The translation authorized by the government of England states that Christ rebukes his disciples in Luke 9:56 that He came not to destroy but to save. The translation authorized by R. C. Sproul does not state this as canon and is relegated to a footnote. If these words are Christ’s it begs the question as to why Christ states that he came not to build up but to bring a sword (Matthew 10:34-36). It is possible that the text rejected is Christ rebuking his disciples because they did not realize that this was the phase of Christ’s humiliation rather than glorification. It is also possible that Christ rebuked his disciples for seeing a political messiah rather than a spiritual one but one that would be inconsistent with the means of fire from Heaven at that time. Christ generally tells others to not speak of Him. This changes when he gives the great commission as a formal charge to preach the gospel to all nations in the entire world. To claim that it is inherently wrong based on the version authorized by the government of England in Luke 9:56 to pray for a stronghold of Satan to be destroyed with fire from Heaven is inconsistent with the call for Christ to come quickly in Revelation 22:20 if 2 Peter 3:12 is considered canon.
Some may at times say that the entire Bible is to be prayed, but then deny this in practice. Take for example the following verse. Some say that it is improper to pray for God to destroy evil with fire from Heaven. To say this may in fact be a form of projection onto God and eisegesis of God’s word. Take 2 Corinthians 10:4. This verse is usually taken to mean that it is not only good, but virtuous and good for the soul to pray that the strongholds of Satan be torn down by God. It is sometimes said that the greatest form of protest in prayer, and that all of the Bible should be prayed, particularly this verse. But to say that it is wrong to pray that God destroys a stronghold of Satan that is indisputably evil with fire from Heaven seems completely inconsistent with the other premise. What sense does it make to pray for the strongholds of Satan to be torn down, but to say it is evil to pray for God to destroy said strongholds with fire from Heaven? What sense does it make to say that we should pray with the martyrs before the throne of God to take vengeance (Revelation 6:10), but then to state that it is inconsistent with scripture to pray that God returns in glory to destroy all strongholds of Satan on earth with fire? What sense does it make to say that we should pray for Christ to return quickly, knowing that Peter said that the earth will be baptized with fire, but then state that it is wrong to pray for a particular stronghold to not be destroyed through baptism of fire resulting from Christ returning to earth? Why is it vicious to pray for strongholds of Satan to be torn down, but not to be burned with fire from Heaven?
Are we wiser than Peter? Are we wiser than the martyrs before the throne of God? Are we wiser than Elijah? Are we wiser than John?
There are also alternatives to why Christ rebuked the disciples. He did not tell the disciples to go and tell everyone of Him while He was with them. He generally told everyone to not speak of Him. It is entirely possible that Christ was rebuking them because they did not understand that the time for him destroying all strongholds with fire from heaven was thousands of years away. But is there not a hint of materialism in denying the privilege of asking God for something? Is there not materialism in assuming that God will not work in miraculous ways in every day life? Is it not a materialist worldview partially adopted by Christians in syncretism to outlaw the petition to God that he act in miraculous ways in the physical realm? How is asking God to destroy a particular stronghold of Satan that different from asking God to set a person on fire with Christ’s Holy Spirit? What’s the difference? Which is more miraculous: For God to send fire to set a sacrifice on fire from Heaven, for God to destroy a physical stronghold of Satan with fire from Heaven, or for God to destroy a spiritual stronghold of Satan of a person who hates God and deserves to burn forever in Hell? Which is more miraculous? If it is more miraculous for God to adopt a child of Satan as one of his sons, how is that more miraculous than God sending fire to destroy a person, or a building, or an entire town? If regeneration is a miraculous occurrence, more miraculous than sending fire from Heaven, then how can it be considered sinful to pray for God to send fire from Heaven to destroy strongholds of Satan? How is that any different from asking God to rend the Heavens and heal our land? Isaiah 64:1 states that the consequences of God rending the heavens is for the mountains to tremble. This verse is said in the context of the temple being referenced as being burned with fire. How then can it be considered sinful and arrogant to pray for God to make himself known and set one stronghold on fire when it is considered righteous and humble to pray for God to set the entirety of earth on fire to renew it? How can it be considered prideful to pray for God to destroy one stronghold of Satan with fire when it is considered dutiful to pray for Christ to return and remake the earth with fire? How can it be considered sin to burn one book, but repentance to burn many?
Even in the last four hundred years, the protestant church has a history of interpreting this passage about throwing down the strongholds of Satan in a literal way meant to be done literally. When the church of England broke with the church of Rome, images were smashed. Statues were dashed. Those images and icons were viewed as being idols that perpetuated the church into being a stronghold of Satan and they were destroyed to be in line with their view of the first and second commandments. If destruction of statues can be viewed as Biblical and virtuous then, how is it that the descendants of such people view the mere prayer for God Himself to personally show his power in destroying a stronghold of Satan to be improper? How can the descendants of those who gave their lives to have a freedom of worshipping God in the manner in which they thought most Biblical view the mere prayer to God of the destruction of Satan’s occupied buildings as sinful? Is this the result of exegesis, or is this the result of a fear of man rather than God? Even if it is allowed that Christ said that they should not ask if He should destroy a building with fire from Heaven, it is ignored that Paul states that the synagogues and strongholds of Satan will be destroyed and that that was a part of his mission if only to pray that God would hasten his return. Or are we wiser than John and the martyrs who ask God to return quickly? Did the martyrs sin in thinking of their own time table rather than God’s when asking Him to return quickly? Did God rebuke the martyrs who died for his namesake that they should not pray for Him to gain vengeance over them by baptizing the earth with fire? Did the prayers of those martyrs become a stink in God’s nostrils, or did they become a sweet-smelling savor? Not long after Christ’s apostles were martyred, the temple run by the pharisees was completely destroyed as Christ said it would in Matthew 24. To say that it is wrong to pray for strongholds of Satan to be destroyed is to say that the prayers of the martyrs and the saints are not a sweet-smelling savor, not pleasing to God, and just plain vanity.
Some might say that Paul mentions casting down imaginations, and that this means that one should not imagine that God will use miraculous means to destroy a stronghold of Satan. But what is the book of Revelation but a spur to the imagination of the church to not only prayer but action knowing that God will use their efforts in his plan to rain fire from Heaven and baptize the earth in fire to restore it? Paul also states in the same verse that anything that exalts itself against God should be cast down. Would it have been sinful for Daniel to pray that God would destroy the idol of Nebuchadnezzar? Was it sin for Elijah to mock the prophets of Baal and to call fire down from Heaven to consume a sacrifice so that hundreds of prophets of Baal would be executed? Why did God reveal Himself to Moses in an unquenchable fire that would consume anyone who touched the mountain? Why did God reveal Himself to Moses as an unquenchable fire in a bush? Why did God reveal Himself as a pillar of fire who would kill anyone who touched the ark of the Covenant? Why would it be considered sinful for the martyrs beneath the ark of the covenant, which is the mercy seat of God to ask God when he will bring them vengeance and consume the wicked with fire from Heaven? The Apostle John might say that Christianity of the modern day does not have too much imagination, but too little. It doubts that God can act in miraculous ways in the way that he has in the past, and that to teat prophecies as literal as history such as Elijah calling down fire from heaven is somehow an act of impiety. Perhaps we are wiser than John, and should expect God to do less than what we expect. To imply that the prophecies of the Bible are merely metaphorical is to deny the historical nature of the historical books of the Bible in which fire from Heaven consumed real physical objects. To state that it is wrong to ask God to send fire from Heaven to destroy strongholds of Satan is to deny God’s power.
It is one thing for Christ to rebuke his disciples before his glorification and ascension not to ask Him if He should send fire from Heaven to destroy strongholds of Satan. It is another matter to pray the same thing after the Revelation of God. In Luke 9, Christ tells his disciples to shake of the dust of their feet as a testimony against those who reject them. It is in this chapter that Christ later rebukes them for instead of shaking off the dust of their feet that they ask if he should call fire from Heaven to consume those who rejected them. Mathew 10 goes into further detail and states that it will be better for Sodom and Gomorra on the day of judgment than those whom the disciples shake the dust off of their feet. Here Christ links the destruction of these people in the day of judgment to fire coming down from Heaven to consume entire cities. It is also in Matthew 10 that Christ does not rebuke the disciples, but instead states that he came not to bring peace but a sword. To focus only on Christ rebuking the disciples for not doing what he said earlier in the chapter of Luke and to ignore the greater breadth of Scripture in Matthew 10 and Revelation which ties the rejection of God to being burned with fire and the prayers of the saints being pleasing to God is to engage in projective eisegesis. In the latter passage, knocking the dust off one’s feet is tantamount to marking God to destroy that place with fire when Christ returns. How then is it considered sinful to pray for strongholds of Satan be consumed with fire? It is one thing for Christ to tell his disciples to restrain themselves and to refrain from calling fire from Heaven at a given time. It is another thing to imply that the martyrs in Heaven beneath the ark of the covenant are sinning in asking God to vie them vengeance by consuming the earth with fire. If the sandals of the disciples are marking buildings to be destroyed with fire in the future, why is the sandals of the disciples the example of prayer rather than the prayers of the martyrs beneath the throne of God? How is the sandal of a disciple to mark a building for destruction holier than a prayer by a martyr? Both signify the coming destruction of all of Satan’s strongholds.
What sense does it make to say that we should pray for Christ to return quickly, knowing that Peter said that the earth will be baptized with fire, but then state that it is wrong to pray for a particular stronghold to not be destroyed through baptism of fire resulting from Christ returning to earth?
Or was Christ implying that Elijah did not act righteously? If they wanted fire from Heaven to be called why would they be working for the devil? Would it not make more sense that if Christ did say that they did not know what spirit they were of, that he was adjusting their expectations of the kinds of miracles he was going to perform at the current phase and that he was greater than Elijah? Is it possible that Christ rebuked them because they were ignoring his prior instruction of the current phase, and that he was implying that they did not understand that they did not need to call down fire from Heaven from God, and that He was God? Is it possible that they did not realize that the current phase of Christ’s ministry was one of a sacrifice in humility, and that the later phase of his return in glory would be physically wildly different, and that destruction by fire would be held to a minimum until then? Is it possible that the disciples were thinking on a merely political level of Israelites versus Samaritans, and that they did not realize their motives for asking this question? If the English Standard Version only states that Christ rebuked them, is it possible that Christ merely said “no.”? If there are no clear markers of any of these possibilities and if different manuscripts disagree over the contents of Luke 9, then any definitive interpretation over this verse especially in the absence of the other passages of Scripture mentioned, will be a product of projection, and the full truth will not be known until Christ returns. But the church is to pray for Christ to return, if 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 and Revelation 22:20 are held to be normative. The vast majority of Scripture indicates that God will consume the earth with fire at the end of days, and that to pray for this to occur is to fear God and not man, and to be totally indifferent to man’s opinion if it conflicts If Christ implied that Elijah did wrongly, why did Elijah and Moses appear to Christ to minister to Him? If the saints have no awareness of the current state of earth, why did Moses and Elijah appear to Christ, and why do the martyrs beneath the throne of God pray to God to send fire from Heaven to consume it so that they can be reunited with their physical bodies?
If this were merely a metaphor what would be wrong with using it as a metaphor in prayer? If God gave the church these images to merely act as if it is pretend play is to doubt God’s power. It is to imply that God is only playing with the church to give it images to confuse it. It is to imply that God plays with the church to give it false prophecies that will not actually occur in the future. If God’s imagery is taken less seriously, this will likely be in reality a way for contemporary secular culture to replace the imagery of Revelation with the imagination of a cold, empty, meaningless universe with no God, no meaning, and no purpose. Even if it were just a metaphor to downplay the imagery given by God to induce holy fear and fervor in the face of man is a highly questionable action against God’s word. The church in whole is not in danger of being too imaginative, but too little. The alterative to not living according to the images given directly by God for edification is living according to the world’s view of the universe as inherently indifferent and godless. Instead, a neglect of God’s imagery is in reality a complicated form of hatred of God and an eisegetical projection onto Him. Rejecting God’s imagery is like projecting materialism of God’s words on last things. While it is possible to go to the extreme of using prophetic imagery too much, in the current atheistic cultural climate of the present, this is unlikely to happen. The Puritans of England in the 1600s seemed to often have a more vivid understanding of these prophecies than Christians of the present day. Today, the imagery of the earth being destroyed by fire from Heaven and demons from Hell is replaced by aliens being defeated by a united humanity — a complete reversal of God’s vision of last thing. To reject God’s imagery is to doubt God’s providence and the edifying nature of His canon.
If to pray for Christ to return quickly is to pray for God to baptize the earth with fire and to destroy strongholds of Satan, then to pray for God to return is to pray for God to send fire from Heaven to destroy particular strongholds of Satan as well as strongholds of Satan in plural. If to pray for Christ to return is to pray for particular strongholds of Satan to be destroyed, then to not pray for Babylon to fall and be burnt is to in some sense to doubt Christ’s return and to doubt God’s power.
To denigrate God’s imagery of the end of the world through fire from Heaven is to emphasize how little vanity matters in the context of eternity. Seeking empty glory is vanity. Beauty is vanity. Glory is vanity. Seeking to live forever is vanity. Pride in one’s group’s epistemological and theological resources is vanity. Proud Pharisaical Inner rings of theological secrets are vanity that will be later revealed to be flawed projections. The house built on concrete will eventually disintegrate into sand and be washed away never to be found again in the abyss of eternity. All books will pass away and their knowledge will be lost or distorted forever. All that is left is bones, and the bones will eventually be blown by the wind as dust in the whirlwind. In other words, to denigrate praying using God’s imagery is to deny Christ’s returning to earth to baptize it with fire.
This is not to even touch the many prayers of deprecation found throughout the psalms that beg God to destroy the wicked. It is proper to impute meaning into passages that the original readers would not have done if new meaning has been revealed through Christ’s incarnation, and prophecies of his second coming. Psalm 97:3 mentions God destroying his enemies with fire. To state that we should not pray for God to return to destroy his enemies with fire and throw them into a burning pit as the book or Revelation shows, is nonsensical. Believers should not only know what has already happened but look forward to what is yet to occur in prophecies set in the future for when Christ returns. To do otherwise would be to have a Docetic eschatology rather than an over-realized one. Christ may return in 1 day or in ten thousand years because time is relative to God if Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 are any indication. To state that one should pray the entire Bible but then make an arbitrary rule blacklisting fire when Christ’s songs mention it explicitly does not follow.
C. S. Lewis says that we listen to some men because they seemed to have been closer to God than we are. In this case, Lewis indicates that the primary danger in reading the Bible is not an overindulgence in curiosity about Scripture, but a surfeit. He sees the danger in endlessly revolving around verses already known while ignoring those which make less sense. In other words, he advises a scout mindset, rather than a soldier mindset of repetitiousness. If he were wrong, by what standard would he be? Solomon says that it is the glory of kings to search out the secrets that God conceals, and he states at the preface to proverbs that he will teach whoever reads his book the secrets of the wise. So by what standard is Lewis wrong, if Solomon gives a class in revealing the secrets of the wise, who are usually presented as wiser than kings who are usually very foolish and concerned with petty matters that shrivel up and die with no lasting honor of any kind. Was Solomon wrong to teach the secrets of the wise? Did God make a mistake in adding Solomon’s books the canon of Scripture? Where then does the authority come to condemn Lewis as foolish when Solomon teaches the secrets of the wise and their riddles? By what standard is one part of Scripture denounced as semi-canonical, as not edifying to some? Motivation? Lewis sees the motivation of curiosity as too low, not too high. Solomon sees the curiosity of the foolish as simple, not prideful. Whence then comes the locking of curiosity to pride as inherently vicious?
God invites the simple to be curious about the riddles of the wise. Who can condemn Him? God invites the foolish to be curious about the vanity of kings? Who is prideful enough to condemn Him? Did bishops of the Middle Ages advise peasants to not be too curious about the mysteries of salvation in the book of Romans? If they did so, were they prideful to warn peasants of the dangers of knowledge to only hold onto their own power over others? Could those bishops and priests have been prideful of their learning and knowledge and yet bar others from studying the Bible because of a concern that they could learn heresy and find unedifying doctrines? When Julius II condemned Martin Luther for his curiosity in trying to understand the secrets of God, was that out of pride, or a concern over Luther’s wellbeing? When John Knox was curious about how to apply the prophecies of Daniel and compared the pope to the antichrist, was that pride and were the French right to enslave him in a galley?
How would one institute a motivation test for applicants into monasteries to study the secrets of God? How would one judge the motivation of the applicant? How would one judge the sufficient lowliness and humility of an applicant? Would an applicant recite a prayer ten thousand times? Is this a way to distinguish who has a virtuous curiosity about drawing nearer to God and those who have a vicious curiosity for knowledge? Can the fruits of a reprobate mind appear to flower with fruit for a short time only to reveal later their heinous sins, or their leaving the faith that they were never really a part of? Who judges who is sufficiently humble to study the mysteries of God? Who judges who is to read which parts of God’s word? Who judges which parts of the Bible are edifying? Does condemning one part of scripture as edifying to one group not in practice condemn it as non-Scriptural, and somehow off limits to those not in God’s inner ring of sanctification? Are those who claim a higher level of spirituality not raising themselves above others to limit others’ knowledge of Scripture? Is such limiting of parts of Scripture itself not an effect of the pride of those doing the limiting?
Some might say that it is dangerous to learn about religions other than Christianity or expressions of Christianity deemed heretical and trust the experts while curiosity is vilified. That to listen to lectures about theological concepts from those whom we disagree with is inherently vicious, a form of pride, and only from vicious curiosity. They may imply to learn about the thought forms of pagan religions such as Hinduism is unedifying and only a vicious form of vain curiosity. They may also read fantasy novels that encapsulate these same thought forms in the guise of an outwardly Christian mask. Take the works of Branson Sanderson for example: The cosmology of his fictional universe mirrors that of Hindu theology, in which God is separated into infinite shards. Which is more dangerous and likely to encourage syncretistic melding of Christian with non-Christian thought? Listening to the lectures of someone like the psychologist Alan Watts, who explicitly states the differences between Christianity and Hinduism, or reading the books of the Mormon Sanderson, who hides Hindu ideas behind a semblance of Christianity? Both can be used to understand one another, but reading a novel assuming that it is merely entertainment and then shunning the other is hypocrisy, and likely an attempt to control the thoughts of others rathe than to edify them. Once God’s word has been segmented into an arbitrary absolute of edifying and unedifying, it is easy to arbitrarily cordon off the study of some subjects as straying from the faith in vicious curiosity. Which is more likely to endanger thought: the conscious explicit studying of a thought system, or the unconscious acceptance of it through a story? Which is more likely to cause a realization of the differences between the two? Is the curiosity of everyone outside of the inner ring of the seven levels of holy bureaucracy vicious?
It is inconsistent to say that God gives wisdom freely but then ignore his means of doing that in which Solomon mentions revealing the secrets of the wise. Perhaps we are wiser than Lewis, Solomon, Paul, and God. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. None is greater than John the Baptist, and yet the least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than He.
While stating that Presbyterians have a tendency toward a melancholic temperament may be seen as an exaggeration, Mark Twain connected the two as inseparable in Tom Sawyer.[1]J. I. Packer stated that a melancholic character is a mind that functions at extremely high pressure, and that Hamlet was one such character.[2] It might be said that until a few years ago that Presbyterians insist upon living life before the face of God because right now counts forever, which are words R. C. Sproul, made a conscious effort to repeat repeatedly.[3] The dark side of this focus is that it can take the form of believing that all things are of great importance. Master concerns weigh more than indifferent adiaphora in the long run. But those who tend toward obsessive compulsion toward order will have a tendency to view small things as of cosmic importance. Some things are of cosmic importance and other things are not. If one denomination of Presbyterians insists on living before the face of God and the infinitely high standard of penal substitutionary atonement, this usually comes at the cost of an awareness of God’s love of adoption and his fatherly pleasure. This may only be mentioned once and negatively in the Westminster standards, but it is still mentioned.
The younger Presbyterian denomination emphasizes adoption and the older Presbyterian denomination interprets this as a license to sin and be lax in applying fundamental doctrines. There is a cost in emphasis to all things and if one emphasizes confession this will not necessarily be balanced by reference to good works God ordained before the foundation of the world.Francis Schaeffer is a strange cross section because while he is claimed by the older Presbyterian denomination, he is more open to analyzing the various expressions of nihilistic philosophy like the younger denomination. At the same time, he states that nihilists should be asked why they haven’t killed themselves yet.[4]This is the same question Hamlet asks. So it may be that he was unusual because he had a melancholic temperament to hold rigidly to what he thought was true, but at the same time openness to consider all thought patterns in the world. It could be argued this is what the Apostle Paul did when he started arguments in Athens with philosophers. This is an unusual combination, because usually those with fixed opinions are not open to ideas, and usually those open to ideas have much looser beliefs. Those who dwell in cities are rarely committed to scripture, and those who lives in the country are rarely high in openness. The younger has a more sanguine temperament susceptible to more doctrinal error and syncretism, while the older has a more melancholic temperament, susceptible to more coldness and aloofness from the surrounding culture.
