12 Friday May 2017
Posted in Image of God, imago dei, Psychology, Uncategorized
One big idea unifies all of Nietzsche’s offspring — the Marxists, the Freudians, the French Existentialists, the critical theorists, the Deconstructionists, the queer theorists — and that is the right to self-invention. That is the cruelest hoax ever perpetrated on human beings, for we are not clever or strong enough to reinvent ourselves. To the extent we succeed, we become monsters.
15 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted in Culture, Thesis, Uncategorized
So when it comes to transgender people mewling and puking about how Wolscht is trivializing their cause, let me put this as simply and gently as I can: When you decide that categories of identity are merely psychological and that reality is constituted by language, you consequently have neither the right nor the ability to call a halt to the Promethean process which you have unleashed just because some of the results prove to be distasteful to you and unhelpful to your political cause. Indeed, whining like a bunch of, ahem, six year old girls is not going to help you at this point.
You do not believe me? Then perhaps it is time to call the spirit of Nietzsche’s Madman once more from the grave: You who have so derided any notion of human nature and external authority, do you now have the courage to face the world for whose birth you yourselves were the midwives? You who have “unchained the sun from this earth,” can you now live with the consequences of your own actions—where all things, even chronological age, must surely give way before the will to power? Face the reality you have made, where Mr. Wolscht is the Nietzschean Übermensch—or, to be precise, the Überkleinesmädchen—of the new order.
17 Thursday Jan 2013
Posted in Apologetics, Carl F Henry, Genesis, John
Tags
Apologetics, Carl F Henry, Derrida, Genealogy of Morals, Genesis, God Revelation and Authority, John, Literature, Logos, Nietzsche, Of Grmmatology, Poetry, Robert Frost, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, truth, Word
The Crisis of Word and Truth
NO FACT OF CONTEMPORARY Western life is more evident than its growing distrust of final truth and its implacable questioning of any sure word.[1]
The first essay in Henry’s six volumes, God Revelation and Authority is “The Crisis of Word and Truth”. He notes the conflict between two worldviews: The God of revelation who speaks versus a meaningless and incoherent “word”. The sound of words has remained and human beings still function and interact, but Word as a primary and stable truth – the Logos of God – that has come under attack.[2]
He wrote this essay without a discussion of deconstruction (my college copy of Spivak’s English version of Of Grammatology is dated 1974, 1976; the first printing of Henry’s essays are dated 1976) or the (for obvious reasons) the Internet. Thus, his discussions of both distance between meaning and words, as well as the ubiquity of media, not only remain true but have actually become more certain.
On one hand we have the Word of God. Christianity posits Spirit and Word as the primary constitutes of existence. First, God is spirit (John 4:24). As the Westminster Shorter Catechism has it:
Q: What is God?
A: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
John 1:1 famously explains “The Word was God.” The knowledge of God comes about because God speaks. Nothing would exist apart from the Speaking God: “God said, Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). The material world of images comes after the Spirit and Word.[3] The world itself exists, because the Word of God upholds it, continually (John 1:3; Colossians 1:15-17; Hebrews 1:3).
On the other hand stands the cacophony of media. Now, Henry does not denigrate or despise the media because it is media. Rather the trouble lies in what it does. It has taken the pre-existing problem of meaning and world (which human beings attempt to escape; Romans 1:18). However, it has “indubitably widened and compounded the crisis of word and truth” (18).
Henry notes the common criticism that the nature of the media is such that it does not respond to matters of significance with significant attention. He quotes Malcolm Muggeridge, “’the fact that the medium has no message. In the last resort, the media have nothing to say ….’” (18).
The media portray matters for the purpose of gaining attention and thus,
Final truth, changeless good, and the one true and living God are by default largely programed out of the real world. Despite occasional ethical commentary and some special coverage of religious events and moral issues, the media tend more to accommodate than to critique the theological and ethical ambiguities of our time. Their main devotion to what gratifies the viewing and reading audiences plays no small part in eclipsing God and fixed moral principles from contemporary life (18-19).
