet because of it revelation is real and the Christmas gospel is quitedifferent from both the sweet sadness and the false optimism of mere reverie.The Word of God is where we ourselves are, not where we should perhaps like tobe, on one of those heights to which by some luck and strong effort we mightattain; He is where we really are, whether we are king or beggar, in our torncondition in which we who face death appear–in the “flesh” …

KarlBarth. “The Word Made Flesh,” In Christmas. Translated byBernard Citron. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1959),12-13.

Original SIn?

2011-12-20T23:22:00.000-08:00

Few doctrines can send a person into an atheist scented explosion of hurt feelings and (not unjust) anti-religious sentiment like Original Sin. And to be honest, even as a Christian I cant say I blame them. It seems to violate the principle that people can be responsible only for acts done by themselves or with consent. Often the Bible itself records expressions of outrage. A particularly funny version is "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth stand on edge." (Jer. 31:29; Ezk. 18:2) Ever since Augustine's famous interpretation of Romans 5:12, Adam and Eve became history's worst case of douchebaggery on record, like that coworker of yours who steals the one clearly labeled and off-limit lunch in the fridge, only in this case the guy doesn't just burgle a delicious pastrami-and-havarti-with-deli-mustard-and-pickle sandwich, but also damns all of mankind. Its sort of like finding out that some relative of yours had the misfortune to acquire a debt just the right amount of time after writing had been invented so that both dice and bookies could exist, and then ten thousand years later some jerk with a ridiculously huge abacus (that can somehow calculate egregious amounts of compound interest) comes to you to collect while you, unsuspecting, are rummaging in the fridge for that lost, oh so delicious sandwich of yours.

But I digress.

But what if original sin in some sense stands on a mistranslation? One of the fascinating differences between Eastern and Western Christianity circles precisely around two different interpretations of Romans 5:12. The passage reads: "As sin came into the world through one man, and through sin, death, so death spreads to all men because all men have sinned." In this passage the major issue of translation for Augustine came down to the final part, which was translated into Latin as in quo omnes peccaverunt or "in whom [i.e. in Adam] all men have sinned." Yet this stands in a somewhat remarkable contrast to the Greek e˙f∆ wˆ— pa¿nteß h¢marton, which cannot really bear that meaning. At all. e˙f∆ w can simply mean "because," so the end of the verse would read "because all men sin," making the concept of original sin moot because everyone is guilty not due to Adam (and Eve) but because everyone, in fact, are themselves sinners. However, the Eastern Orthodox take a slightly different interpretation. The e˙f∆ w itself can be a "neuter," pronoun--in which case we could translate it as just "because."

However it is possible (and the majority of Patristic theology stands behind this) to interpret the wˆ— as masculine, in which case it refers to the directly antecedent substantive qa¿natoß (death). The translation that most Patristic theologians took, and which is the almost exclusive path taken by Eastern Orthodoxy today, thus renders the passage: "As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men; and because of death, all men have sinned." Thus "Mortality or corruption or simply death (understood in a personalized sense), has indeed been viewed, since Christian antiquity, as a cosmic disease which holds humanity under its sway, both spiritually and physically." (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology 144f). Which doesnt let Adam and Eve off the hook for our predicament. But what we "inherit," from them is not guilt, but a corruption. Still hard to swallow for those generally inclined to not believe a Christian orientation of things anyway, but the difference is actually quite palpable. We sin not because we are already guilty creatures, but because of the angst of our mortality. Material goods like food and drink and other needs become, not merely items of communion amongst one another, but necessary and scarce resources needing aggregation to individuals for personal survival. Mortality is thus the driving source of conflict. That is to say, we might not be guilty in Adam (whatever that might mean) but the general human condition of finitude and death is itself a palpable drive toward malificence.

To me this has always made much more sense than the "forensic," sense of imputed guilt. It manifestly plays on the concept of ontology and so clearly produces the picture that sin is not just an arbitrary decision on God's part. Since God is the Creator and Sustainer, any break from Him is also a movement toward non-being, a movement toward attempting to secure onesself (but knowing one will ultimately fail). Hence mortality becomes the driving force to apprehend finite resources for ones self and ones kin as opposed to the general "other."

Whereas the imputation in terms of guilt seems wholly arbitrary (even if legal terms are often used in the Bible) the ontological sense of anxiety and the desperate quest for survival links up quite "naturally," (pun intended) to the world as we know it.

Gregory Palamas on Essence and Energy

2011-12-15T18:48:00.001-08:00

This is an excerpt from my last paper for the Medieval Theology independent study course I did, which I will write about as a whole in a different post. Our last paper was a reading report on Gregory Palamas. We read The Triads and had to reflect on a few topics within it. I chose trying to figure out the notorious distinction Gregory (following more or less the Eastern Tradition as a whole) posited between God's "essence," and God's "energies." Enjoy!

Ifthe texts attributed to Palamas are indeed all the work of his hand, then it isquite likely that no one will ever be able convincingly to explain what Palamasmeant by the distinction of essence and energies in God, since it is not clearthat Palamas himself knew what he meant.

--DavidBentley Hart[1]

Itperhaps goes without saying that the pragmatic and often anti-intellectualistzeal of much of contemporary Christianity would find itself with anunexpectedly very awkward conversation partner should they be stuck in a roomtalking to Gregory Palamas. The conversationwould begin well enough. Pleasantries wouldbe exchanged. Maybe a few passingremarks on how odd it was that they all had—somehow—come to be locked in a roomtogether. “This feels a littleartificial,” one might remark, “like its just some pretext for somethingelse.” A few would nod in agreement orshrug their shoulders, and the subject would quickly be dropped, never to bementioned again. And at the firstallusion to the name of Christ, genial interaction would commence.

Andthe conversation would probably proceed for a bit without halter, trading onmany equivocations born both from the dialogue habits of strangers, and thedifference era, geography, and culture can play with the modes of commonvocabulary (assuming we can extend the implausibility of this scenario just abit more and just suppose by some miracle Gregory now speaks English). So Gregory could say to the pragmatic,anti-intellectual Christians (prefaced with a deep, drawn out sigh), “I’mhaving troubles with a philosopher friend of mine. He just doesn’t understand that Christianityis all about union with Christ.” Towhich the pragmatists would nod their heads vigorously, replying,“Exactly! That’s exactly what we’resaying. Christianity isn’t abouttheology or philosophy, its just about loving Christ and loving others.” At which point another in the room would say,“It is just so refreshing to know our God’s essence is love.” And it is at this point in the story, withthe words know and essence still lingering in the air,where many of the pleasantries stop as Gregory, rising from his seat, replies(beginning with a quote from Maximus Confessor):

“God infinitely transcends theseparticipable virtues an infinite number of times.” In other words, He infinitely transcends . .. goodness, holiness, and virtue . . . thus neither the uncreated goodness, northe eternal glory, nor the divine life, nor things akin to these are simply the superessential essence ofGod, for God transcends them all as Cause. (95)

Perhapsrecomposing himself after this outburst, looking with a bit of concern at themental hernias spreading like plague across the room, Gregory quickly adds, “but, we say He is life, goodness and soforth, and give Him these names, because of the revelatory energies and powersof the Superessential.” (95) But of course at that point it is too late,his interlocutors no doubt now lie strewn about the floor in befuddlement (somepossibly in coma), and the rest of us are now left with the seemingly hopelesstask of clarifying the elusive distinctions of essence and energies in God.

Beforewe plunge into the technicalities, we musnt forget the point of this wholeexercise is to reveal the very fissure that opened up between Barlaam andPalamas, and that to say Christianity is all about following Christ is notreally to decide the matter of what Christianity means. Whereas Barlaam, muchlike our somewhat hapless pragmatists, was more akin to believing that the trueChristian life was merely about a sort of mimetic imitation of Christ, given tous as signs, Palamas saw Christianity as participationin Christ, and ultimately the Trinitarian life of God Himself. Thus Barlaam says “this light [of Christ onMount Tabor] was a sensible light, visible through the medium of the air,appearing to the amazement of all and then at once disappearing. One calls it ‘divinity’ because it is asymbol of divinity.” (72-73). In thissense, the Superessential God remains utterly beyond, apart from us and withoutand above participation. A sorted of created, deictic signpost substituting forthe thing itself. Yet Palamas considers this, not just linguistic nonsense, butthe very undermining of the Gospel itself:

What a novel opinion! How can onespeak of a sensible and created divinity which lasts only a day . . .Can this[light] be the divinity which (without ever being the true divinity [as Barlaamargues]) triumphed over that venerable flesh akin to God? . . . what do you sayto this? Is it to such a divinity thatthe Lord will be united, and in which He will triumph for endless ages? And will God be all in al for us, as theapostles and Fathers proclaim, when in the case of Christ, divinity will bereplaced by sensible light? . . . .Why in the Age to Come should we have moresymbols of this kind, more mirrors, more enigmas? Will the vision face-to-face remain still inthe realm of hope? For indeed if even inheaven there are still to be symbols, mirrors, enigmas, then we have beendeceived in our hopes, deluded by sophistry; thinking that the promise willmake us acquire the true divinity, we do not even gain a vision ofdivinity. A sensible light replacesthis, whose nature is entirely foreign to God! (73)

Tobegin to pry this opinion of Barlaam apart Palamas begins to repeat a dilemma: “Howcan this light be a symbol, and if it is, how can it be called divinity? For the drawing of a man is not humanity, noris the symbol of an angel the nature of an angel.” (73) And goes on, “every symbol derives from thenature of the object of which it is a symbol, or belongs to an entirelydifferent nature. Thus when the sun isabout to rise, the dawn is a natural symbol of its light, and similarly heat isa nature symbol of the burning power of fire.” (75) Palamas then uses a veryinteresting word: symbols of the same nature as that signified are “connatural.” The word itself is reminiscent of the vocabularyused in Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz notes both “connatural,” and “concurrent,” areused by the brothers, borrowed as concepts from earlier philosophy, to indicatewhere “two [or more] items stand in a necessary relationship, such that if oneexists, so does the other.” And“Simplicius [for example] says that ‘at the same time that the fire came to be,it possessed upward movement as concurrent with its substance.’”[2] Thus while we did not have access to theGreek of Palamas’ text, it is nonetheless telling that Palamas uses a similarexample of fire and heat alongside the term translated into English as“connatural” (75, 79), thus suggesting the similarity to Radde-Gallwitz’ analysis.

Palamasseems to affirm this further as he writes, “So a natural symbol alwaysaccompanies the nature which gives them being, for the symbol is natural tothat nature.” Thus “if the light ofThabor is a symbol, it is either a natural or a non-natural one. If the latter, then it either has its ownexistence, or is a phantom without subsistence. But if it is merely an insubstantial phantom, then Christ never reallywas, is or will be such as He appeared on Thabor,” (75). And if it is not aphantom but has independent existence, “separate from the nature of He Whom itsignifies, of Whom it is only a symbol—then let [he who argues this] show whereand of what kind this reality is, which is shown by experience to beunnaproachable . . .” (77) The argumentappearing to be that if this supposedly created light is shown to beunnaproachable (as Gregory shows) then it would be equal in unnaproachabilityto the uncreated God. But of course thisis absurd, so their connatural continuity must be accepted.

Thusa first step has been taken to understand a bit about the energies. They are “connatural,” with God—that is,necessary corollaries to the superessential nature of God, and not somethingcreated. Gregory imparts anotherclue. They are “enhypostatic,” a termthat perhaps makes us feel we have taken two steps back and only oneforward. It appears that Gregory usesthe term to indicate both that theuncreated light of God “has permanence and stability,” (78) and to signify negatively that it is notidentical to the essence, as he is so fond of repeating. This is a sort of tantalizing suggestion,given the significance of the term hypostatic. It appears only in hints and fragments, but the energies of God asmanifestations appear as corollaries to God’s “personal” encounter with us,which is to say despite “energies,” being quite impersonal sounding, that theyare enhypostatic indicates they aremeant to be a tool to describe personalactivity, that is, the energies only “have permanence and stability,” in the hypostases of the Father, Son andSpirit (i.e. enhypostatic can be glossed: the energies are hypostatic only inparticipating in—en—the hypostases ofthe Trinity). Gregory gives us severalclues of this. For example:

Perhaps [Barlaam] will say it is‘through the essence’ that God is said to possess all these powers in Himselfin a unique and unifying manner. But, inthe first place, it would be necessary to call this reality ‘God’ for such isthe term we have received from the Church. When God was conversing with Moses, He did not say ‘I am the essence,’but ‘I am the One Who is.’ Thus it isnot the One Who is who derives from the essence, but essence which derives fromHim, for it is He who contains all being in Himself. (98)

And earlier Palamaswrites, “These, then, are the essential powers; as to the

Superessential . . . that is theReality which possesses these powers and gathers them into unity in itself.”(81) The energies have a sort ofcoherence brought about by God as Subject (hypostasis). John Zizioulas has a helpful commentregarding the Cappadocians that appears to be helpful here as well:

D. Wendebourg assumes too quickly .. .that, because the Cappadocian Fathers distinguished between the essence andthe energies of God and declared the impossibility of passing beyond them tothe divine ousia, they automaticallyexcluded the hypostases from direct involvement in human history. Such an assumption seems to overlook theinsistence of the Cappadocians not only on the distinction between essence andenergy, but also on that between essence and hypostasis. This allows them to keep the essence of Godbeyond direct contact with the world while bringing the hypostases into such acontact. It is at this point that Idisagree with Lossky and the Neopalamites, who tend to exhaust God’ssoteriological work with the divine energies and undermine the involvement ofthe divine persons in salvation.[3]

WhileZizioulas cautions against interpreting Palamas and the Cappadocians in thesame way, I think it is nonetheless acceptable, given the evidence justpresented, to affirm at least something similar is happening in Palamas. The energies are enhypostatic manifestationsof God, and as such are a grammar meant to display our ontological and personalparticipation in a personal though transcendent God, even if some of this sensemay get a little lost amongst Gregory’s lengthy focus on the energy/essencedistinction.

