This Can't Happen to Me

They say that the great ideas occur to one while one is in one's early to middle twenties. I'm starting to understand why: with a baby on the way, a new job that is higher paying but also much more demanding, etc., at 28 I'm discovering that I am rapidly becoming that most despised thing: a bourgeois. Yes, one of those dreadfully conventional middle-class bores whose mind has calcified. I sense the borders of the universe contracting until the cosmos begins to resemble a cubicle; I greatly fear that soon I shall not be able to distinguish between the two. Suddenly the critiques of both Marx and Nietzsche make so much more sense to me, which is frightening in itself.

The worst part of this is the dearth of those who understand or care. "Dude, I'm becoming a bourgeois" is not the sort of complaint most otherwise interested persons would find intelligible, so one finds one's bourgeoisification advancing at a rate proportionate to the general lack of interest in the malady. Simultaneously, of course, one finds oneself becoming more inverted and idiosyncratic as one struggles to cope with bourgeoisification on one's own. My only solace is that the bourgeois mind seems to consistently lack cognizance of its own constriction, so I wait patiently for the Lethean waters of conventionality to o'erflow me. Soon the depths from which I longed to speak will no longer exist as a memory, or even as a theoretical possibility, and I will have become an adult.

Building a Legacy

The Last Day is not a topic often broached in discourse these days, regardless of the discoursers. The "legacy" that one leaves behind is, though. The oddity of the current situation is that the preparation currently urged for leaving an honorable legacy is similar to the preparation that used to be urged for a successful appearance at the Judgment Seat of Christ. It is as though history has become a convenient secular stand-in for the Ultimate Justice which all men long for.

The irony of the anti-Christian Judgment Day is that it is cruel, merciless, and unforgiving. As is typical of non-Christian thought, there is no room for redemption--which is painfully appropriate in the particular case of Judgment, since it is precisely the Redeemer who has been removed.

Matthew 25 is bleeding heart pandering when compared to the New York Times editorial page.

Frere Jean

Johnny Calvin, we hardly knew you. We thought we did, but you never played by our rules, so we wrote you off as a theocratic sadist, or perhaps as a sainted prophet descended from the heavens--a sort of Aryan firstborn, a demiurge, a minor deity. Both without paying much attention to the actual content of your thought--beyond the P-word, of course--times 2. Most of us hated it. The ones who liked it were generally somewhat disturbed persons of slightly below average inteligence who, with occasionally good intentions, made cornmeal mush of your exquisite dogmatics. But at least your beard was timeless. The skullcap, however--that skullcap made you look like a meanie-head. Very bad PR, for which I expect Beza is to blame, as Farel would never have approved. Never trust the sensible ones when it comes to image control.

American Philistine Celebrates Black History Month

Edward the Black Prince (1330 - 1376)

Although Edward never became king - he died before his father, Edward III - he is remembered as a great medieval military hero, with notable victories against the French in the Hundred Years War.
Edward was born on 15 June 1330 at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, the eldest son of Edward III. He was created prince of Wales in 1343. He showed military brilliance at an early age, playing a key role in the defeat of the French army at the Battle of Crecy when he was only 16. In 1355, he was appointed his father's lieutenant in Gascony and the following year led another significant victory against the French at Poitiers, taking the French king prisoner.
In 1362, Edward married Joan of Kent and was created prince of Aquitaine and Gascony by his father. Edward and his wife went to live in his new French domains. In 1367, Edward led an expedition to Spain, to restore the deposed King Pedro of Castile, and proved himself again with victory at the Battle of Najera in northern Castile. Edward returned to Aquitaine, where he made himself unpopular with the nobility by levying taxes to pay for his Spanish expedition. They rose in revolt against him and in 1370 Edward besieged the city of Limoges. When it fell 3,000 of its inhabitants were massacred. A year later, Edward returned to England.
Edward died aged 45 on 8 June 1376, probably from an illness contracted in Spain, and was buried in great splendour in Canterbury Cathedral. His young son Richard succeeded his grandfather Edward III a year later.
During his lifetime he was known as Edward of Woodstock; the title of Black Prince developed after his death and may refer to black armour that he wore.