The barrage of immediate gratification removes the sense of shame and horror that should accompany the sight of such. Public degradation engenders sports, not shame and sorrow. He again Muggeridge on the matter of “’accustoming us to the gradual deterioration of our values’” (19). While every age has thought itself (at least by some) to be the depths of depravity, it goes without saying that much which would have been unthinkable at the time of the essay would be unremarkable in public media today.[4]
Should I read this morning’s news, I would learn of extraordinary acts of pain and sorrow throughout the world. My view of the matter would be incessant, vivid, personal – and yet, there would be (and is) not easy matter of involvement. Thus, I come to human suffering (and glory) as peeping Tom. I cannot form an appropriate moral response – I cannot really do much. Hucksters will try to take my money. Politicians will use words to gain some immediate attention (and most often do nothing remotely useful).
This process affects human beings spiritually. It is a direct affront to the proclamation of God’s truth. It is an affront to the bare concept of “truth” – which ultimately lies with the primal temptation wherein the Serpent questions, word and meaning and logic:
4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4–5 (ESV)
While individual actors seek to turn truth word to manipulation and sales-pitch for personal gain (I pity the poor soul who takes political rhetoric at face value, much like one how gives a scorpion a ride[5]), the ultimate object is spiritual: it is an attack upon the very concept of revelation by God in Word – which is the heart of Christianity.
Some may think that little loss. However, the basis of Christian revelation is also the basis of what it is to be human:[6]
To strip words of any necessary or legitimate role as a revelatory resource denies not only the intelligibility of revelation, but also the very rationality of human existence. Nonverbal experience cannot supply today’s generation with fruitful alternatives to the spiritual emptiness of the times; the cavernous silence of a speechless world echoes not a single syllable of hope. To deverbalize an already depersonalized society is all the more to dehumanize it.
How can one engage in either true personal interaction or societal and corporate interaction when words are stripped of stability, and promise of its hold? Robert Frost ends his wonderful poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” with marvelous point,
But I have promises to keep ….
What human interaction can there be without promise? Yes, human beings can live and breathe and die. Yes, by sheer force and violence a political entity can force itself along. But what humanity remains? What truth or beauty, what love or charm remain?
Henry ends with the proposition that it is the duty of the Christian to not succumb to the spirit of this age, but rather proclaim the “divine invasion” of the Logos, the truth of God, the prophetic Word.
Robert Frost reading, “Stopping by the Woods”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfOxdZfo0gs
[1] Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry, vol. 1, God, Revelation, and Authority (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 16-17.
[2] Although not discussed in this essay, Nietzsche’s arguments in Genealogy of Morals would certainly have an interesting bearing upon the point.
[3] This does require any Gnostic “fall” into matter. The physical world was created “very good.” The distress of the physical derives from sin (Romans 8:20). The redemption of humanity is not out of the physical world into a purely “spiritual” existence, as if the trouble were physicality. Rather, the redemption is to a resurrection, to a New Heavens and New Earth (1 Cor. 15:42-49; Rev. 21 & 22). Thus, Christianity differs strongly from either a Gnostic spite of the physical or a materialist’s denial of the spiritual.
[4] Some may point to matters of “racism” [I have word in quotations, because as a Christian, I must consider the matter of “races” itself suspect and repellant; there is a single human race; there are various cultural structures which people create, but these have no ground separate grounds of human value and being] as an area of advancement. However, polite society has in some instances moved around certain discourse markers, the same nonsensical “racial” beliefs still exist. I remember being perplexed as a child that somehow George Washington Carver did not “belong” to me – even though he was a an American (as I was) and Christian (as was I) and a Scientist (which I longed to be), but that his skin color put him into a different and alien category – why is that primary to anything?
[6] As a Christian, I think it obvious that the correlative lies in the fundamental truth of the Christian claim.
