The Book Of

Of Self-indulgent Personality Tests

2006-11-10T18:16:00.000-05:00

So I want to see how this Johari Window thing works. But that means I need y'all to rate me here.

If you're up to criticism (and what's there to criticize?), you can also offer input on my Nohari Window.

Of Strange Happenings in Moscow

2006-10-17T17:18:00.000-05:00

The April 2006 issue of Scientific American reported that in the preceding February, a graduate student from the University of Idaho rediscovered the Giant Palouse Earthworm (Driloleirus americanus) after a twenty-year disappearance. Driloleirus americanus can grow to a length of three feet, will spit in self-defense, and smells "like lillies."

This is either a sign of the Apocalypse, or the prelude to Tremors 5.

Of a Sudden, Strange Thought

2006-09-09T15:55:00.000-05:00

The OT Christophanies...What if they were not "pre-incarnate" appearances of Christ? What if Jesus (post-resurrection) could time-travel? He seems to do a lot of strange appearing and disappearing after his resurrection, and his eating of the fish and honeycomb with the disciples reminds me of the time the Angel of the Lord came and had dinner with Abram.

That's all I've got. Anybody else have an opinion?

Of Denying Natural Revelation

2006-08-22T18:41:00.000-05:00

Or, The Regulative Principle Mutated To Gargantuan Proportions and Running Amok Through Tokyo While Spewing Radioactive Propositionalism and Stomping Reason Into Oblivion, by John Robbins

Of a Non-Evolutionist Old-Earth Calvinist

2006-08-22T18:11:00.000-05:00

Lee Irons, The Days of Genesis (MP3)

I guess my take on Genesis 1 is not as far from the Framework Perspective as I had imagined (although I think it avoids the pitfalls of that view--perhaps I should call my version the Historicist Framework Perspective). I don't agree with everything here, I wish Irons were more Jordanesque in places, and I find the terms "literal" and "figurative" unhelpful in this discussion (I consider my own interpretation of the Genesis 1 creation days to be both literal and figurative), but this lecture shows that one can be an orthodox Calvinist and disagree with the twenty-four-hour-days interpretation for purely historical-grammatical reasons.

Of Jesus the True Serpent

2006-08-13T15:03:00.000-05:00

When James Jordan came to Dayton last year, he spoke in one of his lectures of how we should see the serpent in the Garden of Eden as sent by God to disciple and instruct Adam and Eve in the principles of kingship, preparatory to their royal investiture as rulers of the lands outside the garden (this is why it is emphasized that the serpent is a beast of the field/land, as opposed to the garden, and why his distinguishing characteristic is the kingly property of subtlety/cunning/wisdom). When, in envy of mankind, the serpent deceived the man and woman, leading them to take of the fruit God had for a time witheld from them, he was in a twisted way fulfilling his God-given mission--he was sent to prepare the human couple to eat of the tree, and he did so in a hasty, rudimentary way, asking them legitimate, wisdom-encouraging questions, but framing them so as to mislead rather than instruct. Jordan furthermore asserted that God's promise that death would follow eating of the tree should not be seen as a threat, but a cryptic message of hope for a fuller existence. God gave the temporary prohibition against eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil immediately after putting Adam into a death-sleep, tearing him apart, and "resurrecting" him as a fuller creation: Man-and-Woman, the multipersonal self. Similarly, had Adam waited to eat of the fruit till God permitted it, he would have undergone another death-and-resurrection transformation, emerging as a fuller, more richly human being. When man stole the fruit, acquiring the gnosis (knowledge of good and evil) that it embodied, that knowledge became a curse to him. The death that should have lead to life was given a "sting," and it was made semi-permanent. God did invest him as a king, providing him with kingly raiment, but that raiment was stained with the blood of the creation he had violated by his disobedience. Man was sent out of the garden into the land, not as a wise steward-king, but as a bloodstained, manipulative tyrant.

I've recently had some additional thoughts about all of this, especially about the typology of the serpent. Ancient Israel was oft troubled by idolatry in the form of various fertility cults, worship of Baal (the male fertility god) and Ashtoreth (the mother-goddess). These complimentary deities, symbols of the masculine and feminine principles (yang and yin, respectively), are very often associated with serpents as cultic symbols; and in fact early forms of these deities often combine both principles into a single deity: the serpent-god. There are even highly suggestive Sumerian pictograms portraying the serpent-god coiled around a tree, and two figures, male and female, seated on either side of him (as it were, in the posture of students or disciples). Why did the principles of masculinity and femininity become so overwhelmingly associated with the serpent in pagan mythology? I think it has to do with the fact that when the serpent deceived Adam and Eve, he robbed them of their integrity, their glory, and, in a sense, their true identity. The serpent took these properties for himself, fulfilling for a time his prideful envy of man.