In speaking about questions from nonbelievers he states the following:
To withdraw by saying or implying, “Keep quiet and just believe” may later lead to spiritual weakness, even if the person does become a Christian, for it will leave crucial questions unanswered.[5]
Rather than saying that there are some things too high for the finite to understand about the infinite, Schaeffer says that to avoid questions can actually damage faith. Without clear answers to such questions, the intellectual rigor of the early Puritans may be lost and replaced with a legitimate faith that may at the same time be harder to articulate or share.
Schaeffer states that there is a danger to using words repetitively that have no meaning outside the church:
I suggest that if the word (or phrase we are in the habit of using) is no more than an orthodox evangelical cliché which as become a technical term among Christians, then we should be willing to give it up when we step outside our own narrow circle and talk to the people around us. If, on the other hand, the word is indispensable, such as the word God, then we should talk at sufficient length to make ourselves clear. Technical words, if they are used without sufficient explanation, may mean that outsiders really do not hear the Christian message at all and that we ourselves, in our churches and missions, have become an introverted and isolated language group. [6]
The use of some words may mean that unbelievers end up not hearing the gospel at all. Creating an orthodox ghetto is a perennial danger in Schaeffer’s eyes.
Schaeffer sees viewing the whole counsel of God as having two ditches:
Christians must be careful at this place. Though the Bible says men are lost, it does not say they are nothing. When a man says he is a machine or nothing, he makes himself less than the Bible’s view of fallen man.[7]
While it is possible to view man as greater than he is, it is also possible to view man unbiblically as less than he is. There is a cost to all emphasis because time and emphasis are scarce resources and the entire Bible cannot be emphasized. Only particulars can be emphasized at a given time and what is presented as the summary of the whole will necessarily be limited and finite.
We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there, we would be among the first to have the courage to step out of the queue.[8]
While there is a sense in which faith in an object that seems absent and unreasonable is virtuous, faith still requires an object. Schaeffer states that Christians should follow the logic of beliefs so that if a tradition is clearly illogical and unbiblical, it should be abandoned. He implies that the church in holding to practices solely on tradition rather than on clear reasoning damages the church’s credibility and makes it harder for unbelievers to convert to Christianity. Using a veil of tradition and cherrypicked verses to avoid the conclusion of all of the Bible can have this effect as well.
This is not to say that the world outside the church cannot also hand pick verses out of context to falsely show that traditional doctrines are somehow outdated. Heretics departing from the covenant deserve neither pity nor mercy and God will destroy them forever if he chooses not to redeem them.
It is not easy to emphasize the adopted children of God being able to enjoy the presence of their adopted father while at the same time emphasizing the heinousness of sin. Likewise, it is not easy to emphasize the eternal and unchangeable infinitely high standard of the king and judge of the universe while at the same time viewing God as a Father who can be pleased by the acts of his children. The older Presbyterian church tends to view speaking of pleasing God as a renunciation of the covenant of grace and a resumption of the covenant of works. The younger Presbyterian church tends to view speaking of God’s judgment excessively to be neglecting God’s love for his children. It is difficult to maintain a balance between these two analogical names for God as the best of all fathers and the most terrible and just of judges. Most of the world views God as an impersonal life force that cannot judge even if it wanted to do so. But if God is seen more literally as a judge and more metaphorically as a father, his love for his children will also be seen as metaphorical, nominalistic, and holographic. It cannot be easily emphasized how undeserving man is of salvation and at the same time please God as his children. As R.C. Sproul, D. James Kennedy, and Tim Keller’s physical presence leaves the world, their successors’ sins beg the question as to whether they went too far to the adoption side of focus and incurred antinomian projection of the flesh onto unmortified flesh under the guise of grace.
While it might be said that Presbyterians should be known for their joy in the gospel rather than for their sorrow for sins in orthodoxy, this is much more easily stated than applied in orthopraxy. Puritan prayers are not known for their expressions of joy. The Valley of Vision has a sometimes pervasive theme of the goodness of extreme sorrow for sin at all times. While some prayers are more balanced, my father was concerned that prayers that are excessively negative lead to a veiled penance implying that the only action that God really values is sorrow for sin. The veiled implication is that to be truly Christian is to hate yourself to the greatest degree possible. The Puritan Richard Baxter notably stated that one does not truly believe in the promises of the gospel until one has trouble not killing oneself to get there.[9] While this may be true in a sense, it is not balanced: viewing the physical world in this negative a fashion does not usually lead to flourishing, but it is indicative of a melancholy temperament. While there are benefits to the church being extremely hostile to whatever modernity suggests, there is also a cost: matching extreme optimism with extreme pessimism is not always warranted. Despair can revert to hope, and sadness can revert to joy, but the will to live cannot easily be restored, and the dead cannot easily be brought back to life.
Francis Schaeffer speaks on the costs of overemphasizing the negative of man:
The Bible teaches that though man is hopelessly lost, he is not nothing. Man is lost because he is separated form God, his true reference point by true moral guilt. But he will never be nothing. Therein lies the horror of his lostness. For man to be lost, in all his uniqueness and wonder, is tragic. We must not belittle man’s achievements. . . . Man can influence history, including his own eternity and that of others. This view sees man, as man, as something wonderful.[10]
One cost of viewing man excessively negatively is that the good which might have been done is abandoned. Man can be viewed as guilty and lost without being viewed as nothing.
Can man be viewed of as deserving eternal flaming torture in Hell, with souls ripped apart and harvested in a manner which skulls on pikes, innumerable piles of bodies rotting and faces impaled on rods can only vaguely illustrate the eternal horror of the wrath of God poured out on the Damned, while at the same time being sometimes gifted salvation through Christ’s merit, given a mandate to spread the gospel, and pleasing their adoptive father even by their stumbles?
Schaeffer makes the following statement about orthodoxy:
Truth is not ultimately related to orthodoxy. . . . truth is finally related to something behind the Scriptures.[11]
It may be that Schaeffer saw the tendency for man to project himself onto parts of scripture and use it in word fetishism[12] that ignores the whole as so prevalent that it can turn into a private language that nonbelievers cannot understand. Schaeffer states that orthodoxy can become disconnected from truth, because orthodoxy is finite, but God is the truth, and he is infinite:
To avoid confusion, let us notice what this emphasis on the unity of truth does not involve. First of all, from the biblical viewpoint, truth is not ultimately related to orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is important, and I am known as a man who is a convinced orthodox theologian. But Truth is not ultimately related to orthodoxy. Secondly, truth is not related ultimately to the Creeds either. I, also, believe the historic Creeds are important, but we must realize that, while the Creeds are important, truth is not finally related to them. Truth is not finally related to them. Truth is related to something back of both orthodoxy and the Creeds.
Thirdly, truth is not ultimately related even to the Scriptures. Let me explain. Though I firmly believe what the early Church and the reformers taught concerning the nature of the Scriptures, and though I would emphasize that what they have to say concerning the Scriptures is crucially important, yet again, truth is finally related to something behind the Scriptures. The Scriptures are important, not because they are printed in a certain way nor bound in a certain kind of leather, nor because they have helped many people. This is not the basic reason for the Scriptures being overwhelmingly important. The Bible, the historic Creeds, and orthodoxy are important because God is there, and, finally, that is the only reason they have their importance. . . .
The answer can only be the existence of God and who He is. Therefore, Christian truth is that which is in relationship to what exists and ultimately to the God who exists. And true spirituality consists of being in the correct relationship to the God who is there, first in the once-for-all justification, secondly by being in that correct relationship as a continuing moment-by-moment reality. This is the biblical emphasis on true spirituality. It is a continuing moment-by-moment proper relationship with the God who exists.[13]
Once again, unity with orthodoxy does not necessitate unity with the truth. Orthodoxy can fall into error and humility is required to remember the finitude of man and his orthodoxy. This may have been related to C. S. Lewis’s desire to attain Mere Christianity, boiled down from indifferent adiaphora that the church is perennially susceptible to treating as inherently sacred. To fail to acknowledge the possibility that one can be projecting oneself onto Scripture is not an attitude of humility, but of pride.
Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a single star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power exerted over its terror by the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene.
At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof,
“‘My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide— My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy,’ came to my side.
She moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks of fancy’s Eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned save by her own transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided away unperceived—unsought. A strange sadness rested upon her features, like icy tears upon the robe of December, as she pointed to the contending elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings presented.
This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most “eloquent” thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it.
[4] Schaeffer, Francis. The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy: The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, He Is There an He Is Not Silent. 1968, 1968, 1972. (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990, 139-140.
Books in this trilogy will be referred to in this essay by their names and the reference number will be in this edition of the trilogy.
This essay will analyze Nietzsche comparing his words and actions similar to these words of the authors of this book: “As Nietzsche says, what a philosopher does is ultimately more important than—and indeed the test of—what he says.”[1] Thought affects action as action affects thought. Therefore, actions influenced by Nietzsche will be weighted and considered.
The author’s view of Nietzsche will be presented, analyzed, and then shown from a Schaefferian perspective of philosophical dichotomies, as well as Nietzsche’s denying God’s existence while acting as if He exists, to borrow Jordan Peterson’s phrase.[2] Schaeffer states that “man functions better if he accts as though God is there.”[3] Schaeffer applies presuppositional apologetics,[4] which was most associated with Cornelius Van Til,[5] though Schaeffer rarely if ever mentions him. One of presuppositional apologetics main contentions is that there are no brute fact because they are all owned by God, a view that Schaeffer amplifies.[6] This essay will speculate on what Schaeffer, based on his writings—mainly The Francis Schaeffer trilogy[7] and How Then Shall We Live—would have said about Nietzsche had he read this book about Nietzsche, despite the fact that Schaeffer said comparatively little about Nietzsche particularly. What Schaeffer did do is to focus attention on how people act as if certain presuppositions are true—even if they deny them.[8] This essay will also show that Hitler made use of, and benefitted from, Nietzsche’s system on a philosophical level, regardless of Nietzsche’s intentions. This essay will follow a roughly sequential outline of Solomon and Higgins’ book, while building on some parts out of sequence, in a semi-systematic manner.
IN PRAISE OF NIETZSCHE
This book is heavily written from a pro-Nietzsche perspective, so other perspectives on Nietzsche are mostly handwaved away. It is presented that most people do not know what Nietzsche “really meant,” partially because of his heavy use of hyperbolic sarcasm. This is used as an excuse for people taking his words out of context. Because the book is pro-Nietzsche, it is written from a Nietzschean point of view, so that Nietzsche is generally implied to be inherently correct (in some way) at whatever subject he speaks about. Little attention is given to Nietzsche’s responsibility to contributing to the dissolution of the idea of a hierarchy of absolute values in Western culture. Any of the sins of Nietzsche in producing real world consequences are placed on his sister, even though Nietzsche arguably fashioned a system that his sister used to great effect.[9] Solomon and Higgins state that “frivolous interpretations” of Nietzsche spring from a lack of understanding of Nietzsche’s circumstances and intentions.[10] This is despite the fact that Nietzsche invited misinterpretation through copious use of biting sarcasm and mockery, which the authors occasionally admit. If one choose to remain ambiguous, people will likely misunderstand.
INTERPRETATION
While the focus on one of Nietzsche’s works to the exclusion of others will skew interpretation, the effects of Nietzsche’s works on the world operate regardless of intentions. Contrary to the views of the authors, stating that the Nietzschean Foucault’s view that there are only interpretations[11] buttresses the argument that Nietzsche’s views of reality shaped how truth is perceived. Mentioning that Heidegger[12] and Nietzsche’s sister took Nietzsche’s notes out of context to support Hitler also underlines that Nietzsche’s system, or his shattering of theories of divine command theory, affected the world in certain directions[13] regardless of how Nietzsche intended. Nietzsche changed the world in certain ways, regardless of what Nietzsche intended. That his vision was applied in ways he would not have approved is an interesting biographical note, but it does not change the terminus of the system he created. His joking about serious matters does not change the fact that he created or popularized a system in which man is a machine. In fact, such joking on said subjects[14] emphasizes his antagonism against divine command theory.
ACTING AS IF THERE IS AN OBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION
The book’s authors act as if there one correct interpretation of Nietzsche, even though they follow Foucault and Nietzsche’s stated belief that all there is, is interpretation. If all there is were interpretation, then there would be little use in presenting the context[15] for an objective view of Nietzsche. The authors act as if an objective view exists, even if they say that all there is, is interpretation. One of Nietzsche’s core presuppositions is that there is no ”cosmic vision,” to borrow a phrase used by Thomas Sowell, especially not like that presented as viewed by God in the Bible. Nietzsche’s reference to a demon stating that one is bound to an eternal recurrence of the same life mirrors Descartes’s Omnipotent Demon. Instead of Descartes reasoning that a good God would not deceive him, Nietzsche rejoices in his own demon’s supposed truth of a cosmically static vision, a vision of whatever exists eternally recurring. Schaffer might say that Nietzsche’s person and his work are not two separate entities, but like Nietzsche’s once-friend Richard Wagner,[16] a whole.
What Schaeffer says about humanist man could be said of Nietzsche: “the humanist has no base for knowing within his own philosophic system.”[17]When Nietzsche removes God as an objective entity out of his system, he destroys the ability for anything to be objectively known. If nothing can be objectively known, nothing can be objectively valued.
DEFINITION OF NIHILISM
Nietzsche’s jokes had a profound impact on the world. The authors maneuver around the fact that Nietzsche was insane later in life by emphasizing that he was of a sarcastic and joking spirit when he made ironically anti-Semitic remarks without being actually anti-Semitic.[18] Any apparent references he makes to violence in dominating women or minorities is properly and accurately shown as out of context. Schaeffer would say that despite this irony, the fact that Nietzsche is abolishing, or at least accelerating the abolition of the belief in absolute values, Nietzsche encourages violence to dominate others, regardless of Nietzsche’s intentions. Higgins and Solomon state that Nietzsche was not responsible for what Hitler did with his ideas,[19] but Schaeffer might wonder what Nietzsche would have done if he were less sickly. Schaeffer would say that regardless of Nietzsche’s more noble intentions,[20] Nietzsche’s uncensored nature had serious consequences on the entire world. The world might have been a profoundly different place if he had restrained himself. Though he ridiculed the German’s vaunting of military victories,[21] he ripped out any value system[22] to replace the use of force. Schaeffer would say that regardless of his intentions, Nietzsche’s humor had an impact on the world of which one could only say he had no if one posits the absence of God’s cosmic vision, which the authors do.
NIETZSCHE’S EUGENICS
In the service of downplaying Nietzsche’s culpability, the authors redefine eugenics to include all mating rituals, to cover for the fact that Nietzsche was in favor of eugenics, and to distance Nietzsche’s understanding of eugenics from being highjacked by “deranged political agendas.”[23] Schaeffer would say that in addition to having a philosophical system in which man is a machine,[24] in a cosmos which is a machine,[25] blaming politics ignores the fact that politics is downstream from philosophy,[26] and downplays Nietzsche’s influence in accelerating eugenics to its final form beyond what Nietzsche had realized were the logical implications of Nietzsche’s words. That Nietzsche may not have seen the logical implications of his words does not dissolve the connection. The authors state that Nietzsche thought of everything political as a herding instinct,[27] but Schaeffer would say that politics are an application of values, because Schaeffer states that thought impacts “all areas of life.”[28] The authors claim that Nietzsche formed a form of virtue ethics without “the need to be ‘political,’” but Schaeffer would ask how Nietzsche can have a form of ethics when he is “beyond good and evil.” Schaeffer’s view of Nietzsche’s system can be expanded to be a bubble that exerts force to enclose all others inside it. This has had clear representations in science fiction for decades in the form of multiverses, whether they be in The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Sliders, Fringe, or other well-known science-fiction television shows. Schaeffer would say that absolving Nietzsche of all guilt is much easier by confusing the connection[29] between philosophy and culture. Nietzsche’s system has no basis for guilt, so it is not surprising that Nietzsche scholars would seek to remove guilt from Nietzsche. Schaeffer might say that the authors create a dichotomy wherein political strength, or “reich,”[30] is in the upper story, while personal strength and self-realization, or “macht,”[31] is in the lower story. Schaeffer would say that the philosophical “eating up principle”[32] is at work here, in which the philosophical lower story (in this case the personal) eats up the upper story (in this case, the political). In such a case, like in Hitler’s career, the personal power area eats up the political, so that the personal “affirmative philosophy” becomes negative use of force on others. While this may not have happened to Nietzsche personally, it could still be argued that Hitler lived out the consequences of Nietzsche’s system vicariously, in ways that Nietzsche would have abhorred. The authors grudgingly acknowledge in the conclusion to the book that Nietzsche affected political thinkers.[33] Nietzsche’s system provides no consistent means of judging Hitler, but Schaeffer says that Christianity does have a way of judging in absolutes.[34] Without a value of the image of God in people, persons are treated as raw material to be manipulated.[35]
Schaeffer states the consequences of determinism in connection with Marquis de Sade:
The sadism of Marquis de Sade is the specter standing behind any determinist because the basis of de Sade’s sadism was his concept of determinism. De Sade’s position was that what is, is right; and if a person holds any from of determinism, he must agree that de Sade’s conclusion is the only logical one.[36]
For Schaeffer, if all is determinism in a closed system,[37] man is abolished, leading to a focus on natural law, which leads to the idea that what is right is what exists, what is exists is arbitrary, which leads to sadism, openness to being treated as a machine (eugenics), and finally a leap into non reason.[38] Non reason leads to importing personality into chance natural selection because it is hard to live inconsistently with what is.[39]
Schaeffer uses the modern-day example of Francis Crick, who though he is a reductionist who “would reduce man to an electrochemical machine,” Crick speaks as if he does research for religious reasons.[40] Because Crick is inconsistent, he also says that astrology is nonsense and that those who believe in it should perhaps not be in a university.[41] But then Crick imports the language of personality when he states that natural selection is clever.[42] He also refers to nature with a capital N.[43] Schaeffer tends to view use of this kind of language as “a semantic trick” shifting into pantheism.[44] If all is electrochemical machines, barring some from universities or reproduction is not be far off, a position for which Schaeffer quotes Crick making such an application to the latter.[45] To Schaeffer, viewing man as merely energy particles leads to disregarding human life, for both abortion to the young and “euthanasia for the old.”[46] To package this as more palatable, Crick wrote a book contrasting the choice of genetic engineering with chance.[47] This results in a moral shift that weakens the concept of “humanness.”[48]
Schaeffer states more consequences of viewing man as a machine:
On every side people are taught that their resistance to manipulation in all these ways is weakened, step, by step. Modern man has no real boundary condition for what he should do; he is left only with what he can do. Moral “oughts” are only what is sociologically accepted at the moment. . . . Man no longer sees himself as qualitatively different form non-man.[49]
This is a reiteration of the view that rejecting a Biblical worldview for one built on man leads to instability and manipulation. The alternative according to Schaeffer is the Greek worldview revitalized by the renaissance, modernism, and now the worship of science.
Schaeffer further defines the term “sociological law” in A Christian Manifesto:
By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed based but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and what they arbitrarily decide becomes law.[50]
Rather than the law being king, the mob becomes king. Whatever the majority says should be decided becomes an ultimately tyrannical king.
Schaeffer shows just how quickly easily the lack of humanness can shift into eugenics by quoting Crick:
Some group of people should decided that some people should have more children and some should have fewer. . . . You have to decide who is to be born.[51]
Man is abolished into material not by science, but by the philosophy of humanism which views man as the measure of all things. If man is the creator of himself, then he is also the destroyer of himself and others.
In A Christian Manifesto, Schaeffer defines the term humanism:
The term humanism used in this wider, more prevalent way means Man beginning from himself, with no knowledge except what he himself can discover and no standards outside of himself. In this view Man is the measure of all things, as the Enlightenment expressed it.[52]
This definition is in essence an idolization of man, which leads to distortion of God’s order, in Schaeffer’s view. In Schaeffer’s view, this form of humanism leads to inhumanity.[53]
Schaeffer goes on to cite Arthur Koestler advocated in a scientific magazine for placing super tranquilizer in the water to pacify unruly elements. Schaeffer also cites Kermit Kranty, the then head of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Department of Kansas City University Medical School advocating the use of birth control into the drinking supply, “so the state could decide who would be able to have babies,” in Schaeffer’s words.[54] Presaging the idea of toxic masculinity, Schaeffer also states that the president of the American Psychological Association in 1971 suggested anti-aggression pills for all world leaders.[55] As these ideas are accepted non-critically, without analysis, manipulation becomes more accepted.[56] One who do not fit in with the established order can simply be labelled mentally ill and “becomes a non-person.”[57] Merely valuing “life,” is not sufficient to keep people from becoming non-persons. Schaeffer contrasts this with Christianity which features Adam, an “unprogrammed man” who was able to make a decision outside of a system, which lead to “true moral guilt.” Adam is fallen, but not a predetermined[58] machine.[59]
FASCISM
The authors confuse the connection between philosophy and culture:
A philosopher who praises solitude and artistic creativity is not likely to have a sympathetic ear for the fascist rant of submerging one’s individuality in the State and conforming its laws as a matter of spiritual necessity.[60]
This of course describes George Bernard Shaw, mentioned by the authors later,[61] who wrote a play about the life-force-defending Übermensch. Shaw seems to fit the mold of a very creative and sympathetic playwright, who did have an ear for the fascism of the Nazis in a fashion of spiritual necessity. So, sympathetic men—if playwrights are taken to be sympathetic men on the whole—could be swayed by Nietzsche’s own words—albeit out of context—to fascism. Schaeffer said that philosophy guides and shapes culture,[62] not the other way around.