02 Tuesday Oct 2012
Posted in Biblical Counseling, Ecclesiastes
Tags
Biblical Counseling, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 4:4, Ecclesiastes 9:6, envy, Genealogy of Morals, green eyed monster, Iago, jealousy, Job 5:2, Ligon Duncan, Nietzsche, Numbers 5, Othello, Proverbs 14:30, Proverbs 27:4, Proverbs 6:34, zeal
The word translated “envy” in Ecclesiastes 4:4 is primarily used translated as “zeal” (Isaiah 37:32, “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts ….”) or “jealousy” of God in the OT (e.g., Zech. 8:2, “Thus says the Lord of Hosts, “I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy ….”). It is used of idols in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 8:5, “this image of jealousy”). It is used of a husband’s jealousy (potentially a jealousy which lacks basis) in Numbers 5.
Only in the wisdom literature is the noun used in a manner which could potentially help understand Ecclesiastes 4:4. In each instance (except perhaps not in Eccl. 9:6), it refers to an emotion which has grown wildly out of control and thus damages the one who exercises the emotion:
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כִּֽי־לֶֽ֭אֱוִיל יַהֲרָג־כָּ֑עַשׂ וּ֝פֹתֶ֗ה תָּמִ֥ית קִנְאָֽה׃
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Surely vexation kills the fool, and jealousy slays the simple.
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כִּֽי־קִנְאָ֥ה חֲמַת־גָּ֑בֶר וְלֹֽא־יַ֝חְמ֗וֹל בְּי֣וֹם נָקָֽם׃
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For jealousy makes a man furious, and he will not spare when he takes revenge.
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חַיֵּ֣י בְ֭שָׂרִים לֵ֣ב מַרְפֵּ֑א וּרְקַ֖ב עֲצָמ֣וֹת קִנְאָֽה׃
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A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.
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אַכְזְרִיּ֣וּת חֵ֭מָה וְשֶׁ֣טֶף אָ֑ף וּמִ֥י יַ֝עֲמֹד לִפְנֵ֥י קִנְאָֽה׃
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Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?
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וְרָאִ֨יתִֽי אֲנִ֜י אֶת־כָּל־עָמָ֗ל וְאֵת֙ כָּל־כִּשְׁר֣וֹן הַֽמַּעֲשֶׂ֔ה כִּ֛י הִ֥יא קִנְאַת־אִ֖ישׁ מֵרֵעֵ֑הוּ גַּם־זֶ֥ה הֶ֖בֶל וּרְע֥וּת רֽוּחַ׃
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Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.
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גַּ֣ם אַהֲבָתָ֧ם גַּם־שִׂנְאָתָ֛ם גַּם־קִנְאָתָ֖ם כְּבָ֣ר אָבָ֑דָה וְחֵ֨לֶק אֵין־לָהֶ֥ם עוֹד֙ לְעוֹלָ֔ם בְּכֹ֥ל אֲשֶֽׁר־נַעֲשָׂ֖ה תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ׃
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Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.
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From these passages, one can conclude the following: First, the emotion itself is destructive of the one who has it: “envy makes the bones rot” (Proverbs 14:30). Experience certainly demonstrates the truth of this proverb.
Second, the emotion takes over the human being, leading to self-destruction and destruction of others.
Shakespeare has his arch-villain Iago famously and ironically warns Othello of jealousy:
IAGO
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
But, O, what damned minutes tells he o’er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!
OTHELLO
O misery!
Othello (3.3.189-92). The irony comes in that Othello is first consumed with jealousy over a wrong which did not occur. Secondly, Othello overcome with his false jealousy proves the truth of Proverbs 6:34, “For jealousy makes a man furious, and he will not spare when he takes revenge.”
Ecclesiastes 4:4 interestingly posits the emotion which is found most commonly in matters involving sexuality and moves into the space of economics (this will be seen more in the instances of the verb discussed next).[1]
Note that in matters of sexuality, that is the marriage relationship, or in the matters involving God, the thing desired rightfully belongs to the one who seeks it. Thus, while a husband may wrongly believe that his wife has departed from the marriage covenant (Numbers 5 provides protection for the wife in this instance. Dr. Duncan’s sermon on this text is wonderful, http://www.shepherdsconference.org/media/details/?mediaID=335), it is not wrong for a husband or a wife to expect and deserve fidelity out of the other. Indeed, a spouse who does not care whether the other is faithful has an exceedingly low regard for marriage.