That is, until Christ appeared. Christ came as the True Adam, the true humanity, to win back for mankind the office that the first Adam had, by his disobedience, lost to the serpent. Additionally, it is interesting to note that Christ came not only as the True Man, but also as the True Serpent. The original serpent was meant to be man's instructor in the divine Wisdom prerequisite to partaking of the gnosis-tree; instead, he caused man's relationship to gnosis to become deeply twisted and corrupt, devoid of Wisdom. Christ came and gave us another Tree, the Cross, the sublime mystery of which far surpasses the tepid pseudo-gnosis of the Gnostics, more Zen-like in its paradox than any Buddhist koan. And he did so by becoming a different kind of Serpent: one like that which Moses lifted up in the wilderness, a healing Serpent who mediated the tree-gnosis by eating of the "fruit" of that tree himself, undergoing the death it entailed (a death fallen man could no longer safely endure), being resurrected as a Spiritual Man, and enabling all mankind to reap the benefits.

Of Books Redux

2006-08-04T13:37:00.000-05:00

I am as yet untagged. Nevertheless:

One book that changed your life: Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
One book that you've read more than once: The Histories, Herodotus
One book you'd want on a desert island: Collected Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges
One book that made you laugh: Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
One book that made you cry: Collected Poems, Wendell Berry
One book that you wish had been written: Biblical Hermeneutics and Typology, Jesus of Nazareth
One book that you wish had never been written: In His Steps, Charles M. Sheldon
One book you're currently reading: Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
One book you've been meaning to read: The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Now tag five people: Jenny, Joy, Mark, Jared, Kristin.

Of Books

2006-08-03T20:29:00.000-05:00

I went to Half Price Books yesterday, and bought the following:

I said consummate arts secrets...CONSUMMATE!!! Geez, guy wouldn't know majesty if it bit him in the face...

Of Jordan on Genesis

2006-07-29T07:31:00.000-05:00

In response to my posts on the Genesis creation account, Dan Sack posted a link to this article by James Jordan, to which I would like to respond in turn. Jordan presents seven reasons for understanding the creation-days of Genesis 1 as twenty-four-hour periods; I'll address them in order:

Notice that Jordan has assumed that the division of light from darkness is a division in time, which is why he sees "Day" as "light-time" and "night" as "dark-time." This is a reasonable enough assumption, on the face of it, but it should be noted that the text itself does not define "Day" as light-time, but rather applies "Day" as a sort of proper name of light. God names the light "Day," and the darkness "Night"--the things themselves, not the periods of time in which we generally experience them. Time is never mentioned. In fact, "Day" is not separated from "Night" until day four, when celestial bodies are created to separate them, and it is there that the concept of time is first mentioned explicitly.
This point is interesting because Jordan's reading becomes less consistent than mine. Jordan sees the use of the word "day" in Gen. 2:4 as essentially different than its use throughout the first chapter. I see the usage as essentially the same--when the "days" are seen as discrete creation-acts of God, then naturally whenever the creation process as a whole is considered as a single unit (a single "act"), it is described as a "day."
Once again, I do not see a problem with the days of God's working-week providing the basis for the days of our working-week. Of course God created in such a way as to provide a pattern for our labors. But notice that my understanding is more sacremental--our week is an earthly reflection of God's week; it is not exactly the same thing. It lifts us into his life by a ritual approximation of his actions, but his actions (and his "week") are greater than ours.
I agree with Jordan here. Don't see a problem.
I have one minor quibble, and then a more substantial disagreement. The sun was not "made to fit the pre-existent length of the day." The sun doesn't regulate the length of our days; the earth does. That's minor, but there is actually a major disagreement/difference of understanding at stake, in that I simply and fundamentally disagree with Jordan's belief that qualities like duration of time have some essential reality apart from the material (or spiritual) systems that they describe. To assert that they do smacks of rank Platonism to me. I see nothing in scripture that encourages such a view. It's bad philosophy and bad science.
I agree--Gap Theory is dumb.
I also see the Framework Hypothesis as fundamentally flawed, in that it renders the creation account non-historical. The book of Genesis is a history, and needs to be understood as such.

Of the Trouble With Teilhard

2006-07-22T15:01:00.000-05:00

What is one to make of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin? My understanding of his thought is still rather impressionistic (and some would claim that his own was as well), but what I do understand of it I find simultaneously fascinating, attractive (in certain respects), and off-putting (in others). Was he profound or profoundly in error? Was he a saint or a heretic? Or, perhaps, was he a little of all of these things?

Teilhard is easy to despise, if one is of a certain temperament. He wrote in a style that is at once heartfelt, ecstatic, heady, pretentious, and obtuse. He was an idealist's idealist, a mystic's mystic. He was also a modernist, while at the same time a critic of modernistic materialism. The Incarnation of Christ was the central concept of all his thinking, but (from what I understand), he understood this as occurring gradually over millennia through the evolution of mankind towards its Omega point (Christ, who becomes a sort of personalized telos rather than the Savior of mankind), rather than the intrusion of the divine Word at a particular time in history. It's like he had this profound understanding of all the implications of Incarnational and Trinitarian reality, while finding the historical events that reveal that reality incredible or irrelevant.

How does grace apply to such a man as Teilhard, who personally denied Original Sin, and thought that evolution, in some sense, "saved" God, but nevertheless always remained in humble submission and willful allegiance to the Church, recanting the public profession of those of his beliefs that Church authorities pronounced unacceptable, while privately continuing to explore them? Who fervently believed that Christ would be made "all in all" through the intrusion of God's life into the world by means of the Body of Christ, but didn't seem to find Christ as an historical personage terribly interesting? Who understood that humanity (and by extension, the cosmos) would only be saved in and through Christ, but denied a Fall from which creation must be redeemed?