Schaeffer further states that humanism leads to statism:
The humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.[63]
As a proponent of humanism, Nietzsche’s system must inevitably lead to statism, authoritarianism, and fascism, in Schaeffer’s view. There are ultimately only two choices: Christianity and fascism.
NIETZSCHE’S SLAVERY AND NOBILITY
Once again, the authors distance Nietzsche from the “political” sphere and relegate his words to the practical, psychological, personal realm.[64] Schaeffer might say that this makes sense in theory, but his “personal” words have global impact, regardless of his intentions. The authors make a distinction between Nietzsche seeing nobility of refinement rather than birth,[65] but Aristotle in his book on politics states the noble have more time to govern than others, like slaves.[66] Schaeffer mentions that Biblical teaching is far removed from Aristotelian ideas of slavery and personhood or lack thereof.[67] In contrast to Nietzsche and Aristotle, the British minister William Wilberforce spoke out powerfully against slavery, because of the humanity of the black man under God, “and because he was Christian,” according to Schaeffer.[68] Once again, the dichotomy of acting as if eternity exists while denying its existence surfaces in Nietzsche’s value of the virtue of martyrs even if he believes their value systems make no sense philosophically. The authors emphasize that Nietzsche predicted, rather than proclaimed and helped accelerate, this process by clarifying language.[69] This dichotomy glosses over the fact that Nietzsche had his Zarathustra in the guise of an Old Testament prophet proclaim with a faux-Biblical style”[70] that “God is dead,”[71] “Nothing is true, all is permitted,” and that “the meaning of the earth” is the Übermensch. Though these words in Thus Spake Zarathustra are not all together in the same place in the book, the effect is the same. While the authors portray Nietzsche as an objective and passive actor, Schaeffer would probably see him as a more active and culpable force than the authors do. Creating a story in which man says that “God is dead” gets people’s attention more than some obscure lecturer saying the same thing in academia, such as Feuerbach.
Schaeffer frames the question in this way:
You get rid of the restraints, you get rid of the polis,you get rid of God or the gods; and then you are free. Unhappily, though not surprisingly, this did not turn out as he expected. . . . If there are no universals, how do we know reality from nonreality?[72]
Schaeffer uses these words when referring to a parenthesis between Rousseau and American hippie culture, but the question applies to Nietzsche’s view of morality as well. It is a logical chain of necessity that if one states that all things are permitted and that God is dead, this will lead to a distorted view of nobility and the cruelty of the nominally noble savage.
NIETZSCHE’S DEFINITION OF NIHILISM
Likewise, the authors then state that Nietzsche predicts “the coming nihilism,” but shift the definition of the word through Nietzsche’s words: “the highest values devaluate themselves.”[73] The authors also note that Nietzsche sees nihilism “as a sign of decadence,” and that he sees “Socratic rationalism as a symptom of decadence.”[74] Schaeffer says that replacing God with oneself in a philosophical system devalues all humans into machines, and necessarily encourages the decay of the system—the definition of decadence. While the authors see nihilism as a description of decadence, or a choice to devalue life, Schaeffer sees nihilism as a cause of decadence, which influences all aspects of culture. Schaeffer states that Fellini reminds us that Rome was decadent[75] because it was coming “to the logical conclusion of its worldview.”[76]
Schaeffer uses the term decadence when comparing the modern day to Rome:
Pompei has returned! The marks of ancient Rome scar us: degeneracy, decadence, depravity, a love of violence for violence’s sake.[77]
Humanism believes in the death of God, the death of values, and the death of knowledge, according to Schaeffer.[78] When speaking of America and Rome, Schaeffer states the following: “It all sounds familiar. We have come a long road since our first chapter, and we are back in Rome.” While comparing present-day culture to Rome may seem trite, Schaeffer sees a similarity on a philosophical level. Most comparisons between America and Rome do not mention this philosophical foundation.
The authors say that Nietzsche sees morality itself as a product of nihilism and decadence, and state that morality is an anthropological term denoting various practices.[79] By contrast, Schaeffer might see the idea of morality in the limited sense as being merely mores to in fact itself be a product of philosophy, or nihilism as an anti-philosophy.[80] Schaeffer comes close to saying that intellectualized art of nihilistic antiphilosophy is decadent. Instead, he states that such art anti-art to the degree that it is based on the idea that the universe is chance.[81]
While discussing philosopher, such as Feuerbach, who said that God was dead—also mentioned by the authors— during Nietzsche’s time, Schaeffer mentions the consequence of a nihilistic closed system:
There is no place for love in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. There is no place for morals in a totally close cause-and-effect system. There is no place for the freedom of people in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. Man becomes a zero. People and all they do become only a part of the machinery.
In a closed system, the entire cosmos is a machine. In an open system, such as that which founded modern science, God and man are free to change the cosmos.[82]
THE DIONYSIAN VIEW
A closed system is related to the Dionysian view. Nietzsche believes that the Dionysian view is superior to Christianity, in part because the Dionysian view has no doctrine of sin. Suffering is somehow built into the structure of reality in the Dionysian view.[83] The Dionysian view is, however, inconsistent with Nietzsche’s view of decadence. Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche’s acknowledgment of decadence is Nietzsche acting as if sin nature exists, which is the opposite of life. Schaeffer might say that for Nietzsche, “decadence” is really just code for “sin.” Nietzsche sees decadence as a kind of distortion of nature. Schaeffer sees sin as a distortion of nature, or the created order. Sin by any other name would still have as destructive consequences. Schaeffer would also say that the nihilistic definition of “morality” denies the possibility of an objective morality. Once again, from a Schaefferian perspective, Nietzsche tries to negate the source of values, but then acts as if they still exist. If one says that there is no meaning, but acts like there is, he is being inconsistent.
ATTRIBUTION OF MURDERS
The authors redirect blame away from Nietzsche in murders attributed to him: “An author is not responsible for vile misreadings of his works.”[84] Schaeffer would say once again that the authors say that all there is, is interpretation, but they act as if some readings are vile and objectively wrong interpretations. In other words, they act as if there is more than interpretation. They imply that bad brain chemistry is responsible for these acts of sociopaths, but if interpretation were all that there is, why would that be a wrong interpretation, if in their view, there is no God to objectively view actions, and that such a view is impossible? Once again, they act as if God, and by extension, objectivity, exists, even though they say that it is right to try to see what “Nietzsche really meant,” to “affirm life.”[85] But if all were interpretation, then what standard would there be to determine what “life” is? Schaeffer would state that this is another way in which Nietzsche’s system breaks down. If there were nothing but interpretation, there would be no objective reading of Nietzsche.
ZARATHUSTRA AND KANT
Schaeffer would use a dichotomy with two stories to show the inconsistency of Nietzsche’s system. When the authors say that Nietzsche does not imply that we should violate the ten commandments when deconstructing the term “morality,” they act as if there is more than interpretation.[86] When the authors deny that Nietszsche’s attack on morality does not imply that “all is permitted,” they neglect to mention that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra uttered these words. When they say that Nietzsche is not rejecting “the accepted rules of civilized behavior,” they sometimes neglect to mention that Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity is, in Nietzsche’s view, an attack on (a) morality.[87] Like Nietzsche, the authors act as if there is a code of universal morality that should be followed, and that to misrepresent Nietzsche would be to violate that universal standard. The authors state that Nietzsche is not attacking morality, but is emphasizing excellence.[88]
By contrast, Schaeffer would say that the particulars of inspiring happiness, freedom, and excellence of the master morality (and a leap into non-reason) in Nietzsche’s system is undefined in a lower story. Schaeffer would say that a leap into non-reason in Nietzsche’s system is necessary is clear in the statement of the authors, that describing a virtue destroys it.[89] In the upper, unreachable story of Schaeffer’s portrayal of Nietzsche’s system would be universals, the Bible, slave morality, reason, righteousness, constraints, duty, and decadence.[90] That Schaeffer might line up the dichotomy this way indicates how inconsistent Nietzsche’s system is because some particulars are viewed as more universal than others. This is similar to Schaeffer’s rendering of Kierkegaard’s dichotomy in which faith and optimism are placed in the upper story of reason, and pessimism remains locked in the lower story of reason, in which man is a machine.[91] One story in Nietzsche’s system is, in the authors view, Kant’s abstract world, and the other is where humans actually live, so that abstract principle and practical behavior are separated. By contrast, Schaeffer states that the Reformation believed and lived out truth content from a personal infinite God.[92] Schaeffer states that it makes no sense of a creator to create the world but then give no true though non exhaustive instruction about himself.[93]
Schaeffer’s rendering of Kant’s dichotomy is as follows:
Noumenal world—the concepts of meaning and value
Phenomenal world—the world which can be weighed and measured, the external world, the world of science. [93.5]
Universals remain in an airtight compartment in the upper story, which cannot be touched by the particulars in the lower story. Kant wanted to connect these two realms, Schaeffer says, but was unable to do so.[94] Schaeffer would say that this gives rise to a mystical antiphilosophy where there is silence because men must live as men and not machines.[95] Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche’s philosophy is existentialism because it is positive nihilism. Schaeffer says that existentialism is an antiphilosophy “because it deals with the big questions but with no rationality.”[96]
The authors state that Nietzsche viewed the slave morality of only being concerned with duty, while the master morality is concerned with beauty.[97] While Nietzsche may have viewed returning to the collective Dionysian view of reality to be good in some respects, a collective herd morality does not breed individual virtue,[98] and all is not one,[99] thus Nietzsche’s own views negate his value of the end of individuation. Schaeffer might say like the philosopher Alvin Plantinga that Nietzsche’s philosophy is “self-referentially inconsistent.”
MORALITY ALONG PSYCHOLOGICAL LINES
Seeking to replace Christianity’s view of objective ethics, Nietzsche reconstructs morality along psychological lines. The authors state that Nietzsche’s view of the slave is that the master morality is oppressing them with a non-universal morality, and that they are suffering victims.[100] As a result, slaves get spiritual revenge on the masters by inverting values so that desire is evil. A metaphysical understanding is brought to bear by the slaves so that ethics are viewed as objective, and subjective individual good and evil are ignored. In describing the slave and master moralities in this way, according to the authors, Nietzsche undermines the credibility of the “Judeo-Christian morality” by reducing “rationality and piety to petty personal envy or indignation,”[101] with “obsessions with rational principles” springing from feelings of inferiority.[102] So morality is usually just the product of the resentful, pathetic, mean-spirited, and legalistic emotions of slaves, according to Nietzsche.[103] Schaeffer might say that some aspects of morality can proceed from resentment, and still be divine in origin, while maintaining the Creator-creature distinction, because the Bible is replete with God using mechanisms to contain evil using emotive terms so that they can be understood.[104] Hell, in the reformed tradition at least, could be seen as a form of extreme resentment, and yet be objectively perfect justice that glorifies God.[105] Schaeffer would also say that in the view of the authors, Nietzsche places master morality, character, motivation, virtue, and culture in an upper story, while placing slave morality, rationalizations, and facades for faulty characters on a lower story.[106] In other words, though denying it, Nietzsche acts as if universal moral standards exist and that they are somehow, somewhat tied to nature.
NIETZSCHE AND SCIENCE
Reconstructing morality along psychological lines also involves relabeling moralities, like the ten commandments, as well as punishment,[107] as a product of resentment.[108] Schaeffer might diagram this as the ten commandments being on a lower story with resentment and reason, with non-reason and virtue on the upper story. In Schaeffer’s conception, systems like Nietzsche’s are of man trapped in a machine,[109] and that Nietzsche insists that meaning comes from acting with enthusiasm anyway, and acting as if resentment is transcendently wrong as long as the wrong people are using it. Nietzsche seems to view himself as relatively virtuous for being resentful of the products of resentment. He also views this resentment as “obsessed with power,” according to the authors.[110] Nietzsche, according to the authors, blames Christianity and Kant[111] for justifying “the vindictiveness of resentment” through a belief in an ability to change one’s nature.[112] As a result, Nietzsche views an upper story of a “Kantian sense of obligation” as really slave morality divorced from nature.[113] Though Nietzsche seeks to create new values,[114] Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche is really rediscovering old values. Schaeffer might also frame Nietzsche’s system as “will to power” on the upper story, and Socrates’ “tyranny of reason”[115] on the lower story. If Schaeffer did so, he would reframe this as really being a leap into non-reason on the upper story and reason on the lower story. In Nietzsche’s view, theological doctrines are nothing more than psychological analyses of the resentful.[116] Schaeffer would also say that while Nietzsche compares humans to animals in stating that they cannot change[117] their nature,[118] he acts as if their actions matter when he praises characters in Shakespeare’s plays.[119] Nietzsche preaches against being judgmental, but then acts as if it is right to judge.[120]
NIETZSCHE’S INSANITY
Once again, the authors, following Nietzsche, say that God is metaphorically dead, and eternity does not exist, but then act as if both exist. They say that Christianity is false, but then act as if it is true. If everything really were interpretation, all interpretations of madness would be valid, and Nietzsche dancing only after being committed to an asylum,[121] and claims of exposing himself to syphilis[122] would be perfectly normal. This is generally not considered normal behavior. Regarding Nietzsche’s mental state, the philosopher Alvin Plantinga stated that Nietzsche spent the last 10 years of his life in an asylum.[123] Francis Schaeffer said in How Should We Then Live that Nietzsche realized that if God did not exist, madness was the logical course of action.[124]
The authors state that Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer’s negativity on life:
He came to reject were Schopenhauer’s views that life is meaninglessness and that art provides us with an escape from life, from the ineluctable insanity of the will.[125]
Schaeffer might ask if Nietzsche did not act as if Schopenhauer was right when Nietzsche devolved into insanity after embracing the power of the will. If there is nothing to rage against, raging against the light is merely madness.
Nietzsche acted as if God existed in some aspects of his life, but then went insane, in Schaeffer’s view, in order to be consistent with his belief that God was dead:
I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of his venereal disease, though he did have the disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.[126]
Though Nietzsche acted as if God existed to the degree that he acted fairly rationally and compassionately, the logic of his position ate away at him until he had to live consistently. He had to live as he thought.
It is notable that the Nietzschean Foucault’s dichotomy is summarized by Schaeffer to be madness: “the ultimate autonomous freedom is being crazy.”[127] Schaeffer also mentions the Nietzschean philosopher Foucault’s book, Madness and Civilization while making this statement. This is not a statement to be simply thrown away.
DENYING LIFE
All philosophy is often considered a footnote to Plato,[128] so it is relevant to consider Nietzsche’s system in correspondence to it. In a way, Nietzsche inverts the Platonic view of the world, in which the world of appearances is the false, or at least questionable world, and the real and perfect world is the one beyond the senses. Schaeffer says that Plato understood that without universals, particulars have no meaning.[129] His cave-dwelling Zarathustra is a parody of Plato.[130] For Nietzsche, this world is all that exists, and visions of a more real and perfect world beyond the senses is a delusion. This view manifests itself in a dichotomy between “life,” “instincts,”[131] and “life-denying” denials of human nature such as Christianity.[132] The authors state that Nietzsche conceives of Christianity as nihilistic for failing to perceive human nature as it really is. They also say in effect say that Christianity falsifies reality.[133] Once again, Schaeffer would point to the authors acting as if misrepresenting Nietzsche is wrong, even though they claim that all is interpretation. In the end, Nietzsche has no grounds in his system other than interpretation for stating whether anything is consistent with “life,” or “reality,” or not. It is difficult to prove anything if one believes that all is interpretation. Schaeffer would also say that the “mannishness” of man in Nietzsche prevents him from living consistently with rationalism.[134]
NIETZSCHE’S VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY
The authors try to massage the idea that Nietzsche was an atheist by asserting Nietzsche’s point of view that society has “moved beyond” the idea of God, and that God is a projection of oneself onto the cosmos, who can be turned into a being of pettiness.[135] Yet they also Nietzsche acknowledged “the psychological need for myth.”[136] Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche feels the need to act as if a mythology is true, and that eternity—or at least the Blessed Isles[137]—exist. C. S. Lewis may have been drawing on Nietzsche in this regard when he stated that Christianity is the one true myth[138] when he inverts Nietzsche’s symbol of those who live in mountains as noble.[139] The authors state that Nietzsche was heavily informed by Feuerbach’s belief that religion is a formed of what amounts to what is now known as “learned helplessness,” or in their terms, that the creation of God is due to self-denigration for the purposes of self-protection.[140] In referencing Feuerbachian imagery of temples projecting power into the Heavens, the authors ignore the fact that atheists during the enlightenment erected a statue called reason and enthroned it in a church during the Reign of Terror in France.[141] In applying the word “retaliate,” to the Biblical God’s actions, the authors imply that God uses no justice.[142] Mirroring Nietzsche, the authors complain about Christianity viewing instincts as temptations that should be responded to with fasting, but this is truer of ascetics rather than a description of Christianity as a whole.[143]
SCHAEFFER’S VIEW OF CHRSTIANITY
Schaeffer states that the admission of pagan thought into Christianity over time resulted in this distortion in the Middle Ages[144] and a non-Christian bifurcation of the spiritual and the sensual.[145] Nietzsche mentions that no Christian keeps Christ’s admonition to cut out his own eye to avoid lust.[146] Schaeffer would say that terms like “nature,” “instincts,” “temptation,” “self-assertion,” “justice,”[147] and “self-enhancement” remain on the lower philosophical story in Nietzsche’s system as a part of the apparently natural realm, while everything in the upper story remains undefined. One of Schaeffer’s main philosophical foci was that it is difficult to say anything consistently if one denies the existence of absolutes.
PSYCHOLOGICAL MORALITY
Constructing a Nietzschean morality along “psychological lines” involves denigrating Christian impulses. The authors conflate instincts with humanity and state that “Christianity encourages self-hatred.”[148]Robert C. Roberts would say that this is technically true in that penitence is a form of self-hatred.[149] Francis Schaeffer would say that Christianity has a basis for distinguishing between creation and the creator, even if Christians have the ability to falsely project themselves onto God as the Pharisees did in Scripture.[150] Schaeffer would probably admit that even though the Bible has absolute truth, it is also possible for man to project himself onto God by taking particulars in the Bile and acting as if they are absolutes in a way that is not warranted by the Bible itself. Schaeffer says that Christians have absolutes with which to make non-arbitrary judgments from “the Truth of total reality,”[151] even if they do so imperfectly.[152]
Schaeffer states that the base of the Reformation was based on final reality:
That base was God’s written law, back through the New Testament to Moses’ written Law; and the content and authority of that written Law is rooted back to Him who is the final reality.[153]
Humanism by contrast in Schaeffer’s view can only lead to arbitrary authoritarianism.[154] It is the necessary terminus of the system.
Schaeffer also says that the move that the church made in the Reformation moved Christianity toward the absolute standard of the Bible and away from church judgments.[155] Schaeffer might say that if Hitler had been encouraged to more self-hatred or self-disgust of the darker and twisted parts of his sin nature, sin nature in the Christian worldview being a willful twisting of nature, he might have been less evil and genocidal. Once again, there is nothing in Nietzsche’s system that consistently differentiates Hitler from “life,” outside of interpretation. Schaeffer states that Christianity can make such a distinction in definitive terms—and use an absolute to judge.[156] Schaeffer goes so far as to state that no authoritarian government can stand against those with real absolutes with which to judge.[157] The authors state that Nieftzsche’s philosophy is affirmative, after “pushing and destroying,” rejecting “the nihilism of Judeo-Christian morality,” and setting up “philosophers” who will ‘legislate values.’”[158] Once again, the dark side of redefining “life” as “essentially unchristian,” is that Nietzsche and Nietzschean scholars have no basis in their system for believing that Hitler was not a philosopher legislating[159] virtues. Schaeffer might mention that Plato’s imaginary Republic, which had philosopher-kings shaping society, was a totalitarian regime, based on Sparta. The upshot is that rejecting Christianity, with or without his wishes, Nietzsche’s system loses all transcendent values, and only retains power. Using Nietzschean ideas, Nietzschean scholars have no means other than interpretation to suggest that Nazi Germany was not an outgrowth of Nietzschean ethics, regardless of Nietzsche’s intentions.
