With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on. -- William Morris

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Happy Feast of Patrick!

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession
of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,
through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.

I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim
in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,
in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,
in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,
in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me,
God's host to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of vices,
against inclinations of nature, against everyone who
shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.

I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose
my body and my soul,
against incantations of false prophets,
against black laws of heathenry,
against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,
against spells of women [any witch] and smiths and wizards,
against every knowledge that endangers man's body and soul.
Christ to protect me today
against poison, against burning, against drowning,
against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the
Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.
Amen.

Pax Christi,

Monday, March 09, 2009

Machiavellian Agnosticism

Today one of the (in my opinion few) praiseworthy acts of the Bush administration was overturned by President Obama's executive order on funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush's policy wasn't even perfect, and now the problematic contingency of something like an executive order on this issue comes to light. I could rant for hours about the loss of a common understanding of natural law, the common good, a shared moral culture, and basically all of the conceptual and practical resources required for an ethical appeal to something more fundamental than the whims of positive law. But I'll spare you...most of it.

One aspect of the issue that really grinds my gears is the rhetorical framing game that's going on. MacIntyre once noted that one of the deepest flaws of modern political culture is that "professional" politicians and their parties often actively discourage the kind of communal reasoning about the proper ends of politics itself. Too often they succumb to Machiavellian tendencies, framing the debates ideologically and supressing the most relevant questions from even being raised. The political gerrymandering between the parties on "life issues" is a testament to this, and today the news stations were flooded with it.

The way commentators have been spinning the issue is a bit frightening. Much of what I heard has tended to portray this as something like an issue of "science verses religion," as if the discourse of science were offering us one ethical judgment derived from the scientific method (this stuff is good), and revealed religions were offering us the negative judgment in stark contradiction to scientific methodolgy and simply as a tenet of blind belief. Underlying all of this is the problematic assumption that common moral reasoning, rational conclusions about the goodness or badness of human action, is simply an impossibility. Moral opposition here is thus part of the fabric of essentially irrational faith commitments that people are legally free to have. Yet this seems to suggest that non-believers have no good reason- no resources, in fact- to have any ethical problem with it. Why? Because the science part shows us that we can likely cure the sick if we follow it, and therefore it seems to provide some moral guidance.

Frankly, I'm not sure why the scientific part of this is even in the spotlight. It is not an aspect that should even enter the debate (because nothing scientific is being debated by rational people!). When it does, we have the voice of an empirical truth-seeking metholdolgy being employed to weigh-in on judgments that are simply "above its pay grade." Of course then what is really being imposed is a presupposed anthropology and ethics which avoid the critical gaze that an environment of common moral reasoning should be designed for. Use of the language of "science" in this kind of discussion then becomes frighteningly equivocal: shifting back and forth from referents about empirical data on the one hand and evaluative moral judgments on the other. What's scary is that when the discourse of scientific research is not complemented by a proper discourse about human action and human ends, and science is used to try and fill the void, we end up with dangerous beaurecratic logic: the question of means will eclipse questions of ends, and suddenly the utilitarian value of curing countless numbers of suffering people will eclipse the moral weight involved in killing countless unborn children in order to achieve this. This may be no problem for a Scientism, but has little to do with science per se.

The result of all of this is of course that the most relevant question is skillfully avoided: whether or not the embryo that is destroyed to fuel the research is a human life. The more we can avoid making any explicit judgments on this issue, the less the terms of the debate will be understood, the less common moral debate can happen with the promise of common understandings, and the more ideological, hidden presuppositions about ethical value can remain behind the curtain, exerting their influence through manipulation.

Just listen to the talking points: what is emphasized, how questions are dodged and redirected, what stats are used. Note especially how the proponents attempt to appropriate their opponents' supposedly essential "religious" logic, by noting that their faith is one that respects life and encourages us to heal the sick by using this knowledge; without, of course, ever addressing whether they are taking life in order to acheive that oh so pious end.

The nail in the coffin for me was when one CNN anchor (a light in the rhetorical darkness) was bold enough to ask the only question that really mattered of his guest, a congresswoman in favor of the President's move. After her few attempts to duck and weave, he asked: but is this a human life, or only a potential human life? To which she responded: that is "above my pay grade." Here she echoes the now infamous words of President Obama on the abortion issue (which is really the issue in question here). And what this represents is a remarkably clever but remarkably monstrous kind of agnosticism. It is the queen of moral anti-reasoning and rhetorical inconsistency.

If I lived in a country like our own which (now) recognizes that NO man or woman has the right to enslave other human beings; but for some inconceivable reason (maybe extreme ignorance), I believed it to be "above" my epistemological "pay grade" to determine whether or not African Americans are in fact human beings; one would assume that I meant the jury is out, and while it is possible (in this messed up world) that they are not human, it is also certainly possible that they are. If I am committed to African Americans being even potentially human, it wouldn't make much sense to enact a bunch of Jim Crow laws or even policies protecting the right of whites to enslave them, in effect acting as though they were not humans with the same human dignity. By enacting such policies, the commitments entailed by my actions grossly betray the commitments and judgments I expressed through words. So while I say the jury is out, my actions imply a swift verdict, judge, jury, and executioner.