How could one man have been so profoundly right in certain central aspects of his theology, while profoundly wrong in other, similarly central aspects? How could one man have displayed the fervent life of the Spirit, and the confusion of a spirit of error? As I try to perceive the Body as more fundamentallly organic than ideological, I would like to believe that when Teilhard finally encounters the Parousia he longed for so desperately, he will be greeted rather as Bree the talking Docetist horse was by Aslan in The Horse and His Boy:

"Now, Bree," he said, "you poor, proud, frightened Horse, draw near.
Nearer still, my son. Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell
me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a
true Beast."
"Aslan," said Bree in a shaken voice, "I'm afraid I must be rather a
fool."
"Happy the Horse who knows that while he is still young. Or the Human
either."

Currently Reading
The Future of Man
By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Of a Prayer

2006-07-20T14:52:00.000-05:00

The following has come to be my favorite prayer out of the 1963 Book of Common Prayer:

O ALMIGHTY Father, thou King eternal, immortal, invisible, thou only wise God our Saviour; Hasten, we beseech thee, the coming upon earth of the kingdom of thy Son, our LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ, and draw the whole world of mankind into willing obedience to his blessed reign. Overcome all his enemies, and bring low every power that is exalted against him. Cast out all the evil things that cause wars and fightings among us, and let thy Spirit rule the hearts of men in righteousness and love. Repair the desolations of former days; rejoice the wilderness with beauty; and make glad the city with thy law. Establish every work that is founded on truth and equity, and fulfill all the good hopes and desires of thy people. Manifest thy will, Almighty Father, in the brotherhood of man, and bring in universal peace; through the victory of thy Son, Jesus Christ our LORD. Amen.

Of Clarification of My Previous Post, and Responses To Criticism

2006-07-17T19:28:00.000-05:00

I think some clarification of my thought is in order, as a number of the objections to my post on Genesis 1 seem to be directed at a position I do not in fact hold. Addressing them rather haphazardly, I would point out the following:

In response to Katy's last comment, a careful re-reading of my original post should make it clear that I am not proposing some variant of Day-age Theory (which seems to have been her impression, judging from the reference to an "epochal" Monday--though the thing about a momentary Friday just confuses me). What I am suggesting is of a different order entirely. To explain it, I need to make a scientific statement, followed by a more liberal-artsy illustration:

Relativity tells us that there is no privileged (read "ultimate") description of duration or sequence of events in spacetime.

All observer-participants in the physical world experience their own unique timeframe. This works rather like Narnian time--each observer's timeframe runs faster or slower relative to everybody else's depending on what that observer happens to be doing (and what everybody else happens to be doing). Now most everyone here on earth operates under pretty much the same relativistic conditions, so the differences between all our gazillions of different timeframes are so close to nil that we can disregard them under all but the most extraordinary circumstances, and speak generally of what we might call "Earth Time." But somebody in a different part of the universe (or in a different universe, if such things exist--many physicists are open to the idea, though I must say I am not fond of it) might be operating under conditions different enough from our own to make his experience of time significantly out-of-synch with ours. If there were a lot of folks there with him, operating under largely the same conditions, we might generalize their collective experience under another appellation--say, "Narnia Time." These two general timeframes, "Earth Time" and "Narnia Time," would be overwhelmingly stable and consistent internally--two humans on Earth would agree that, say, a glass fell from the table before it shattered on the floor, and that the whole thing took 1.063 seconds. But say that there was a magical door in Narnia through which a dwarf and a centaur could observe this same terrestrial event, but from their own Narnian timeframe. Our dwarf and centaur would agree with each other on their version of what happened, but they might describe the glass shattering gradually over a hundred years, after which it rose, miraculously restored, from floor to table. Furthermore, they might describe this second action as occurring almost instantaneously, though it was hard to tell, as the pageant of glass and table was obscured by the simultaneous intrusion of the Second Punic War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both the Earthly and Narnian descriptions of what happened to the glass would be fully correct and literal, from their own perspective. Neither description would be the "real" description--what happened to the glass does in fact depend to a certain degree on whom you ask. What General Relativity does is provide the scientific framework for reconciling these two descriptions.

What I am suggesting about the Genesis 1 creation account is akin to the phenomenon described above, though not entirely. I am saying that Genesis 1 recounts the story of the creation from a third, similar, but essentially different, viewpoint--let us call it "Aslan Time." Alsan perceives the falling glass from his kingdom in the Utter East, a world beyond all worlds, whose timeframe is the archetype from which both the Earthly and Narnian timeframes are derived. Likewise, it is increasingly common for theologians to reject the formerly common view of God as wholly atemporal (for reasons I cannot elaborate here), but rather to see our experience of time as a reflection or shadow of a divine temporality arising as an aspect of the interaction of the Persons of the Godhead. Time in the created order derives its characteristics from both the interrelations of material things and the whole creation's relation to its Creator. Divine temporality arises solely from the Trinity, and is different than, if analogous to, our experience of time.

