The God with a Bod

If only to be reminded how not to live, it is illuminating to investigate (very briefly and without venturing, I advise, too far beyond the wikipedia articles) the biographies of two of the most evil men who ever lived. I would be calling them that not out of undue judgment, but because both Aleister Crowley and the Marquis de Sade sought and relished the title. Interesting about the lives of both men is that their quest to be evil entailed a furious rejection of anything to do with Christianity, which might be an implicit proof of that religion's authenticity. Bona fide evilness doesn't exactly deem it necessary to rail against "spirituality in general."

For the purposes of this post however, also of note is that both these men did everything they could to escape, through either spiritualism or sexual abuse of self and others, the confines of their bodies. Perhaps because both men's significantly gifted (and squandered) minds knew the value of consistency, being vehemently anti-Christian meant being equally anti-body.

For refreshing contrast, take this quote from the famous 14th cent. Orthodox Saint Gregory of Palamas, defender of the somatically sensitive Eastern style of breathing prayer known as hesychasm :

"My brother, do you not hear the words of the Apostle, 'Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in us,' and again, 'We are the house of God?' For God Himself says, 'I will dwell in them and will walk in them and I shall be their God.' So why should anyone who possesses mind grow indignant at the thought that our mind dwells in that whose nature it is to become the dwelling place of God? How can it be that God at the beginning caused the mind to inhabit the body? Did even He do ill? Rather, brother, such views befit the heretics, who claim that the body is an evil thing, a fabrication of the Wicked One.

As for us [the orthodox], we think the mind becomes evil through dwelling on fleshly thoughts, but that there is nothing bad in the body, since the body is not evil in itself" (p.41).

But despite the proliferation in church history of passages such as these, it is still a popular misconception that Christianity is against the body, the blame usually falling on Augustine. Those who think this are wrong (and easily righted), but the facts often have little effect on misconceptions that prove so effective at selling books. For example, many western guides to eastern meditation practices start with the standard, "Christianity says the body is evil, and therfore you need this body-affirming book."

Nevertheless, the fact remains that just as one cannot be more radically humanist that by worshipping the God who became human, so one cannot be more pro-body than by worshipping the God who took one on permanently.

'tis the season

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

I suppose there's no need to be concerned whether or not faith chips are blasphemous when forgiveness is just a few clicks away.

West and Zizek

Count Slavoj Zizek among those putting postmodernity on endless trial. In him we have yet another high profile intellectual performing public pomo-mutiny, perhaps accounting for his popularity. He certainly filled an auditorium tonight for a dialogue with Cornel West.

But unlike the T.D. Jakes event, this time it was more of a one way conversation. Zizek spoke for so long that West didn't have much of a chance to. In a very long and meandering way "Brother Slavoj" (West's designation) groped toward what I discerned to be the following point: Belief can be good, granted you don't actually believe.

Zizek recommended the kind of Christianity that has the benefit of liturgy and ritual without taking the faith part entirely seriously. This he called having a proper "distance" (hasn't he read millinerd? That just won't do). But still, Zizek the Marxist just couldn't get away from belief. Perhaps because Christianity is a fresh blast from the past for his secularized Slovenia, Zizek is quite eager to buy the sexy newcomer a drink. While still calling himself an atheist, he's heavily flirting with the Christian faith. And though he's hesitant to go all the way, things were getting kinda steamy.

Continue...
Zizek passionately described his fascination with the fact that Christianity has no parallels. If Jesus was just another messenger of God the religion he claimed would be a bore. But in this particular faith God himself dies on the cross. He loves G.K. Chesterton's assertion that one can only find a pure atheism in Christianity, that is, in the cry of derelection on the cross and the mystery of Holy Saturday.

Critique:
Zizek then claims then that only an atheist can be properly Christian, when in fact the opposite may be true - only a Christian (who buys the mystery of Holy Saturday) can be a "proper" atheist - for at least on that day, God in the person of Jesus Christ, was indeed dead. After the standard adulations, Cornel West picked up on this, explaining that Psalm 22 is not the same thing as Psalm 14 - a very nice distinction indeed. There is room, West seemed to be claiming, for the Jacobian struggle with and even absence of God within the framework of genuine belief in God.