Thisleads into the nature of that distinction itself, which will also elaborate onthe distinction between the Cappadocians and Palamas that Zizioulas was hintingat. What sense can we make of thedistinction? While utilizing biblicalterms like energeia, the difference nonetheless at first glanceseems contrived. Yet Vladimir Losskyhelpfully gives the summary that it is a distinction born from the necessity tohold in tension that “God. . .is at the same time totally inaccessible andreally communicable to created beings,” and “neither of these terms [can be] excludedor minimized in any way.”[4] It is in other words, as we saw above, adevice necessary to ensure both thatwe can participate in God, and that it is indeed the transcendent God in whom we participate. Yet this is not the only antinomy. Another, elaborated by Lossky:

What is the nature of therelationship by which we are able to enter union with the Holy Trinity? If we were able at a given moment to beunited to the very essence of God andto participate in it even in the very least degree, we should not at the momentbe what we are, we should be God bynature. God would no longer beTrinity but myrihypostatos or‘myriads of hypostases’; for He would have as many hypostases as there would bepersons participating in His essence. God is and therefore remains inaccessible in his essence. But can it be said that it is one of thethree Persons that we enter intounion? This would be the hypostaticunion proper to the Son alone, in whom God becomes man . . .[5]

Whilethis could be something of a false way to state the problem (as we saw withZizioulas’ distaste for Lossky’s “neo-Palamism,”) it nonetheless does seem tobe generally helpful to understand the thought process of Gregory. The onlyoption, of course, is that we participate in God via God’s energies. However this “third” option is mitigatedslightly by the fact (which Lossky either overlooks or does not considerimportant) that, as we have seen, the energies are enhypostatic and are fullyexpressive of, even if not identical with, the divine essence and persons.

Whichbrings us to a point that we will close with. Just what, exactly, are the energies then? Palamas is adamant that 1.) they are notcreated (97 et al) 2.) They are enhypostatic. 3.) They are as we have seen “connatural,” expressions of God’s essence4.) They “are numerous . . . but in no way diminish the notion of simplicity .. . [nor] cause any detriment to the simple nature of God.” (78). Right away this list as it stands so far canrule out conceptualism, which is to say the energies cannot really be likenedto be multiple only in our conceptionof them. Yet how do they not violate simplicity? For energies appear in Palamas to besomething different that essence and differentfrom each other. Yet Palamas insists onsimplicity being upheld. Indeed in anodd way Palamas has to count on simplicity to assure the continuity ofessence/energy in order to maintain the very purpose of the distinction: ourtrue participation in the truly transcendent God. What is to be made of the claim to theintegrity of simplicity then?

Palamas gives no extended argument, and indeed either doesnot really see this as a problem or considers the few examples he does give tobe sufficient for his purposes. Particularly interesting is if we go back to his discussion ofconnatural signs. Heat, for example, isa connatural sign of fire—it is its energy, so to speak. Heat is simultaneous the connatural sign offire, while nonetheless being conceptually distinct from it. In modern logic this is what is known as a“modal property,” which is to say formally distinguishable concepts whichnonetheless constitute a single continuous object. Modal properties are taken from Aristoteliantheories of hylomorphism, or objects as compounds of matter and form. Consider a bronze statue of Athena. On the one hand, it would appearthat we must recognize at least two material objects in the regionoccupied by the statue. For presumably the statue cannot survive the process ofbeing melted down and recast whereas

the lump of bronze can. On the other hand, our ordinarycounting practices lead us to recognize only one material object. Given that Palamas fairly directly links thisidea of an energy and sign connatural to nature and applies it to God, it issafe to say that the energies are somethinglike modal properties of the essence. We can quote Gregory here to see the parallel: “The capacity of fire toburn, which has as its symbol the heat accessible to the senses, becomes itsown symbol, for it is always accompanied by this heat, yet remains a singleentity, not undergoing any duplication; but it always uses heat as its naturalsymbol, whenever an object capable of receiving heat presents itself.” (79)

This leadsto two more interesting observations on just what we can make of this mindjarring distinction. The first isthe non-duplication of the nature in the connatural sign. The fire does not undergo duplication in theheat, its natural sign, but remains a single thing. This is the nature of a modal property. Gregory himself says as much: “Even if weaffirm that this energy is inseparable from the unique divine essence, theSuperessential is not for that reason composite; without doubt, no simpleessence would exist if it were so, for on would search in vain for a naturalessence without energy” (82) i.e. even normal non-superessential natures arenot rendered asunder by their various energies, a fortiori God is not less of a unity because of His energies. It also indicates that the properties of the energeia do not have what Frege calls“sortal characteristics,” that is, in naming the property one has not alsonamed the logical conditions in which that property could be quantified ornumbered. Which is to say in naming thecriterion of identity of an energy (i.e. Palamas’ list: “inaccessible,immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal . . .” – p.80) we have not therebyalso listed the conditions which would enumerate each as non-compossible withthe others. Each “de-nominates” aquality without “de-lineating” it, so to speak.

Hypothetically,one could imagine Palamas saying that multiple (indeed, infinite) energeia do not violate simplicity becausethere is no criterion possible in which one could “turn them againsteachother,” so to speak. Each energeiais coextensive with the essence, even if the term is not identical to the essence. Palamas has an affinity to this way of putting it even if he does notquite word it so: “But since God is entirely present in each of the divineenergies we name Him from each of them [i.e. each are coextensive with Hisessence] although it is clear He transcends them [i.e. they are not identicalto the essence]” (96). Radde-Gallwitz notes a similar distinction in Gregory ofNyssa where Nyssa deals with plurality and simplicity by noting that “goods areonly limited by their opposite,” i.e. none of these modal properties areopposites of the other, therefore none limit the other and each, even ifvarious, are all nonetheless coextensive with the essence, even if none arelogically identical with it. To theseRadde-Gallwitz gives the name “propria,” of the essence. “Propria strictly speaking are neitheraccidental nor predicated in answer to ‘what is it?’ They are inherent in natures and necessarilyso, without being definitional.”[6] He cites Porphyry’s use of the term propria in relation to humans andlaughter. Man is the animal that laughsand each are coextensive: if man, then laughter, if laughter, then man. But laughter does not answer the question:“what is man?”

Andso we see at least a hint of how their multiplicity does not interfere withsimplicity. But there is anotherhint. Modal properties only displaytheir multiplicity in an exterior relation. Heat may be a connatural sign for fire, but unless there is a body toheat, heat will never manifest itself (Palamas says so explicitly onp.89). He applies this analogy andtransfers it to Deification, one of the energies. “Deification is likewise everywhere ineffablepresent in the essence and inseparable from it, as its natural power. But just as one cannot see fire, if there isno matter to receive it, nor any sense organ capable of perceiving its luminousenergy, in the same way one cannot contemplate deification if there is nomatter to receive the divine manifestation.” (89) And earlier Palamas notes:“for as St. Basil tells us, he alone knows the energies of the Spirit who haslearnt of them through experience.”(87) To this catenae we might add: “In the first place, that essence is one,even though the rays are many, and aresent out in a manner appropriate to those participating in them, beingmultiplied according the varying capacityof those receiving them.” (99). Thuswhile Palamas insists the energeia are uncreated, he also appears to onoccasion speak of their multiplicity as manifest only from our standpoint ofexperience of them. Thus themultiplicity of the modal properties, while always connatural qualities of theessence, nonetheless perform specific functions only in relation to finitecreation and humans, who can only interact with one or another modal propertyat a given time. Just as when I burn myhand with fire: the unity of fire is not compromised, though I am beingaffected by one particular modal aspect, namely heat.

[1] David Bentley Hart, “The Hidden and the Manifest:Metaphysics After Nicaea,” in OrthodoxReadings of Augustine ed. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos(New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 212n.39.

[2] Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of DivineSimplicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 160.

[3] John Zizioulas, Communionand Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York:T&T Clark, 2006), 138-139n.80.

[4] Vladimir Lossky, TheMystical Theology of the Eastern Church (New York: St. Vladimir’s SeminaryPress, 1976), 68.

[5] Ibid., 70.

[6] Radde-Gallwitz, DivineSimplicity, 201.

Memory and Apocalypse

2011-11-20T15:05:00.001-08:00

I always enjoy making seemingly random connections between things (and as a completely unrelated sidenote, I really wish I was British so I could spell it connexions, which is just so much more satisfying for some reason). Talking to a friend of mine who is a psychologist (no, Im not crazy) we got on the topic of what he called "Troxler's fade." The fade was discovered by a man with the supervillain-esque name Ignaz Troxler in 1804. The theory refers to a phenomenological or visual/perceptual effect when one focuses too much on a single point, stimulus along the peripheral of your vision begins to fade. So the theory goes, our brains are wired to allow unvarying stimulus to disappear, essentially so we can get on with our lives without getting our poor brains beaten to a pulp by swarms of unrelenting data, and then go crazy. This is a theory analogous to how the brain processes information, and why forms of Autism manifest as they do. Normal brains process information by super-rapidly organizing what is and what is not important to remember. Which is why we are usually better at keeping big picture ideas rather than the minutia of lists. On the other hand Autistic brains to varying degrees lose this "filter," and absorb everything. This generates things like the "Rain Man" effect where you have a hyper-intelligent individual super conscious of minutia, but who has a more difficult time processing things like metaphor or understanding the nuances of social interaction.

At any rate, I havent really thought this through at all but I think there is a curious parallel between the Troxler fade and how Apocalyptic categories affect us. One of the interesting adjectives always used of Apocalyptic is that God "interrupts," our normal life. Or in Barth's terms of his Commentary on Romans, God's Word leaves a "crater" where we can see the negative space of its impact even if we cannot conceptualize the content of the "hole," itself. You can see this theme brilliantly in various ways: again Barth's concept of the Word of God and the dialectical event of Revelation, Bultmann's moment of being confronted and opened to the future by proclamation, Moltmann's earlier theology of Hope that "eschatologized" Barth's word-event (thought actually in the Theology of Hope Moltmann is critical of the category "Apocalyptic," itself), Jüngel in God as the Mystery of the World has an interesting synthesis and development of Barth and Ebeling (and others Im sure) in that the Word-which-is-not-present nonetheless addresses us and pulls us toward the future. In others you can see this theme through the elaboration of ecstasis, that is, the going-outward-from-onesself, again in various more or less successful conceptualizations; in Rahner as the transcendental horizon of consciousness, in Zizioulas the ecstasis occurs in the eucharistic communion, in Pannenberg it occurs through the Spirit as an anthropological phenomenon summarized by the event of Christ. And on and on.

If one can generalize the Troxler fade, we can say it has several analogies to apocalyptic revelation: God in the apocalyptic act reorients and causes a "flash" which breaks the ordinary we have become numb to and which has faded. It does this both by super-ceding what has come before, but also by re-organizing the given and making it New. Thus, we so prone to forget and ignore the old are called again to awareness to the movements of God. Thus apocalypse is not only an "interruption" but an act of memory, a reminder, an anamnesis, and even a repentance, a metanoia or a changing of one's mind. it causes us to see "Easter in ordinary," to shamelessly steal the title of Lash's book. We can see this in the biblical language used: the dialectic between the heavens "being torn open," (as when Christ is baptized) and the heavens always-already "standing open," which is normally unperceived (as in Revelations). The breaking-forth of God's apocalyptic "interruption," is not just a scission forever separating new from old; but it is the forever New which makes New as well: it literally "changes our mind," about the true nature of the ordinary, causing that which has faded to flash forth in newness and its glorious and ordinary weight.

Gregory of Nyssa on Celebrities

2011-11-18T18:56:00.001-08:00

"Our greatest protection is self-knowledge, and to avoid the delusion that we are seeing ourselves when we are in reality looking at something else. This is what happens to those who do not scrutinize themselves. What they see is strength, beauty, reputation, political power, abundant wealth, pomp, self-imporance, bodily stature, a certain grace of form or the like, and they think this is what they are. Such persons make very poor guardians of themselves; because of their absorption in what is foreign to them, they over look what is proper to the reality of their identity, and leave it unguarded."

Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. 2 in Cantum Canticorum 6: 66.4-5

Humanity is that Creature that Laughs

2011-11-17T20:27:00.001-08:00

"They divide property into four: what is an accident of a certain species alone, even if not of it all (as doctoring or doing geometry [is said] of man); what is an accident of all the species, even if not of it alone (as being biped of man); what holds of it alone and of all of it and at some time (as growing grey in old age of man); and fourthly, where 'alone and all and always' coincide (as laughing (to gelastikon) of man). For even if man does not always laugh, he is said to be laughing not in that he always laughs but in that he is of such a nature (pephukenai) as to laugh--and this holds of him always, being conatural (sumphuton), like neighing (to chremetistikon) of horses. And they say that these are properties in the strict sense, because they convert: if human, laughing; and if laughing, human."

--Porphyry, Eisagoge 12.13-21

Argumentum Ornithologicum

2011-11-16T20:00:00.001-08:00

I think one of the most under-rated things about theology is the humor. While certainly not a constant laugh-factory, theologians can be a surprisingly witty bunch. Thus I have loose plans for a series tentatively (and groan worthily) titled TheoLOLogy (sorry it was literally the first thing that popped into my head. Better ideas? Let me know).

For the inaugural post in this series I present what was read to our independent study class in Medieval theology the same day we were studying Anselm's Ontological Argument. This is an excerpt from Jorges Louis Borges, an author that I (lamentably) had never read before, and the piece is entitled "Ornithological Argument." Enjoy!