I think the creation days of Genesis 1 are shaped by this divine temporality, for several reasons--the fact that the account begins before there are structures in the universe from which what we know as time can arise, the fact that the days are framed by unique creation-acts of God (i.e. Each creation-act is not portrayed as occurring "on" or "in" a certain day--rather, each act is a day, framed by a covering/covenanting/evening and a harvest/appraisal/morning), and the fact that God appears to create time on day four. Genesis 1 is a very literal, historical acount of how God created the world. However, so is the Big Bang Theory, with its approximately fifteen-billion-year-old cosmos. The two descriptions simply assume different reference points (and, of course, they tell their stories to different ends).

In response to Katy's other question, I would say that of course our week is patterned after God's creation week. I don't see a problem.

Josh, hopefully this clarification clears up that I am in fact taking Genesis 1 literally (depending on what you mean by "literally"--the term itself is pretty vague). Darwinian Evolution doesn't enter the picture here, so I'm not sure why you bring it up. The current proposal of an approximately fifteen-billion-year-old universe is based on things like redshift measurements and proportions of various elements in the observable universe, not estimations of how long it would take for life to evolve (assumed to be only a tiny sliver of the total age of the cosmos). As for the creation of light and its division from darkness, and their constitution as Day and Night, I think the emphasis is on something more cosmic--Day as "heat" and "life," and Night as a "bending" or "turning back" from Day (check your Strong's). I think the original readers would have interpreted the passage this way. Of course, they would have seen it as meaning what we ordinarily mean by "day" and "night" too--again, I don't see a problem with that. Perhaps a problem arises if you equate the "Day" and "Night" with the "evening" and "morning," which does seem to do violence to the text, given the inappropriate order ("Night" follows "Day," while "evening" precedes "morning") and vastly divergent symbolism. Notice that there are creation "days," but not creation "nights." This is because "Night," as Genesis 1 uses it, is a constituted form of the pre-creation darkness and chaos--it is anti-creational, an "aversion" to the "Creation-Day."

I hope I have shown that I am not "just" trying to accommodate science with this interpretation. To misappropriate a recent Leithartean distinction, I am not trying to let my scientific "tail" wag my theological "dog." Rather, I want to incorporate the whole experience of God given to man, through natural and special revelation, into my hermeneutics. Obviously natural revelation must not trump special revelation, but neither should the two disagree (else God would be a liar). The New Physics, comprising Special and General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, has turned out to reveal a universe that is overwhelmingly more Trinitarian in character than was imagined by Newtonian physics, and vastly more suggestive of a divinely-instituted order (an order than runs much deeper than we could have envisioned under older models). Thus I hardly see reason to shrink from its claims without careful consideration.

Of Rethinking the Six Days of Genesis 1

2006-07-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

I have heretofore always favored an understanding of the six days of creation in the first chapter of Genesis as literal twenty-four-hour periods. My primary reason for this has been that our faith is radically historical--its veracity stands or falls on various historical claims--and that the book of Genesis very plainly presents itself as an historical narrative. I still think this is a terribly important point. However, the changing face of my understanding of both biblical hermeneutics and physical science leads me to think that the literal twenty-four-hour periods interpretation is largely incoherent, and suggests to me an interpretation more consonant with what we now know of the nature of physical reality, as well as what the text actually says, while retaining the deeply historical character of the Genesis narrative. Now it may very well be that what I am presenting has already been suggested by dozens of others I am unaware of, perhaps more cogently, and may have been refuted by others still. If so, I would appreciate people pointing me in their direction.

The problem that I see with a "literal twenty-four-hour days" approach to the Genesis 1 creation account lies in its implicit assumption of Newtonian time, and its reification of what are actually descriptive, conditional time-units. One of the implications of General Relativity is that mass-energy is ontologically precedent to space-time. Time is not a container-like matrix within which "things" interact and "events" occur. Rather, time is a property of "things"--more specifically of ordered systems of "things"--and has no meaning or reality apart from the interactive systems from which it is derived. If we are to think of the days of creation as twenty-four-hour periods, we must reify time by assuming it exists apart from the systems that sustain it and give it meaning.

Let me illustrate how this works. At the beginning of the Genesis 1 creation account, we have God alone in a pre-creation that is "formless" (undifferentiated, unstructured, chaotic) and "void" (vacuous, empty). These are conditions under which what we experience as time does not exist. Even if you were going to say that scripture is speaking hyperbolically at this point, and that some fundamental physical order is already in place by verse 2 (which seems to go against the narrative flow), thus making time possible, you are still asserting that "days" as twenty-four-hour periods have some meaning or existence apart from the rotation of the earth about its axis in relation to the other celestial bodies (earth can't even "rotate" by itself, without other bodies to rotate in relation to)--all of which are as yet uncreated. In fact, if you go to the text without assuming that the creation days must be twenty-four-hour periods, it seems remarkably clear that God doesn't even create time as we experience it until day four, along with the heavenly bodies that give it meaning.