Schaeffer speaks about the life denying nature of humanism:
There is a death wish inherent in humanism—the impulsive drive to beat to death the base which made our freedoms and culture possible.[159.5]
It is likely that Schaeffer would say that this describes Nietzsche well. Humanism leads to particulars, mathematics, particulars, and mechanics, but can never reach the meaning of life.[160] It is worth noting that the years around Nietzsche’s death as being described by Schaeffer to be a massive philosophical shift—1890 for Europe and 1913 for America.[161]
SIN NATURE
Nietzsche also acts as if God exists—and by extension that sin nature exists—by stating that Christianity is hypocritical. In The Antichrist, the authors state, Nietzsche portrays Jesus as focused on the present, with Paul corrupting his teachings.[162] This is mirrored in the quest for the historical Jesus, which C. S. Lewis realistically satirizes in the Screwtape Letters as being shot through with the projection of the researcher onto Jesus.[163] All rationalism and no supernatural makes Jesus a non-entity.[164] A contentless word.[165] Because, anthropomorphically speaking, this is a view of flawed humans that is consistent with Christianity, it is not obvious how Christianity’s view of human nature is “life-denying,” when it is similar to Nietzsche’s in this particular instance. Nietzsche is suspicious of motivation,[166] and this is consistent with Christianity’s (especially Augustinian Calvinism’s) awareness of sin nature’s ability to twist the mind as stated in Scripture[167]. Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche points out Christianity’s hypocrisy as an aberration of his view of nature, but Nietzsche does not provide anything besides Nietzsche’s projection onto nature.[168] As for the other aspect, Nietzsche presents God as a crutch for the weak and resentful, but this is an inversion of the apostle Paul. Paul, in the book of Romans presents humanity as fallen, and consciously seeking all possible ways of foisting resentment on God. Nietzsche complains of the superficiality of Christian kindness,[169] but Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche’s positive enthusiasm in the face of meaninglessness is also superficial. It is not clear how cruelty is better in Nietzsche’s system than superficial kindness. Moreover, complaining about the superficiality of Christians is really a complaint against the superficiality of humanity, so Nietzsche acts as if sin nature exists. While claiming that Christianity is false, Nietzsche acts as if it is true by portraying human nature, or at least the fallen nature of Christians—if not non-Christians—to go against his perception of nature.
CRUELTY
After twisting the definition of the word “atheist,” the authors twist the definition of the word “cruelty.” They state that Nietzsche was being sarcastic in referring to festivity in punishment, yet acting as if cruelty is objectively wrong by trying to save a horse from beating.[170] The authors subtly imply that those belief systems are “cruel” to the degree they recognize that suffering is a part of life.[171] Later, they state that to Nietzsche, “there is no fundamental difference between animals and human beings.”[172]
Schaeffer would say that the dichotomy of the system that Nietzsche creates is in full force here, wherein human nature, cruelty, morals, resentment, punishment, and “life,” are in the lower category while objective ethics and terms like “salvation” and “love,” “resentment,” and “punishment”[173] remain undefined in an upper, unreachable story. The authors state that Nietzsche wants a master morality that is artistic[174] and removed from primordial brutishness,[175] but this clashes with Nietzsche’s value of “nature.” The logical chain of events following from the condemnation of divine command theory as imaginary leads to the belief that everything is interpretation. As a result, all things in Nietzsche’s system tend to be permitted unless they cross a nebulous threshold of being against “life.” If even nature is not a universal morality in Nietzsche’s system, then nothing exists in it to consistently state that might does not equal right. Such as system of infinite interpretation does not lend itself to a concept of honesty existing in an objective capacity. In Nietzsche’s system, “cruelty” just becomes another word to be redefined to benefit whoever is doing the defining.[176]
Considering Schaeffer’s words that “There was a serious problem in trying to construct a system of law upon nature. Nature is cruel as well as non-cruel[,]”[177]and his emphasis on the importance of Rousseau’s thought, it makes sense to assume that Schaeffer would say that this is true of Nietzsche’s thought as well. Equating nature with goodness leads to the view of the Frenchman Marquis de Sade, for which we get the word sadism.[178] Schaeffer states that “Goethe equated nature with truth.” When Nietzsche followed Goethe,[179] he inadvertently encouraged cruelty, regardless of his intentions. If nature is the standard of goodness, “cruelty becomes equal to noncruelty,” in Schaeffer’s words.[180] Schaeffer states that man is abnormal due to the Fall and that one symptom of that abnormality is cruelty.[181] Schaeffer further states that if God were responsible for man’s current state by creating him that way, God would be the devil as Camus states.[182] But God created man nonfallen, and man chose to fall and in turn become cruel.[183] Schaeffer also states that Christianity is true, and that if it is not, evangelism is unspeakable cruelty.[184]
Interestingly, Schaeffer talks of Nietzsche immediately after speaking about the view of cruelty changed by the belief in the death of God:
Nietzsche in the 1880s was the first one who said in the modern way that God is dead, and he understood well where people end when they say this. If God is dead, then everything for which God gives an answer and meaning is dead. . . . He himself is left with all content about God being dead and all assurance of God as personal being dead. The final result is the same.[184.5]
In the last two sentences, Schaeffer says that this existential methodology affects both the secular and the liberal theologian alike. Both are in the same position as Nietzsche if they accept Nietzsche’s premises.
Schaeffer by contrast seeks to balance this issue of cruelty and nobility in man:
Another question in the dilemma of man is man’s nobility. Perhaps you do not like the word nobility, but whatever word you choose, there is something great about man. I want to add here that evangelicals have often made a serious mistake by equating the fact that man is lost and under God’s judgment with the idea that man is nothing—a zero. This is not what the Bible says. There is something great about man, and we have lost perhaps our greatest opportunity of evangelism in our generation by not insisting that it is the Bible which explains why man is great.
However, man is not only noble (or whatever word you want to substitute), but man is also cruel. So we have a dilemma. The first dilemma is that man is finite and yet he is personal; the second dilemma is the contrast between man’s nobility and man’s cruelty. Or one can express it in a modern way: the alienation of man from himself and from all other men in the area of morals.[185]
Schaeffer acknowledges the potential greatness of man, but also man’s potential cruelty. Schaefer states that Christianity offers an explanation of how both of these qualities coincide in man, while Nietzsche—as well as Hinduism[186]—does not. Schaeffer further states that if an impersonal beginning is accepted, “man’s finiteness and his cruelty become the same thing.”[187] When finitude becomes cruelty, to be finite is to be cruel. There is no place for the infinite in Nietzsche’s system.
Schaeffer also states that beginning with the impersonal leads to the conclusion that “his cruelty is what he has always intrinsically been: that is what man is.”[187.5]
Schaeffer summarizes the consequences of starting with the impersonal and believing that man is as he has always been:
Modern man has no real basis for fighting evil, because he sees man as normal. . . . But the Christian has — he can fight evil without fighting God. He has the solution of Camus’ problem: we can fight evil without fighting God, because God did not make things as they are now — as man in his cruelty has mas made them. God did not make man cruel, and He did not make the results of man’s cruelty. These are abnormal, contrary to what God made, and so we can fight the evil without fighting God.[187.6]
In a way, Nietzsche follows Rousseau in implying that society is responsible for the fall of man from nature. Contrary to Camus, and by extension non-Christian worldviews, Schaeffer states that it is possible for the Christian to fight evil without fighting God, because God did not create evil. [188]
HITLER AND EVIL
The authors imply that we can become more humane by getting beyond good and evil in order to occasionally praise those deemed monsters by history.[189] Ironically, this is something that the Nietzschean-infused popular academic Jordan Peterson was attacked for doing.[190] During his lecture on Cain and Abel,[191] to demonstrate the immense malevolence inherent in mankind, he mentioned the “organizational genius of Hitler.” What articles that castigate this statement ignore is the context that he stated that people are not as evil as Hitler because of their lack of malevolence, but because of their lack of ability to inflict that malevolence on others. In any case, Peterson was not praised for his humaneness in his ability to “get beyond good and evil” and acknowledge a genocidal monster’s skills in inflicting pain on others. Peterson’s point, which draws on the holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s work,[192] was that humans are capable of extreme malevolence, and that castigating one group as evil completely misses the point. Schaeffer might say that those journalists who took Peterson’s words out of context were acting as if Jordan Peterson praised Nazis, when in reality, he was stating that anyone could be as evil as a Nazi in the right circumstances. In practice, people who seek to “get beyond good and evil” are usually castigated as encouraging evil.
NIETZSCHE’S RELATIVISM
Somewhat later in the book, the authors condemn the interpretation that Nietzsche was a relativist.[193] They define Nietzsche’s perspectivism without reference to divine command theory: “There is no absolute knowledge that transcends all possible perspectives: knowledge is always constrained by one’s perspective.”[194] So opinions are usually shaped by motives, rather than by concern for truth, in Nietzsche’s view.[195] Schaeffer would say that the authors’ rendering Kant’s dichotomy[196] of a world of perfect ideas and “existence in itself” is on the upper story, and the perspective and interpretation of what faculties perceive is on the lower story. Nietzsche focusses on the lower story and denies the existence of the upper story. The authors state perspectivism is to “be understood to be only one perspective, one set of interpretations, and nothing more.”[197] Schaeffer would say that by this interpretation, the view that Hitler is evil would only be one interpretation. Schaeffer would also say that Nietzsche’s system, regardless of Nietzsche’s intentions, falls apart upon serious contact with anything involving Hitler. This is underlined by Nietzsche’s belief that there is something beautiful “even in cruelty.”[198] Regardless of Nietzsche’s intentions, removing an upper story of objectivity and making such statements has a massive effect on society and how it views cruelty.
LINGUISTICS
The authors indicate that Nietzsche foresaw the role of psychology and linguistics in shaping perception.[199] By contrast, Schaeffer would say that it is not primarily physiological factors and language that shapes beliefs, but philosophy which shifts the meaning of words. While the authors see Nietzsche as foreseeing shifting trends, Schaeffer might question how much of those trends were accelerated by Nietzsche by catalyzing them, and that casting doubt on the order of grammar may be a form of applying philosophy, or as Schaeffer calls, “antiphilosophy”[200] to language. In other words, Nietzsche rigidly rejects the rigidity of rigid statements about reality,[201] yet believes that “language imposes its own shape on our experience, with the effect that it does not accurately reflect the world as it is.”[202] In a sense, Nietzsche is deifying language, so that it imposes its will onto people. Schaeffer sees language shift as an after-effect of philosophy, not the other way around.
Schaeffer also states that linguistic analysis can only lead to language, not bigger questions:
Language leads only to language, and linguistic analysis thus never gets to the big questions. Consequently, existentialism and linguistic analysis are both antiphilosophies in that neither gives the basis people need for the answers to the big and fundamental questions.[203]
In their semi-deconstruction of the word “relativism,” the authors try to link Nietzsche’s perspectivism to the scientific worldview (in the book’s conclusion, they backtrack and refer to Nietzsche’s moral relativism).[205] Schaeffer would counter, as he mentions in his book, that both Robert Oppenheimer and Alfred North Whitehead—both non-Christians—stated that the scientific method sprang from the Christian worldview, and that Oppenheimer was not sure that modernity could have created it.[206] He also mentions that Francis Bacon and other founders of modern science were Christian, and that they saw no conflict between the Bible and science.[207] The authors that Nietzsche acknowledges that the scientific worldview sprang from Christianity.[208] Schaeffer would ask how one can arrive at a better understanding of the truth by a system which came from Christianity, which Nietzsche acknowledges stresses telling the truth, if everything is interpretation, and if Christianity is in Nietzsche’s view, poisonous and against life. Schaeffer states that “man as man” is dead or “devoured” in modern science so that man has no meaning.[209] Ironically, the authors appear to be using the same dichotomy of Kant, who as heavily implied by Schaeffer,[210] used pure reason of the sciences as an objective upper story, with religion in the relativistic practical reason as the subjective lower story. This dichotomy is similar to the dichotomy of Nietzsche that the authors mention: “aesthetic” truth claims and “scientific” truth claims.[211] Later, the authors state that Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemic believed that “The scientific quest for truth is also ascetic,” and sometimes “an evasion of life.”[212] Schaeffer says that time plus chance plus matter does not equal man.[213] Trying to link the scientific worldview to Nietzsche’s perspectivism, the authors fail. Schaeffer contrasts relativism with Biblical Christianity, which holds that a reasonable God provides confidence that truth can be found, and that science can show a meaningful correlation between the observer and the observed.[214] Without it, “science blurs into speculation,” from which ought cannot be derived from is, and arbitrary values result.[215] “Without “a certainty of the objective existence of reality,”[216] science founders into a game.[217]
CHRISTIANITY ACCORDING TO SCHAEFFER
After failing to link Nietzsche’s perspectivism to science, the authors mention that Nietzsche states that the worship of science has replaced worship of God.[218] Schaeffer comes close to saying this when speaking of Francis Crick’s speaking of science in religious language.[219] Christianity is a form of Platonism, to Nietzsche, according to the authors.[220] Schaeffer would say that this is confusion: Schaeffer states that the church’s admission of “Greek and Roman thought forms” into Christian thought (such as Thomas Aquinas’s heavy reliance on Aristotle) put revelation and reason on an equal plane.[221] Schaeffer also believed that Aquinas bifurcated grace and nature.[222] Schaeffer also states that European thought was bifurcated into the reformation, which used Biblical thought of man as a creation of God, and the humanism of the renaissance, which used a Greek idea of man as autonomous from God.[223] He further states that because Aquinas believed that the will, but not the intellect was fallen,[224] philosophy became unmoored from revelation, and the particulars began to lose, or devour, meaning.[225] The renaissance placed man at the center, reached no absolutes, and led to license.[226] The Reformation did not have these problems because it did not suffer from a philosophical dichotomy of nature and grace.[227] The reformation placed God at the center, and as john Wycliffe, used “the Bible as the supreme authority,” or “absolute values” in Schaeffer’s words.[228] Schaeffer also delineates the Reformation and the Renaissance by stating that Hitler and Mussolini used the practical applications of the political handbook of the Renaissance—Machiavelli’s The Prince.[229]Schaeffer contrasts London after the Reformation and France after the Enlightenment: London in the bloodless revolution of 1688 functioned under a Reformation base, which was built on an infinite God.[230] Paris functioned in this time under an enlightenment base, which was built on finite man, which led to anarchy, a reign of terror,[231] repression, and rule by the elite to control the anarchy, according to Schaeffer.[232] Paris’s declaration of man’s rights fell through because it did not have a Reformation base like the American Constitution.[233] Schaeffer highlights that the shape that revamped Pre-Christian humanism in the renaissance took in Paris as it shifted into modernism included an actress dressing as the goddess of reason carried by men dressed as Roman soldiers.[234] Schaeffer states that Lenin concluded in his book about the Paris commune that it failed because too few enemies were killed.[235] In doing so, Schaeffer mentions like Paris, Communism[236] promised utopia in the present but only gave an arbitrary dictatorship of an elite.[237] Humanistic utopianism was replaced with tyranny.[238] Schaeffer indicates that Greek humanism was digested during the middle ages, which was followed by the renaissance, which returned to Greek humanism, leading to the enlightenment, which informed German universities, particular tfheological faculties.[239] This climaxed with the quest for the “historical Jesus.”[240] For Schaeffer, religious liberalism is Christianity + Artistotle + Plato + enlightenment. The belief in the perfectibility of man leads to authoritarianism and slavery.[241]
Schaeffer speaks about Albert Schweitzer’s use of the Historical Jesus:
We should remember Schweitzer as an expert on Bach and a genius on the organ, and we certainly should not forget his humanitarianism in Africa, but unhappily we must also remember his place in the theological stream. The Quest for the Historical Jesus (especially the conclusion of the second edition which was never translated into English) showed the impossibility of ridding the New Testament of the supernatural and yet keeping any historical Jesus. The rationalistic theologians could not separate the historic Jesus from the supernatural events connected with him.[242]
Schaeffer states that all that is left after Schweitzer used the grid of the historical Jesus to sift Scripture was “poetic ethical pantheism,”[243] which is similar to Schaeffer’s description of Hegel’s system being enthusiasm following contradictions.[244] In both cases of Schweitzer and Hegel, a leap into nonreason is made to try to reach optimism that does not follow from rational premises. The theologian followed this trajectory and employed “existential methodology” which greatly encouraged subjectivity in exegesis of Scripture. Schaeffer later states that if the existential methodology is used, absolutes with which to judge become lost.[245]
Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche confuses two different branches of the church—one of which merged paganism and Christianity—which, in Schaeffer’s view, differed sharply from each other.
Schaeffer mentions the effect that philosophy has on the church’s word usage:
…[A] large section of the church has only been teaching a relativistic humanism using religious terminology.[246]
In other words, nihilism with Christianity sprinkled on top. In politics, this take the form of “a frosting of personal peace and affluence.”[247] Personal peace and affluence are no replacement for a stable foundation for society. Without a foundation, the structure falls.
CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE
Christianity, Solomon and Higgins say, leads to abstraction, which leads to the death of God, science, but also nihilism, promoted by science.[248] This incongruity did not stop Nietzsche from acting as if science can be true by attempting to scientifically prove his idea of eternal recurrence.[249] Nietzsche’s solution to these problems is a focus on nature.[250] Schaeffer might mention that this is similar to Goethe equating nature with truth,[251] which, as noted earlier, makes cruelty equal to non-cruelty. When the authors mention Socrates’s “reason run wild,” that Nietzsche found distasteful,[252] it is not clear how reason can be wild and yet bad, when nature is wild, and good. If it is said that civilized humans are tamed animals deprived of strength,[253] it is not clear why being deprived of physical strength is worse than being deprived of mental strength. Schaeffer agrees with Nietzsche to the degree that the worldview of the scientist shapes the course of science,[254] but Schaeffer would counter that Nietzsche may just be projecting himself onto nature, that finding meaning in finitude is another way of acting as if sin nature exists by saying that some things are unnatural, and acting as if God exists by saying that nature is good. C. S. Lewis would say that Nietzsche was nudging toward the very system of (truncated pagan) pantheism which Hitler embraced.[255] Moreover, Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche’s system creates a dichotomy, with the scientific method, learned sophistication, artifice, and pretense[256] are on an upper story, while nature and love of fate is in the bottom story. Schaeffer might say that the authors also later set a dichotomy wherein the lower story is “spirituality” which really means “perception of nature,” and an upper story of “superficial hypocrisy of the herd mentality of organized religion.”[257] Another way of diagramming this would be with atheism, acting as if God exists through a leap into non-reason on the upper story and organized religion on the lower story.[258] Schaeffer might say with Lewis that the more Nietzsche’s system moves away from Christianity, the more it drifts toward pantheism.
Schaeffer states that science removed from Christianity becomes positivism unmoored from reality:
Within positivism as a total structure there is no way of saying with certainty that anything exists. With the system of positivism itself, by the very nature of the case, you simply begin nakedly with nothing there. You have no reason with the system to know that the data is data, or that what is reaching you is data. Within the system there is no universal to give you the right to be sure what is reaching you is data. The system of positivism itself gives you no certainty that anything is there, or that there is really, in the first move, any difference between reality and fantasy.[259]
This is another way of saying that if everything is true, nothing is, and science spirals off into manipulation. No universal, no science, in Schaeffer’s view.[260]
IGNORING THE HYPERBOLE
Once again, the authors act as if something is objectively good: relativism, or in one definition, “the thesis that every view is as good as any other.”[261] Schaeffer would say that this is a clear contradiction along the lines of a Hegelian synthesis.[262] If something is considered both true and false, truth becomes relativized and arbitrary.[263] When antithesis is rejected as a concept, a synthesis of contradiction results in all things being relativized, in Schaeffer’s view.[264] This predictably leads to a kind of pragmatism that some beliefs are true enough.[265] The authors state what Nietzsche really meant when he said that there is no truth is that we cannot reach truth outside of perspectives, and that Nietzsche was really only attacking dogmatists, like the apostle Paul.[266] Schaeffer would say that Nietzsche was not only attacking dogmatists, but the dogma,[267] and the cosmic vision of God having an existence at all. Once again, the authors present their position of relativism as inherently true while minimizing the logical import of Nietzsche’s presumed sarcasm, that nothing is true. Later in the book, however, the authors soften their position by stating that Nietzsche in The Antichrist “gave a sustained attack on Christianity as an institution and a moral worldview.”[268] In their bestiary of Nietzsche’s terms, however, they state that Nietzsche believed that the apostle Paul barbarically perverted Christ’s teachings into “the doctrine of atonement.”[269] The authors also state that Nietzsche did not attack Jesus.[270] Schaeffer would say that this is true only because they have redefined the word “Jesus” into nondefined symbol.[271] In reality, Nietzsche attacks the idea that Jesus is God in the sense in which it is used in Scripture. Schaeffer says that the Reformers realized that the church had been marred by distortions, after a critical look at traditions, so they returned to Scripture to understand man’s relation to God. [272] The reformers explicitly returned to the teachings of the Apostle Paul in Scripture to understand all of Scripture, and to place the Bible above both man and the church by translating the Bible into the common tongues.[273] Schaeffer might say that Nietzsche rejects a Jesus with semi-Kantian categorical imperatives of the Bibles,[274] and substitutes a Jesus of his own.
Schaeffer outlines the divine nature of Christ:
Now in history, there on Calvary’s cross, in space and time, Jesus died. And we should never speak of Jesus’ death without linking it to His person. This is the ternal Second Person of the Trinity. When He died, with the division that man has caused by his revolt now carried up into the Trinity itself, there is expiation, in propitiation and substitution, the true moral guilt is met by the infinite value of Jesus’ death. Thus Jesus says: “It is finished.”[275]
In contrast to Nietzsche’s idea of Jesus, Schaeffer states that Jesus was a real man who was fully God and fully man who died in real space and time and was resurrected. Any other ideas about Jesus are just projections of men.
NIETZSCHE’S HATRED OF BIBLICAL GOD
In their bestiary at the end of the book, the authors mention Nietzsche’s dislike of Christianity’s conception of God:
Nietzsche’s conviction that this conception of God in relation to our temporal world is a vicious scheme with harmful consequences for those who accept it.[276]
The authors also mention that Nietzsche seems to imply that Christianity is poison[277] and that the Christian conception of God is a false, ugly[278] idol to be smashed.[279] It requires incredible amounts of sophistication to say all of these words regarding Nietzsche disliking Christianity and Christianity’s conception of God, and still maintain that Nietzsche was not an atheist. Some ideas are so illogical that only incredibly intelligent people can believe them. The authors say that Nietzsche is not an atheist while producing support for the fact that he was.