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second or perhaps less; I dont know how many birds I saw. Were they a definite or an indefinite number? This problem involves the question of the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because how many birds I saw is known to God. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because nobody was able to take count. In this case, I saw fewer than ten birds (let's say) and more than one; but I did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, but not nine eight seven six five, etc. That number, as a whole number, is inconceivable; ergo God exists.
-Jorges Louis Borges, excerpted from The Maker p.29

The Monstrosity of Christ

2011-10-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

I had a moment today when I walked by a homeless man who was, so to say, unpleasant. In both odor and appearance he was haggard, unbathed, unbalanced; he had a weatherworn beard and skin like some flayed, cracked leather that had long existed in surrender under the heel of the sun.

He was missing most of his teeth except for a few, so worn from malnourishment and a hard life, little broken gravestones.

And he stank as if he had never heard of water.

And he heaved and moaned, shriveled over as he walked, like a plant born from dry ground.

And my first reaction was a strange mixture of pity and revulsion. And I remembered that verse that says what you do unto the least of these, you do unto Christ Himself.

Christ Himself.

And then in horror and as a reflex, a sense of my own superiority over this man, no matter how I tried to forget it, to banish it like an unwanted ghost, fell upon me.

And I remembered Isaiah, where he said the Christ had no beauty or majesty to attract us, and I thought to myself

Self, I said, what if this was in fact Christ? And I met his harrowed, yellow eyes.

What if Christ looked like this, no elegance, no form of beauty.

Would you have believed in Him?

And what would you have said, what would you have done lingering before his monstrous form upon the cross, I said to myself.

I would have yelled at him to come down, to be the god I would want myself to be.

The man whom I, a good citizen, thought was executed as a criminal outside the city gates, discarded like refuse, would I have believed if someone told me He was God?

God came in sweat and puss, in frailty from the dark corners of forgotten swaths of earth, and I would not have believed.

I stood stunned.

I had approached the vagrant like a mountain piteous of the valleys below, offering to them shade, strength. But now he loomed before me like the very scandal of Christ.

And his frailty unhinged my heart.

Aquinas on the Simplicity of God

2011-10-18T21:50:00.001-07:00

The following is an excerpt from a small reflection essay for my Medieval theology course tomorrow. We each were assigned aspects of Thomas Aquinas' theology, and I got Divine Simplicity. Enjoy!

Simplicity, if misconstrued, can become a fairly ironicmoniker for God. In the introduction tohis beautiful biography of Thomas Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton wrote, reminiscingthat “A lady I knew picked up a book of selections from St. Thomas, with acommentary; and began hopefully to read a section with the innocent heading, The Simplicity of God. She then laid the book down with a sigh andsaid: ‘Well, if that’s His simplicity, I wonder what His complexity is like.’”[1]

Simplicityis the doctrine that there is, roughly speaking, no composition of any kind inGod. He is not made up of more basic“bits,” nor is he an amalgamation of parts, nor can he be divided, nor is hemade up of matter at all. At first blushthis doctrine seems esoteric and abstruse, a ghost or relic wandering the aridscholastic wastes. Indeed it has alwayshad a litany of critics. In our owncentury it has fallen by the wayside. Particularly acidic are the comments of Emil Brunner and KarlBarth. Says Brunner, “Anyone who knowsthe history of the development of the doctrine of God in ‘Christian’theology…will never cease to marvel at the unthinking way in which theologiansadopted the postulates of philosophical speculation…and at the amount of harm thishas done the ‘Christian’ doctrine of God,”; and perhaps even harsher thoughless verbose, Barth inhis Dogmatics claimed that Simplicity “was... exalted to the all-controlling principle, the idol ... devouring everythingconcrete.”[2]

On inspection, however, it would bedifficult (or, impossible) to accuse Aquinas of merely applying simplicity“unthinkingly,” though without the pejorative connotations Barth seems at leastpartially correct that it could indeed be seen as a controlling principle inAquinas’ thought. In fact Jay WesleyRichards notes that along the course of Aquinas’ thought Simplicity pushesfurther and further toward the front of his works, until it receives its finalposition front and center at the beginning of Q. 3 in the prima pars of the SummaTheologia, suggesting perhaps that the more he thought about it, the moreAquinas considered it of the utmost importance.[3]

Simplicity should not be consideredas merely one among the many attributes of God, however. Having established the plausibility of God’sexistence, at the beginning of Q.3 Aquinas notes “now it can be shown how Godis not, by denying of Him whatever is unfitting to Him—namely composition,motion, and the like. Thereby we must discussHis simplicity, whereby we deny composition in Him…” Thus David Burrell notes that Simplicity, farfrom being an attribute, acts morelike a “formal feature,” of divinity, in which it actually defines the manner in which properties may be spoken of God.”[4] Thus we might say Simplicity is both a matterof ontology and epistemology. It is a diagnostic tool that aids us inanswering “what is God?” (a question Chesterton records that a young Aquinaswas famous for pestering his professors with) and “what is it to speak and knowGod?”

Brunner’s additional comment thatsimplicity is merely a (fallacious) importation from philosophy as anencroachment into properly “biblical,” theology, could hardly be further fromthe truth, and he probably couldn’t have gotten away with such a statementexcept that it reflected the general prejudice of his age regarding metaphysics. Here the pejorative connotation contained inBarth’s “all controlling principle,” breaks down as well. For Aquinas the discussion on simplicity,while of course employing philosophy, is never an a priori deductive axiom foisted upon scripture like an iron cage,but is primarily a device to properly interpret scripture itself.

Before getting into the bulk of hisarguments we immediately get a sense of simplicity as a hermeneutical tool forstatements about God in the very first article in III. He asks: “Whether God is a body?” and thefive points of evidence for God having a body are scriptural: God is spoken ofas three dimensional (higher than heaven, deeper than hell, etc…); everythingthat has a figure is a body, and it seems since man was made in God’s image, He must have a figure and ergo abody; whatever is corporeal is or has a body, and God is said to have arms,eyes, right hand, etc…; posture belongs to a body alone, yet Isaiah said he sawthe Lord sitting…; only bodies can be referenced by local terms, and we areexhorted to “come to the Lord,” et al. And while Aquinas’ answers are philosophical, we are here dealing with avery pertinent interpretive issue on how literal to take these descriptors.[5]

He answers: on the contrary, God isSpirit. So automatically theintroduction into the discussion on Simplicity isn’t about the mereintroduction of an alien principle, but arrives as a heuristic which isimplicitly guiding us to organize which scriptures interpret which. Because it is not immediately obvious that“spirit” means “not a body,” in this sense. Aquinas continues in the first and second replies (which are largelyparallel) that God cannot be a body because “no body is in motion unless it beput in motion,” and secondly “because the fist being must by necessity be inact, and no way in potency,” but “every body is a potency, [per the first replythat every body moves only when put in motion]” thus God cannot be a body. And Aquinas replies to the various scripturesby noting “Holy Writ puts before us spiritual and divine things under thelikenesses of corporeal things. Hencewhen it attributes to God the three dimensions…it designates His virtualquantity [i.e. His power, excellence, majesty, etc…].”

Aquinas goes on in article two ofquestion 3 to investigate whether then God is a composite of “matter andform.” Here there are some interestingobservations. Aquinas answers that Godcannot be such a composition because “everything composed of matter and form isgood through its form,” but God is not good throughanything but is Himself theGOOD. “Hence it is impossible that Godis matter and form.” Yet this does not leave God “amorphous,”so to speak, Aquinas makes an intriguing suggestion: Every agent acts by itsform, and its manner of form determines the type of agent it is. God is primarily and essentially an agent as actus purus and is thus in His essence a Form,[6] and not a composite ofmatter and form. Why? Because as we have seen for Aquinas matter isinert; if God were composite there would be a “delay” in His absolute actionand God would be less Himself.

We can understand this better byturning to the third article. “WhetherGod is the Same as His Essence or Nature?” Here it behooves us to quote Aquinas’ complex reasoning at length:

God is the same as His essence ornature. To understand this, it must benoted that in things composed of matter and form, the nature or essence mustdiffer from the suppositum [i.e. the material expression of the nature],because the essence or nature comprises in itself only what is included in the definition of the species: as,humanity comprises in itself all that is included in the definition of man…nowindividual matter, with all its individualizing accidents, is not included in the definition ofspecies. One of the elements in this …isthat what is one and simple can be represented only by many things. And so there comes about in these effectscomposition, which renders suppositum distinct from the nature in them. For this flesh, these bones, this blackness,this whiteness, etc…are not included in the definition of a man. Therefore this flesh, these bones andaccidents designating this matter, are not included in humanity.

This is what Rudi Te Veld calls theprinciple of the “non-identity”[7] which runs through everycreated, composite thing. You and I donot “express,” or “enact” ourselves purely, because our composite form allowsthe accumulation of accidents which “delay” and hide any “pure” expression ofwho were are (thus for example a stutter while proclaiming your love to someonecan ruin the message and dilute the purity of self-expression, etc..) In otherwords who we are is always expressed through a medium not strictly part of thedefinition of ourselves (I am not my bones, in Aquinas’ language) and in sodoing an interval of “not myself,” piggybacks upon every self-expression.Moreover as we are a composite of matter and form in order to “explain,” and “identify,”ourselves we have to take a conceptual step back in order to identify ourconstituent parts: thus in a sense who were are has to be reduced to the morebasic parts of our composition. “Whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by theprinciples of that essence…or by some exterior agent—as heat is caused in waterby fire…therefore a thing whos being differs from its essence must have itsbeing caused by another.” (I.Q3.a4) Butthis is not so with God; without composition, God is the explanation for God,and God is the expression for God. Godexpresses God purely, without the delay of a filter or medium.

Moreover, Aquinas continues inarticle 5, God cannot be complex because God is not a genus. That is to say thereis no genus “Divinity,” of which Godis merely an example. This is because“in the intellect, genus is prior to what it contains, but nothing is prior toGod either really or in the intellect. Therefore God is not in any genus.” If there was a genus“Divinity,” God would fall under the principle of “non-identity” we justencountered: for if he were merely an exemplar of the Genus there would have tobe some individuating principle the genus became composite with (be it matter,or whatever) that specified and located God as an species apart from theuniversality of the Genus. But in doingso God becomes not only composite but an impure expression of Himself and,given the “Five Ways” of Aquinas, where God must be the self-existentbeginning, not God at all, in fact. Rather “God is the principle of all being, therefore He is not containedin any genus as its principle.”

By the same reasoning there can beno “accidents” (i.e. non-essential) qualities in God, because all subjectsprone to accidents relate to them as potency relates to act. What Aquinas means by this is that ouridentities are in a real way bound up within the accidents of our life (againwe go back to we can have no “pure” expression of ourselves unmediated byaccidents). But there can be no potencyin God, and therefore no accidents (I.Q3.a.6).

In article 8 Aquinas summarizes hisprevious arguments and adds a few (semi-)new ones which appear as elaborationson previously established principles. For example, every composite-entity is posterior to its constituentcomposition, but again God does not “come-after” anything, and thus cannot becomposite. Or further, in everycomposite entity there is a previous cause which must account for the unity ofthe composition, for “parts cannot unite unless something causes them tounite.” But God cannot have a cause per definition since He is the first efficientcause.

Aquinas ends his specific enquiryinto simplicity with article eight: whetherGod can enter into composition with composite things? Aquinas, predictably, answers no for threeprinciple reasons. The first, he says,God is the first efficient cause, and thus cannot enter into compositionbecause “matter can be neither numerically nor specifically identical with anefficient cause.” Secondly, akin toearlier arguments, God cannot enter into composition “because, since God is thefirst efficient cause, to act belongs to Him primarily and essentially. But that which enters into composition withanything does not act primarily and essentially, but rather the composite soacts; for the hand does not act, but the man by his hand…Hence God cannot bepart of a composite.” And thirdlybecause “no part of a composite can be absolutely first among beings…for matteris in potency, and potency is absolutely posterior to act…and as that whichparticipates is posterior to that which is essential, so likewise is that whichis participated…”

Thus in conclusion we can see howThomas is utilizing both an ontological, and a hermeneutical or epistemologicaltool with simplicity. Bruce Marshallwrites of Thomas “When applied to God, ‘simple’ is not primarily a metaphysicaldescription…but rather a metalinguistic stipulation rooted in the conviction ofGod’s transcendence. It serves toqualify the application of all creaturely discourse to God, who is, so thefaith maintains, the beginning and end of all creatures, but not himself acreature.”[8] To summarize and conclude I quote at lengthan excellent illustration by William Placher:

I might for instance, ordinarilythink about something by distinguishing its component parts. A carburetor has a tube through which airflows, and a jet that sprays fuel into it. But God, as simple, has no component parts, so we cannot understand Godin that way. Again I might understandthe carburetor in terms of its form and matter: take some tempered steel andshape it into a large tube with a small jet entering it. But, Aquinas says, God is not composed ofform and matter, since God is not a material body, so we cannot use suchdistinctions to understand God. I mightthink about my carburetor in terms of potency and act—that is, I might saysomething like “Here is how you make a carburetor, and then, when you pump fueland air through it, here is what it does.” But divine simplicity, Aquinas says, does not admit of potency, so thatdistinction is likewise of no use. Yetagain if we had a carburetor on the table in front of us and I were trying toexplain it to you, you might ask about some piece sticking out of the top, andId reply, “Oh that must be how it fastens to the rest of the engine. That doesn’t really have anything to do withbeing a carburetor.” In other words, Iwould distinguish its essence from something distinct from that essence. But this also does not work with respect toGod, who has no properties distinct from the divine essence. The list goes on. It seems that none of the ways we wouldorindarily go about understanding something work with respect to God…A decadeor so before the Summa, Aquinascovered much the same ground in his DisputedQuestions on the Power of God, and concluded, “Wherefore man reaches thehighest point of his knowledge about God when he knows that he knows him not,inasmuch as he knows that that which God is transends whatsoever he conceives ofHim.” (On the Power of God 7.5 ad.14.)[9]

[1] G.K. Chesterton, SaintThomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox (New York: DoubleDay, 1956) p.xvi.