This view makes the Genesis creation account compatible in a couple of interesting ways with what is often seen by evangelical Christians as a big, scary scientific ogre: the Big Bang Theory (which, for the record, has absolutely nothing to do with the theory of evolution, and in fact proved itself against overwhelming resistance from materialist scientists who thought it was dreamed up to justify the doctrine of divine creatio ex nihilo). First, the Big Bang Theory predicts what has sometimes been seen as an absurdity in the Genesis account: the existence of light before the creation of the various luminaries which, in our present time, are its sources. The Big Bang Theory requires that light and heat exist (in great plenitude) in the universe from the very beginning, before even the simplest elements are formed. Secondly, the arising of time out of the formation of material systems, primarily stellar bodies, as the Big Bang Theory explains, seems remarkably like what is described in Genesis 1:14-19.

But what then is meant by the "days" of Genesis 1? I answer with another question: What is meant by the phrase "day of the Lord?" Certainly not a twenty-four-hour period. Rather, the "day of the Lord" is a complete, historical act of God. I think the language of Genesis 1 suggests a similar treatment of the creation days: each "day" is a single constitutive, decretive act of the Creator-God. The framing of each "day" around a creation-act, along with the "evening and morning" trope (in Hebrew, the word for"evening" means "covering," "weaving," and "surety of covenant"; while the word for "morning" means "breaking-forth," "harvest," and "appraisal"), suggest it strongly. The "days" of Genesis 1 are days of "divine time" (see the article from two posts ago)--manifestations of the inner life and relationality of the Godhead, of his will and purpose. Genesis 1 is, after all, a theocentric account of the creation, culminating in God's rest after the creation of mankind. In Genesis 2, the creation account begins over again, from an anthropocentric viewpoint, which more or less holds for the rest of scripture (this distinction nullifies fears that anything but a literal-twenty-four-hour-days interpretation of Genesis 1 casts doubt on all subsequent biblical history).

Obviously this is not an exhaustive look at the implications of rethinking the Genesis 1 timescale, and there are undoubtedly many things I have overlooked. Hopefully, you in blogland can help point them out to me. Nevertheless, the insufficiency of a literalistic view of the Genesis 1 creation days, in the face of our present-day, relativistic understanding of time, as well as less wooden and fundamentalist hermeneutics, seems to me increasingly plain.

Of Homosexuality and the Abuse of Liturgy

2006-06-26T23:41:00.000-05:00

The modern world finds orthodox Christians' non-acceptance of homosexual practice baffling because the modern world is anti-liturgical, and human sexuality is an inherently ritual/sacramental/liturgical reality. Sex is a rite, not a right--and like any rite it can be done wrong.

In other words, homosexual practice is not wrong because it is "icky" (there are many aspects of creation order--including heterosexual relations--that are, from one perspective or another, "icky"); rather, it is wrong because it is misappropriation and misuse of a ritual reality.

Of Time and Trinity

2006-06-26T23:30:00.000-05:00

As of the time of posting, I have not yet read this article, but it looks fascinating.

Currently Reading
God and Time: Four Views
By Gregory E. Ganssle (Editor)

Of the End of Science

2006-06-03T15:47:00.000-05:00

If you haven't read about the New Physics, you've missed the biggest thing the twentieth century (and perhaps the second millenium) has to offer. I'll refrain from trying to explain a set of theories that made even Einstein's head spin, but trust me when I say that, whatever your expectations, it's a wilder ride than you can imagine. The New Physics is basically the implosion of the classical scientific worldview, and the emergence of a cosmology so unutterably strange and wonderful (and Trinitarian) that you'll wonder why anybody gives modernism the time of day.

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word." -- Niels Bohr

Currently Reading
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith
By Stephen M. Barr

Of How I Laughed Till I Nearly Threw Up

2006-05-03T01:36:00.000-05:00

Beyond description.

Of a Travesty

2006-04-29T15:20:00.000-05:00

Read it and weep.

Of a Cossack's Cassock and a Surplus Surplice...and Other Fun Words

2006-04-25T06:48:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday was my first Eucharist as an acolyte (a crucifer, to be exact). Wearing the cassock and surplice with my longish blond hair, I looked rather unfortunately angelic, to the merriment of all. When I told my mother about my new ecclesiastical role, she said it sounded "cultish." Which is hilarious.

Currently Reading
Wise Blood
By Flannery O'Connor

Of My Return To Blogger

2006-04-20T14:57:00.000-05:00

Xanga is so gauche, so puerile, so very last week. I come again to my native haunts.

Recently Watched
A Very Long Engagement
By Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Of an Incidental Observation

2006-02-02T14:33:00.000-05:00

If you want to understand perichoresis in a very mindblowing sort of way, watch professionals dance a European Close Style waltz.

Of Recent Reading

2006-02-01T04:45:00.000-05:00

Roughly chronological, beginning with the most recent:

The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
My first foray into science fiction. I read an article that described this book as "a Star Wars-style space opera penned by G. K. Chesterton in the midst of religious conversion." Subsequent research on the author led to reviews comparing him not only to Chesterton, but also Borges, Nabokov, Dickens, Swift, Melville, Kafka, and Proust. And while these comparisons seem a little wild (though not terribly), I am finding Wolfe quite a pleasant surprise.

Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, Luis Fernando Verissimo
Very fun mystery novella by a Brazilian, starring Jorge Luis Borges as the detective.

Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The spoof on the Apocalypse that Nate Wilson should have written.

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
I finally got around to reading this, having read most of Eco's other novels first.

The Dancing Wu-Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, Gary Zukav
A layman's introduction to relativity and quantum mechanics. Man, where was the New Physics hiding all my life? Totally righteous.

At the End of an Age, John Lukacs
A historian's take on the death of Modernism. This book, along with the previous one, pretty much single-handedly made a postmodernist of me.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco
I always enjoy Eco, though this is probably my least favorite of his novels so far (I have yet to read The Island of the Day Before.)

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Absolute must-read. Imagine if Jane Austen and Honore de Balzac got together to write Harry Potter for grownups and you will have some idea of the supreme sweetness of this novel.

I really love my current employment, as it gives me from four to fifteen hours a day, three days a week, wherein I have little to do but read--and I make $12 an hour doing it. On the other days, I walk around outside thinking and listening to music or N.T. Wright lectures for $10.25 an hour. Pretty happy with that.

Of Bittersweet Irony

2005-10-17T15:46:00.000-05:00

So naturally the best article I've read in some time about the problems of the modern American church hails from the pages of Harper's Magazine.

Of Five Relatively Unimportant Reasons Why It's Sweet To Be an Anglican

2005-10-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

1. Father Wayne can open a sermon with an illustration from 24 (as in the TV show with Kiefer Sutherland), and still be an unmigitated theological badass.

2. Father Wayne can make exclamations like, "Sweet Jesus, what was lost!*" and totally pull it off.

3. When announcing upcoming Advent services which our church will celebrate in fellowship with other local churches (Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Baptist), Father Wayne gave directions to one church by unselfconsciously referencing its relation to his favorite pub.

4. We occasionally get sermon series prompted by epistles from the bishops.

5. We totally have bishops. Who write epistles.

*In reference to the destruction of early icons by the Iconoclasts

Of Mirrored Labyrinths

2005-04-22T23:23:00.000-05:00

While I was at the bookstore the other day I came upon an book about labyrinths (the book being of the coffee-table variety, with stylish formatting and lots of pictures). Leafing through it, I found my curiosity piqued by the universality of what is called the "Classical Labyrinth," a particularly patterned seven-track unicursal maze, sometimes called a "Cretan Labyrinth." This particular pictograph can be found the world over, from the Mediterranean to Polynesia, from the temples of India to the pueblos of New Mexico. It seems no one really has any idea how that particular symbol came to be spread so widely across seemingly insurmountable geographic and cultural barriers.

As I was reading this, I found myself eavesdropping on the conversation of two people behind me. They were both teachers, probably in their late twenties, but what really drew my attention was that their conversation seemed like a synopsis of all my conversations with Jenny Sullivan over the past few weeks. Their words, their very mannerisms, were deja vu. I evenually had to leave, unnerved at having encountered a mirror of my recent personal history.

Afterwards I connected the two events. I had discovered a double of my own relational labyrinth sprung up in another part of the world, without any visible relation. And I would like to think this is because, like the Classical Labyrinth, my private relational labyrinth is born of something universal, something essentially human. I'm not trying to figure out the future; it's just comforting to know that I share my troubles with other people, even if only a few.

Of the Absoludicrous

2005-04-18T23:32:00.000-05:00

I derive an unwarranted amount of pleasure from doing absurd things in the hope that someone will notice, and that my actions will have made their day a little more surreal. Today at Barnes & Noble I purchased The Guide For the Perplexed by Rabbi Moses Maimonides (the foremost Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages and court physician to Saladin) along with REAL Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book by the presumably pseudonymous Robert Hamburger. I hope the cashier was appreciative.

Of Homo Leprechaunus

2004-12-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

I find the search for the Big Bang and the search for the Missing Link to be two of the most ironically worthwhile pursuits of modern science. The search for the Big Bang has given us the two Hubble Deep Field photographs, along with their precocious younger sibling, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which together present the most brainspattering, shotgun-blast-to-the-face witness to the majesty of the Creator I have seen. The search for the Missing Link, on the other hand, is far more interesting for its dead ends. And I am not speaking of the much-hyped hoaxes and cavemen constructed from bone chips, but rather of the very real scientific discoveries and their implications for people such as myself who have stubbornly refused to stop believing in fairytales.

Picture if you will a tropical island populated by tiny little people who hunt dragons, giant rats the size of golden retrievers, and miniature elephants. While this seems like the setting for a bad fantasy novel, it actually comes from the pages of a scientific peer-review journal, and is intended as quite serious natural history. The remains of a race of three-foot-tall hominids (read, 'wee folk') have recently been discovered in Indonesia, and the discovery has created quite a stir in the scientific world. Most especially, this is because they are apparently (even from an evolutionary standpoint) neighbors of Homo sapiens and not his ancestors. As such, Homo floresiensis stands as one of the few known semihuman creatures that may very well have interacted with humankind; another is Homo neandertalensis. This past summer, while rereading Lewis' The Discarded Image, I became convinced that the neandertal and the elves or high faeries of European folklore were one and the same. (The modern paleoanthropologist's conception of the neandertal is very little like the sloping caveman of the popular imagination. Neandertal was apparently not only stronger and hardier, but also more intelligent than modern man. Oh, and his slightly shorter stature fits in well with this theory also.) Now the appearance of the diminutive Homo floresiensis lends credibility to the existence of such fairytale staples as leprechauns, gnomes, and the like. Even the scientists have admitted as much, especially since the tiny people recently discovered in Flores (affectionately dubbed 'hobbits' by their discoverers) have always featured in the folklore of that island in much the same way that leprechauns do in the folklore of the Irish or pucks and Robin Goodfellows in that of the wider British Isles.

