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.

The International Protestant Cabal

Samuel Huntington is still unpopular due to his proposals in “The Clash of Civilizations”; “Who Are We?” certainly didn’t help anything. And yet there is something fascinating about his suggestions. The fertility of Huntington’s ideas aroused me as I read George Marsden’s “Jonathan Edwards” last summer. Marsden commented on the peculiarity and ubiquity of international Protestantism in the 18th century: Protestants in both Europe and North America were keen observers and active participants in a trans-Atlantic effort that incorporated religious and political aspects into an ostensibly unified strategy to promote Calvinistic polity and politics across the West. Jonathan Edwards was a typical example of a prominent Protestant who did his part to track and assist the international Protestant agenda. What struck me was the similarity of the efforts of Edwards and his cohorts to Huntington’s proposal: there was an informed attempt to unite nations, based on their religious and political stances, in international action.

Of course, the West is now post-Christian, and we have long since watched the Protestant vs. Catholic dispute lose its urgency. But I think that, in light of the fervent Christian profession still extant in the United States and its confrontation with the newly-discovered (!) enthusiasm of the Islamic East, we may have an opportunity to consider Huntington’s proposal. I say this in light of the emergence of the Religious New Right (as Richard John Neuhaus would have us term it) in the United States. The Christian Right tends to have its foreign policy dictated to it by the Republican party, with all of the corporate and Zionist commitments that that entails. But what if the Christian Right were to re-think its policy based on Huntington’s vision and the previous commitments of their Protestant forbears? If it were conceivably advantageous to all concerned parties to ally themselves based upon shared civilizational (previously religious) heritage, could that provide a coherent foreign policy?

It is far beyond my competence to answer that question, but it fascinates me. What if Israel were no longer a foreign policy priority due to its lack of a common heritage with the United States? What if there an intentional cultivation of international relationships with those countries most congenial to Christianity?

But if there is to be anything distinctly Protestant about this vision, what could it be? The Christian affiliation of most countries so inclined is generally Roman Catholic. The importance of Roman Catholic nations to an international Christian vision is no less real than the pragmatic necessity of the co-belligerency alliance that has developed between Protestants and Roman Catholics in the U.S. I do not see any way to escape the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic that has developed in the American Culture Wars. But I do think that Protestants would be wise to adopt a similar position to the one propounded by such Catholic thinkers as Richard John Neuhaus: we plan to both work with you in the present and assimilate you in the future. We’re a long, long, way from even being able to consider dumping the Papists, domestically or internationally; but that must be our ultimate goal if we are to remain recognizably Protestant.

Was Miguel de Cervantes a Closet Theologian?

“I now repeat,” replied Don Quixote, “what I have said many times before, that the majority of people in this world believe that knights-errant have never existed, and I hold that unless Heaven miraculously convinces them of the truth—that there were and that there are—any labor that I may undertake for that purpose must be in vain, as experience has so often shown me. So, I shall not stop now to deliver you from the error that you hold in common with the multitude. What I intend to do is pray to Heaven to deliver you from it and to make you see how beneficial and necessary knights-errant were to the world in past ages and how useful they would be today if they were in fashion. But now the sins of mankind—sloth, idleness, gluttony, and luxury—are triumphant.”

-Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote II.18

It comes as no surprise to anyone to hear that Cervantes’ masterful Don Quixote is a multi-layered work. At once a parody of chivalrous romances and a critique of the emerging bourgeois world, Don Quixote is so stratified as to provoke wonder. However, to my own very limited knowledge, no-one has so far pointed out the parallels between the Manchegan knight’s delusions and the doctrines of the Calvinistic churches—which, by 1615, were well known, even in Spain.

Consider the passage above, with its obvious similarities to Calvin’s observations on total depravity and irresistible grace. For Calvin, there could be no reception of the Gospel without a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. This doctrine was propounded in marked contrast to the Thomistic model of naturally available knowledge of God. Interestingly, in context the above statement of Don Quixote serves as evidence of his insanity. As Don Lorenzo observes after having heard this comment, “[H]e is a gallant madman.” Could it be that one aspect of Don Quixote is an assessment of early Calvinism? I should like to think so, and I suspect that no-one will bother to stop me.

Obviously Cervantes’ greatest novel is a fascinating work; how much more intricate does it become, though, if a satire of Calvinism is thrown in gratis? Consider, for example, that the Calvinists posited presbyterianism as the original Christianity, a hypothesis which many would consider akin to Don Quixote’s insistent belief in the literal existence of the knights-errant. Additionally, there is the devotion of Don Quixote to his books of chivalry: books which he accepts at face value, books which he considers imbued with an absolute authority which trumps all others.