[2] Emil Brunner, DogmaticsVol. 1: The Doctrine of God (London: Lutterworth, ,1949) p.242; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 p.329.

[3] Jay Wesley Richards, The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity,and Immutability (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003) p.214n.5.

[4] David Burrell, “Distinguishing God from the World,” inLanguage, Meaning, and God, ed. BrianDavies, (London, Geoffery Chapman, 1987) p.75.

[5] This issue especially may seem absurd to mostChristians as its not usually an issue of contention. What is missed in this dismissal is how itrelates to the concept of impassibility; namely that if God is not impassible,then logically it seems to demand that God in some sense have a body orcorporeality in order to be receptive. Modern passiblists like Moltmann, Jüngel, and others, have not takentheir position to this conclusion, though in some sense Hartshorne definitelyhas (though “body” is termed in the sense that all bodies are composites ofactual occasions, and God is merely a huge cluster of families of actualoccasions). However the Open-TheistClark Pinnock has suggested it in his own work, seemingly taking the exact opposite stance of Aquinas:

“There is an issue that has not been raised yet in thediscussion around the open view of God. If He is with us in the world, if we are to take biblical metaphorsseriously, (!) is God in some sense embodied? Critics will be quick to say that though there are expressions of this ideain the bible, we shouldn’t take them literally. But I do not believe that the idea is as foreign to the Bible’s view ofGod as we have assumed. In tradition,God is thought to function primarily as a disembodied spirit, but this isscarcely a biblical idea. For exampleIsrael is called to hear God’s word, to gaze on his glory and beauty. Human beings are said to be embodiedcreatures created in the image of God. Is there perhaps something in God which corresponds to embodiment? Having a body is certainly not a negativething because it makes it possible for us to be agents. Perhaps God’s agency would be easier toenvisage if he were in some way corporeal. (Pinnock, Most-Moved Moverp.34)

[6] Karl Rahner complained in his book The Trinity trans. Joseph Donceel (NewYork: Crossroads, 2004) p.15 that Aquinas has effectively castrated Trinitariantheology by separating his treatise “on the one god,” from “on the triune God,”thus making it seem that the Trinity is a mostly irrelevant add-on. But here with Aquinas’ language of pure formis a suggestion that seems to be taken up later with the bridge between thetreatise that “God delights in Himself,” namely that the “pure form,” or the actus purus of God is nothing other thanthe inter-trinitarian life of God-in-act.

[7] Rudi Te Veld, Aquinason God (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006) p.79

[8] Bruce D. Marshall, “Aquinas as a Post-LiberalTheologian,” The Thomist 53 (July1989): 382

[9] William Placher, TheDomestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking About God Went Wrong(Westminster: John Knox Press, 1996) p.22-23

VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006) p.79

God of the Gaps

2011-10-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

One of the areas I have really become fascinated with is literature which deals with changes in what Charles Taylor calls our "social imaginaries."

For those unfamiliar with Taylor's definition one can look for it in his book, helpfully titled Modern Social Imaginaries (p.23-30 in particular), or his more massive A Secular Age (which I just finished last month, it is spectacular). By "social imaginary" Taylor is attempting to target something more specific than "theory," though that is included. It includes:

How ordinary people "imagine" social surroundings, carried in contemporary images, stories, legends, etc...
It is different than a "theory," in that theory is mainly possessed at a theoretical or reflective level, and by only a few elites or a small minority. The Imaginary is shared by large groups at an often pre-theoretical level (i.e. "gut feeling" etc...)
These social imaginaries provide a common "understanding," (if the purely intellectual connotations are put aside, and "understanding," includes emotional, physical, and psychological disposition) which provides and "atmosphere" or "context" for common practice (A Secular Age p.171-172)

He goes through a few variations of his definition, but they all reflect the same basic structure of what he is attempting to get at by the term: "It is in fact that largely unstructured and inarticulate understanding of our whole situation, within which particular features of the world show up for us with the sense they have." (A Secular Age p.173). The Social Imaginary in effect provides "an implicit map of social, political, and cosmological space." Thus, "the background which makes sense of any given act is thus wide and deep. It doesnt include everything in our world, but the relevant sense-giving features cant be circumscribed; and because of this we can say that sense-giving draws on our whole world, that is, our sense of our whole predicament and in time and space, among others and in history." (p.174)

This is obviously a very interesting and multi-faceted concept that can be developed in many directions (and Taylor does so in a little over 800 pages). For example Taylor agrees with John Milbank that many aspects of modern, or "secular," humanist ideas which masquerade as "discovery's" (of science, human reason, man come of age, etc...) are actually constructions which have forgotten their theological and philosophical origins. But the point I want to write about briefly here specifically is how Taylor draws this discussion to a head in several points to discuss how massive alterations in our social imaginary have caused the "science vs. faith," debates because they have (often implicitly, without many noticing) changed the very structure of the terms and concepts involved. (p.295 -- here Taylor explicitly cites with approval the various works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Fergus Kerr, David Burrell, and Louis Dupre)

Thus a major portion of Taylor's investigation (mainly in the second half of the book) regards how pre-theoretical conditions have often changed, which create an environment that deeply imbeds forms of the world that can produce unbelief. Thus after a large section of argument Taylor starts a chapter on the rise of unbelief in the 19th century:

But [this second wave of the rise in unbelief] is also qualitatively different....this depth is a reflection of something else, viz. that the unbelieving outlooks are more deeply anchored in the life-world and background sense of reality...than their eighteenth century predecessors. (p.322-323)

This involved (and here Taylor follows both Dupré and Kóyre) a fundamental change in the cosmological imaginary. We transitioned from a "cosmos" (a hierarchically graded universe full of symbolic meaning and order) into an "infinite universe" which is now vast, infinite, seemingly shapeless to divine meaning. Here Taylor again "wants to emphasize that I am talking about our sense of things. Im not talking about what people believe," (325) because certainly many still believed (and still believe) in a God who intervenes in the universe, or a universe that contains meaning and form. Rather Taylor is attempting to chart a change over at the level of pre-theoretical awareness--i.e. how we inhabit the universe, our emotional attunement to it (to use the Heieggerian concept, which Taylor often employs). "Reality in all directions plunges its roots into the unknown, and as yet unmappable" (p.326) and one where "the extensions of time probably had the greatest impact," in altering our cosmic imaginaries, now bombarded by the "dark abyss of time."

It is these changes in which Taylor notes an inordinate amount of pressure in Victorian England (and this is echoed in the analyses of Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature, and McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism) was placed upon theologians (mostly pressure coming from themselves) to produce proofs of "design." This was because the overwhelming social imaginary at the time was the philosophy of mechanism--things no longer really were thought (or felt, again at a pre-theoretical level) to accord with any Platonic-type view that things were ordered by the ideas, or that there was any type of meaning of that sort in the universe at all. But the immediate reaction to this was understandable but ultimately not very profound idea that this world was "created by a benevolent God, in part to succour his human creatures," and thus must evince evidence of this.

And again without the Platonic-type deep meaning in structures, allegorical, moral, and typological readings of the Bible themselves largely dropped out: "Having largely dropped the Platonic facet of the cosmos idea, many felt they had to adhere more rigidly to the Biblical facet in all its details. But this rigidity springs from the scientific context itself...Hence the idea of fastening on the bible primarily as a chronicle of events, and trying to extract the maximum exactitude from the accounts one finds there: a typical project of the post-Galilean age, and which ends up [e.g.] in the ludicrous precision of Archbishop Ussher's calculations [regarding the beginning of the world some 6000 years ago]." (p.330). Thus "the pure face-off between 'religion' and 'science,' is a chimaera, or rather an ideological construct." (332)

Thus in one sense there was no conversion from "Christianity," to "science," or "belief" to "atheism" pure and simple: there was only a transition between two constructions of either, the atheist and the scientist only seeming to contradict the theologian because the entire discussion has been put into an improper mode of discourse. As he puts it later:

"We can say in general terms that, where there was a conversion from faith to science which was undertaken...the kind of faith involved played an important role...Thus to the extent to which Christian faith was totally identified with certain dogmas or cosmic theories...[would] the new depth reality appear as a decisive refutation [of Christianity]...we can really [here] speak of a conversion brought about by certain scientific conclusions. But then the greater question remains: why did they need to identify their faith with these particular doctrines?...This fits, of course, with my general position here, that conversions from religion under the influence of science turn not on the alleged scientific proofs of materialism or the impossibility of God (which turn out on examination to not go through anyway) but rather, on other factors which in this case consist in attachments to inessential doctrines which can be refuted." (p.365)

This is absolutely ripe with profound insights, but here I want to focus in on the concept of the God-of-the-gaps. Because what happened is that our social and cosmic imaginaries changed in such a way that "evidence," for God became narrowed into identifying non-explainable functions of the (now-mechanistic) world (not just any unexplainable functions, of course, but those considered to have a high-level of meaning in their inexplicability). This facilitates the creation of a "pure nature," (which de Lubac so forcefully bemoaned): "The mechanical outlook which splits nature from supernature voids all...mystery. This split generates the modern concept of miracle; a kind of punctual hole blown in the regular order of things from outside, that is, from the transcendent. Whatever is higher must thus come about through the holes pierced in the regular, natural order, within whose normal operations there is no mystery." (p.547)

Thus part of the problem, ironically enough, became the apologetics themselves. As Michael Buckley writes in his magisterial At the Origins of Modern Atheism: "In the absence of a rich and comprehensive Christology and Pneumatology of religious experience, Christianity entered into the defense of the Christian God without appeal to anything Christian." (At the Origins of Modern Atheism p.67). And the atheism that ensued was not a reaction to Christianity qua Christianity, but in most cases was a revolt against this particularly flacid form of design theory which tried to find a place for God. As Amos Funkenstein put it:

The medieval sense of God's symbolic presence in his creation and the sense of a universe replete with transcendent meaning and limits had to recede, if not to give way totally to the postulates of univocation and homogeneity in the seventeenth century. God's relation to the world had to be given a concrete physical meaning...It is clear why a God describable in such unequivocal terms, or even given physical features and functions, eventually became all the easier to discard...Once God regained transparency or even a body, he was all the easier to identify and kill." (Theology and the Scientific Imagination p.116)

Because of course a God that did a specific something in the universe could maintain that function only until it was discovered God was getting credit for something else's work. And no one likes a plagiarist. This is where I think ID (intelligent design) theory often leaves us today. Considering that it has now been ruled as not a science, and not able to be taught in schools (and from the records I have read, at the hearing Michale Behe was made to look like an idiot) this sort of analysis can only be seen as a red herring.

I will post more on this later, but for now I want to propose, with many others, that ID is a fundamentally modern phenomenon, and God's relation to the world has not always been conceptualized this way, nor need it today. Im currently in a course on Medieval theology, and I will leave you with a quote from Etienne Gilson:

But even supposing that we are not mistaken about thesewonders—and mistakes of this kind will happen at times—they neverintroduce us to anything better than akind of chief engineer of the universe whose power, as astonishing to us as ourown is to a savage, remains, nevertheless, within the human order…It isuseless, therefore, to press this question, and we must pass to [a]second. Just as the [Thomistic] proof[of God] from movement does not consider God as the Central Generating Stationfor the energies of nature, so neither does the proof from finality considerHim as the Chief Engineer of the whole vast enterprise. The precise question is this: if there isorder, what is the cause of the beingof this order? The celebrated example ofthe watch-maker misses the point, unless we leave the plane of making for theplane of creating. Just as when weobserve an artificial arrangement, we infer the existence of an artificer asthe sole conceivable sufficient reason of the arrangement, so also when weobserve over and over, an order between things, we infer the existence of asupreme orderer. But what we have toconsider in this orderer is not so much the ingenuity displayed in this work,the precise nature too often, perhapsalways, escapes us, but the causalitywhereby He confers being on order…He is first with respect to the being ofthe universe, prior to that being, and consequently also outside it. That, to speak precisely, is why we ought tosay that Christian philosophy essentially excludes all merely physical proofsof the existence of God, and admits only physico-metaphysical proofs, that isto say proofs suspended from Being as being.

--EtienneGilson, The Spirit of MediaevalPhilosophy (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) pp.78-80.

Humor and Hermeneutics or: Stuff Facebook Tricks You Into Thinking Is Funny

2011-10-09T03:26:00.000-07:00

This is an off the cuff, annoyed rant. When one facebooks (is that the right verb?) one is inevitably infected by memes; be it some type of annoying chain letter status (if denying Christ before men is akin to not liking his Facebook fanpage...turns out Im damned) or, if you are one of the highschoolers from the youth group I work with, the strange aphorism-generating "The Awkward Moment When..." trend. But recently I have noticed going Michael-Jackson-Holds-Kid-Over-Balcony viral are two pictures, the first of which is this:

The awkward moment when Facebook tells me all combinations have been achieved by my current Friend's list

If you cant read it because of the size of the picture, what it is is an "F you fundamentalist Christianity!" fresco which is attempting to deconstruct, with the sophisticated irony only an illustrated chart can convey, the "one man-one woman" cliche of marriage. There are, for example, illustrations of polygamy (heres looking at you Abraham), Levirate marriage where the brother of a widow's husband is obligated to marry her, and Deuteronomy 22's idea that a rapist must marry the woman he rapes, etc... The idea, of course appears to be an attempt to out-bible the bible thumpers (and, with the addition of + signs, outwit the other religious folks who are simply bad at math). And the second picture receiving near David-after-dentist levels of virality is this:

To be fair, this mob was sponsored by Irony

And obviously both are funny in that "not immune to bored, drunken bloggers with photoshop," sort of way. Silly protesters! You didnt know we could make up your intentions and then digitally sumperimpose them on the interwebs! And I mean, come on, who among us hasnt had a slow saturday afternoon to reduce a complex issue into a pastiche of arrows and Indie smarm? Just try and cast the first stone, am I right?