Science rules.

Of Pagan love

2004-12-16T21:38:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I watched Closer, and while I'm glad I did, it is one of the unpleasantest films I've seen in some time. The story follows the hideously intertwined sexual relationships of four selfish, faithless, cruel, guilt-ridden, despairing, hopeless, and entirely ordinary people as they brutally destroy their own and others' lives--all in the name of love. The movie is really brillant at portraying this as the abomination it is, without giving into the typical Hollywood temptation of trying to pander to audiences' desire for mere titillation. There is a great deal of (quite explicit) on-screen sexual content (although, interestingly, not a single sex scene), but it is all far from appealing. 'Eviscerating' is a better term.

The love possessed by the characters in this film (which is smart enough not to put forward the all-too-tidy 'sex vs. love' dichotomy) is monstrous, an idiot and bestial mutation of the familiar Christian virtue. Closer is a phenomenally accurate portrayal of how human depravity perverts even such a noble thing as love into a weapon for annihilating souls, but it does so without offering any sort of a solution, because the moviemakers obviously do not have one. It gives us the Law (no pun intended) without the Gospel, and the result is really depressing. To sum up my reaction to the film, I must reference one of its scenes. Jude Law's character has just met Natalie Portman's character and is describing to her his work as an obituary writer. He explains the euphemisms used in the obits page ('convivial'=alchoholic, 'private'=gay, etc.), and she asks him what her euphemism would be. He replies, "Disarming." When she objects that 'disarming' is not a euphemism, he says, "In your case it is."

In this film's case, 'disarming' is a euphemism.

Of a Mystery Multiplied (More Sexy Stuff)

2004-12-03T15:59:00.000-05:00

Forgive me; I can't resist.

It suddenly seems remarkable to me that the author of Hebrews, in 10:20, speaks of Christ's flesh as a veil. Now I don't think this is really the point of the passage, but such a reference to a veil of flesh suggests a sexual connotation, and I find upon closer examination that out of this a pattern seems to emerge. I don't know how useful (or orthodox) this train of thought is, but bear with me. You may offer criticism in the comments.

Throughout the Old Testament, the unfaithfulness of Israel is often portrayed as the dalliances of an adulterous wife. Her rejection of Yahveh takes the form of harlotry; she goes "a-whoring after other gods." In Ezekiel 23, we are told that the sister cities of Samaria and Jerusalem even went so far as to give up their maidenhead to their lovers among the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans. Israel had lost the purity of her youth, her spiritual virginity, to foreign gods ("While she was mine," Yahveh bitterly remarks in v. 5).

In the New Testament, Christ comes to stand in the place of an impure humanity before the Father. May I suggest that in so doing, he becomes a renewed spiritual virginity for the elect, supplying a new veil, "that is to say, his flesh"? And that when that veil which is his flesh is torn, what has has happened is none other than the reunion-in-consummation of God and man?

And what in fact follows this but the entry of the Spirit, the Lifegiver, into the world, impregnating it (if I may be allowed the term) with a new creation, the kingdom of heaven? It seems to me that this pattern in not wholly in my imagination. And if that initial sacrifice of Christ on Calvary can be seen (in a sense) as the opening act of a marriage between God and man, could not the symbolic repetition of it in the eucharist be likened to the continued (bloodless, after initial consummation) sexual communion of a husband and wife?

I'm not sure any of this is very compelling. Comments are certainly welcome.

Of an Observation

2004-11-16T01:30:00.000-05:00

A proper covenant is sealed in blood. In the marriage covenant (and I realize I am generalizing, since a number of factors can eliminate this symbolic moment), the solemnizing blood is spilt from the new bride's torn hymen (I hope it will not be thought too vulgar of me to allude to the significance of a "rending of the veil"), by which, in true Levitical fashion, the husband's generative member is sprinkled (baptized), and so consecrated to service in his temple.