-courtesy of the BBC (Black Broadcasting Corporation)

Five Years Later

After 5 years, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) has finally announced a denominational position on the “New Perspective on Paul” (NPP) and its subsidiary, the "Federal Vision/Auburn Avenue Theology " (FV). I commend the church for taking a definite stand on this, and I believe that the OPC’s decision to side with the Westminster Standards and the traditional Protestant reading of Paul, rather than with the latest theological trend, is a judicious one. I wonder just how ecclesially helpful this stance will be, though, coming as it does some years after the outbreak of a fairly serious controversy in conservative Presbyterian circles. It appears to me that most people affected in any way by the FV dispute made up their minds years ago as to what they thought of it. This new effort would seem rather to open old wounds than to heal them.

Furthermore, although I am encouraged by the denomination’s stand, which was announced by a series of articles on justification in the current issue of the official OPC organ, New Horizons (NH), I must admit that I am cringing at the poor quality of the various responses. Let’s remember, folks, that the NPP/FV theology, as equivocal and incoherent as it may be (especially in its FV manifestations), is being advanced by some of the brightest minds in conservative Presbyterianism--which, these days, isn’t saying much, but the fact remains. The several essays, all of which I have at least cursorily perused, seem more to represent a well-intentioned showcase of disputational no-nos than anything else. This would be a great resource for a high school logic teacher: “Alright, class, please identify the formal and informal fallacies present in each essay (there are at least two). Bonus points if you can make any one argument formally valid.” Sadly, this is true even though the essays focus on justification and (apparently) on these two main criticisms: 1. The NPP/FV position is not confessional, and 2. The NPP/FV position is not truly Pauline. One would think that such a narrow purview would facilitate honed, biting essays. One would think.

Reading the NH essays this morning, my mind kept wandering to the prospective carnage that will be wreaked on these poor professors, pastors, and elders. Don’t these guys read Credenda/Agenda, or at least remember the “Morecraft-a-roni and Cheese” spoof from Round 1 of this same debacle? And, to my shame, I determined to immediately re-subscribe to Credenda. Wrong or not, the FV boys just had an effortless slaughter hand-delivered to them, postage paid by the OPC.. Entertainment value aside, I sincerely hope that the denominational report, which comes out next month, will be more substantive. But I suppose you know where my money is.

Romantic Anarchists

I'm starting to wonder if we've truly moved into a "post-modern" age. The current obsession with "the margins," to regurgitate the Derridean metaphor, appears to me more and more like a continuation of the Romantics' infatuation with le bon sauvage. In the narratives of these latter-day Rousseauians, the championed always seem to be exotic in some way or other, the current favorites being non-white, non-Christian immigrants of various types, who are seen (accurately, I'm afraid) as naturally subversive of whatever vestiges of Western Christendom remain. In the NY Times article below, notice how the perspective of the long-time area residents is not even considered except as an object of ridicule. Apparently, the continuation of any kind of coherent, traditional identity, even of the most general kind, is not something that is to be permitted these benighted folks, who labor under the delusion that it is "their" community. One wonders, though, if this "more-diverse-than-thou" snobbery would be sustained if the "Fugees" were relocated to Upper Manhattan instead of suburban Atlanta.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/us/21fugees.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Frenchify Me

American Francophobia is perhaps an understandable phenomenon, particularly given the general attitude of the French towards Americans. For my own part, however, I tend to harbor an inexplicable and utterly unfounded Francophilia. Perhaps that is simply another instance of my unprincipled contrarianism manifesting itself; I prefer to think of it as a continuation of my interest in high civilization. Whatever my motive, the fact remains that I actually know very little of French culture. I have never seen Paris, I have never read Proust, and I don’t parlay voo anything at all.

I have been wishing recently that I parlay vooed a lot. I have made a belated discovery of Pascal’s Pensees, and my admiration is without limit. Insert here [] the usual remarks on genius, prescience, etc. Those banal accolades would merely obscure the uniqueness of the work’s achievement. Insert here [] the usual accompanying regret that it was never completed.

What has chiefly piqued my interest so far (I have not yet finished reading the Pensees) is what I would call Pascal’s argument from original sin. Oddly enough for his age (mid-seventeenth century), Pascal found most of the usual arguments for Christianity insubstantial and ineffective. He thought, for example, that the old favorite, the teleological argument (the argument from design), was burdened with too much counter-evidence to be conclusive. (That is likely the case, no matter how frequently it is revived.) However, he believed that conclusive evidence for the truth of the Christian religion could be found in the explanatory power of its doctrine of original sin. According to Pascal, no other perspective, whether religious or philosophical, can sufficiently account for what he calls man’s simultaneous “wretchedness and greatness.” He found that, in the nature of the case, all other known explanations emphasized one or the other aspect of the post-lapsarian human condition, rendering them hopelessly one-sided.