INVERTING CHRISTIAN WORDS AND PRACTICE
Despite stating that Nietzsche was not an atheist, the authors mention that Nietzsche staged “a guerrilla war against Christianity and Judeo-Christian bourgeois Morality.”[280] Nietzsche also lampoons the Lord’s Supper,[281] and parodies the New Testament.[282] The authors imply that Christ was misinterpreted by Paul and state that he was “the greatest propagandists that Christianity has ever known.”[283]—similar to how they view Socrates as a prop for Plato[284]—and emphasize Luther’s contrast of the spirit and the flesh, rather than Paul’s, whose epistle to the Romans shocked Luther into reforming Europe.[285] In doing so they state that Nietzsche claims that the church (rather than Christ) tries to give an antidote to “the problems it has created,”[286] and that evil things ought to be “rechristened” as good.[287] If he knew of these words, Schaeffer might mention that these words are mirrored —as he mentioned without mentioning Nietzsche—that Hitler replaced charity with strength as a value.[288] They at one point[289] liken Nietzsche to Jesus, but it is not obvious what exactly their conception of Jesus is other than being morally thought provoking.[290] Nietzsche views individuation as a problem leading to suffering, and believes that a return to Dionysus will bring “the end of individuation.”[291] Schaeffer might ask if Christianity creates sin nature, or reveals it. He would also say that Nietzsche’s system uses a dichotomy in which “life,” “meaning,” and “instincts” are undefined in an upper story, while guilt feelings are in the lower story. In a future age less influenced by Christianity, Hitler might be viewed more positively, and that would not be inconsistent with Nietzsche’s system, which cannot consistently bring in a transcendent value to judge deviations from “life.” The authors use sophisticated logic to deny that Nietzsche was an atheist while acknowledging that Nietzsche attacked Christianity.
CONSEQUENCES OF NIETZSCHE’S PREMISES
After redefining relativism, the authors redefine egoism. The authors state that Nietzsche thought that “the interests of certain exceptional individuals” were “more important than those of the majority.”[292] This is aristocracy[293] by another name. Even though Nietzsche questions the interests of others, he provides no real standard for judging others because he is more interested in tearing down what he perceives to be arbitrary, unnatural standards. The belief that some individuals’ interests are more important than others combined with a lack of transcendent standards easily leads to a value of power, even if Nietzsche did not intend this. And that is what the authors claim, that Nietzsche was just following the herd in using martial imagery when he was against militarism in a time of peace, was not a warmonger, and did not envision biological warfare. It could be asked whether Nietzsche would have acted more warlike had his health not failed him. While the martial imagery may have been mere metaphor for him, it was not for many of his German readers. The parallels with Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov not realizing the effect his words would have on others is strong in this regard. Once again, the effects of Nietzsche’s words regarding the right to use power on others functions regardless of his intentions.
POSTMODERNISM
After the authors redefine egoism, they dance around definitions of postmodernism:
He rejected the notion of truth and insisted on the importance of interpretation not in order to undermine science but rather because he agreed with its empiricist aims and methods.[294]
The authors state that Nietzsche is not a postmodernist. Schaeffer would say that this is an odd thing to say about a man who rejected divine command theory, questioned origins of things, and focused on words, the very attributes the authors attribute to postmodernism. If he was not a postmodernist in the technical sense, he went far in making it very possible through creating a system in which truth is undefined and science is presumed to be relatively true out of necessity. The authors almost admit this in the conclusion of the book.[295] This system believes that circumstances produce moralities, and that moralities produce attitudes.[296] The authors state that many interpretations protect us from nihilism,[297] but this flies in the face of Nietzsche’s sister taking one interpretation and forcing it on an entire country.
REX LEX AND EUGENICS
Schaeffer states that the kind of science with weakened certainty as “sociological science,” which is justified by its ends, rather than the truth, be they racial or evolutionary in nature.[298] Schaeffer states that “in the case of a well-known teacher of anthropology” one view of evolution was chosen rather than the other because the other view “led to racism.”[299] He states that civil law “without a sufficient base” turns into arbitrary sociological law just as science devolves into the arbitrary, and law takes on “variable content”:
Once the door is opened, anything can become law and the arbitrary judgments of men are king. . . . Lex Rex has become Rex Lex. Arbitrary judgment concerning current sociological good is king.[300]
A rejection of divine command theory leads to a deemphasis in logic,[301] so Nietzsche’s words are often interpreted as fallacious.[302] Once again, while Nietzsche may have envisioned the concept of the ubermensch to be a positive fiction of a man who lives according to “life,” and creativity, Nietzsche’s language provided his sister and the Nazis a means to redefine “life” for the worse—regardless of Nietzsche’s intentions.
Schaeffer applying Nietzsche to Marxist-Leninism and then connecting arbitrary law[303] in the United States to both eugenics[304] and abortion[305] indicates that Schaeffer would say that this principle is at work in Nietzsche’s sister using Nietzsche’s philosophical structure (without his consent) to encourage eugenics. Once again, whether Nietzsche approved of his sister’s use of his system to create her own set of values is irrelevant if she acted in accordance with the system he set up, or the void he encouraged when he stripped civilization of the belief in God and told people to create their own values to fill the absence. Arbitrary law declares babies non-persons, according to Schaeffer.[306] According to Schaeffer, the death of the Christian consensus can led to hedonism, chaos, arbitrary absolutes, and then a 51% average to determine what is moral.[307] Schaeffer explicitly contrasts a Christian consensus to the power Hitler acquired:
In the days of a more Christian culture, a lone individual with the Bible could judge and warn society, regardless of the majority vote, because there was an absolute by which to judge. There was an absolute for both morals and law. But to the extent that the Christian consensus is gone, this absolute is gone as a social force. Let us remember that on the basis of the absoluteness of the 51-percent vote, Hitler was perfectly entitled to do as he wished if he had popular support. On this basis, if the majority vote supported it, it would become “right” to kill the old, the incurably ill, the insane—and other groups could be declared non-persons. No voice could be raised against it.
Given all of this evidence of Schaeffer tying relativism to non-personing and mentioning Nietzsche as of the same group of modern man, it is reasonable to assume that he would also see a connection between Nietzsche and Hitler. In Schaeffer’s view, a worldview based on no absolutes, leads to hedonism, chaos, one man or a technocratic elite imposing authoritative arbitrary absolutes.[308]
NIETZSCHE’S DEFINITION OF SPIRITUALITY
The authors state the effects of Nietzsche’s view of spirituality:
A naturalistic spirituality involves an appreciation of one’s world and other beings in a manner that transcends the contrast between the self and the non-self.[309]
Of course, the authors do not mention that this was also brought about through Hitler through brain-washing of the populace to be ultra-nationalistic, or hyper-tribal. Once again, Schaeffer would mention that Nietzsche’s system borrows capital from Christianity to appreciate the beauty of God’s creation, but only through a leap into non-reason. Schaeffer might mention that the Reign of Terror in Paris is the terminus of the kind of Pre-Christian spirituality that Nietzsche advocates. Schaeffer calls this kind of spirituality “pan-everythingism,” because living in a closed system of nature renders all men as machinelike, with no wills of their own, in a universe stripped of personality.[310]
BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
The authors give a short summary of Nietzsche’s work, the first of which is The Birth of Tragedy. The authors state that Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy dichotomized the world into two gods: Apollo and Dionysius. Nietzsche praised Dionysius, with its art, music, wine, sexual abandon, loss of self, passion, and sense of meaning, while devaluing the Kantian Apollo.[311] Nietzsche also criticizes scientific worldview in rendering people less able to deal with “the irrational side of our natures.”[312]
Francis Schaeffer would say that this recognition that things can go wrong is a tacit recognition of sin nature and its effects. He states that the gods in Greek mythology are “amplified humanity.”[313] He would also say that the upper story is where the word “meaning” is undefined, and the lower story of “order” without meaning in Nietzsche’s system. The authors state that Nietzsche believed that meaning is created through turning tragedy into art.[314] Schaeffer would say that this is borrowed capital, which is another way of saying that Nietzsche acts as if God exists, and that there is order that can convert[315] tragedy into art. Man must conform to the order of the universe to live.[316] Holding that the universe is inherently chaotic and tragic runs up against the form and order of the external universe.[317]
SCHAEFFER AND MEANING IN CHRISTIANITY
Schaeffer would say that “relishing one’s life”[318] is really acting as if God exists and Christianity is true, because Christianity says that God created a meaningful universe.[319] He states that if man is viewed as autonomous from God, the particulars lose their meaning, and this is illustrated in art.[320] Schaeffer states that the Reformation emphasized the image of God imparting equal dignity to all people, which led to a lay government of elders in the church and a democratic emphasis in government.[321] He also states that the consensus on absolute values lead to political freedom without chaos,[322] so the Bible was a base for law.[323] Schaeffer further states that the Reformation moved away from arbitrary government of the middle ages, and led to presbyterian ideas, leading to the Puritans, which developed a constitutionalist model, and freedom from arbitrary governmental power.[324] Schaeffer emphasizes that John Locke’s ideas regarding government in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding(were a secularization of the ideas of the Scottish Presbyterian minister who wrote a book called Lex Rex (1644),[325] or “Law is King.” A member of the continental congress applied Rutherford’s ideas to the American Constitution, according to Schaeffer.[326] Though imperfect—especially in the area of race and slavery[327]—the Reformation was mainly built on Biblical principles.[328] Through this Biblical filter both man’s greatness and man’s cruelty can be understood, according to Schaeffer.[329] Schaeffer states that The Reformation was built on the Bible, which is based on God, has absolutes, so that Christians can condemn cruelty and slavery and bring justice.[330] Schaeffer states that the American founders knew that “law can be king because there was a law giver.”[331] Humanism can boast no such thing and can confer no rights.
Schaeffer states that Hegel and Marx, as products of humanism, believed in an impersonal universe, which had no absolutes, leading to a political “arbitrary absolute” of expediency in totalitarian countries.[332] Schaeffer states that this can intensify under “lawless expediency”:
[Solzyhenitsyn ] correctly identifies the root cause of the lawless expediency as the willingness to assure internal security at any cost.[333]
In contrast to Christianity, materialism breeds Marxist-Leninism, which strips the rights and dignirty of man, attracts by talk of idealism, but then ends in arbitrary expediency.[334] As a product of a leap into non-reason, Marxist Leninism disappoints.
Schaeffer ties Marxist Leninism to Nietzsche explicitly:
To accept Marxist-Leninism is indeed a leap into the area of non-reason. It is its own kind of Nietzsche game plan, a setting of limits as to what one will observe, and a refusal to look outside of these boundaries lest the system be brought down like a house of cars. This does not make Marxist-Leninism less of a danger, and it is also necessary to take into account the resurgence of the old-line Communist parties, especially in some of the European countries where they are either legal or underground. [334.5]
If everything were interpretation though, this would be purely subjective, and one monster’s art would be another monster’s cruelty.[335] One cannot merely say that everyting is subjective and then act as if some things are not.
NIETZSCHE’S INCONSISTENCY WITH WAGNER
The authors state that Nietzsche in Untimely Meditations presented three modes of viewing history, which commemorates, reveres, and learns from history.[336] Nietzsche does not want historians to belittle the work of the present,[337] but if art were cynical, he might change this opinion, if it does not accord with his conception of “life.” In that time, Nietzsche was also disturbed by Wagner’s chaotic and excessive theatricality,[338] or that he was not “true to himself.”[339] Schaeffer would say that in saying this, Nietzsche acts as if there is something other than interpretation, as if Wagner were breaking a transcendent principle, rather than his own personal, individual preference. Additionally, Schaeffer would ask how viewing history as an eternal loop would promote optimism in the present, or how one can be true to oneself if everything is merely interpretation. To underline how philosophy affects all of life, Schaeffer traces the shift toward subjectivity in German composers from Beethoven through Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg, and finally to the English composer John Cage.[340]
THE DEATH OF TRUTH
In the aforementioned collection of essays, Nietzsche makes a rather clear statement about the nature of truth:
Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.[341]
For Schaeffer, this would be a clear demonstration of Schaeffer’s definition of nihilism. It is hard to not take this at face value. Even if Nietzsche did not mean for it to be taken at face value, the acid of skepticism is very strong in Nietzsche’s work. Similarly, in Human All Too Human, A Book for Free Spirits, Nietzsche attacked the idea that the world could be viewed outside a perspective, as unhealthy.[342] Schaeffer would ask what criteria he uses for “unhealthy” if everything is interpretation and the product of perspective. In Daybreak, Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, the authors say, Nietzsche vilifies Christianity’s idea of the corrupted moral nature as a way to heap contempt on others.[343] Once again, Schaeffer would say that he acts as if Christianity is true by vilifying what he sees as transcendently unnatural, while denying[344] transcendent values.
THE GAY SCIENCE
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche sees “self-sacrificial values”[345] as veiled power moves, states that God is dead, and that one should love one’s fate,[346] which is to be in an eternal loop. It should be noted that this phrase, “gay science” or something like it, was coined by a poet seeking to mock economists for arguing against slavery. Schaeffer would say that this is a philosophical dichotomy of “objective” nihilism of no purpose in a repeating machine in the lower story, and “subjective” meaning of enthusiasm. This directly flows into the narrative Nietzsche next wrote.
Schaeffer states the effects of humanism[347] in 1970, seven decades after Nietzsche’s death:
Humanism, man beginning only from himself, had destroyed the old basis of values, and could find not way to generate with certainty any new values.[347.5]
All that remains is apathy disguised under the veil of “personal peace and affluence.”[348] If God is dead, reason leads to despair and non-reason leads to the hope of hope.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Thus Spake Zarathustra features Zarathustra, according to the authors is probably a parody of Christ, yet Zarathustra’s “new philosophy,” in a universe in which everything repeats, is that one ought to become greater than human capacities, especially in the artistic realm.[349] Schaeffer would ask how one can become the timid last man rather than the courageous superman if nature is all that exists with no sin nature to will it in an unnatural direction.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
In Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, Nietzsche also calls for “new philosophers” and new value, which the authors state has political ramifications, despite the authors statement earlier in the book that Nietzsche was above politics,[350] and later claim that Nietzsche’s sister arranged some of his work along a political agenda.[351] These new philosophers will be beyond simple understandings of good and evil, which turns into a dichotomy of simplistic slave morality and a “wholesome” master morality.[352] Schaeffer would ask how if everything is interpretation, one is more simplistic than the other. He also would mention that the facility with which the Germans used this idea in World War II to redefine “life” or as to “take one’s own way of living as the standard of goodness”[353] cannot be merely handwaved away. Nietzsche calls himself an immoralist, but then acts as a moralist.[354] While Nietzsche acts as if Martin Luther crushing the self-righteousness of others is righteous,[355] his mooring for righteousness often stems from a very different place than the Bible. Schaeffer admits that Luther was unbalanced in some regards,[356] but holds to the fact that he returned Germany toward a Biblical absolute standard and away from an arbitrary one.
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche defines life:
Life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.[357]
Schaeffer would say that given Nietzsche’s predilection to redefine words, and revalue man’s place in the world, it should not be surprising that Hitler would follow Nietzsche in redefining life, but with some as subhuman and some as superhuman.Heavily associating life and morality itself with self-preservation can have deadly consequences. Once again, that Nietzsche did not intend becoming beyond good and evil to mean genocide, does not change the fact that in this case that very thing happened. The authors state that due to the fragmented nature of Nietzsche’s notes which they claim Nietzsche’s sister distorted and reorganized in order to publish, The Will to Power, is not much of a book.[358] This description clashes with their earlier descriptions of Nietzsche’s work as often a series of thought-provoking series of aphorisms. Schaeffer would say that the fact Nietzsche said relatively little about the will to power in his work[359] underscores how people could take his words out of context and use it for ends that he found repulsive, but are still consistent with his system. The authors disagree, but in doing so, they act as if an objective interpretation of Nietzsche exists, while denying objective interpretations.
CONCLUSION
The authors close the conclusion to the book by portraying philosophy as art:
Attempts to commandeer Nietzsche as part of the support structure for particular political doctrines, however, do seem to fly in the face of another of Nietzsche’s own proposals: that we respond to the recognition of the limitations of our outlook by becoming more playful and lighthearted. If we lack the capacity to build conceptual structures on absolutely firm ground, the new may as well treat our theories as artistic creations, meaningful as self-expression and as modes of engagement with reality, but never immune to challenge. Their seriousness is precisely the seriousness of children’s play, the sphere of experimentation in responding to the world. This insight, too, is part of Nietzsche’s legacy, appreciated by some across the philosophical spectrum, from postmodernism to the best of analytic philosophy.[359.5]
Schaeffer would say that this elevation of artists falls apart upon contemplation of the fact that Hitler dropped out of art school.[360] Hitler could hypothetically have stayed in art school and there may have been no holocaust. He decided to take a decidedly military and political application of Nietzsche’s philosophy, regardless of Nietzsche’s wishes or intentions. While there is obviously value to recognizing that one’s perceptions of reality are fallible, taking this idea too far can have deadly consequences for entire civilizations. Because Shaeffer quotes from Eric Hoffer,[361] he would likely say in response to the authors that Hoffer states that many fanatics are failed artists, and that the connection between a holy or a nihilistic war to artists is much closer than many people think.[362] Hoffer states that Hitler found refuge in in nihilism.[363]
Schaeffer shows the dead end of freedom divorced from meaning in art:
Freedom without limitations. . . no longer fits into the rational world. It merely hopes and tries to will that the finite individual will be free—and that which is left is individual self-expression.[364]
Self-expression is a dead product of a dead system if it is cut off from meaning. Postmodernists may act as if meaning exists are acting as if God exists, to a degree, but then deny his existence by their words.[365]
Schaeffer makes the statement regarding existentialism:
If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.[366]
Schaeffer his discussion regarding Nietzsche describing the tension between the beauty of nature around Nietzsche’s house and the quotation written in stone there:
Surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, Nietzsche knew the tension and despair of modern man. With no personal God, all is dead. Yet man, being truly man (no matter what he says he is), cries out for a meaning that can only be found in the existence of the infinite-personal God, who has not been silent but has spoken, and in the existence of personal life continuing into eternity. Thus Nietzsche’s words are profound “But all pleasure seeks eternity—a deep and profound eternity.[367]
With words such as these, it is hard to assign the label epicurean to Nietzsche’s thought. Like the original epicureans, they had some focus on virtue, but that quickly decayed in a way that it did not for the Stoics.
Schaeffer states the consequences of living life without an infinite-personal God:
Without an infinite-personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make “systems.” In today’s speech we would call them “game plans.” A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame, in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it. This game plan can be one of a number of things. It can sound high and noble, such as talking in an idealistic way about the greatest good for the greatest number. Or it can be a scientist concentrating on some small point of science so that he does not have to think of any of the big questions, such as why things exist at all. It can be a skier concentrating for years on knocking one-tenth of a second from a downhill run. Or it can easily be a theological word game within the structure of the existential methodology. That is where they are now.[368]
In Schaeffer’s view modern man is in the same predicament as Nietzsche, who are better off acting as if God exists. The alternative is decadent nihilism or madness: “In other words, all men constantly act as though Christianity is true.”[369]
Books by Schaeffer are abbreviated in the style of Solomon and Higgins’ abbreviations of the titles of the works of Frederic Nietzsche.
HSWTL = How Should We Then Live
FST = Francis Schaeffer Trilogy
ACM = A Christian Manifesto
Likewise, S&H = Solomon and Higgins
[1]Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins. What Nietzsche Really Said. (New York: Schocken Books, 2000), 207.
[2] Schaeffer, Francis. How Should we Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976), 19, 20, 250, 254.
[7] Schaeffer, Francis. The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy: The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, He Is There an He Is Not Silent. 1968, 1968, 1972. (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990).
[90] S&H, 108. In a Christian worldview, happiness, freedom, reason, righteousness, duty, and excellence are usually considered universals, while decadence and distorted moralities are considered overemphasis on particulars. In Nietzsche’s thought this is somewhat but not entirely inverted.
[138] Lewis, Clive. Letters of C. S. Lewis. 1966. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), 368.
[139] S&H, 238. Lewis, Clive. The Pilgrim’s Regress. 1933. (London: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992). Lewis uses the metaphor of the loose man who lives in the South and the Stoic man who lives in the North.
[210] Schaeffer may not make the analogy between the upper story and pure reason, and the lower story with practical reason, but he would likely agree that this is the case philosophically in Kant’s system of thought.
[262] FST, 13-14, 232-233. Some say that the Hegelian synthesis understood in sharper terms is misinterpreted by Schaeffer. Some say that Hegel courts misinterpretation.
[319] The idea that Christianity says that God created a meaningful universe is found throughout Schaeffer’s but it is especially emphasized in He Is There and He Is Not Silent.
[359.5] This citation for the end of Solomon and Higgins book to be repaired.
[360]Pressfield, Steven, McKee Robert (FRW). The War of Art Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. (New York: Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2012), 68.