This isn't rocket science. If someone pleads ignorance about what is and is not a human life, but then strongly pushes policy entailing that these things are most certainly not human lives, that is monstrous deception. Anyone who claims that the jury is out, but drops the guillotine, is simply lying, and lying with a purpose.

This is clearly a kind of agnosticism designed to aid a Machiavellian, ideological policy judgment. It is an agnosticism that does not extend beyond words. It is an agnosticism that simply makes no sense. The only truly relevant question here, and the only one that can actually make it a debate, is whether or not in order to get the stem cells you are in fact murdering young human beings. A judgment on this is necessary, and it is either explicitly declared or it is deceitfully hidden. To follow the analogy: there is no policy move for the agnostic; there is only room for the atheists and the theists.

The other problem is that the implications of the judgements is, perhaps purposely, never fully illustrated. Let's use todlers. Say, for the sake or argument, that I was able to grow a batch of ten 3-year old children that sprouted up from the ground; but only one was adopted by parents and the rest will slowly die within a month. Their hearts are all amazinly strong and have the unique ability to adapt perfectly to any body they may be placed in without any signs of rejection by the host body; and in fact, those hearts can be used to clone millions of hearts just like them; but once the children die, the hearts are no good. It sure would be a shame to let those hearts go to waste especially when there are so many suffering people in need of hearts. But...how to get them. Can we harvest those hearts without, by definition, taking the lives of 9 innocent three-year olds, i.e. murdering them?

That is the question everyone must grapple with. Even if folks (like Peter Singer perhaps) say "sure, no problem," at least they've addressed the issue consistently, rather than suppressing it. This would then allow us to argue about the coherence of different ethical systems, and from this dialectic come to radically more informed conclusions about issues like this. At least people would know what is at stake...

For any ethic that houses notions of intrinsically evil actions, the murder of innocent children is an action that can never be ordered to the final human good, and thus no matter how good the result (curing countless millions), or how grim the circumstances (the kids are going to die anyway, no matter what), its never morally acceptable to take the children's lives. And this is a completely reasonable conception of morality! It is not nonsense or something only indoctrinated believers would be willing to accept. It is something that, given a culture that encourages it, reasonable people can grasp and debate.

Pax Christi,

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Zombies in Bethany


Though not related to my other exegetical hijinks, I was translating parts of John 11 today for my Greek class and came across a rather disturbing discovery.

In the story of the Raising of Lazarus, Jesus proclaims in a loud voice in front of a large crowd His great confidence that the Father always listens to his prayers (John 11:41-32), and that He boldly told the people to open the tomb so that the crowd will come to believe that He is indeed sent by the Father(v.42). In effect, he says "I know you basically do whatever I ask you all the time, God; but for the sake of these people standing around, let's make some magic happen, huh? Let them know that I'm your number one man." One could interpret Jesus' words here as being rather presumptuous...

And as it turns out, this may have caused things to go horribly wrong. Everyone knows the story as it is often told: that Jesus calls for Lazarus to come out and he stumbles forth, still wrapped in his burial cloths, and Jesus says: "Loose him [lusate auton], and allow him to go away/home" (John 11:44). Jesus has successfully completed a resucitation miracle and sends the man on his way. BUT: The verb luo actually means both "to loose" and "to destroy"!!!! So by following the former meaning, exegetes have horribly misunderstood what is really happening here. This is not the story of a successful miracle, but rather the story of a botched miracle.

It's clear to me that the Father is playing a rather nasty practical joke on Jesus here: seeing that Jesus calls upon Him with all of those expectant eyes watching, the Father only restores Lazarus to an undead state, not to life. So when Jesus sees Lazarus stagger out as a freaking ZOMBIE, he and the entire crowd are struck with fear and Jesus shouts:
[AHHHH!!!!] DESTROY him (lusate auton) and get him out of here!!!!! (kai aphete auton hupagein)
How embarassing for our Lord and Savior...

Pax Christi,

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Orthoidos

When writing upon the Triumph of Orthodoxy for Vox Nova this week (the post can be found here) I came to the realization that I needed to use a word, but didn't know of a word to use, and so invented one: orthoidos. The word relates to the transcendental of the beautiful in the way orthodoxy relates to the truth and orthopraxis relates to the good. I used the word eidos, Greek for form, thinking it was best suited for the task at hand (for it comprehends more within its domain than eikonos would).

I described the word itself in footnote 4, saying:

Ortho-eidos. As with the good and the truth, the concrete realization of orthoidos can differ according to circumstance; just as the concrete form of truth is found in the correctness of a statement at a given time and place, so the concrete form of the beautiful is found in how fitting a form is as it is used at a particular time and place. Thus “It is raining,” can be correct or incorrect, depending upon the time the statement is made, so a specific form of eidos, such as a specific architectural design, could be legitimate at one place, and, through a change of circumstances, not something which would be proper to reproduce. Changes in how we live will affect the forms of the buildings we construct, and what is appropriate at one time will no longer be the case later. This can be shown by the fact that we no longer need build walls to defend cities.

Anyone know of a word of similar thought and content, or did I create one of the theological missing links?