And then there is the episode of the windmills. Ah, how tantalizing it is to imagine a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic author lampooning Calvinism with this scene! But the most touching aspect of the whole portrayal is the wistfulness with which Cervantes regards his knight’s illusions.

Cynics, Windmills, and Ex-Lutherans

“There have been many writers who have not known how to mingle the useful with the pleasant, and in consequence their work has come to nought, in spite of all their toil. As they are unable to imitate Diogenes as philosopher or scholar, they go to the opposite extreme and blindly and licentiously try to imitate him as cynic.”

-Francisco Marquez Torres, state censor of Spain, in his official approbation of Don Quixote, Book II, published 1615

“Unable to imitate Diogenes”; of how many people could that be said? In fact, who has ever been able to imitate Diogenes? Diogenes was precisely that prototypical man whom one remembers particularly for those traits which no-one could ever meaningfully mimic. (By the way, the Jesus seminar should get a clue from this: if Jesus of Nazareth was a Cynic, he was hopelessly uninteresting when compared to his forbear.)

Be that as it may, Marquez Torres has a point. However futile it may be to attempt building Diogenes’ platform, there have been multitudes who have tried to speak from it. But perhaps I have spoken rashly of Diogenes’ inimitability; perhaps there are those who can manage both his radical critique as well as his capture of the public imagination. Marquez Torres seems to be saying that whoever would assay one successfully must assay both simultaneously. And he is not far wrong in remarking that Miguel de Cervantes achieved both with his monumental Don Quixote. But he is also correct in his condemnation of those throngs who obnoxiously seize on one trait without grasping the other.

Marquez Torres has, I believe, hit upon an explanation for the unrelenting tediousness of our age. There are legions of opinionators today, but how many of them will be memorable in a later age? How many of them, once the urgencies of the moment have passed, will scorch their marks upon the mind the way Diogenes still does? How many of these anointed sages can do, for example, what Richard John Neuhaus has done with his idea of “the naked public square”? Neuhaus is an uncommonly good opinionator, but what truly distinguishes him is the fact that he has produced an enervating metaphor that continues to captivate the imaginations of many.

What Marquez Torres says to our opinion-guzzling age is this: If, in your search for the good, you’re not capable of taking a lantern with you to the marketplace in the daytime, stay at home.

Dude, That Is SO Derivative

Christian culture is derivative e.g. Augustine's Platonism, Aquinas' Aristotelianism, Calvin's humanism. Christian culture is dependent on successful derivation.

Christian culture is also dependent on successful transformation of derived cultural forms. Eg. Scholasticism and natural law.

Logically Speaking

For everyone's benefit, let us avoid romanticizing the days when "everyone" studied some form of logic. Familiarity with the discipline has never implied its consistent or appropriate use. However, now that logic is rarely studied at all, appeals to it are for the most part either amusingly or annoyingly meaningless. Does that seem too harsh? Consider that a speaker appeals to logic; it is unlikely that he himself is familiar with the discipline in any form, and even less likely that a majority of his hearers are. Which makes his appeal to logic about as substantive as an appeal to nano-computation.

But the funny thing about logic is, as much as it is spurned in study, it still retains powerful emotional ties to the popular mind. This emotional tug of logic on the nous of the populace is explicable by a lingering affection for reason; it is ironic, though, since rigorous rationality is the last thing the poster [post-everything] mind desires. Logic is the bomb-shell ex that you sometimes remember fondly but can't stand in person.

More ironic than the poster's incantation of logic in an affectionate though meaningless manner is what he means when he says "logic" or "logical." Even a brief examination of a popular address in which some form of the noun "logic" occurs will reveal that the speaker most likely intends something along the lines of "this makes sense to me." Thus, "This is the only logical way of looking at x" becomes intelligible as "This is the only way of looking at x that makes sense to me." The poster mind has even succeeded in vaporizing logic via the narcissistic ego.

Of course, logic is not yet as arcane a discipline as, say, Latin. The academy still occasionally seeks to implement it--usually in philosophical or theological papers. However, outside scholarly writing, the appeal to logic is usually just a "red herring" on the way to another non sequitur.

Joe Ratzinger Needs to Grow a Pair

American Philistine is highly disappointed with Joe Ratzinger's flip-flopping on the "evil and inhuman" Mohammed quotation. Since when does the Pope apologize to anybody, let alone to a bunch of Mahometans who somehow manage to get in a tizzy over a serene and erudite speech?

And where are the angry Protestants in all of this? Joe R. did not directly criticize Mahometans, in fact his speech had little to do with them at all (see the link below), but he did single out Protestants for criticism. Where is Rick Warren demanding that Joe R. find a better purpose in Germany than taking pot-shots at Protestants?

Pope’s Regrets Over Statement Fail to Quiet a Storm of Protests - New York Times

Ernst Troeltsch

Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology: Ernst Troeltsch