And dont get me wrong: both are legitimately funny, and for their part make good points. The bible is full of strange examples of marriage; and corporate protesters in their extreme and most crude manifestations are those people who havent envisioned a world where they not only have to brew, grow, and grind their own coffee, but then have to drink said laborious coffee to get the energy to plant, grow, and harvest the cotton to sew their own fruit-of-the-looms. But before we push the irony envelope by simply photoshopping the angry mob into nakedness, or by making a secret bible marriage chart that would even make Da Vinci blush, maybe we should address the actual issues?

Ha! Save us? If you love us so much why don't you just marry us??

In the first place the marriage chart, while pointing out the many different types of marriage exemplified, fails to make any impact on the idea of marriage sanctioned by the bible. It does not, for example, take into consideration the idea that any type of marriage (or, more generally, any type of action) portrayed in the genre of narrative can be either prescriptive or merely descriptive. Thus the polygamy of Abraham is in no way a normative thing. Ironically in attempting to counter-act the fundamentalist interpretation, they merely use fundamentalist hermeneutics and take it ad absurdum: that which is in the bible is normative. But unfortunately this does nothing to strengthen their case since there is nothing to demonstrate polygamy was acceptable; what the author of the account is doing is merely recording what, in fact, happened. (And if anything the troubles that are recorded make it plausible to assume polygamy is frowned upon)

Or there is the case of anachronism; sure, it might be an utterly horrible thing to assume a rapist should marry his victim today, or that a widower's brother has to marry his brother's former wife. But the atrocity we feel in these two acts assumes a broader world-view in which in either case the woman is not essentially left in the world as good as dead; a world where society (not just Jewish society, but all society, everywhere) saw that woman as a piece of filth who rated on the chain of being somewhere between dirt and those with an unwarranted appreciation for dubstep.

Ok Im looking but I still dont see you in the picture...a little more to the left maybe?

What we miss in these laws is the utterly generous character they convey; what they are are not demonstrations that the bible has no consistent view of marriage, but the exact opposite. In a world where if you were a man in power you could generally rape anything that moved to your hearts content, the Jewish law, for a woman, was the best woman's rights movement going. But, regardless of where one falls on the interpretation of gay marriage (and I believe that wherever one falls, we must always act with love, charity, and understanding) the fact is that the funny chart does nothing to further its case.

Or take the picture of the crazy activists. What is annoying about it is not that it points out a potential area of hypocrisy in the anti-corporation free-for-all. Insofar as it reveals inconsistency, it should be applauded. Its annoying tendency is rather that far from provoking thought, it retards it. Of course there will be extreme anti-corporate activists who think that corporations simply need to stop existing to solve whatever problem their bandwagon addled brain has jumped upon. But the real issue behind anti-corporation sentiment isnt the desire to end corporations (which would thus suffer from the hypocrisy that those who wish to end corporations utilize their product), but to end their abuse. This of course is partially the fault of the activists themselves when they, for example, represent the problem in the simple terms that the CEO of a company makes X amount in multiples of the common worker. But this is not the problem. The problem comes when this multiple of the common laborers wages is registered within a scale that includes finite resources (so the workers cannot make living wages), abuse (where companies artificially exclude competition), exploitation (where companies have mass layoffs, outsourcing, and in outsourcing, major labor rights violations, undue political control etc...) One cannot read, for example, Naomi Klein's two excellent major works, No Logo, and its sequel of sorts, The Shock Doctrine, and not be frozen in horror at the abuse of the corporate agenda.

Thus my ultimate point boils down to a question: how is humor, funny? These two photos appear funny, but in actual fact are vacuous. Humor should be thought provoking, but it turns out these two pictures, while funny on the surface, in fact invade and retard thought by reducing, not revealing, the actual issues. Instead of a straw man argument they merely created a straw-man joke. Accusing the activists of being anti-corporate while pointing out they are using the corporations products is through the artificial label "anti-corporate" creating an artificial irony. Like I said they arent anti-corporate, in fact many of them probably work for the various corporations: if anything they are pro-corporation while nonetheless feeling the corporations could be run more fairly, though that doesnt play as well on the internet. The picture and its captions are like making a straw man and dressing him in a silly hat and mismatched shoes, and then making fun of it for how poorly it dressed itself. Sure, anti-corporatists who decry corporations while using their stuff is sort of funny, but what the picture makes us forget is that whoever made the picture with its captions made the irony. Or saying that all these are forms of biblical marriage so take that ya stupid fundamentalists! is unimpressive. If you want to try and shock you should probably take the absurdity of the argument all the way and say Jesus was into prostitution because he hung out with prostitutes. What is actually funny is how these two pictures have manipulated several of my otherwise very intelligent friends to post them as serious discussion pieces; when in fact they merit little more than counteractive satire, or the small, dismissive shake of the head that understands the surface humor, but derides the ultimate lack of depth.

I think the only message these leave us is that if we take our positions seriously, we should leave the bullshitting about those who disagree with us at the door.

Reflections on Anselm's Ontological Argument

2011-10-05T03:39:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from a somewhat off-the-cuff reflection paper I wrote recently for an independent study I am doing on Medieval Theology/Philosophy. In particular this for this assignment I was asked to choose texts from Anselm to read. I ended up reading Anselm's Monologium (which constitutes a variety of logically developed arguments for God's existence and nature) his Proslogium (the infamous ontological argument, written, he says, because he thought the Monologium was too varied in its arguments, and he wanted to find one single argument which could be developed) and also Anselms Apologium which are answers to the supposed refutations of Guanilon regarding the ontological argument. At any rate if more specific commentary is desired, I shall do it, but mainly my reflections for the assignment focused on the (admittedly, an object of my lengthy fascination) ontological argument. Enjoy!

It is the pernicious curse and prejudice of the contemporarymind that new is better than old; hence new authors and thinkers are to bepreferred to the old ones, so it goes, lest one look unfashionable in theirreading habits. So too comes the commonbut opposite lament of historians that, as Michel René Barnes puts it ofAugustine, and the famous Process theologian Charles Hartshorne of Anselm—it ismore popular to invoke the ancients than to actually read them (Hartshorne,quite scathingly in his introduction to this collection of Anselm’s basicworks, says that though Anselm’s presentation, and then ultimately his defensein the Apologium of the infamousOntological argument are only a few pages of his total corpus, “even these fewpages have been far too many to read for the Argument’s detractors.”) I myself am often guilty of such a habit asI, ever since I was forced for my own intellectual survival in highschool tobegin (however naively) to sift through the “proofs” of God’s existence (andbecome somewhat enamored with the ontological argument), far too often turnedto surveys rather than originals; though some (albeit entertaining) penance hasbeen done as I read three of Anselm’s treatises.

I shouldsay at the outset that I am still uncertain of my position regarding theontological argument. ThoughSchopenhauer once said that the argument “is a charming joke,” I think this initself can be rhetorically turned one way or another. For there are many senses of a joke. Schopenhauer undoubtedly meant itpejoratively—as in “that guy is a joke,” or “my singing skills are a joke,”i.e. the objects of the sobriquet have no credibility. But turned slightly we could say that thebiting edge of the best jokes are that they are funny as they seem immediatelyeasy to dismiss—because they appear simple, or absurd, or crass etc… But once one thinks of the joke it begins toturn reality around its axis and suddenly the joke is funny because it sosimply reveals reality in a startling and disconcerting way that, even ifultimately untrue, lingers.

It is certain that the Ontologicalargument can suffer no easy dismissal; in fact interestingly enough it hasreceived something of a massive renaissance in 20^th centuryphilosophy, most recently by Alvin Plantinga in his very interesting versionwhich utilizes modal logic, and by Hartshorne himself in his The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays inNeoClassical Metaphysics. In factone of the most humorous tales of the comeback of the ontological argument wasby the famous mathematician Kurt Gödel, who wrote a very complex “proof” insymbolic logic in 1941, though he told no one of it until his death bed around1970 because “he was afraid that people would think he actually believed inGod, whereas he is engaged only in a logical investigation.”[1] Whatever his own beliefs, no less acommentator than Bertrand Russell commented in his History of Western Philosophy (p.536) that "The argument does not, to a modern mind, seem very convincing,but it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is tofind out precisely where the fallacy lies." It seems we must therefore bastardizeShopenhauer’s saying: the ontological argument is a joke because, perplexingly,it seems simply untrue, yet clings, and cannot so easily be exorcized.

Anselm has the rare privilege in the history of thought whereusually there is “nothing new under the sun,” to have come up with that elusivenew thing, which in this case we now call the Ontological argument. One shouldn’t take the brief size of the Proslogium as a mark against it; ifanything its briefness should be considered a strength—it was by Anselm at anyrate. He considered it a small thingthat took up great space, and he wrote it because he considered his earlierwork, the Monologium, to be, even iflogically rigorous, too multivalent, too multi-tiered. Anselm disliked the fact that it was a bookthat was “linked together by many arguments” (p.2) and he thus sought a single argument to demonstrate both God’sexistence and God’s essence.

In The Medieval TheologiansG.R. Evans notes (p.96) that Anselm is unusual in “struggling philosophicallywhether God exists.” And this is undoubtedly true; yet this statement hardlycovers the matter. In the Proslogium, despite its erudition andsophistication, it is saturated in prayer, and with what can only be describedas laments. There is a palpable sense ofangst in his writing. “I have never seenyou, O’ Lord my God, I do not know your form.” (i.4)[2];“Amid what thoughts am I sighing? Isought blessings and lo! Confusion” (i.5); “How long, O’ Lord, will you forgetus, how long will you turn your face from us? (ibid); and he, after the argument has even been laid out, askshimself “but, if you have found him, why is it that you do not feel him? Why, O Lord my God, does my soul not feelyou?” (xiv.21) Immediately, then, Ithink we must dismiss that venerable canard that such arguments are akin toindulging in esotericisms along the lines of “how many angels can dance uponthe head of a pin?” Anselm, it appears,is in a crises whose magnitude can only be indexed by the spiritual. Indeed the argument only came upon him,Anselm notes, when he was weary with its force (p.2). The argument, it seems from Anselm’s candor,is not a “rationalism” devoid of the spiritual; it in fact pressed itself uponAnselm’s very soul, and I could not help but be moved that Anselm’s argument inthe Proslogium both begins and endswith prayer (indeed I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole thing was a prayer,to be honest).

With our pension for categorizing, today there is a generalconsensus, following G. Oppy’s thorough work The Ontological Arguments and the Belief in God (New York:Cambridge Press, 1995) that there are, loosely, no less than 8 types of ontological argument. Oppy classifies Anselm’s as the“definitional” ontological argument, namely the argument that, by definition orconcept, God has to exist. The argument begins in chapter two ofthe Proslogium with the idea thateven the fool, who says in his heart “there is no God,” can understand theconcept of “a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived.” (ii.7). I was struck by the sense that this is an“exteriorized” version of both Augustine’s and Descartes “interiorized”argument for God: whereas they, in their own individual senses argue that sincethey doubt, therefore God must exist (of course Descartes takes a moreroundabout approach) here Anselm (pacehis own heart-wrenching prayers) puts the doubt, not in himself, for the sakeof the argument, but in the “Fool’s” heart (following Psalm 14:1-3). I do not want to make too much of this, bothbecause the evidence is scarce and because I trust very little in my ownpsychological insight, but here again we seem to see a man torn apart: hisheart lurches desperately toward God, but in order to find God he apparentlydoes not want to start the argument with hisown doubts (and how could one who has been asked, as Anselm records himselfas being asked, to state definitively upon God, start with his own fears?) Thus in the name of the rational, Anselmstarts with the fool.

Anselm then underscores a working assumption that “it is one thingfor an object to be within the understanding, and another for the object toexist.” (Ibid). Hence “even the fool understands thatsomething exists in the understanding that than which nothing greater could beconceived.” (ii.8). And so this “being”exists in the understanding; but Anselm is not done. “For, assuredly, that than which nothinggreater can be conceived cannot exist in the understanding alone. For suppose it exists in the understandingalone; then it could be conceived to exist in reality, which is greater.” (Ibid). In other words if, truly, abeing “than which none greater can be thought” can be conceived, this beingmust be conceived as existing pernecessity. For if it only existed inthe mind, a greater being, namely the same being in the mind, but now inreality, could be thought. Thus, so theargument goes, by definition, if(paraphrasing with my own take on the argument) the concept of this “ultimate” can be conceived, it must be conceived as existing.

Now, there is a prevalent misunderstanding of the ontologicalargument which Hartshorne in the introduction warns us to avoid. This misunderstanding reads the argument as:perfection must have all desirable goods or qualities; existence is such aquality, ergo perfection must have existence. Kant (Critique of Pure Reason, p.483)famously retorted that existence is nota predicate, and hence “it is not a predicate that can be added to the conceptof a thing. Logically, it is merely thecopula of a judgment.” In other words,“the real [concept] does not contain more than the possible [concept]…A hundredreal dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred possible dollars.” (Oneof my professors at Portland State, when I was in the Philosophy program beforetransferring to Multnomah, made an “anti-ontological argument” out of thispremise: it does not matter if God is real or not—the concept either waycontains the components necessary to live by its power). Of course a poor person would object that hewould much rather have 100 real dollars and Kant would agree; he is arguingthat “is” or existence is the admissionof an object, and not part of the definition. The concept of God is what Kant calls its “analytic concept” (i.e. whatdefines the object) but the existence of any object, even God (according toKant) is confirmed only “synthetically” (i.e. a posteriori). In otherwords the ontological argument commits a category mistake to prove its case—ittries to do a priori what can be doneonly in some synthetic combination of a priori and a posteriori. Of course inthe case of God even Kant had to make the exception, and God then for Kant isneither a priori or a posteriori strictly speaking, but transcendental for the sake of thepractical reason.