Hoffer is somewhat inconsistent because he states that Germany was “inured to submissiveness” on page 144 but then states that “the seed of individual liberty is in its Protestantism and not its nationalism” on page 146.
In the third chapter of Written in Stone, Ryken says that Scripture interprets Scripture but acknowledges that this can be extraordinarily difficult because of the noetic effects of sin. [1] Ryken states the following rule: “The way to know the full and true meaning of any Bible passage is to know what the rest of the Bible says on the same theme.” Applying part of Scripture to the exclusion of others is almost necessary, because finite minds cannot hold all of Scripture in mind at once. In that sense, projection onto Scripture, or the infinite, through the nature of humans being finite is inevitable. Finite creatures will never be carbon copies of Christ, and focus on certain Scripture regarding indifferent things will result in projective eisegetical legalism. This does not preclude the existence of bright graven lines of laws of the infinite to follow, but it does mean that the ability for finite humans to draw arbitrary lines for themselves and then project those lines onto God using parts of Scripture myopically without reference to master concerns is a distinct possibility. The near inevitability of projecting onto God’s word through being non-infinite should promote humility in one’s interpretation of Scripture. Because the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, Scripture will inevitably have to be taken out of context in some respect by anyone other than Christ.
One practical application of this idea is that Ryken Jesus interpreting the law in Matthew 5:30 rather than look at a woman with lustful intent, but does not define the word lustful. It is often said that red letter Bibles are dangerous because they lead to a Christological error of believing that all of Scripture is not God’s word, but the reliance on this passage and the neglect of considering others such as the Song of Solomon leave the impression that red lettered verses are higher on the hierarchy of interpretation than poetry. If the definition for lust is “desire,” or heavily associated with desire, as noted by Augustine (City of God book 14), not mentioning other parts of Scripture when discussing this verse suggests that the interpretation will be unbalanced, and therefore subject to projective eisegesis. It may or not be the case that if Christ were present in the culture of the present, he would emphasize different parts of the Bible. C. S. Lewis stated in the Weight of Glory that the idea that desire is evil is not of Christian origin. The Stoic frame is that desire is an indifferent emotion that is not good or evil until application. In the book of proverbs, wisdom should be desired, not folly. So in the Bible, Wisdom is personified as a woman to be desired. Taking Matthew 5:30 without the context of these verse is likely to lead to imbalance, and projective eisegesis. Elevating particulars as universals is a form of idolatry. Some might say that in an age of digital pornography, emphasizing Matthew 5:30 by itself is appropriate as a sort of corrective. Doing so may make desiring shadows rather than reality worse without the Biblical context stated above.
Similarly, Matthew 5:22, if taken out of context of the rest of the Bible, or held as a standard against which to judge the Bible can lead to projective eisegesis. While Scripture is breathed out, translations can have errors, and the translation that Ryken quotes leaves out the qualifier that being angry with one’s brother without cause is a sin.[2] Being angry at one’s brother without cause is not the same as being angry against others with cause. The Stoic frame is that anger is inherently dangerous is inconsistent with the Stoic idea that all emotions are indifferent in comparison with virtue. Jesus whipped people in the temple with anger. In Revelation, Jesus is angry with churches who are not being consistent with Scripture as a whole. The prophets feature many examples of God being angry with Israel for willfully breaking his laws which leave no room for interpretation. To state that Matthew 5:22 states that anger is inherently wrong is a Stoic point of view of anger that does not follow from Scripture as Christ’s own actions indicate. Proverbs 8:13 equates fear of God with a form of anger—hatred, both emotions of which Ryken condemns as inherently and categorically sinful.[3] It might be said that Ryken acts as if the red letter verses are more authoritative than black letter verses. In a similar vein, Ryken mentions that an application of the ninth commandment is that “we must use our words to encourage and to bless.”[4] How this is put in the context of prophets cursing nations and sometimes children is not mentioned. There is a time to love, and a time to hate (Ecclesiastes 3:8). Idiolzation of the present rules of propriety might be one source of the demonization of anger as inherently evil, even when the Bible often speaks of it as virtuous if the object is evil. John Calvin said that to call anger evil is to insult God.
As Ryken says “We must reject every false god in order to worship the true God, who alone is our Lord and Savior.”[5] He also states the following: “when we use idols, we are not worshiping the true God, but are constructing a false god—a god made in our own image.”[6] In order to avoid creating a false God, Christians should not speak as if anger is inherently evil, especially when God can be angry. To do otherwise would be to fashion an idol.
Ryken states that we should not reshape God: “We reshape and remake him until he is safely under our control.”[7] This is arguably a reason that C. S. Lewis presented God in the form of a lion, who is explicitly not safe. To label anger as inherently evil is a way of trying to reshape God as well. There is also a rabbinical tradition that Sinai means “hatred.”
Ryken makes similar statements :
We also make an idol whenever we turn God into something we can manipulate . . . . advocating a deity who think more the way they do… . remaking God in their image… . We too are tempted to worship God the way we want him to be, rather than the way he is. We tend to emphasize the things about God we like and minimize the rest.[8]
This all proves his point of making God into something more like himself. It seems at times that Ryken is more interested in making God into a Presbyterian than knowing God as He is.
While some laws leave no room for interpretation, Christ’s words outside of their context leave many cities of rooms for all kinds of misinterpretation. Combining a deemphasis on Christ’s humanity, Christ’s emotions, and leaning toward a Platonic view of the world may currently feeding the growth of Eastern Orthodoxy, either or in conformity or in reaction to it. One solution to decreasing the chance of projective eisegesis is in forcing oneself to study parts of Scripture that do not make sense to the reader. In TheWeight of Glory,[9] Lewis says that this is the only way to learn what the believer does not know and needs to know. The alternative is often mindlessly trudging through well worn ruts.
In the chapter on the sixth commandment in his book on the ten commandments, Ryken is somewhat more circumspect in his words than other parts of the book, but still tends to speak in extremes without regarding exceptions. Ryken summarizes the sixth commandment:
“what the sixth commandment forbids is the unjust taking of a legally innocent life. . . .Perhaps the best translation is, ‘You shall not kill unlawfully.’” [9.5]
This leaves room for just wars, even though Ryken does not cite Thomas Aquinas’s formulation of this idea.[10] It may be said that if a war possesses the attribute of justice, that is a measure of its justness, even if Ryken does not cite Plato on this concept.
Thomas Aquinas lays out three requirements for a just war:
In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. . . . Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. . . . Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil.[11]
It is curious that Ryken does not cite this famous formula. One does not get credit for being more reformed or credible by not citing one’s sources.
Ryken does not speak as clearly when speaking about nonlegal violence:
“It is always wrong for us to take the law into our own hands. . . . Although it is always wrong to avenge ourselves (see Romans 12:19), the government has a God-given responsibility of vengeance.”[12]
While this is true in principle, Ryken neglects to mention that the mosaic law refers to blood avengers who arguably are given authority to do this within certain parameters.[13] It would have been beneficial if Ryken had reconciled these two ideas found within the Bible.
Ryken makes the claim that violence can be done to God’s sovereignty:
“The sovereignty of God is always at stake in matters of life and death. . . . To take a life unlawfully is to violate God’s sovereignty over life and death. . . . It is also to rob God of his glory.”[14]
While murder is a violation of God’s preceptive will, it is not a violation against his permissive will, because he allows things to happen that do not please Him, even if they glorify Him in the long run. While murder may be an attempt to rob God of His glory, no one can in the long run succeed in robbing an omnipotent being or reducing His glory.
Ryken makes questionable claims about the nature of America being different than earlier times: “We are living in angry, violent times, and murder in all its forms is very common.”[15] While this is true in one sense, it is also true that we are on the cusp of a golden age of material well being. But violent movies and videogames are just an effect of sin nature, and the first human born of a woman was a murderer of his own brother: Cain.[16] Protesting a new medium is as old as writing has existed. Some violence in stories is necessary to learn how to deal with it. Solomon[17] would likely say that it was not from wisdom that Ryken said that the former days were better than these. Moreover, complaining about violence in stories condemns much satire that is considered great works of literature. Indeed, much of the Bible is very violent, which Ryken mentions later in the chapter.[18]
In the light of dark sayings of Ecclesiastes, it is questionable to make an absolute statement about all life: “None can be discarded; all must be preserved. . . . God alone is the Lord of life , and he alone has the right to determine when it is time for someone to die.”[21] These are absolute categorical statements that would contradict his earlier words. If all human life must be preserved, then this comes into conflict with his earlier statement that wars and executions are lawful to preserve life. If God alone has the right to decide when someone should die, this cuts down on the God-given authority of judges who pass judgment on others. Ryken tries to backtrack on the issue of euthanasia to say that turning off artificial means of sustaining life is giving the decision back to God.[22] But Ryken’s extreme unguarded statements are problematic to say the least if he claims the Bible’s authority but then applies it to questionable conclusions.
Ryken unfortunately labels a form of music associated with African Americans with a murderer in Genesis: “There is also the story of Lamech, who performed the original gangsta rap[.]”[23] This is ironic, because the economist Thomas Sowell shows in his book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals that much of the violent aspects of black culture was inherited from whites in the South, who in turn inherited it from immigrants from the Celtic Fringe of Scotland hundreds of years in the past.[24] In essence, Ryken is blaming the sins of white people on black people and then projecting that thousands of years into the past for rhetorical effect. While Lamech is a murderer who stands condemned, it is regrettable that Ryken reduced himself to mocking the echoes of honor cultures. It is curious that Ryken does not cite a psychology study performed in 1973 on seminary students in which a lecture on the good Samaritan was interrupted and the students told to go to another lecture hall because of an interruption.[25] Generally those who were told they had much time to reach the other lecture hall helped the man placed on the way to the other lecture hall. Those who were told they had little time to reach the other hall did not help. The timing affected their action more than their beliefs.
Ryken quotes Martin Luther on the subject of murder by neglect:
If you see anyone condemned to death or in similar peril and do not save him although you know ways and means to do so, you have killed him.[26]
It is at odds with the idea that all men stand condemned but not helping someone to escape death who is condemned is killing the man. Nonetheless, it is ironic that Martin Luther, who incited the peasant riots and then stated that any man who put down said riots would go to heaven would make a statement such as this. In his case, it was very true because his word carried enormous weight that would effect his country if not the entire world for hundreds of years. This is reminiscent of Dostoyevsky’s words by a monk in The Brothers Karamazov that the sins of the entire human race are yours.[27]
It seems somewhat unbalanced for Ryken to imply that the best way to avoid violence is to teach children how to solve problems non-violently. While this is a skill that should be valued, to not also mention the value of engaging in sports mentioned by the apostle Paul, such as boxing, that can aid in peacemaking as well as the channeling of male aggression seems to err on the side of coddling. There was a time in England when it was considered man’s muscular duty to bring Christianity to the world.[28] The British Empire enforced a vigilance to eliminate the slave trade and stopped the Indian practice of burning wives when husbands died.[29] While there were obvious abuses, the virtues of the British Empire are now ignored. Likewise, the instructions of God to Joshua to be strong and courageous in brutal wars seven times is ignored. It is also ignored when Christ engaged in violence to drive people from the temple.[30]
Ryken frames Christ’s parable of the good Samaritan as the way that Christians are to live, but this ignores when Christ used violence in the temple, and laughs at fools in Proverbs 1. It also ignores Christ coming in judgment on a cloud with a scythe to judge the earth in Revelation 14:14. Ryken again condemns anger as inherently categorically sinful by citing the Heidelberg catechism[31] and ignores all of aforementioned Scripture in addition to “the fear of the Lord” being “hatred of evil,” in Proverbs 8:13. He once again ignores the possibility that “without cause” is in Matthew 5:22,[32] and takes the Heidelberg catechism as of greater authority than Psalm 4:4 which delineates sin and anger, and is normativized in Ephesians 4:26. Ryken claims that to hate those who carry out abortions is evil, but ignores applications of imprecatory psalms regarding children in Psalm 137:9. Ryken’s claims about anger are at odds with these verses of Scripture.
Ryken claims that to put people down is to reveal murderous intent:
When we use angry words—when we put people down, when we whisper about their reputations, when we make racist or sexist remark—we reveal that there is murder in our hearts.
While this may be true in general, it begs the question whether prophets like Jeremiah had murder in their hearts when they put Israel down under God’s command. Jeremiah called Israel a whore. Repeatedly. With great anger. Paul condemned Peter for being a legalistic racist to his face, presumably in public, and then wrote about it for the entire world to hear about for eternity.[33] If hatred of evil is the fear of the Lord, it is reasonable to assume that Paul was angry that Peter was abusing the gospel with mosaic law. While Ryken does briefly mention that it is possible for anger to be righteous, he appears to take Galatians 5:20-21 out of context of the rest of the Bible as a prooftext to show that anger is inherently sinful. If Christ can be angry, this indicates that anger is morally neutral before application to an object. Some anger is evil and some anger is good. Defaulting to all anger being sinful is unedifying because some anger is required by Scripture. Stating that man’s anger is inherently unrighteous may sap courage to do the right thing in times of uncertainty. If all anger were inherently murderous, God would be a murderer. But it isn’t, so God isn’t. God’s anger is always righteous.
Ryken tends to be loose with his use of the word “glorify.” All things must necessarily glorify God, even if they do not please Him. Murder glorifies God by revealing to men man’s depravity and the fact that evil men should be punished.[34] The more depraved the murder, the more God is glorified in the sense that it awakes in men the inner and then outer acknowledgment that evil exists and should be punished. There was a man in Natchitoches, Louisiana who murdered a girl selling girl scout cookies in cold blood for no anger at all, humanly speaking. It would be difficult for a Christian to not have anger that the man was allowed to be set free from prison after serving two years, never repenting, and never revealing the site of the body. Proverbs 8:13, Psalm 4:4, and Ephesians 4:26 suggest that anger at sin is required. While it is true that in a sense this glorifies God, it brings out the contradiction that if everything glorifies God, ordering someone to glorify God is not clearly delineated from existing. Pleasing God through Christ—which the Apostle Paul explicitly orders—is.
[1] Ryken, Philip Graham. Written in Stone: The Ten Commandments and Todays Moral Crisis. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Pub., 2010), 41.
A psychology textbook defines Cognitive dissonance as “an uncomfortable clash between self-image, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, or perceptions and one’s behavior.” If one state of affairs is believed to exist, but new information contradicts the earlier view of that state of affairs, this causes pain. Whoever experiences this pain of cognitive dissonance seeks to alleviate it. One can either reject the new data or view of data as false, or accept it and change one’s view of the world or whatever part of the world is being analyzed. It appears that one reason that Einstein was able to think in ways that others would not is that he allowed cognitive dissonance to dwell in his mind longer than others would allow it. He tended to dwell on problems without seeking easy solutions that would ultimately fail to take into account the whole of whatever it was that he was considering. It would appear that a need for cognitive complexity can be correlated with a tolerance for cognitive dissonance, as well as incongruence.
Because cognitive dissonance is painful, this would mean that tolerance for cognitive dissonance is by extension a tolerance for cognitive pain. It causes pain to see something that does not fit an expected pattern. Learning requires pain, because it hurts to be wrong, and learning requires realizing the wrongness of a given belief or action pattern considered thereunto. The Stoic practice of memento mori as exemplified by the ninth resolution of Jonathan Edwards creates cognitive dissonance. Imagining your own death simulates the vision of one’s life flashing before one’s eyes, along with regrets for actions taken or not taken. This can be a painful process, because it invites cognitive dissonance of possible states of affairs that do or do not exist. The practice of memento mori leans more toward the pessimistic realism of what is rather than the optimistic delusion of imaging the world and one’s actions in it to be better than they actually are. This produces incongruence between the ideal self and the real one.
If Christian is to be conformed to the image of God, then focusing on the record of the walking transcript of the law, and asking what He would do if He were in Christian’s place is necessary. Christian knows that he cannot raise the dead, or expiate sin, or raise the dead, or cast out demons. Christian also knows that Christ is his Captain and example. There is no way for Christian to be conformed to the Image of God without considering the actions of the Image of God and seeking to apply that example to himself if that Image were in his position. This does not imply that Christian thinks that he should act as if he were the Image of God. Being conformed to the Image of God implies following the example of the Image of God in respect to Christian’s station, knowing that Christ is his Captain of Salvation, and Christian is not. How often did Christ think of his own death? How often did Christ warn others of the wrath to come? Though Christian is not Christ, this fact in no way restricts Christian from imitating Christ if the primary way that Christian is to be conformed to the Image of God is by considering Christ’s actions and applying it to his situation as a vassal of Christ. Christ obeyed the law perfectly through reliance on the Holy Spirit. Christian cannot keep the law perfectly, but the only way he can obey in any way is to attempt to imitate Christ by relying on the Holy Spirit. Any attempt to obey is futile without tacit reliance on the Holy Spirit. Or is there another way to be conformed to the image of Christ other than seeing His actions, and asking what Jesus would do if he were in Christian’s situation?
Scripture repeatedly states that Christ is the standard to which Christian is to compare himself. Asking what Jesus would do in if he were in his situation is an unescapable fact. If Christian is honest when comparing his obedience to that of Christ, he will inevitably see an incongruence that will cause painful cognitive dissonance. If Christ experienced great pain at the thought of his death, how much pain should Christian feel at the sins which necessitated Christ’s death to pay for Christians’ sins? If Christ is the focal point of all of time and space, how can Christian be conformed to the Image of God without considering Christ’s example and how far short he falls in comparison? How can Christian realize that he falls infinitely far from Christ’s example, if Christian never considers Christ as his example? How can Christian realize the depths of his sin in his greatest accomplishments if he does not ask what Jesus would have done if he were in Christian’s position? How can any realize the depth of any sin if they do not compare themselves to the infinite purity of Christ, and how He would have done better than them if He had been in their positions? It is impossible to realize the depth of sin without considering what Jesus would have done if He were in the position of Christian. It is impossible for Christian to realize the extent to which he relies on the Holy Spirit to do any good without comparing his actions to Christ’s, and asking what Christ would do if He were in Christian’s situation.
If it is true that a tolerance for cognitive dissonance requires a tolerance of pain, and a tolerance for cognitive dissonance is necessary for learning, then a tolerance for pain is necessary to realize the gulf between Christian and Christ. If asking what Jesus would do if he were in Christian’s situation is necessary to learn and be conformed to the image of God, and a tolerance for pain is necessary to realize the gulf between Christian and Christ, then asking what Jesus would do if He were in Christian’s place requires a tolerance for incongruence and cognitive dissonance that is painful. It is impossible for Christian to grow spiritually and conform to the Image of God without asking what Jesus would if He were in Christian’s situation. Otherwise, that Christ was tempted in every way that Christian could be, would be meaningless and useless. Minimizing the extent to which the imitation of Christ is a way of de-emphasizing the human nature of Christ, and leaning toward heresy of Docetism. “To neglect Christ as our pattern of holiness is ‘evil and pernicious.'” The Christian is to imitate God (imitatio Dei) before the face of God (Coram Deo).
Temptation is a kind of spiritual cognitive dissonance. The Christian may state the gospel only for it to be rejected, as it rejected Christ (John 17:14). It glorifies God as a Creator that the world hates Him, but it does not please Him as a Father (John 15:19). The world rejects Christ because Christ has no unity with them. He shares flesh like a man, but they do not share His spirit. The cognitive dissonance of the unbelieving world is resolved by rejecting Christ (1 John 4).
But Christ was tempted yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). This means that temptation is not sinful. Temptation is not a sin. Otherwise, Christ would have sinned in being tempted. But temptation is not inherently sinful. It is in the will acquiescing in sin that is sinful. Satan put thoughts into Christ’s head (Matthew 4:1-11). Having a thought in his mind was not sinful. He rejected that thought which was a temptation. Likewise, for a Christian to have a thought in one’s head that did not originate in one’s body but is given by Satan is similarly not inherently sinful. To equate sin with temptation goes against Christ’s actions as presented in the Bible. Once again, it is only in the acquiescing of the will that temptation or thought can be sin.
By contrast, the Christian has the cognitive dissonance of being tempted to follow after the world rather than to obey God by imitating Christ (romans 12:1-2). Paul experienced great cognitive dissonance when he perceives the battle with the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the Spirit (Romans 6, Galatians 5:17). They both desire different courses of action. John states that the Christian must reject the lusts of the flesh and embrace the lusts of the Spirit (1 John 2:15-17, 1 Peter 2:11). The lusts of the flesh avail vanity, but the lusts of the Spirit bring glory (Matthew 16:26, Revelation 14:13). The flesh desires an empty glory, while the Spirit desires a weighty glory. Assuming that the Holy Spirit does not override the will of believer, the Spirit does not in a sense get what He desires when He is grieved by the Christian’s resolving cognitive dissonance in a way that is not what the Spirit desired for the Christian to take (Ephesians 4:30).
Works Cited
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. 1678. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Coon, D. and Mitterer, J. O. (2016). Introduction to psychology: Gateways to mind and behavior. (14th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 528-230.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
—Frank Herbert
Self reliance is rarely if ever defined. The Oxford English Dictionary has the following definitions for self-reliance:
1 a. The state or condition of not needing or relying on external assistance, support, or aid.In early use frequently identified as an attribute of God.
1598—2013
b.spec. Of a country, community, etc.: the state or condition of not requiring goods or commodities from elsewhere; financial or economic independence.