Pascal believed not only that he could prove original sin simply from the now-existing human condition, but that his triumph would then evidence the logical need for a redeemer, who could be none other than Christ. (Those who find all of this hopelessly optimistic should refer to the Pensees for all the epistemological qualifications made there.) To him, the essence of the Christian religion consisted in two propositions: man is fallen and Christ has come to redeem him. The first step of his apologia would be to demonstrate the former.

Obviously, this all seems rather quaint in an age when one is hard-pressed even to convince practicing Christians of the reality of original sin. The venerable doctrine has fallen into such ill repute that one finds it cropping up repeatedly as a sort of universal punchline demonstrating the woeful ignorance of past ages. It’s the anti-religionist’s version of phlogiston. However, isn’t Pascal correct to say that the core of the Evangel is contained in his two propositions? And isn’t his insight into the insufficiency of alternative explanations still valid? (Think of the Freudian explanation of the greatness of man, or the Nietzchean explanation of man’s weakness for more contemporary examples.) Pascal’s argument from original sin merits the sort of attention that Plantinga and others have recently given to the ontological argument. Maybe then the sunny day will dawn when we can all be lost again; after that, we might even regain the hope of being found.

Osama Is My Hero

No, really, he is. Not that I can tolerate Muslims, respect Islam, reverence the Quran, or appreciate Mohammed and/or Allah; I consider that Islam and Islamists receive more than sufficient butt-kissing from the elites of what used to be Christendom. However, Osama bin Laden does provoke my admiration, and not because I think that his violence is a justifiable reaction to Western imperialism. I admire Osama bin Laden because he represents a vital, all-encompassing religious and political vision within his tradition. I wish his tradition the perdition it deserves and will eventually receive, but at the same time I am quite jealous. Where in the remnants of Christendom is there Osama’s counterpart?

Osama bin Laden espouses an orthodox version of mainstream (Sunni) Islam, which naturally includes an adherence to Islamic (Sharia) law, but he goes beyond the expected parameters of Islamic Revival thinking and also advocates the return of the Caliphate. His agitations have as their goal the reestablishment of a unified Islamic superstate under the leadership of the Caliph (supreme leader). It’s the rough equivalent of a French intellectual advocating the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire with both its ecclesiastical and political institutions reinstituted. As laughable as that seems, bin Laden has managed to spread his vision (and his organization) across the Arab world, and has managed to arrest the continuing theoretical, political, religious, and military attention of the West. He’s a devout, articulate intellectual who can organize and execute (pun intended) in an amazingly effective fashion.

As an orthodox Calvinist, I wish that there were a Presbyterian al Qaeda. Not for the violence, of course; remember that I’m a Christian, not a Turk. But as an alienated person in the post-Christian, post-industrial West, I long for the kind of leadership that someone like bin Laden provides. In the United States, we have a vital but nonetheless hopelessly confused Christian Right. What Presbyterian would go to war for D. James Kennedy or R.C. Sproul? Again, not that violence is a kind of litmus test for inspiring leadership, but the fact remains that there is a huge void when it comes to Christian leadership, especially Protestant leadership. This is an age of dwarfs, of little men in coats who perpetuate the achievements of their forbears. I long for the day when a Burke or an Anselm or a Knox or a Calvin will arrive again.

Those Provincial Scientists

[click post title for NY Times article]

Breaking news from the NY Times' science page: Neo-Darwinian scientists believe in scientific materialism, including a crass form of determinism! Gasp! This could launch a new phase in the Culture Wars! How will the backward religionists respond to this? No one knows! Will organized religion survive this new assault? Stay tuned for more, er, developments!

With all due disrespect to the scientific community and the staff of the Times, this is very, very old news. Unfortunately, it seems that physics and journalism majors don't receive the liberal arts background that would allow them to know this. However, we enlightened humanist elites will smugly bear with their backwardness, lack of sophistication, and general ignorance. After all, they're only scientists and journalists. With the specialization required by today's disciplines, one can't expect such professionals to be familiar with the commonplaces of Western intellectual history, can one? But, just possibly, one should fault them for wondering what the effect of materialistic determinism might be on Christianity. One does assume, after all, that these people read the news.