This is not, despite its cogencyin its own realm, relevant to Anselm’s argument (so argues Hartshorne, and Iagree). Because what is not being arguedis a generalized thesis that existence is a predicate of perfection. Rather the argument is, in fact, (and Anselmwould fully admit this) dealing with a uniquecase. Existence is not a predicate—yes:of normal, finite, created things. Norperhaps in abstraction is it a predicate of God; however what is at stake isnot a predicate “existence.” Rather Godis defined as “necessary existence”or that which “cannot be conceived not to exist.” (Proslogium III.8). Thus ifwe are to use Kant’s terms the analytic concept of the “object” God demands the synthetic concept ofexistence because it, by its very essence, mustexist if the concept is to be coherent. In other words what we have is Aquinas’ ipsum esse: God is He whose essence and existence are identical,unlike contingent created beings whose essence does not demand theirexistence. And thus the gray area raisesits head: logically definition and reality in this instance seem to have toco-occur. Because by definition thatwhich cannot be conceived not to exist is greater than that which can beconceived to not exist (i.e. what is contingent). Hence Kant’s critique is generally incisive,but specifically wrong.

If I might generalize, this is the first sticking point of theontological argument, namely whether or not we can make the leap fromdefinition to existence, from thought to reality. This is perhaps the greatest sticking pointfor myself. If we are honest withourselves, at this point, despite whatever logical rigor accompanies it, whenit comes down to brass tax it is simply difficult to admit that the conceptmust somehow make demands upon reality. However, whatever my reservations about the validity of this step I needto say that even if it is invalid ithas very interesting and fertile consequences. Michael Buckley has written a book (which I am chomping at the bit toproceed beyond the introduction) called AtThe Origins of Modern Atheism. Themain content of the book is to chart the rise of atheism as a cogent andgenerally accepted position from the Reformation through the 19^thcentury. But one of the book’s workinghypotheses is that atheism is essentially parasitic upon the theism itrejects. In other words it is not thatatheists believe in “nothing” (as the popular fundamentalist mantra would haveus believe) but rather that they disbelieve in very specific things—namely thespecific theistic context they are rebelling from. E.g. Evolution only contradicts a theism setup in Victorian England as enumerated by a design-theory like William Paley; or more relevant to the ontologicalargument, atheism rejects a God that is defined (whatever the original intentions)as something less than “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. One of the transitions to modern atheism,argues Buckley, is that God more and more became envisioned, not as the grandcreator of being and creation ex nihilo,giving being to beings, but as having this or that specific function in theuniverse (i.e. Paley’s design, or Newton’s “force at a distance”; even economictheories that were precursors to Adam Smith had God doing very specific menialtasks). God, they thought, must be doing something very specific,and very akin to the tasks other things were doing. But in this sense God “became that mucheasier to identify, and so that much easier, once theory progressed, to kill.”

What Anselm’s argument does at this point (again, even if invalid asa proof per se) is point out the factof some of the “grammar” of what it means to speak of God. Indeed if I can skip back for just a momentto Anselm’s prior work, the Monologium,he writes “…the supreme Being is so above and beyond every other naturethat, whenever any statement is made concerning it in words which are alsoapplicable to other natures, the sense of these words in this case is by nomeans that in which they are applied to other natures.” (ch. LXV.129) In other words the negation of this God isnonsensical; this doesn’t ultimately, I think, demand that God exists. Rather what it does it to demonstrate thatthe atheist reaction to God is meaningless—in a strict logical sense (withoutcommenting on whatever sympathies I have with their existential rebellion). One can react and live as if there is no God; but ultimately the intellectualorientation of atheism has no discernable (non contradictory) content since per definition one cannot (logically,per definition, etc…) “deny” this existence. One has to merely reject the definition and accept the abyss; one cannot“refute” it per se (Proslogium III). According to Anselm, then, it seems thatwherever atheists reject a god, we should thank them because they have onlytorn down an idol.

The second sticking point of theontological argument is whether or not one can actually conceive “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Descartes’ opponents were quick to point outthat it did not seem, in fact, that we could have a “clear and distinct” viewof the infinite. One therefore likewise wondersat the exact stability of Anselm’s construct. But before we jump to the conclusion that he was in fact aproto-Cartesian, whose arguments circled around the ability to equate “I amable to conceive” with “I have a clear and distinct notion of…” Anselm’sargument of being able to conceive of “that than which nothing greater can beconceived” leads into ch. XV (p.22) of the Proslogiumwhere he writes “Therefore, O Lord, you are not only that than which a greatercannot be conceived; but you are a being greater than can be conceived.” And inXVI Anselm repeatedly speaks of God’s “unapproachable light.” And in the Monologium LXIV (p.128) he writes “For it is my opinion that onewho is investigating an incomprehensible object ought to be satisfied if hisreasoning shall have brought him far enough to recognize that this object mostcertainly exists; nor ought assured belief to be the less readily given tothese truths which are declared to be such by cogent proofs, and withoutcontradiction of any other reason, if, because of the incomprehensibility oftheir own natural sublimity, they do not admit of explanation.”

In this sense Anselm’s proof ismore profound, more existential than Descartes’. Because it is a grasping at a hint; not therevolution around a (supposedly indisputable) beacon. Thus Anselm’s proof in no way relies on“clear and distinct” ideas. Only on avery basic logical component that a “maximally great” being (to use Plantinga’slanguage) is possible to approach mentally.

I have focused greatly on a minorpart. In our discussions in class Iwould like to touch upon how the doctrine of simplicity systematically imposesitself upon Anselm’s thought (especially in the Monologium) but I have ran out of room here. I want to conclude with a brief reference tothe idea of “reason alone” or “apart from faith.” Anselm is often credited with the instigationof this idea, however nascent and neophytic it is in his thought. My comment is nothing profound but is this: Ibelieve there is a difference, at least abstractly viable, between what athinker thinks they are doing, and what they actually do; and then againbetween what a thinker’s epigones think he did, and what was actual in his (orher’s) thought. For Anselm suffers anotherdichotomy: in the Monologium which hewas dissatisfied with, with its multiple arguments, he also is very specific inthe fact that his arguments runs from reason, and apart from Christian creedand faith. Yet the later Proslogium, which, as Anselm himselfsays, was written in order to cure his own dissatisfaction with the Monologium’s bricolage of arguments, isnot now done “reason alone” but in fact begins with a prayer for God to revealhimself, and speaks in no uncertain terms of the necessity of revelation. So Anselm, it seems, is difficult to fit intoa narrative of a world “coming of age,” in which reason begins to overtakerevelation. If anything Anselm is amicrocosm of this in reverse: he thought at first to prove God with reasonapart from revelation (though arguably the whole path of the Monologium is implicitly directed alongits very specific course by Anselm’s faith, so I wonder if even here “reasonalone” could be true) but theninstead of purifying this method of reason even further, Anselm disrupts thenarrative of progress by finding a moresatisfactory solution in the explicit “faith seeking understanding”introduction which frames the Proslogium. Different contexts, of course, can partially accountfor the differences; nevertheless I wonder if in the end, if I couldextrapolate Anselm as a microcosm, that he stands as a sort of metaphor for thewhole modern to postmodern turn: at first we were intoxicated by the myth of apure reason. But now, wholly dissatisfiedwith the manifold paths this spawned, we return to the idea that, in fact, wemust accept a tradition, we must believe first, in order to understand anythingat all.

[1] Asa happy coincidence I stumbled onto A.W. Moore’s history of the development of the concept of the infinite, aptlynamed The Infinite (London:Routledge, 1990) p. 172ff at Powell’s Books a few weeks ago which had thischapter on Gödel. Moore also notes thatapart from this “explicit” ontological argument many have (rightly or wrongly)considered another of Gödel’s theorums, his “incompleteness” theorem, to in itsown way be an ontological argument for the necessity of a true infinite. In essence his theorem disrupts theassumption of Euclidean geometry that a finite stock of axioms can beascertained from which we can deduce an infinite number of other mathematicaltruths. What Gödel demonstrated wasthat, for example in set-theory, there will always be a mathematical axiom thatis true but not provable, because it will always imply a greater set thatincludes the current set, ad infinitum. There then must therefore (to give the short,blissfully un-mathematical version of the story) be a true infinite reconcilingthe set of all sets.

[2]Citations will be format x.y where x indicates the chapter and y the paginationin the collection of works I am drawing from.

The Real Most Interesting Man In The World

2011-09-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

Enough said.

The Story So Far

2011-09-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to reiterate my thanks again to everyone who read the story, the response has been great and I ended up getting a bunch hits from it (for me, at least), but more importantly I have received advice and more encouragement than I ever expected. I have written more, but the rest is even rougher and needs much work. Though I would love to post it in the future.

If you haven't read the story, or want quick access to a specific part, I have provided just below links to the story in order (and just as reminder I skipped posting chapter four because it is unfinished and doesn't add much by way of the overall story, so the transition from chapter three to chapter five is intentional):

Chapter One: Autumn, And Everything After (Part One)

Chapter One: Autumn And Everything After (Part Two)

Chapter Two: Such Awkward Creatures (Part One)

Chapter Two: Such Awkward Creatures (Part Two)

Chapter Three: I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning (Part One)

Chapter Three: I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning (Part Two)

Chapter Three: I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning (Part Three)

Chapter Three: I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning (Part Four)

Chapter Five: Bellicose (Part One)

Chapter Five: Bellicose (Part Two)

Chapter Five: Bellicose (Part Three)

Chapter 5: Bellicose (The Final Part)

2011-09-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

If you have reached an end, then it is not God.

--St. Augustine, de Civitate Dei bk. 12, ch.18.

If there are anyindelible truths to life, one is that public restrooms are a terrible place totry and gather your thoughts.

You try to focusbut your eyes keep getting caught by the strange things written on the stalls,some in ink, some scraped by a knife, like they were trying to carve theiridentities into the very hardware of the system. The vulgar and the tragic intertwined in somedelinquent free form poetry, a patchwork of non-musical jazz without soul orsymphony. There were phone numbers likeinvitations, racism, strong urges to legalize gay marriage, and strange stickfigure pictures that had been scratched over by countless others but obviouslyhad them in awkward sexual positions. Idoubted half of them were even possible, but apparently stick figures are veryflexible.

Next to these wasthe occasional bible verse, never the verse itself just the number referencingwhere to find it. Apparently someonethought these people could use a good dose of Holy Scripture without taking thetime to reflect that maybe vandalism wasn’t the best way to get the messageacross. Or maybe it was the perfectway. They were lost in the noiseanyway. It was a pity how they justmelted into everything else. Everybodychose to express themselves here and it was disgusting; or if it was beautifulit had nothing to set itself off from the profane. These were all choices, contrary, absurd,poignant, and everything in-between, was the same nothing as everythingelse—fractal opinions just endlessly ramifying up and down the stall, all likeclaw marks on the inner walls of a prison. The desperate human spirit. Carved here. In some reallybizarre way the man with the one eye and the southern drawl was right. Too many laws suffocate humanity. Here, humanity at its most base, the place ofpissing and defecation, and God knows what, where Christ like all humanityundoubtedly frequented, was the basecamp where mankind ventured out into thelaw of human judgment. There wassomething comforting to know that God Himself was absurdly human before hestood before the courts.

“I’m alive, but Idon’t feel alive,” one scrawl said, desperately inserted, or perhaps overtaken,in between someone who must have thought themselves rebellious just to write Fuck on the wall, and someone whothought “Sara is a whore.” But onecaught my eye, alone and unassuming, beneath the toilet paper. There is no modern romance, it said. I think it was from a song. Or maybe a poem. I don’t know why I thought it was profound. The stick figures were, probablyunintentionally, telling me the same thing. There is no modern romance.

I got up, got outof the stall I was hiding in, went over to the sink and splashed water on myface. Can one baptize themselves?No. Of course not. But Christ ventured forth as I was aboutto. Through waters, absurdly human,standing before the Sanhedrin.

You were probablyhere by now, waiting for me in the room that I was dreading to enter. Good. You can wait a little bit too. Ilooked into the mirror, drying my face off with those terrible unabsorbentpaper towels that are always in a public restroom.

“Who areyou?” I whispered to myself, notnoticing that a Public Defender had walked in and was washing his hands afterhe awkwardly decided to balance his suitcase on a small shelf to keep it fromtouching the floor. I had that mortifiedfeeling you get when someone walks in and catches you doing something you wouldotherwise never do in front of another human being. He just looked at me with a little smile.

“Save thatquestion for when you leave,” he threw his useless paper towel into the wastebasketand started to dry his hands on his suit, “don’t ask that here.”

Finally somethingthat made sense. But unfortunately forme it didn’t sink in because I was too busy fighting off the urge to tell him Idon’t normally talk to myself.

As the door closedbehind him, I looked back into the mirror and sighed.

Here we go.

--------------------------

Am I a great loop?

I sat in my bedone night and felt my hand on my face. Iwas under a tomb of blankets, a crypt of darkness. And I knew that science would say that what Ifelt was nerve against nerve, flesh and flesh. Matter causing matter to sense matter. So “sense” is too strong perhaps. Matter caused matter to change. Was the warmth of my hand the phantom of some physics equation? The delerium of my heart just some chemistrypercolating? Was I a ghost haunting myown dreams? Meat musing about itself? TheEsperanto of the molecule, meat puppetry. I didn’t want to be forgetful that Iwas just a lump of clay with no Potter.

And so matterlooped upon matter, and matter changed as matter folded upon itself, as my handmet cheek, as my heart met chest.