Of Yahveh the Skeptic

2004-11-15T21:54:00.000-05:00

Last night I read Chesterton's excellent Introduction to the Book of Job, which I unreservedly recommend to everyone. Some choice bits:

"The modern habit of saying 'Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me' - the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."
"When, at the end of the poem, God enters (somewhat abruptly), is struck the sudden and splendid note which makes the thing as great as it is. All the human beings through the story, and Job especially, have been asking questions of God. A more trivial poet would have made God enter in some sense or other in order to answer the questions. By a touch truly to be called inspired, when God enters, it is to ask a number more question on His own account. In this drama of skepticism God Himself takes up the role of skeptic. He does what all the great voices defending religion have always done. He does, for instance, what Socrates did. He turns rationalism against itself. He seems to say that if it comes to asking questions, He can ask some question which will fling down and flatten out all conceivable human questioners. The poet by an exquisite intuition has made God ironically accept a kind of controversial equality with His accusers. He is willing to regard it as if it were a fair intellectual duel: 'Gird up now thy loins like man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me' (38:3). The everlasting adopts an enormous and sardonic humility. He is quite willing to be prosecuted. He only asks for the right which every prosecuted person possesses; he asks to be allowed to cross-examine the witness for the prosecution. And He carries yet further the corrections of the legal parallel. For the first question, essentially speaking, which He asks of Job is the question that any criminal accused by Job would be most entitled to ask. He asks Job who he is. And Job, being a man of candid intellect, takes a little time to consider, and comes to the conclusion that he does not know."
"This, I say, is the first fact touching the speech; the fine inspiration by which God comes in at the end, not to answer riddles, but to propound them. The other great fact which, taken together with this one, makes the whole work religious instead of merely philosophical is that other great surprise which makes Job suddenly satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable. Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man."

Of the Epistemology of Toilets

2004-10-07T22:00:00.000-05:00

Today I started reading The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch. In the course of his meandering commentary on life and death from the perspective of an undertaker, Lynch makes the interesting observation that at the same time the advent of the automobile was ushering birth, childhood, courtship, marriage, sex, old age, and death out of the modern home and into the hospitals, daycares, cinemas, wedding chapels, hotels, nursing homes, and funeral parlors (respectively) of the outside world, the advent of the flush toilet was bringing urination and defecation inside. What a tradeoff.

He also points out that the tidy disposal of human waste made available by these same flush toilets has left us moderns with no regular, tangible reminder of death and corruption. As a result we are unaccustomed to unpleasantness on any real level, and are therefore generally unprepared to address death or any of its lesser cousins when they invariably confront us.

So I guess my having been a nurse aide makes me more prepared for death than most of the general populace.

Of Not Being a Contrarian

2004-10-05T00:28:00.000-05:00

The motto of New St. Andrews is Numquam bella piis, numquam certamina desunt ("For the faithful, wars shall never cease"). The motto of "Old" St. Andrews is Dum spiro spero ("While I breathe, I hope"). Now which of these mottoes is the more optimistic, forward-looking, postmillennial?

Of Some Thoughts on Children

2004-10-05T00:26:00.000-05:00

I am repeatedly amazed that sex and children are so inextricably linked. Personally, I am at a loss to decide which of these I desire more, and it seems wholly gratuitous that the two are a package deal (albeit presently withheld from me). Certainly my perception of their respective pleasures is naive, overlooking the pain, labor, and responsibility of each, and yet it seems undeniable that in making one the prerequisite of the other God has surely dropped the ball, let slip the mask, and shown himself for the hedonist he is. Sexual reproduction: it's like God forgot that you can't eat your cake and have it.

At Dave and Alisha's wedding reception I was able to hold Israel Cummings long enough to rock him to sleep, despite his protestation. Permit me to wax sentimental. There is something so wholly real, and wholly impossible, about rocking an infant to sleep, that for that brief period it was to me the one sole function of the universe; the telos of reality itself. For forty or so minutes I was in the warm belly of the world, the umbilicus mundi, the cosmological core, and the motions and undulations of the party round about were simply emanations of that central reality. In all honesty I cannot call up from memory an image of the child I carried (newborns are generic to those not yet parents), but rather a physical recollection of hard and soft places, a map of texture and form: the warm lump of a head under my chin, the coolness of awkward limbs, the uncertain strainings of a tiny homunculus. In that moment I knew what it was I lived for.

"And I saw visions of God," writes Ezekiel.

Of Prolegomena

2004-10-04T01:50:00.000-05:00

Last night I watched Meet Joe Black for the first time, smoked a cigarette on the balcony, read Jeremy Huggins' blog, and decided to get my life together.

I'm exaggerating. In truth I only decided to begin writing regularly as a discipline, though that in itself is for me no small resolution. I am utterly undisciplined, especially when it comes to writing. My excuse to myself has been that I don't write because I can't think of anything worthwhile to say. This is a lie, not because I can in fact think of something worthwhile to say, but because it is not why I don't write. I don't write because I'm a "perfectionist," which is a technical term meaning "a lazy bastard."

So I will write, if needs be poorly. I will aspire to pseudo-profundity. I will be unoriginal, derivative, plagiaristic. I will be a navel-gazing wanker and I won't give a damn.

And you few, you happy few, will be the victims of my stab at a meaningful writing life. Feel free to set your email filters accordingly. I only ask that you filter by subject line, which will always begin with the phrase "Climbing the tree with the lights in it", rather than filtering all email from this address. Who knows? I may have something important to write to you at some unimaginable date in the future. Also, the substance of these letters will be posted on my new blog. Yes, a blog. See the preceding paragraph.

Tomorrow I will write something attempting substance, but for tonight this notice must do. Two small profundities, as a downpayment: today I bought a coaster, black, inscribed with the motto "Love Like You'll Never Get Hurt"; also I found the Sangreal.