While the emotion may drive the person to foolish extremes, the factual predicate for the provocation is not necessarily wrong.
However, with envy in particular, the thing desired is something which one does not have a legitimate right or expectation (as opposed to a marriage, where the expectation is based upon a promise). Hence the arguments which must be created to justify the envy: The other person must be wrongfully in possession of that property in order for me to be rightful in resentment and envy.
Envy is ultimately a belief in the present injustice of the world. In fact, the exceptionally strong emotion described by the Hebrew word (zeal, envy, jealousy – depending upon the object) all hinge upon a response to perceived injustice (zeal: a thing for God to right; jealousy: desire for exclusive attention from a spouse; envy: it’s not fair you have that).
Thus, envy is a perversion of a desire for justice. It ultimately is a critique of God, for God has not allotted the property and circumstances rightly. This makes sense of the flow of the passage in Ecclesiastes:
Ecclesiastes 3 begins with the observation of the sovereignty and order of God over all events, objective, subjective. Qoheleth then moves to the matter of unrighteous human judgment and God’s actual judgment: In verse 17, he notes that God will judge. Then Qoholeth moves to the fact that all people will die. This is not a digression but a further elaboration: Death is the summons which brings all men and women to the place of judgment.
Chapter 4 returns to the matter of human wickedness (which God will judge). First, the oppressors who judge the weak. Second, the weak who envy the oppressors.
[1] Placing envy as a (the?) motivation of human behavior is a matter which Nietzsche considered at length, see, e.g., http://www.nietzschecircle.com/essayArchive1.html The rant against Jesus and the Jews in the Genealogy of Morals, particularly the first essay, sections 7-9, will give a taste for this point.
23 Friday Mar 2012
Posted in Church History
Tags
a Brakel, Atheism, Church History, desire truth, law, Nietzsche, Postmodernism, The Christian's Reasonable Service, UCLA
I first read postmodernism I a graduate seminar at UCLA in 1982. I read books which words mean nothing and authors don’t exist. Not only were the ideas incomprehensible; the writing was turgid: it was like a silted stream during a spring thaw.
In the end, postmodernism is a simple concept: I want something; I will do OT say what I need to do to get it. When you say or do something you are just doing the same thing – or, which is more likely, you are the unwitting stooge of some system which exists to give some powerful group what they want.
There is no truth, no right or wrong, there is only power, oppression and desire. It is a brutish way to live. It is a justification for any type of oppression – but always in the name of freedom.
Á Brakel in The Christian’s Reasonable Service makes this observation about atheists, which interesting sounds like postmodernism:
Athiests acknowledge no law except the law of nature which they propose to be such as to endorse a pleasurable pursuit of their own lusts. They consider it sin when one does something contrary to his own interest and advantage; and they consider it a virtue if one engages himself in promoting the fulfillment of his lust. They consider salvation to consist merely in finding joy in eating, drinking, fornicating, boasting, indulging in pleasure, as well as yielding to one‟s lusts. Lying and deceit are considered honorable means to obtain such bliss, or to enable them to avoid whatever would disturb them in their bliss. They know of no punishment except when damage and shame are experienced, and no damnation except for a restless and melancholy frame of mind. Their motto is Ede, bibe, lude, post mortem nulla voluptas! that is, eat, drink, and play, for after death there is no pleasure. Irrespective of whether a man, horse, or any other creature dies, dead is dead. They ridicule the existence of a soul, angels, and devils and relegate them to the realm of fables. They are at peace with this conviction, having no acquaintance with a stirring and remorseful conscience. In this the wretched Jew, Baruch de Spinoza—born in December, 1633 and deceased in February, 1677 in The Hague—led the way. It is obvious that other atheists have borrowed sentiments from him.
It is thus evident that atheists do exist, and therefore there is no such thing as innate knowledge of a deity in the heart of man. If there were such innate knowledge, one would not be able to root it out as so many have done and currently are doing, or as many are attempting to learn how they may accomplish such a thing.