And in somecomplex concatenation, cause upon cause in an endless, infinite chain led to meand produced H2O+NaCl. And a tear randown my cheek. But the tear and mysadness was just the lacrimation of eye ducts. A salt I now breathed. My painwas just chemicals flexing and fusing.

But what was thatname, then. Pain? What need did I have of the name if the eventwas described fully by the physics? Wasn’t pain equal, convertible with H2O+NaCl? With the red and iron of my bloodeffervescing as I heaved in loneliness, in the dark? The name described nothing.

And if itdescribed something, what was it? Whatwas the beyond of its horizon, which stretched above the chemical surface, thematerial substrate?

Did I emerge? Was that Myself who was crying anEntity? Did I crawl and burst from bloodvessel and vein? Or was I purely thesnap of a neuron? So I could say “I havenever felt so alone.”

But a scientistwith some computer could say “Synapse X burst and connected to Y.” And on and on.

And would we meanthe same thing?

---------------------------

A strange thinghappened as I walked from the bathroom through the hall, to that great and dreaded door. Earlier I had peered into theroom designated for family legal matters, though it was clear even throughcasual glances that the only family matter occurring today was the same reasonyou and I had shown up. And the room wasfull. So depressingly full. It was always like this, I had beentold. Everyday. It wasn’t a large room by any means. But it was packed with a mass of sad eyedbodies filing paperwork, scribbling furiously to work the last ink drops out ofdried pens, standing in molasses lines that seemed frozen to stillness in themorning cold.

Quiet in thecorners with faded toys from a decade past were little boys and girls. I remember being taken aback that parents wouldbring their children to this. It wasdifficult to tell if the kids even knew what was going on. Sometimes they would catch your eye withtheirs, and you realized they wanted an explanation of what was happening, asif some stranger would tell them what mom and dad were curiously silentabout. From the mass of the crowd Iheard the heart breaking voice of a little girl, bored with the meager toys,tugging on the blouse of her mother who was distracted with the telltaleclipboard and papers. “Mommy can you andDaddy take me to the zoo after this?” The whole room heard this, through their scribbling and moroseconversation, and for a moment the whole room almost collapsed under theweight. What a terrible thing.

I stood outsidethe same door now, ready to be absorbed into that same line, terrified ofit. I breathed in deeply and pushed thedoor open, readying myself for a crowd, probably the same crowd still waitingtheir turns. The door opened and…astrange thing. Emptiness. A Miracle. There was no one in there waiting save you. Three employees were at the head of where theline was supposed to form, sipping on coffee and laughing at some of theabsurdities they had already witnessed today, probably enjoying the unexpectedlull more than anyone.

They say that Godworks in mysterious ways, and certainly to any outside observer who knew of ourdivorce this would have been a strange event to call a miracle, no matter howsmall of one. I remember hearing afterwardsby one of the filing clerks—I don’t remember her name, just the army of catpictures lining her back window like little watchful sentinels—how the officehad never been this empty during the week, and that the whole room had clearedout not five minutes before I walked in and saw you sitting there. It is fair to say, then, that in that room Iwitnessed a tiny miracle. But to thisday I find it shameful to call it that, to say its name to anyone other thanmyself. Miracle. I don’t know whichpart I was more confused about, the fact that, in the moments before I walkedinto the room the only thing I thought fit to pray for was not reconciliation,but a speedy procession through the labyrinth, or the fact that this,precisely, was what God answered. SinceGod had apparently been in a generous mood, I sometimes wonder with pangs ofguilt what I would have been given had I in that instant the character to askfor something nobler. A simple make us whole. Time heals all wounds, so the saying goes,but sometimes it seems to make others irreparable. The years often get heavier. No one tells you that.

The small blessingof an empty room proved itself in the fact that it still took a good half anhour comprised of two different staff members going over the divorce forms,page by page, for the most part simply examining each to make sure oursignatures, initials, and dates found their homes among the many sadlines. It was such a peculiar thing togo through this, to stand there as each page was turned. To watch your life itemized and divided. A tremble of nervous laughter wouldoccasionally murmur from our mouths as the attendants would take turns with thesame joke, saying we would have to start the process over because we missed asignature here, or a date there. And ofcourse this was followed by a small smile, the sounds of papers being slidaround on laminate countertop to face us so we could sign, and each time wecontinued on page by page. I remembernoticing, out of the corner of my eye, that you were twirling your hair throughthe whole process. It reminded me ofwhen we first started dating. Howstrange that we could be the same, and yet so different now, there at the farend of our history.

I suppose this wasall incredibly routine to the people helping us, don’t you think? They did this every hour of every day. Well. They were government employees so those days weren’t very long Isuppose, and numerous holidays, long weekends, smoke breaks, and the like. But still you get the point. How do you tell a story then, and which one istrue? Do I tell the story of how myheart died that day, how it died many times and was haunted by many falseresurrections, how that day I left myself behind? How loneliness loomed up suddenly and weended in the way that, probably, most catastrophes ended without an ending, thedead not knowing how they died?

Or should I speakof how the truculent universe of the labyrinth preferred to retain us as itssecret, left to itself to fade away as a single instance among a vast ocean ofpublic statistics? Of how the fullpublicly recognizable statement of my grief was a neat stack of stapled papers,passing quietly from hand to hand in triplicate in a manila envelope with a redcolored tag? Of how there was,somewhere, a bare patch in what was a pristine spot of forest, cleared of itstimber, now cleaned and sliced and pressed and bleached so that we coulddeclare our enmity? Was this truly onlythe story of how a document with an absurdly long barcode number got filed,about how it was transferred to the nameless cat-picture woman after I leftthat day, about how she filed it while simultaneously wondering what she shouldget from the vending machine, and about how months later I received anunassuming slip of paper in the mail telling me everything had gone perfectlyand I was, as summer’s first marches came, officially alone? I somehow knew allof this was true. My bellicose tragedy wassuddenly a census form: Caucasian male, 24, divorced. Derrick is dead. Long live file 7879025.

Or another story: Isaw the black of the beginning, the great spark of cosmos. God spoke. The cosmogeny progressed. Theinfinite outward race of light and heat. Luminescent spandrels of ardor between darknesses, of earth betweenenergies. Molecules diagonalized andcacophonized and split and sundered. Eigenvectors played and improvised in magisterial analogy, thesempiternal resounding in echo after echo, form after form. Diaphanous andethereal creation chorused. Coalesced. Nothing, then something, then quark and leptonand muon and tauon and strings; and I was rock and ocean, then cell and ape. Your heart was dripping pitch and made ofwood, our form unearthed from the landscape as the eons marched. Then love; then war. Pink and purple nebula, then star and systemsolar, then planet, land and water: clouds of effervescent silver divided likecells splitting, fanning into infinity, compounding in multiplication, and thenagain into math beyond mind. Watersbecame wet and the land thirsty. Thecontinents carved themselves from the spaces of sea. I first looked into your eyes.

Vegetationlaunched itself toward God. Upward. Ever upward. All from the evening, a murmur in the excretion of the void. We kissed. Next and beneath waterfall and fauna, one another with our fingers lacedamongst the grass, and in love. Treessprouted. Then man came. And machine. And we fell in love. And machines took the trees and cut them;they bit the brown bark and sliced it; they bent it into perfect sheets. And eons of creatures, great and colossaldied and fed the earth. They meltedunder boundless pressures, immense and chaotic. The continents and water ground them into chemicals. Their bones and bulk swallowed by wet anddust and rock. And we became married.They became petrol. All their strife andpersonality, teeth and frenzy, all their struggle and love, appetite andinstinct, fed into oil. And the oilbecame ink. And then language blossomedand ink became its guardian. Life, thenlanguage, then law. And the ink was sentto a stamp factory. And we became unhappy. Andthe factory refined and distributed it, and a truck running on oil brought thestamps abroad, and to here, this place of corridors.

And our distances grew.

I saw our liveslike movie reels projecting upon this planet earth, paper thin illusions oflight playing upon the material surfaces of blood and stone. Silhouettes gliding effortless upon some moretrue solidity. So buoyant and aloof. Was there a need for creation? Aninfinite, unbreakable law that led to us? To our perfect love. To itsshattering. To its husk.

Our kiss. Our quiescence.

And here wewere. The ink from eons brought bytrucks was placed in a storeroom, and the storeroom was visited by a lady whoowned too many cats and distributed to her coworkers. Coworkers patiently attending to us. Isn’t this a strange story? The dinosaursdied so we could write our divorce papers. No, that wasn’t fair. They gaveus our marriage certificate too. Whatuseful creatures. The whole of the universestood us here, as if history was tilted just slightly toward our currentposition. We were a small knot that tiedtogether the strands of eons. And wasthis story any less true than the one where our hearts broke, where our worldsended? Was it truly pain, or merely theblindness of nature? Was Nietzscheright, did everything merely meet, kiss, and depart? Were we tragic, or merely the world worlding?

“Done.” The clerk smiled politely at us as shenotarized it with the strong click-thump of her stamp. That damned microcosmos.

“That’s it?”

I was like thevictim of a nuclear blast, still standing alertly erect in fear andwonder. The system and efficiency herewere trying to prune the wildness of my heart, just like the trees outside thecourthouse. Only I was a clutch oftimber ablaze, standing like a giant candle burning for the dead. My heart was screaming, but all that wasoutward was anesthetic.

“Yes, that’s it,all done.” She smiled again. We began to turn to leave. But before I could fully come to realize howodd a thing it is for such a monumental change to have just occurred whose onlyimmediately visible cue was the thumping of a stamp, the clerk beckoned usback. I secretly prepared myself for thepart where they cut off my right hand, or fileted the souls of my feet. Jokes on them though, I thought, I’m lefthanded.

“Just one morething,” she said with the same small smile, and with no visible instrument oftorture.

“Did we forgetanother signature?” I asked.

“No, no. Its not that.” She paused. “Its just,” –she examined us in earnest, pale blue eyes unblinking,traveling between us—“well, I do this so often. I just wanted to say its nice to see you two act so civil towards eachother in this process. We just get somany who aren’t.”

We noddedsheepishly at her odd compliment, thinking her done. Yes, civil. Thats exactly what we were. It had nothing to do with the fact that wejust wanted this whole affair bleeping done with as soon as bleepingpossible. Yes, yes. We are the epitome of human decency. We were the Geneva Convention: yes, you cancertainly still kill each other, butplease, lets be civil about the wholeaffair. Let us go. God, let it be finished.

But she added onelast thing, which I will never forget.

“Its just that,that’s the way it should be.” She noddedlike a mother nods. Like my mother. “Imean, you loved each other once.”

You loved eachother once.

I’m not sure whatit was exactly about her saying that. Iguess I knew all along you didn’t love me anymore. I mean, we were getting a divorce after all, I’m not quite surewhat other clues I needed. But to hearsomeone else say it, to hear the past tense aloud from a third party. One with a notary stamp no less. I would have preferred the knife. I was already on fire but I had hoped gettingeverything over and done with would finally be like walking into the coolvelvet dark of the evening sky, plunging into its silk lattice of stars. Into the vaulted sky of oceans I daydreamedof as my father read scripture to me all those years ago. But those damnedwords tore the skin of the night to its four corners by white, unforgivingdaylight. Heaven’s vaults stood open,empty. I felt my skin grow hot, my facered.

They say the Greek word for truth literallymeans to un-bury, to un-cover and unveil. In that moment, then, as I burned, I was truth, and all my clevershadows started to corrode away. A slow humof sorrow began to gasp for its freedom. What was that feeling? I was notloved. No. What a bitter clench in my heart. Tearswelled up in my eyes and I turned quickly to manage my way back through thelabyrinth to the outside. I rememberedthat moment when I stared through your lover, and the universe also began toleap away. It began to leap away now, ofits own accord. Get, out. I screamedinside. Go now. I did everything to choke them down. The papers passed hands. The story of the felled tree, the compressedpaper, the printed law, became true. Theuniverse lurched around the axis of the notary stamp. I clenched my fist. Took a breath. Cursed at myself. I was that candled tree burning for the dead,but now, detonated by my own heat, I exploded, disappearing into the beacon ofmy own fiery wreckage. It was like atheological disappearance, you know. Like the Lord’s Supper. I felt myheart falling in its fire, and after falling it would be transubstantiated intospreading waves of earth and heat, and after its waves had swelled and brokenand passed over and under and on, they would turn back to look at their dead,and simply cool as they pushed outwards toward the air.

We walked out ofthe room, unspeaking.

I remember readingan account of a bunch of young firefighters who died in a horrible forest fireas they ran up a hill to try and escape it as the blaze ran out ofcontrol. A few survivors said it roaredlike all of nature was the throat of some great animal. The physician who went in with the rescuecrew the night the men were burned told the author of their account that, aftermany of the bodies had fallen while running, most of them had risen again,taken a few steps, and fallen again, this time like pilgrims in prayer, facingthe top of the hill. And that, theevidence, then, is beyond bewilderment and pain there remained some firmintention to continue doing forever the last thing that they hoped to do onearth before each passed into flame. Far from their whole lives passing beforethem in review as the conflagration ran its course, everything actually becamesmaller on its way to becoming eternal. The smallness of a thought, the unbearable lightness of one singlemovement that resists completion and so is restarted. My own small passing overinto eternity began in our last words, and in this living death I felt the markedrepetition over and over again as each step took me not closer towardsanything, but farther and farther away from you.

Do you rememberthose last words we spoke to each other that day? Beneath and between the whispered curses atmy self, a small glimpse of our eyes caught in the hallway right before theentrance where daylight overtook the neon glow. There was an awkward hesitation as you stopped but wanted to continue,beckoned by a clandestine breeze of cool morning air which crept into the buildingas a man left through the doors, carrying the promise of far away places andcalling you to the bright outside and beyond. And so we stood there for an imperceptible moment, with no normal timekeeping pace with the slowness of our shock. There we were in that small infinity, our arms hanging at our sides, andour eyes becoming the eyes of strangers, as if the notary’s stamp was magic andbegan to take hold. The world walkedbetween us.