Other Christians however have expressed even more serious concerns about Zizek's casual fling with faith:

"Does Christianity need saving, or does Marxism? Is Zizek a Bob Dylan, turning to Christianity because socialism is in decline, or is he a sincere convert to the rabbi from Galilee? I do not think that Christians need to be anxious about whether celebrity philosophers respect their faith, but I do think it is important to evaluate the future of this new alliance between post-modern European philosophy and the church. Zizek assumes that the church and Marxism can be allies because they have a common enemy in the corrosive consequences of consumerism. The question is whether they have a common hope. Given the present disarray of socialism, Zizek's ideal of absolute justice is very fragile indeed. It makes sense that he would reach out to the church to fill the vacuum left by a proletariat that has lost its voice. It would make a lot less sense for the church to try to salvage an economic ideal that has ruined many countries and countless lives" (from Christian Century).

And though I entirely agree, I'm less concerned for the church appropriating Zizek's ideas (because it's unlikely) than for the church actually appropriating Zizek, which strikes me as if not likely, at least a live possibiltiy.

Conversion?
Zizek said that in talking to fundamentalists he has ascertained that their faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has no element of existential angst - it is for them a fact as true as any other commonplace fact. And though of course that is true for some Christians, it is far from true for even the most mildly sophisticated expression Christianity (again, if he had only read millinerd). The fact that anyone has faith in the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in fact part of the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That such faith needs divine initiation is a basic tenet of Christianity that Zizek seems unaware of (and least it didn't come out tonight).

But it is a miracle that perhaps Zizek is on the way to experiencing. That is, the miracle of believing (as Christians do) that the reality of God is true independent of our belief in it, and it remains true independent of any benefit that such belief imparts. In fact, persistence of faith despite its impartation of benefit may be exactly what the "My God my God why have you forsaken me" that Zizek finds so fascinating is all about.

John Henry Newman once said that liberalism [in religion mind you, not politics] is a half-way house to atheism. Similarly Zizek's brand of Marxism may be a half-way house to actual Christianity.

Should he keep up his fascination, then "brother Slavoj" he actually might one day become.

original deconstruction 2

...the sequel.

Herbert Butterfield sums up a lifetime of historical reflection as a Christian in his precise and powerful book Christianity and History. Despite recent reflections (which are also worthwhile), the meditations of H.B. have, I think, yet to be surpassed.

Butterfield describes the "gravitational pull" of what he terms "cupidity," (a.k.a. "falleness"). It is "an historical equivalent to the theological assertion that all men are sinners" (59). Because of this irrepressable tendency, divine judgement often requires no divine effort at all:

"Sometimes God has only to withhold his protection and let events take their course - 'I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be' - and the penalty comes from His formidable non-intervention" (80).

But to get around to deconstruction:

"It seems that nothing could be more exact perhaps for any man that the statement that 'all men are sinners and I the chief of them.' or the the thesis, 'There but for the grace of God go I'... All this seems to be the final effect of the reading of history upon me. And if anybody answers me that of course there must have been great saints whom I slander in all my descriptions of human nature, I accept the correction, but still note the fact that these always seem to me to be the people who are most emphatically in agreement with me on the point that I am making"(64).

This is the classical Christian doctrine of original sin in action, and what else is it than a fundamental deconstruction of humanity from the start? Unpopular as it may be, far more absurd (and dangerous) is the alternative, which as G.K. Chesterton remarked, is "to believe in the Immaculate Conception of everybody."

original deconstruction

So what is this "leaven" that Jesus so often and so strongly warns about? Dangerous thing is to define it as the theology and teachings one disagrees with so as to keep going one's merry way. He must be referring to liberal (for the conservative) or conservative (for the liberal) theologies.

St. Jerome called the leaven heretical doctrine (so fashionable at Seminaries). John Calvin insisted it was atheism (so fashionable at Universities). And though both Jerome and Calvin may have been right, in a comment below I claimed that Christianity should (but too often doesn't) do the job of deconstructing itself, so I thought I'd give an example:

In his commentary on Matthew, in order to avoid such scapegoating Dale Bruner consistently renders the traditional "Pharisees and Sadducees" as "The Serious and the Sophisticated." It's the best single recent English Bible translation maneuver I'm aware of. It delivers the medicine to those who need it most: The self-styled "pious" and "intelligent" who would actually bother reading his commentary.