1847—2002
†2. The state or condition of having excessive confidence in oneself or one’s abilities; arrogance; presumptuousness. Also occasionally: an instance of this. Obsolete.
a1617—1928
†3. A supply of a commodity that is adequate for a country’s own needs. Obsolete. rare.Apparently only in the works of T. Fuller.
1642—1650
The definitions are theological, economic, psychic, and economic. The theological can be used as proper if applied to God, and improper if applied to man. The psychic can be used properly if applied to man but not to God. The economic can be applied to man, but if the theological definition is used, the economic definition is rendered subject to sin. This can lead to the mistaken idea that private property is evil.
That the use of the theological and economic definition of the word “self-suffiency” coequally appears to be somewhat joined in the base of the word “self-reliance.”
Consider the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of self-reliance: “Reliance on one’s own abilities and resources rather than those of others; independence, self-sufficiency. Now usually with positive connotations; in early use often in negative sense, in contrast with proper trust in God.” The first conclusion that could be suggested is that in comparison with other men, the self-sufficiency or self-reliance is a virtue. The second conclusion that could be suggested is that self-sufficiency or self-reliance in comparison with God is vicious.
Consider the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the word self-control:
1. The ability to control one’s emotions, desires, and reactions, esp. in difficult situations; control of oneself.
1653—2004
2. With reference to a country, organization, or other body: self-government, self-rule.
1812—1990
While the definitions of self-reliance and self-sufficiency focus on the need of aid from others than the self, self-control focusses on the ability to control oneself. There may be some connotation between these words so that some definitions are associated with the other words.
At times, self-control, despite being the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) can be viewed as suspect. Self-reliance in the west can often be associated with, if not equated with, sin. Some may say that sin is not relying on God, and suing means is relying on one’s self, that trying to do it oneself is not relying on God. There is a sense in which this can be true, but it can be a false dichotomy and an allergy against means. God ordains means for the Christian to use. Should the Christian rely on the means mean given to him by God? One ditch is to rely entirely on the means and forget they are from God, like valuing the presence of Christ through the Lord’s Supper as merely a mechanical act. The other ditch is to embrace nominalism and view God as so far distant from man that all means are considered tools of Satan to be shunned. Means, such as tools, are indifferent. They can be handled as a weapon or as a tool and can be used for virtue as well as vice. Likewise, self-control as a concept, which was considered one of the four virtues in ancient times, is in a sense indifferent before application. It can be used for good as well as evil. All self-control glorifies God as a life-force, but not all self-control pleases God as a Father. Some self-control is used for vice and some is used for virtue.
The caricature of Calvinists as automatons is telling: there is no responsibility without choice. While there is a sense in which there is no freedom of the will before regeneration by God, there is also a sense of the training of the will post-regeneration ( Hebrews 12:11, 1 Corinthians 9). It is a dangerous thought to think of oneself as just a terminal, a host that Christ can download himself into. The idea that Christ can download into the Christian model, and have the mind of Christ in the sense of being Christ. Thinking of oneself as a non-player-character in the Matrix who can become an agent is not an edifying concept. Agent Smith in the Matrix is based on Metatron, the gnostic distortion of Christ. Metatron is the son of the false god of Gnosticism that realizes that the creation of the physical universe was a mistake by the creator. The Christian version of Gnosticism is Docetism. Docetism is a heresy that emphasizes Christ’s divine nature at the expense of his human nature, so it could be called internalized Gnosticism. Docetism emphasizes the spiritual at the expense of the physical, so any statement that outlaws self-control as suspect is questionable. A similar practice is in force with regard to the terms self-reliance, self-control, and self-sufficiency. There is a tension inherent in these terms whenever mentioned in a theological setting because it suggests a lack of reliance, control, or sufficiency provided by or given to God. While there is truth to using the words in that way, becoming like Christ does not mean becoming assimilated into Christ like being assimilated into a machine like the Borg from Star Trek. Sanctification occurs in individuals as well as collectives, and pushing the image too far of collective sanctification of the body of Christ as the church itself has costs as well as benefits.
It might be said that the Christian should rely on God to give him the power of Christ’s Spirit, so that he can do the work God has given him. What does help mean? What does self-sufficiency mean? Does buying food from one’s own country count as self-sufficiency? Does buying from one’s own town mean self-sufficiency? Does hunting with one’s bare hands what self-sufficiency means? Was Cain’s sacrifice to God rejected because he did not use his bare hands as Abel did? Is self-sufficiency an economic state of reality, or a psycho-spiritual state of mind? In a way, it is both in different contexts. The demonization of one or all of these words becomes a shift toward or away from individualism. Individualism is now associated with rebellion against God, but the opposite ditch is to associate collectivism with legalism. Individuals can be righteous martyrs and collectives can be legal representations seeking to apply God’s word to reality in governance on its people. Both individualism and collectivism as tendencies are not inherently good or evil. Both can be used for good as well as evil, as self-control can be used for good or evil. All individualism and collectivism glorifies God as an abstract life-force, but not all pleases God as a Father. Individualism and collectivism can be vicious or virtuous. There is a sense in which the individuals of an organization take on the mind of their superiors, but this is usually not considered an excuse to commit crimes or to act with vice. Christ was a part of the collective, but he could also stand outside of it as an individual and correct it. This takes self-control that can reject the falsehoods of the collective when they appear. It is not Christ’s Spirit control that possesses the Christian. After regeneration, the Christian is powered by Christ’s Spirit to choose to control himself.
These things are indifferent as concepts. They can be good or evil. All things must necessarily glorify God. As a corollary, all self-reliance, self-control, and self-sufficiency must necessarily glorify God. It is not necessarily true that all self-reliance, self-control, and self-sufficiency pleases God as a Father. All things necessarily glorify God, but not all things necessarily please God as a Father. All branches glorify God, but some die and are cast into the fire.
At times, some label control negatively, as if it is somehow a mental illness. It is at times stated that the human race is “control obsessed,” or obsessed with trying to obtain God’s blessing by its own actions. This is to attach a negative association with the word “control,” and to nearly equate it with sin. To be obsessed with controlling others through a subjective application of Scripture as the Pharisees did is one thing, to be obsessed about using means is another. To use means is still another. To merely state that the human race is control-obsessed is to focus on a fuzzy idea, or to link similar ideas together and not discern between them. Fuzzying these ideas together may result in avoiding focusing on single issues particularly and lumping all together. The spiritual application of this is instead of repenting of sins particularly as the Westminster Confession of Faith states should be done, and instead thinking of all sin as pride, all repentance as self-deprecation, feeling bad for existing. Repenting of a particular sin is not the same as a general feeling of self-hatred. Such conflating of ideas is word fetishism, which focusses on the associations of the word rather than what the words denotatively mean in order to control what meaning of the words. Such fuzzy logic is like folding a paper with consequence and premise to act as if they are both the same. Generally speaking, the more one says to slow down and think, the wiser the individual.
The connotation of self-reliance has much to do with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on the subject. Emerson was dismayed that he could predict what different sects of Christianity could say based on their creed. He sensed that there was little independent thought in denominations, and that they were mainly pushing forward what their leaders assigned to them. It seems that the term “self-reliance” has tinges of atheism because this was what Emerson was two steps removed. But on closer inspection, this is a description of all human behavior. Men tend to form groups and follow the leaders. This is a basic children’s game that mimics what adults do. Self-reliant thought outside of groups is nearly impossible, because all men follow in the tradition of other men at some level, even if that level is merely genetic or cultural. At first his thrust is that no one can point to one man and say “that is a Christian,” because there are so many expressions of the body of Christ. There is no one mere Christianity that is acknowledged by all as the truest form of Christ’s disciples. Eventually his analysis breaks down because his definition of self-reliance boils down to the idea that peace comes from oneself and “the triumph of principles.” Some men are naturally more independent from the opinions of others, and test the premises of their group more rigorously. I Thessalians 5:21 says to test everything. It can be argued that this is what the Bereans did in Acts 17. It might be better to say that rather than being self-reliant, it is better to weigh things according to fixed principles, and not to ignore doing this if its conclusions grind against one’s tradition. The Christian ought to weigh tradition against Scripture to see if the two are consistent, and acknowledge the power of hothouses of mutual enthusiasm and in-group bias. Christ condemned the tradition of the Pharisees that was at variance with Scripture.
Control is the ability to use means to achieve ends. God uses laws to control people in a sense, but no one would call God control-obsessed. It could be said that all government is a means to the end of controlling people by restraining actions that are damaging to the whole. In the case of self-control, the Christian should want control to not sin. The Christian should desire that the laws of his country are consistent with God’s laws so that bright lines of action that delineate good from evil restrain people. The Christian should desire to have control to not sin. The Christian should desire control of himself. While God’s laws can be twisted into sin, this does not mean that God is control-obsessed, it means that Pharisees are vipers who hate God. While it could be said that the Pharisees, were control obsessed, this is not the language that Christ uses to describe them. While self-control in one area can be regarded as a virtue in public sports that measure skill, an undue value of that skill can lead to downfall. The basis of Stoicism is delineating what one can control and what one cannot control. One has the ability to control oneself but not others. This is not obsession with control, but a healthy understanding of reality.
Being able to accurately gauge what one can and cannot control leads to clarity towards on what one should focus his efforts. It might be said in things that one has under one’s control, the purpose of focusing on something is to control it. Paul implies that in Romans 5 that the Christian cannot control God, or the suffering that he gives to His children, but they can control how they view suffering, which produces endurance. It is however possible to quench this if Ephesians 5:30 is any indication. While it may be possible to put away bitterness in the sense of forgiving someone of a fault, it may not be in one’s area of control to put away bitterness defined as felt pain. God is the Lord of pain, and that may not be in one’s control, as 2 Corinthians 12 makes clear. This tension between the two definitions of bitterness can be seen in Job 9:18. Sometimes God gives a divine duty of drudgery. The Christian can Focus on what he can control. The bitterness may or may not have been caused by his sin (John 9:2, Most of Job). In cases of prolonged bitterness such as bodily injury or depression, viewing such conditions as the result of one’s sins may be valuable or may actually worsen the condition in a non-edifying fashion. Emotions may or may not be objective. The Christian’s emotions are objective to the degree that they are consistent with Christ’s emotions on objects.
Control is indifferent as a concept. It can be good or evil. All things must necessarily glorify God. As a corollary, all control must necessarily glorify God. It is not necessarily true that all control pleases God as a Father or edifies the body of Christ. All things necessarily glorify God, but not all things necessarily please God as a Father. All branches glorify God, but some die and are cast into the fire.
C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters states that God values most prayers said during depression, or troughs of spiritual life. If this is true, then God the Father valued and was most pleased with Christ on the cross, when he doubted God. Christ said in Hebrew the psalm before psalm 23, asking why God had abandoned Him. Jordan Peterson said that God Himself doubted God on the cross. Christ also said beforehand that his soul was sorrowful unto death. This is a deeper depression than any man can experience. Christ is God and Christ felt these things in his body, like men, because he became a man while still God. God has a body like man, because Jesus has a body like men. Any statement that God does not have a body like man, is a heretical distortion of the reality of Christ’s body and should be deleted or modified before it encourages Platonic Gnostic Docetism which denies that God has a body that was pierced for the sins of those the Father had given Him. C. S. Lewis could be wrong.
Christ also used his muscles to whip money changers in the temple because he was angry. This was a form of violence that he did with the muscles of his body, which was like men. His soul was different because He had a divine nature, but He still relied on the Holy Spirit to do no wrong. The Holy Spirit did not possess Christ. Christ relied on the Holy Spirit’s power to obey God and to reject temptation. Anxiety, anger, and depression are not sins. It is not how Christ felt, but what he did with those feelings that defined Him. He was angry without sinning. He was depressed without sinning. He was anxious about being nailed to columns without sinning. Embrace the Holy Spirit. Reject temptation. Obedience is an action that the believer does through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot obey for the believer. That would be antinomianism. Only the believer can obey through the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ cannot possess the Christian. Christ cannot act for the Christian. The Christian can act through the power of the Holy Spirit and please God through the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ. All actions glorify God as Creator. Not all actions please God as Father.
An overemphasis on justification without adoption will lead to imbalance of thinking of God only as a judge and not as a father. An overemphasis on adoption without justification will lead to an imbalance of thinking of God only as a father and not on a judge. In justification, God justifies the Christian based on Christ’s obedience on the cross. In adoption, Christ’s cannot obey for the Christian in the sense that Christ cannot repent for the Christian. Christ cannot do good works for the believer. The Christian is not a host for Christ. Christ does not possess a human like a demon possesses a human. Christ regenerates the will of the Christian through His work on the cross which recreates the soul of the Christian, which allows the Christian to imperfectly obey God through Christ. In Justification, only Christ can obey and attempts to do so by anyone less are worthless for obtaining salvation, even though that sin glorifies God in the long run. In adoption, God adopts the believer and they can please God through Christ.
Or is that too far? Was Paul being legalistic when he made it his aim to please God? Paul told Christians to imitate him in imitating Christ, and Paul made it his aim to please God. Paul did not make it his aim to justify himself before God as a judge. Paul made it his aim to please God as an adopted son before his father. Paul did not make it his aim to justify himself. It is extremely important to make a distinction between justification and adoption. Too much focus on justification without adoption leads to antinomianism, and the belief that there is no sense in which the Christian can please God. Too much adoption without justification leads to legalism, and the belief that the Christian can justify himself before God without union with Christ. Both of these concepts must be held in focus or heresy fogs the perception. For this reason, the Westminster Larger Catechism definitions of both justification and adoption are worth memorizing unless they can be shown to be imbalanced and at odds with Scripture.
The theologian Mark Jones states that God has not removed the will of the Christian:
God’s work of holiness does not bypass the moral faculties of the believer, but rather renews them and purifies them(by faith in the power of His Spirit) in order for the believer to use his own God-given (and now God-restored) faculties.
To act as if Christ acts in the believer is a misleading statement. Framing the Christian as a robot without a will of his own does not lead to more sanctification, but is as Jones says, a form of hyper-Calvinism.
Jones states that to make such an error is to confuse impetration and application: “To blur the distinction between impetration and application, and so make Christ totally responsible, not only for our imputed righteousness, but also for our imparted righteousness, Obliterates human responsibility, replacing it with Christ’s “responsibility.”
Making Christ responsible for the Christian’s actions is not a Biblical view. If only Christ can act, then Christ would grieve the Holy Spirit. But that would be impossible. Mark Jones states in his book on antinomianism that Christ cannot repent for the believer.
Jones quotes the Puritan John Flavel:
Though faith (which we call the condition on our part) be the gift of God, and the power of believing be derived from God; yet the act of believing is properly OUR ACT. . . Else it would follow, when we act any grace, as faith, repentance, or obedience, that GOD believes, repents, and obeys in us, and it is not we, but GOD that does all of these.
While it may seem to make sense to say that Christ believes and that this is not the will of the believer, following the logic of this statement leads to nonsense. The Christian relies on the Holy Spirit to imperfectly obey God through the power of the Holy Spirit by virtue of union with Christ’s penal substitutionary atonement.
Jones restates that the wills have not been destroyed but renewed:
We have not been deprived of our wills; rather, the Spirit makes our hearts and minds able to do God’s will.
If the will was completely destroyed, this would mean that obedience is completely impossible and that only Christ can obey. Only Christ can obey perfectly, but the adopted children of God can obey imperfectly through union with Christ.
He could be wrong. The Puritans could be wrong. He could misunderstand the Puritans. It would be wise to have read through the Puritans such as John Owen more than him to make a judgment of that kind.
Both adoption and justification must be kept in mind if a Reformed and Biblical balance is to be achieved. Otherwise, a focus on one to the detriment of the other will lead to imbalance and heresy. Or maybe Jones is wrong. Maybe Christ does take manual control of the Christian like a man climbing into a giant robot.
At times it seems like the protestant use of Isaiah 64:6 as a kind of badge of honored dishonor. This seems like reaction formation: forming an identity out of the rejection of something else. At times, some practices, such as lent, are termed as out of bounds because they “are catholic” rather than because they are unscriptural. The word “protestant” comes from the word to protest after all. In a way this was shaped by the nature of Europe. England sometimes secedes from Europe whether it be from the Roman empire, or from some other governing organization. England has a perennial felt need to distance itself from its nearest neighbors, especially France, which was traditionally Roman Catholic. As the spiritual descendants of the British Puritans, Reformed denominations of Christianity often feel the need to differentiate themselves from their near neighbors. The nearby neighbors of the Reformed are often Roman Catholics, who in the Reformed view emphasize the role of works and deemphasize Christ’s penal substitutionary atonement, while at the same time emphasizing the role of images of God as having a human body that experiences pain. While railing against Roman Catholics violation of the second commandment, Puritans at times wrote extremely vivid prayers instructing readers to imagine their sins as wounds on Christ’s body.
Reformed texts can have reference to reveling in statements of being worthless, and works being worthless to obtaining salvation. While works are worthless to obtain regeneration, denigrating the good works that God has given before the foundation of the world to His people is rarely edifying. Taking a perverse pleasure in a form of penance in telling oneself that one is worthless is not the same as repentance. If pride were the only sin, then self-noughting would be a virtue. But arrogance is not the only sin, and self-deprecation to the point of despair is not edifying nor pleasing to God if it leads to imbalance and an inability to use the resources God has given in a ways that please Him as a Father. If God is only seen as a Judge, then He cannot be seen as a Father. A Judge cannot be pleased except by the perfect Sacrifice. A Father can be pleased with sincere imperfection. Or maybe God’s idea of a Father is so far removed from the modern Christian’s understanding that the term should be synonymous with Father. This is unlikely because Christ did not tell the Christian to baptize in the name of the Judge, the Lawyer, and the Spirit of the Law. Instead, the names of the Trinity are mainly archetypal patriarchal roles, not impersonal spectators. If the legal spirit of justification is not balanced with the familial spirit of adoption, imbalance will occur.
All works glorify God, but not all works are done by believers. Works done by believers are done through Christ and can be pleasing to God as a Father. Works done by unbelievers are not done in Christ, and do not please God. Vain religiosity does not please God, because it is vain. This is not the same as good works. Mark Jones indicates that it is hateful to God to compare genuine good works to rags of any kind. Isaiah was not talking about good works in Isaiah 64:6. Jones also views that antinomian practice as profoundly damaging and a profound distortion of Scripture that has no place in the Reformed tradition. It is Docetist sanctification and it is heresy. Unbelievers seeking to justify themselves are vain works that will burn away into nothingness by God as judge. Believers who are justified by Christ can please God as a Father who delights in the efforts of his children. To ignore the Reformed distillation of this because of connotations is evil in Mark Jones’s view. It is also worth noting that God explicitly tells Job’s friends that they will be instructed by Job on the proper way to address Him.
When the phrase “Christ working obedience in us” may be a part of Hell’s philological arm to disrupt words from Scripture. This phrase does not seem to appear in Scripture. While phrases such as Ephesians 3:7, 20 and 2 Corinthians 10:5 seem similar, they are not the same thing. While the Christian has total dependence on Christ, ascribing all actions of the Christian to Christ leads to nonsense if that includes repentance. Christ cannot repent for the believer. While the Christian cannot do anything good without Christ, too much emphasis on Christ’s action can encourage laziness and excuses in the Christian. This is what Jones states that John Own and John Flavel say, that this distorted focus can and does lead or flows from the Christological error of antinomianism. While Paul mentions God’s working in Ephesians 3:7, and in verse 20, Paul Also orders the Christian to work out his salvation with fear and trembling in Philippians 2:12 while mentioning that God works in the Christian. If either of the divine or human work is minimized, heresy and imbalance will result.
This is not merely an academic exercise in which purely abstract variables are balanced off of each other. If a pastor kills himself, is that Christ’s failure, or is it that pastor’s failure to control himself? Was that a lack of Christ’s self-control, or of the pastor’s self-control? If it is solely Christ’s work in the pastor, then Christ fails. If it is the pastor’s duty to control himself, then the pastor fails. Thus it is extremely important to differentiate between the duty of the Christian as opposed to Christ’s “duty.” Making a mistake in the importance God places on self-control can and does have fatal consequences. Making Christ responsible for the Christian’s obedience may appear to be a mark of humility, but Jones indicates that it is really a form of hyper-Calvinism, and not Scriptural. Or maybe the famous clergyman John Donne was right, and it is proper and edifying to compare sanctification to rape.
Emotions are indifferent as a concept before application to an object. They can be good or evil. All things must necessarily glorify God. As a corollary, all emotions must necessarily glorify God. It is not necessarily true that all emotions please God as a Father or that they edify the body of Christ. All things necessarily glorify God, but not all things necessarily please God as a Father. All emotions glorify God, but not all emotions please Him as a Father.
If all things necessarily glorify God from the viewpoint of eternity, then all control must necessarily glorify God (Romans 9). It is not necessarily true that all control pleases God as a Father or that it edifies the body of Christ. All things necessarily glorify God, but not all things necessarily are children adopted by God. All branches glorify God, but some die and are cast into the fire. All pots glorify God from the viewpoint of eternity, but not all pots are fashioned to glory (Romans 9). All control glorifies God from the viewpoint of eternity, but not all control is righteous or pleasing. Christ is the vine, but Christ does not repent for the Christian. Christ does not evangelize for the Christian. Christ does not possess the Christian. Christ does not control the Christian. The Christian controls his will through the power of Christ’s spirit. Or maybe we are wiser than Chris who presents God in the parable of the talents as a businessman who requires action of his servants.