“Well,” youstammered, “Ill see you later.”

I actuallylaughed.

“No youwont.”

Im not sure why,but you looked hurt at that, and I felt sad for saying it and hurting you. In my mind I had pictured a more elegantending, our departures from one another riding the swells of violins orsomething grand like that. But I justwatched as you turned from me and disappeared into the brightness of the dayoutside, until I could only see the side of a tree against the light floodingthrough the door windows, its leaves falling like feathers. But I thought Icould still smell your perfume.

At least for amoment.

Chapter Five: Bellicose, Part Two

2011-09-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, itwas not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry whichconfessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and agod from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods ofinevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for humanspeech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who everuttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instantto be an atheist.

G.K.Chesterton, Orthodoxy, San Francisco:Ignatius Press, 1995, p.139

In one of the long halls as I was still waiting for you I sat outside the divorce office on a bench listening to a large older woman missing several teeth go on and on to another woman behind a desk, Hispanic and infinitely patient, about how the government was out to get her, and how she had tried so many times to pay her fines. And that, wouldn’t you know it, somehow the money was getting lost in the mail.

An older southern man who had been sitting next to me, the strangest sight I had yet seen, with a scraggly gray goatee, an eye patch, and glasses, interrupted my eavesdropping. I didn’t mind. I couldn’t really pay attention anyway.

“It’s a mess, isn’t it?” He peered at me with his one eye under the brim of a black baseball cap with no logo.

“What is?”

He grinned at me and motioned in a little wave with his hand.

“This place, all of it.” Leaning forward on his cane, one gnarled hand cupped over the other as they swallowed the fake wood of the cane’s handle.

“All of this was made by people you know.” He gave me a strange smile. “All of it. Every brick, mortar, and law. And if tomorrow a bunch of people decided this was all meaningless, well it just would be. That’s the system. That’s how it works. People giving and taking meaning from other people.” He stopped and muttered something that I couldn’t hear. I didn’t quite know what to make of this stranger.

My phone rang. I excused myself for a moment.

“Hello?” It was you. I got up and walked past the patient Hispanic woman, whose name was Betty, as she started to deal with some guy in a plaid shirt with a red vest who was having trouble understanding why he needed a court date for the trouble he was in for carrying his unlicensed shotgun in public. I placed my finger in my ear with my free hand to block out the absurd conversation. This place can make you hate people if you’re not careful.

“I’m lost.”

Those words sent a knot into my stomach. We both were always so bad at directions. I remember we tried to find this little Italian restaurant for an hour and eventually just gave up and went downtown. We laughed about it forever. But not now. But not this. I had only been inside for twenty minutes and it was killing me. I think time itself got lost wandering the corridors. This needed to end soon but it couldn’t without you.

“Ok where are you at?”

“Um, I don’t know,” I hear your car slow down in the background, “looks like I’m at 211th street?” My heart sunk.

“Yeah that’s way past it, you need to turn around and get to 95th.” I sounded too harsh. I softened my voice. “It’s a little tricky to find because of the one way streets.”

“Ok. Sorry I’ll be there soon.” You hung up and the wait began again. For a minute I hesitated, wondering if I should go sit back down next to the strange southerner with one eye. Unfortunately I had left my papers there so my decision was made for me. He wasted no time starting our conversation over.

“You getting a divorce, son?” Through the shadow of the brim of his hat and the thick black rim of his glasses he glanced down at the papers all amiss from being nervously rustled about before I had walked off to get your call. His one eye was apparently more than enough. I was taken aback at how forward he was, how casual. I felt like some great and tragic secret of mine had just been unearthed. Yet his voice was strangely tender, as if I was really his son. For some strange reason it comforted me.
I sat down.

“Um, yeah unfortunately I am.” I didn’t know what else to say. It was either that or lie and say I was here for some petty crime, which definitely did not seem like the better option.

“I myself just lost my boy in a car accident. I’m here to take care of what these morons consider the necessary legalities.” He stopped and adjusted his hat. He spoke those words quietly to me, but with force, like he expected them to have body and weight to throw on the gears that made motion in this place and grind them to a halt. The world melted away. As if suddenly we were just sitting in a great space, where the labyrinth exhausted itself into a single room, every corridor corroded, coalesced, a furious contortion into openness; and we were set off against the empty space he and I. No other movement. No other sound. He was held in a sort of scientific humility; or maybe I should say he held himself like this. The magnanimous man, who is great in that he knows he is small. The scientist, who could begin to describe the world by starting with the worm. Where the last was first. A kingdom of God. In all the movements of the hallways, the massive jurisdictions, legislation, all the infinite words and jargon, litigation, sophistry, lateralization of clauses, the infinite exterior concatenation which would not hold him, their greatness confluxed on deaf ears. The only cosmos was his words, his suffered death, his son. The world would suffer, be impressed with, his ghost. Be turned around it like its center. I miss him. He wasn’t cavalier in how he said it, even though it was again so straightforward. But the thrumming of the lights and the passing of people continued. I was waiting for a life story but it never came. Ironically I felt closer to him for that. I was trying to think of something to say when he looked up at me, and apparently saw that I was struggling.

“It keeps us human,” he nodded at me as he said this, his southern accent catching every word. “Not knowing what to say in the face of tragedy, I mean. All of this, this place, is chatter. Babble for the sake of some desperate meaning in the face of nonsense.” He gave a sad smile to me, and leaned in like he was about to tell me a secret. “But it doesn’t mean anything, you know? You say too much of something and it loses its value. The air just fills up, and there’s nothing left to breathe. You make ten million laws and you’re not human anymore. It just spreads the pain too thin and too rigid over so many words. Silence sometimes is just the best thing. Makes you face yourself, its like in the empty space, you suddenly appear.”

He tapped his cane into the ground once, and rocked back, leaning into the hard bench, his eye shut. “Kinda makes you appreciate the fact that God was born in a shit-hole. The simplicity of it all, that you can be truly human still, in a place like that, without all of this legality.” It was difficult to tell if this was blasphemy or piety. But he whispered it like a prayer.

My phone rang again before I could really take in what he had just said. Again it was you. Thank God you were finally here. I hung up the phone and muttered some triviality of a condolence about his son, even though I had just received a completely eloquent speech on why speaking too much was a poor choice. I was an idiot. But today, I felt, I was entitled. This was not a good day.

I had told you to meet me in the room I had been sitting next to, but I needed to go to the bathroom first. Collect myself. I said goodbye to the man who had been sitting next to me, and excused myself. With an almost imperceptible reluctance he said goodbye and nodded.

He called after me.

He asked me like a guard would ask, as the inmate walked the ingressing corridor towards extinction. The needle. The chair. The guillotine. The mob's stones.

“Do you still believe in love, son?”

The strange things this guy kept saying. I laughed softly to myself, eyebrows furrowed, and turned back around.

Ever so slightly, I nodded.

“I’d like to.”

Who knows if I meant it, it was the only thing that came to my mind to say. He took in a deep sigh and stared off ahead of him, leaning his chin upon his hands, still clasping the top of his cane.
“I believe in love like I believe in God.” His eye never left me as he said it.

I thought about it for a second.

“I don’t know what to say to that,” I said back as the execution hallway stretched before me. It was true. I didn’t. I didn’t know what he meant. He just chuckled at me.

“Good.”

__________________

I was so tired.

I awoke reaching for you in the dark one night. But I turned my head, and I was in an empty room. My hand felt in its reach only a cold and unused side of the bed. I became embarrassed at how I had forgotten this, even though I knew no one was watching. I turned back over. Pretended it was a twitch and a dream.

-----------------------------

I dreamt last night of the home I grew up in. My old home. Again. The dream was so visceral, so real. How fitting. To this day that chapter of my life was real, that which shaped my bones and flesh, the poetry which wrote my heart and conjured my soul. The fulcrum of my world. Was everything after merely the dream? How I could only hope for that.

I dreamt I walked past my parent’s room at night, in the old house through the landing to the stairs past their room’s double doors, that beautiful house I loved, and I heard them laughing to each other happily. How my heart soared at this. I walked downstairs, hungry I think, searching for food in the kitchen pantry, assured at their laughter. Their love was like the foundations and stone and wood and beam of the house. The lattice of my heart. So I walked on, unthinking. The world was already founded. What did I need to trouble myself with it?

I walked downstairs.

Suddenly, though, as if I cannot descend the staircase swiftly enough, in the dream it is early morning, and I see my father in the dark of the living room, clutching a photograph of my mother and another man, snuck from the midst of some previous, horrible midday, shadow pouring down his face. It is that awful morning. That unforgettable morning. That day life first collapsed.
I tried to go in to my dad in the dream, like I did in real life, to talk to him. What’s wrong dad? I asked. I knew somehow that I was originally on my way to class. But in my soul as the words left my lips I knew I wouldn’t go. All plans were just ash. Here his darkness anchored me. The future intercepted my every thought.

As I walked into the living room, in the dream, he is gone and the dark house is empty, and ready for sale. Not just empty, but that emptiness you feel when you walk into a house, unlived for weeks. And for some reason my sweet Kalika, she was standing there in my dream. My Kairos. Kalia. Kalonice. Kalokagathia A love from long before. My soul gave her many names that repeated perfection and beauty. My sweet archetype, she is there, here, in the dream for that moment I feel the love and longing that rapt me for so long.

I miss you, I say to her in my empty house, in the melancholy dark.

She smiles at me tenderly.

The house is so sublime and still. I get a powerful, indescribable emotion, as if I existed in that moment in time, knowing all that I know now; knowing that the silent house will disappear and that my family will go their own way. That for the next ten years no matter what I do I will in a very profound sense not know who I am anymore. I feel it in the way only dreams can make you feel. Where your body is not flesh but feeling.

I know that this is the first disappearance of many. That I will fall in love again. That I will be denied.
All of this I know in that moment as if I was then, standing in the sad silence of my beloved home, empty and now just a house, on the cusp of all that is to follow. Standing on the limen between heaven and earth. It is horrible and beautiful. Sublime and terrifying. Like a moment viewed from eternity—all the instants stemming from this, all its implications and tragedies and consequences present, in this before, this moment, with the emotions only dreams can conjure. All the pathways, the traces of time stretching forth, root and branch and trunk, but inflected in the immediate intuition I had, a puncture in time. Nonlinear. Abrupt.

My whole body was a fire, and the flame was that emotion. It was a great, knowing melancholy. That is the only way I know how to describe it.
It is just Kalia, and the still shadows of the house, and myself, waiting to explode outward into all the times and distances pregnant in that moment. I saw a shadow of myself walk out the door for the first day of school. But he disappeared as a phantom of my mother took his photo. I saw my first kiss on the couch when my parents were out. The endless hours of my friends and I in my room, evading sleep with laughter. Leaving like smoke and drafts through the vents of the house, breathing as if they also knew; they verged on their last gasps as our creatures.

For a second, I thought about running away. Outside. Anywhere.

Into the night and its mysterious distances.

If I get away maybe I could stay in the dream, I thought for a second.

But I don’t. I know, somehow, as I stand here that this is the last time I stood in my house. I know if I leave I will not be able to come back, like Adam east of Eden.

So I hesitate. Savor the moment within the place, my place forever lost, restored only in sleep and its depths. I see the moon flooding in through the great window nook in the kitchen. I feel the cool tile beneath my feet. The smoothness of the counter I felt everyday as I grew up. The sensation that met me in the mornings before my cereal. In the evenings as I drank a last glass of water before bed.

Goodnight my son, said my parents, both. Goodnight my daughter, they said as my sister walked up the stairs. Goodnight, before we scattered before the wind.

I miss you, I say again to Kalia as if I didn’t emphasize it enough a moment before. I don’t know why she was in this dream. She wasn’t there when it actually happened. But in this dream I couldn’t focus on anything but her. She was so beautiful. Her shimmering hair. Her lips. Our laughter together. It was like the weight of all the sorrow I felt was carving her shape from the shadows, making her surface and soft skin and beautiful tender smile. Conjuring her from the aloneness of me standing in the house. She was like some female messiah. As if the only way I could flee, under the stars and outside, was if I kissed her and grabbed her hand, leading her along unknown paths with me. Or if she led me away. Her hair, her gorgeous lips, her bright, beautiful eyes illuminating the dark behind me.

The urge was so strong, I can remember if I concentrate so very hard, to tell her again that I missed her. That I loved her, so much more than anything. She was the house; the sorrow; she was all my friends absent; my family broken; my identity obscured. The potential of my past renewed.

A beautiful symbol. My subconscious is a poet. I still haven’t shaken the feeling I awoke with from that dream, it was so powerful. I’ve had variations of this dream many times, but not so powerful as this. Never like this.

The dream is about to end. I know it.

The house of my father, my mother, groans under its immanent dismissal.

Kalia and I are standing there still, looking at each other as if in love. The beams and glass begin to pull away, as if in some silent hurricane stripping the house. We stand there unperturbed. She is smiling at me, her green eyes sparkling in the moonlight.

I miss you. I said.

We both know this moment is soon over. In the still starlight the tile is torn from counters, the world shivers and shakes around us. I see a family of shadows on the porch carving pumpkins and putting in candles. But it evanesces; the mirage mixes with the storm. The garage is pulled into the heavens toward the moon. I want to try and hold on to it, to not let it pass.

Beyond, in the silver of the moon’s gaze, the world blurs.

Why does everything have to end, I said, to pass? I spoke as one who existed ten years before but with the weight of everything ten years after. The walls of my room upstairs wrench into the night, all the phantoms of my youth uprooted, hooked by some great, incorrigible force. We knew how this ends.

She finally spoke as she kisses me. Her hand running through my hair.

It is a song, she says. All of it.

I awake.