Then Bruner goes on to uncovers what this leaven actually is:

"All three Synoptic evangelist understood the application of Jesus' leaven warning differently: Mark understood Jesus' warning politically ('Watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod,' Mark 8:15); Luke understood Jesus ethically ('keep yourselves free from the leaven of the Pharisess, which is hypocrisy,' Luke 12:1); and Matthew understands him doctrinally. 'watch out for their doctrine.' Matthew is the theological Gospel. Matthew hears Jesus warning us specifically about the perfectionist theology of the Pharisess and the secularist theology of the Sadducees. Jesus thus calls all later disciples to discern in their own time the perfectionist (superconservative) and secularist (supermodern) theologies of their age and to free themselves as much as possible from both of them. This leaves disciples with the teaching of Jesus - alone" (p. 116).

And needless to say, before anywhere else the place to look first for the superconservative/supermodern leaven of pride is within.

One sign might be a blogger who consistently quotes himself in his own posts.

Last Things

I try to keep my panegyrics limited to editors of my favorite journals.

Joseph Bottum, among other things relentless opponent of capital punishment, is one of the most well read people I've ever met. He gave a talk tonight called "Death and Politics." A title which he explained,

"I figured them Princeton kids are way too happy, and somebody's gotta show 'em the melancholy side of things before they get to thinking that life is all Ivy League and strawberry shortcake. So I picked the two most depressing topics I could think of."

In his meditation on the place of death in our society (which too often has none) he quoted a host of philosophical, literary, poetic and political sources ranging from Antique to Medieval to Enlightenment to Modern times while (and here's the kicker) managing to still make sobering and worthwhile points.

I figured it must have been his notes - then in the question and answer session he kept quoting sources from across the history of civilization, from memory - while still making points. Afterwards I cornered him into something I thought I could speak semi-intelligently about... theology, but then he just quoted patristic passages and Scripture from memory - and still, those pesky points. All good ones too.

What were they? No time for that (subscribe to F.T.).

I've been enjoying Ezekiel 4:9 bread of late. The recipe came right from the Bible.

I hope they didn't keep reading.

Postmodernity on Endless Trial

Everyone gets the Kolakowski reference, right?

Recent publications aside, take for example ThinkTank's linking to Keith DeRose's recent assessment, or if you prefer disembowellment, of postmodernity. Though long, the time spent reading it can save much time spent reading nonsense. In fact, that's why he wrote it.

Also referenced is another professional philosopher, Bruce Benson's post on postmodernity which is a good first read as it cautions against hasty, misinformed dismissals of the phenomenon - the type of dismissal which DeRose's article very successfully avoids.

Or take yet another professional philospher, Diogenes Allen, who describes what he terms the "Cartesian light-switch." Descartes' all-or-nothing philosophy insisted that any knowledge not based on absolute certainty was worthless. And because Descartes thought he could establish such certainty, the light switch of absolute knowledge was flipped on (i.e. Enlightenment). Swinging to the opposite pole, many postmodernists claim that because Descartes was wrong (which he was), the only possible solution is to flip the light-switch of knowledge completely off.

Funny, in summer months in the Ford Focus when I turn on the air conditioner full-blast my wife says

"You know, there is a middle setting."

And she's right. The espistemological light does not have to be on or off. There's a dimmer switch, called humility, that can carefully consider our claims to knowledge without putting us completely in the dark.

Sure there will be those who continue to claim absolute Cartesian knowledge. They give rise to postmodernists who insist on no knowledge at all (except of course for the startlingly ambitious claim to know that we have no knowledge). Between them are those who neither claim purely objective knowledge nor deny it completely.

Among them are Yale historian Donald Kagan who in a major 2005 address (which I got via DeRose) writes

"Historians... know that the current fad of skepticism and relativism is as old as the Sophists of ancient Greece and had a great revival with the Pyrrhonism of the 16th century. On both occasions their paradoxical and self-contradictory glamour yielded in time to common sense and the massive evidence that some searches are more objective, some things truer than others, however elusive perfect objectivity and truth may be."

Meanwhile, I'm quite content to let the all-or-nothing epistemological extremists duke it out.

Similar to the entertainment lineup at the Tropicana, it is a contest I'm not too interested in scoring tickets for.