In the tragedy of Hamlet, Laertes’ father, Polonius, the king’s advisor, tells his son to be true to himself. Hamlet’s mother marries her husband’s brother, and Hamlet is depressed about this and the effect that his father only died a month earlier, and chooses to wear only black. Hamlet’s father comes back from the grave as a ghost to tell Hamlet to seek vengeance for him. Instead of accusing the new king directly of regicide, Hamlet decides to use the indirect approach and pretend that he is insane. He then develops insomnia/vampirism and walks around the castle for hours reading books. The king and queen begin to worry about Hamlet’s mental state and send for his classmates in Martin Luther’s university town, Wittenburg, about which a play has been written in which both Martin Luther and Hamlet are characters. “Professor Doctor Reverend Father Martin Luther encourages Hamlet to major in theology.” As the founder of the Reformation, Luther would have a profound influence on all Puritans, and the effects of that would be felt by the Neo-Puritan Jonathan Edwards, who is most famous for his illustrations of Christians and nonChristians alike as spiders hanging on webs above a pit of Hell, ready to fall into never-ending consumption at God’s command.
Eventually, Polonius advises the king to use his daughter to help Hamlet return to sanity. Hamlet tells her to go to a nunnery, which is really a euphemism for the opposite institution. The fact that few realize the meaning of this phrase is emblematic of how far Elizabethan English is from modern day English. The linguist David McWhorter stated that Shakespearian English should be classified as an entirely different language because the meanings are so far removed. Even so, people constantly plagiarize Hamlet with phrases like “he’s a real piece of work,” and “good night sweet prince,” which the queen says right before she dies of poison. An interesting statement to make to children before going to sleep. Sleep is a short death. Death is a long sleep. As a result of the language time barrier, some that see Shakespeare as inherently deeper than modern fiction may not fully understand how similar some modern fiction is to Shakespeare’s sometimes raunchiness. What may appear to be classier use of language may be a lack of familiarity with the rawness of the language used. Shakespeare’s language is dead to the degree that the average person can think that he understands Shakespeare’s words, but be completely deceived by his own hubris of using modern day definitions to words that are using definitions 500 years old.
Hamlet makes fun of Polonius by stating that the book he is reading mentions that old men become stupid and have grey beards, but that this seems to him improper to be stated directly. He then delivers a famous monologue that functions as a memento mori (meditation on death) —that is often recited by the pretentious at high speed—before his friends try to cheer him up because they were told to do so by the king and queen. When they inform him that a troupe of actors has arrived, he informs his friends that he is only insane when the wind is blowing north by northwest. To ensure that the play is maximally good, he lectures the actors on the proper way to perform the play with great feeling for fictional characters that they have never met. It is almost as if Shakespeare foresaw that Hamlet’s memento mori soliloquy would be memorized and recited mechanically by the pedantic, so he inserted a scene immediately after the soliloquy in which Hamlet is even more pedantic than Polonius. Hamlet teaches the actors how to be actors and how to speak with feelings, which they presumably are already experts, especially since Hamlet saw them perform in the past.
Hamlet inserts words regarding the vanity of both passion and women when he emphasizes the queen of the play-within-the-play that is performed. With Hamlet’s hero-worship of his father, it may be asked whether the king has blame in not taking measures to prevent himself from being assassinated by his brother. Usually this kind of betrayal is considered far worse than normal assassination, because of the closeness of brother, yet the first murder in history was of one brother murdering another, and the first born human being was a murderer.______ In the play, this may be Hamlet’s way of saying that his mother is not at fault, because she was overcome with passion that robbed, distorted, or removed her reason, or that she had little reason to begin with. He may just be playing, and be piling irony upon irony. In either case, he is very aware of the consequences of death. The play as a whole functions as a seesaw jumping between Stoical meditations on death like those made by the Stoic philosopher and tragedian Seneca, and the whimsical and irreverent plays of Aristophanes, which feature satire such as the philosopher Socrates working at the cloud factory.
As Hamlet’s playfulness/madness continues, he stabs Polonius with a sword, thinking that he is a rat, and confronts his mother with her sins of commission and omission. In Hamlet’s mind, a large part of the sins of the country fall on her, in her decision to marry the murderer of her husband, and her failure to enquire into the circumstances of his death, and overall, her overriding passion that displaced logical thought.
When the play within the play ends, the king tries to pray for forgiveness, but finds it useless, and sends Hamlet away with orders to have him killed by his friends. Laertes returns furious with the king that he allowed his father to die. Polonius’s daughter goes insane and dies of hypothermia and/or drowning in a lake. When Hamlet returns to Denmark, he picks up a skull and wonders whose it is. He finds that it is the court jester’s whom he played with as a child. After witnessing the funeral, Hamlet interrupts it by jumping into Ophelia’s grave to show that he is more saddened by her death than her brother, so her brother challenges Hamlet to a fencing contest. The king and Laertes conspire to poison Hamlet during the duel, but Hamlet grabs Laertes’ sword and poisons him accidentally. The queen drinks from the poison cup, Hamlet is poisoned, and Hamlet forces the king to drink from the cup. In this parody of the Lord’s Supper, everyone dies to bring the vengeance ordered by the ghost of the king. This scene in particular functions as a memento mori, which Stoics used to consider the pointlessness of anger in the face of death. This may be related to why Jonathan Edwards told himself “to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances that attend death.”
It should be asked whether these characters were true to themselves, and if this phrase has meaning. It is not clear whether Laertes was true to himself or his father, because he sought revenge, but did so in an underhanded manner. It may be true that Hamlet was true to his father, because he sought the vengeance that his father directly commanded. It is debatable whether Hamlet was true to himself when he pretended to be insane, prompting Ophelia to follow suit and drown in a lake. It may be that Ophelia was true to her father’s instruction, because he told her to bind herself to Hamlet, and followed him into mental instability and heavily symbolic meditations on death and the commons circumstances that attend death. In Hamlet’s conception, his mother may or may not have been true to herself. If her nature was inherently irrational, then she was true to herself in acting irrational. If she was rational, then she was not true to the king she bound herself to—at least in Hamlet’s conceptions—because she did not enquire as to why the king died. Some might say that she was true to the country, because for the country to be stable, there must be a king to govern, in the medieval conception of the world. In another sense, she was not true to the country, because the evil king caused the country to be conquered by Norway at the end of the play. Denmark is conquered by Norway because the rightful king of Denmark slayed the king of Norway, and the king’s son sought vengeance for the king. By the time he arrives, the entire Danish royal family has died through infighting. Of all the main characters, only Horatio remains.
So what does it mean?
What does it mean to be true to oneself? What is the standard of truth? Is it consistency with oneself? Is it consistency or unity with the king? Those who are most unified with the king die through unity with the king’s sins, as the federal head, the entire country is damned in a sense to be invaded by Norway. What the head decides affects the whole body. It could be said that the king’s cognitive dissonance or lack thereof poisoned the entire country. Hamlet’s cognitive dissonance of his mother marrying so soon after his father’s death stem from the fact that the king killed his father in an act of regicide. Hamlet’s cognitive dissonance takes the outward appearance of madness. Is Hamlet being true to himself and his father’s command if he is false to others about the true nature of his madness? Is he true to himself, or true to his father the real king, who burns in the fires of purgatory for sins he was unable to repent of?
Ophelia is true to Hamlet in the sense of trying to love and care for him, and in the sense of consistency: she follows Hamlet into madness and drowns in a lake surrounded by her eccentrically gathered flowers. Was she true to herself, or true to Hamlet? It might be wondered if she had been less true to her father who dragged Hamlet’s love letters to the king, she might have remained more sane, if less forthright. Is her insanity a result of being true to herself, her father, and Hamlet? Is being true to oneself the same as insanity depending on the person? The poets of the romantic era believed that this was wholeheartedly the case. Robert Schumann for instance walked into an asylum, before jumping off a bridge after rejection to the asylum and returning to it. Being true to oneself is dependent on who one is, and without a clear definition of truth, this becomes mere consistency. One can be true to oneself and be insane. Her grave diggers argue over whether she killed herself or was the victim of a tragic accident. One mentions that the church is unable to give her an honorable funeral in public for this reason: she is buried as a suicide. Was she in depths of despair that Hamlet was going insane, or was she true to him in the sense that she was bound to him and the resulting cognitive dissonance compelled her to imitate what she thought was his true nature? Ironically, if Ophelia had ignored her father less and visited Hamlet more often, it might have been the case that he would have been more open to her about the true nature of Claudius’s regicide, and her mental state would not have suffered.
Is unity with others being true to oneself? Most of the members of the play are seeking unity to the king to a sychophantic degree, which Hamlet consistently mocks. Polonius, Ophelia’s father, is a fulsome flatterer—or at least complimenter—of the king. He seeks unity with the king and he seeks unity with Hamlet. Hamlet says that something looks like a weasel, so Polonius agrees. Hamlet says that something looks like a camel, so Polonius agrees. Hamlet says that something looks like a whale, so Polonius agrees. While it might be argued that he is merely humoring Hamlet, it cannot be denied that Polonius seeks to give a positive spin to both his words and the king’s, and his agreement with the king. For all Polonius’s vain foolishness, Hamlet still stabs him as a rat and lugs his body through the castle. In the end, the only reason that he was behind a arras on the wall is that the king was concerned that Hamlet might reveal more. Polonius was false to Hamlet for hiding, and that falseness killed him. While Polonius was responding to the queen’s call for help, the undercurrent of this is that Polonius was not able to dwell on the heart of an issue. Rather than seeking for the root of the issue, he merely cut low-hanging fruit. He never considered that his daughter or a play of actors could not ameliorate Hamlet’s madness because it came from the king’s sins. If he had been more detached from the king, he might have been able to see what Hamlet did. Polonius consistently follows superficiality when he might have done otherwise, and sought the true nature of the king’s actions.
Osric is similar to Polonius but who is even less sure of what he says, at least according to Hamlet. He tells Osric that it is hot, so Osric takes off his hat. He tells Osric that it is cool, so Osric puts on his hat. He tells Osric that it is hot, so Osric takes off his hat. Osric has unity with Hamlet, is true to Hamlet, at least on the outside, but it is questionable whether Osric actually believes that the temperature changes every five seconds. It may be that Osric really believes this, but it is more likely that he is trying to save face, and is not being true to his inner conviction. He may have none, and this is likely, if he can change his opinion about the weather as fast as blinking. Is being true oneself the ability to stay true to one’s inner conviction in one’s heart of hearts regardless of what others say and do as Martin Luther did? The diet of worms is referenced vaguely by Hamlet when he is joking about where Polonius’s body currently resides. Hamlet is aware of the moral consequences of not being true to one’s conscience, and states that they can go seek Polonius’s body in heaven, and if he is not there, go look in the other place. Osric makes it alive to the end of the play, but only through being introduced so late in it. His actions indicate that he is not true to anyone.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are more actively two-faced. They seek unity and being true to the king, and are ready to dissimulate to Hamlet their real intentions. Hamlet has to wring it out of them that they were brought to Elsinore to cure him of his madness. Hamlet lets them know that he is not always mad, but he tells Horatio that he doesn’t really trust them. The king sends them a letter to kill Hamlet on his way to England. This indicates that the king trusted Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with killing Hamlet, who they outwardly acknowledged as a friend. Were they true to the king? That ended in their death, when Hamlet rewrote the letter, sent it to England, so that it was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that were executed. For some reason, this is the name of a movie. In the movie, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not know who they are or what they are doing when out of scene from the original play. They do not know how to be true to themselves. They do not know who they are. They do not know where they are going, and yet when the actual play returns, they speak their lines. So does being true to yourself mean to not be twofaced, but to stand by one’s moral convictions without prevarication and without reserve? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are true enough to the king, not to Hamlet, and not to their consciences.
Laertes tell Ophelia to stay away from passion, and to avoid Hamlet’s romantic advances. Then Polonius lectures him and gives him the famous words that he is to be true to himself, because then he can be false to no man. But later Polonius sends a messenger to spy on Laertes and insinuate to random strangers that Laertes has been visiting brothels, to see what others say about him. It is hard to see how this behavior could be interpreted as being true to oneself. This is not the same as trusting but verifying. When Laertes returns to Elsinore he sees that Hamlet has driven Ophelia insane, or possibly Ophelia’s melding herself to Hamlet’s personality even as he rejects her for ostensibly her own good. While initially wishing to kill the king, because of the death of Polonius and/or Ophelia, his father and sister, he is taken to the king’s side and told that he should kill Hamlet. Was Laertes true to himself with this action? At his death, he seems to regret it, indicating that his conscience was betrayed by the king, to betray Hamlet through being false to him. Laertes was true to himself in the sense that he was outwardly open with how he felt: he had hatred for anyone who he thought sought to injure his family, but this trueness was betrayed, and he was induced to be false to men, or at least Hamlet, until death forced the truth. Laertes is ambiguous, so while he may or may not have engaged in sins earlier in the play, he is true to his conscience that vengeance must be sought. But if his conscience told him anything about staying away from Claudius, he did not listen to it.
Was Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, true to herself? Hamlet waffles over whether his mother is feeble-minded, or whether she is an epistemically lazy agent. Whether from nature or nurture, she does not come off as a particularly bright character. Herein lies the question: Was Gertrude true to her simple loving self, or was she false to what she knew to be true and pursued the path of lust? Hamlet concludes that she was false to what she knew, false to herself, and false to the true king, so that her marriage to the king’s brother is really “Damned incest.” Gertrude accepts these words as true as daggers thrust into her heart, so she seems to feel in her conscience that his words are true, and that she should repent of her relationship to the usurping brother. There is ambiguity over whether she knew that the cup in the final scene was poisoned. If she knew, then was she true to herself in embracing death, removing from herself the thousand aches that flesh is heir to? If she did not know, was she true to her passionate but deadly end? She enjoyed her passion in celebrating Hamlet’s victory over Laertes in the duel. In the end, she was true to herself in the sense of expressing how she felt, in joy over her son’s prowess with a sword. But she did not tell the usurping king that she knew of his regicide, even though she repented of her accessory to treason by marriage to him, just not to him by words. If Gertrude’s conscience told her anything about Cladius, she did not listen to it until Hamlet forced her to do so.
It might be said that the character in Hamlet who was least true to himself was Claudius, the usurping brother with the indwelling murderous spirit of Cain. Claudius lied to himself that it was right to kill the king. Claudius lied to himself that it was proper to marry the queen. In a way, he lied to himself when he casts shame of Hamlet for mourning his father’s death for so long. It eventually turns out that Hamlet was truer to the king than anyone else, because he tortured himself into finding a way to set things right as his father commanded. Claudius lies to himself that Hamlet is just mad. Claudius lies to himself that Ophelia dies because of attachment to Hamlet’s personality rather than his own sins. Claudius lies to himself that he is the rightful king of Denmark. Claudius ignores all of the troubles of those around him that he caused by murdering the true king. If Fortinbras is to be believed, Hamlet would have been a great prince and soldier had he lived. The usurping brother wrecks all of the lives connected with the king, but he lies to himself that he has responsibility for them. He is true to himself in only the basest sense, that he seeks his desires to the disregard of man’s law and God’s. Claudius is least true to his conscience of any character in the play.
A subtheme of Hamlet is the question of what repentance is. Hamlet’s bipolarity shows itself in at one time viewing everything he does as of the utmost importance, but then succumbing to depths of despair later because he cannot see that any of his actions matter. He muses on the meaning of death, and cries out in pain that God mad a law against suicide. He picks up a skull and hints that he realizes that he is like the jester whose skull he is holding. Crushing the dust of dry bones, he muses on the vanity of bones that may once command legions, but then be used to fill a hole in the wall. His contrition is rewarded when his father returns to him out of the grave, and gives him a charge to gain vengeance, or when he sees in the usurping king anger that his sins are pricking his conscience. When he uses a play to prick the king’s conscience, Hamlet decides that it would not be true vengeance if he killed the king while he is confessing his sins, because his father, the true king, is unable to confess his sins in purgatory. But the king is not really confessing his sins. He is unable to be true to others even if he is somewhat able to be true to himself: It is a shallow repentance to repent of a crime but then to keep all of the treasures that resulted from the crime. He knows that his prayers cannot ascend to heaven because he has no true contrition. In this sense he is true to himself, at Hamlet’s prompting, but it leads to not true spiritual repentance, and he orders Hamlet to be executed on his trip to England.
In one way, Hamlet is being true to himself in that he does not hide how he feels, even if he does give misleading reasons as to why he feels that way. While he seeks to avenge the king, and is tortured by his inability or unwillingness to do so at times, this manifests itself in erratic behavior such as walking around for hours in the hall reading, or various mad antics. Despite spurning Ophelia, Hamlet flies into a rage when he sees Laertes making hyperbolic statements regarding his grief. There is no reason to doubt that Hamlet is being true to himself in all of these actions, given that he has just been considering the vanity of falseness. Hamlet’s grief at Ophelia’s death indicates that he did care for her well-being and did spurn her out of concern for her wellbeing. The fact that he repents of this incident indicates his sincerity in this matter. It can’t entirely be said truthfully that Hamlet was true to Ophelia. While he may have been true to his feelings at the time when he slapped Ophelia and spoke negatively of the entire human race as inherently sinful and lustful continuously, he did not reveal the true source of his madness. It might be said that Hamlet was not being true to his conscience when he makes lewd remarks to Ophelia during the play-within-the-play, but this is likely done in the service of pricking the king and queen’s conscience. If the Song of Solomon is not considered canonical, then Hamlet’s actions in this area of questionable, but if it is considered canon, the situation is more complicated. Hamlet is true to himself in that he follows his conscience, which tells him that he must fake insanity in order to follow his father’s commands that appear to him supernaturally. Claudius is not given the usual respect and honesty, because he has forfeited those things as a regicide.
Horatio functions as a good control to Ophelia. Ophelia, it may be assumed, was true to Hamlet, and Hamlet’s behavior influenced Ophelia to imitate him. As he plumbed the depths of insanity or despair, she was compelled to follow him into madness, and her father into the afterlife. Horatio, by contrast, was not. Horatio saw the ghost of Hamlet’s father himself, and told Hamlet about it. Had Ophelia been told the truth by Hamlet, rather than slapped and told to join a house of ill repute, it is much less likely that she would have gone mad. Every time Horatio is reintroduced into the plot, he is presented as vulcanlike, Stoic, and totally devoted to Hamlet. Hamlet comes close to stating that Horatio is of Stoic mettle when he says that Horatio is not passion’s slave and that he wears him in his heart’s core for that reason. Horatio is devoted to Hamlet like Ophelia is, but Horatio is the only surviving character at the play’s end. Horatio even tries to kill himself like Cato, but Hamlet orders him not to do so. In this way as well, Horatio shows himself to be the counterpart to Ophelia: he is willing to kill himself to be unified and true to Hamlet, but unlike Ophelia, Hamlet is there to tell him to stop. One major difference between Horatio and Ophelia is how he treats them: after Hamlet’s meeting with his father’s ghost, he views her as solely an object of lust as a breeder of sinners, rather than “beautified.” Horatio is consistently true to both his conscience as interpreted by Hamlet.
The king is true to his desires, murders, and perishes. The queen is true to her desire, marries, repents, and perishes. Polonius is true to the false king, superficiality, and perishes. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are true to the false king, partially true to Hamlet, and perish. Osric is true to the false king, false to Hamlet, yet lives. Ophelia is true to the Hamlet she understands, and perishes. Horatio is true to the true king and Hamlet and lives. Laertes is true to the false king, his desire for revenge, is false to Hamlet, and perishes. Hamlet is true to his conscience, slogs on for months through drudgery, and uses the falseness of play to reveal the true nature of the king’s heart.
Only Hamlet, Horatio, and Ophelia are true to their consciences throughout the entire play. If being true to oneself is being true to one’s conscience and seeking the will of Heaven, then they are the only ones who do it consistently. When Horatio expects foul play in the duel, Hamlet is convinced of the presence of providence to govern all things, and will not give way to bad omens. He states that if it is his time to die, he will, and he does.
Many remember Marcellus saying in the beginning of the play that there is something rotten in Denmark, but few remember Horatio responding that Heaven will direct it.
It is often said that duty done without desire is drudgery, but it is not often defined what drudgery is, nor is it considered that the word “lust” literally means—or used to mean—“desire.”[1] Duty done without lust does not have the same connotation. Proverbs usually takes a dim view of violence, but psalms treats it more indifferently. Sometimes in the psalms, God abhors the bloodthirsty and hates evildoers (Psalm 5:4-6), but at times, that God delights in his people when they wield two edged swords to execute vengeance (psalm 149:4-9). War and peace are not inherently good or evil because some war is just and some peace is unjust, or false. Both peace and war glorify God from the viewpoint of eternity, but not all peace and war is pleasing to God. In any case, a lust for violence is not considered virtuous in the present age. Bullying and cruelty tend to be defined as taking joy in causing the suffering of others. The more a hero in a story takes part in these emotions, the more he is generally perceived to be villainous and vicious, but the Biblical picture becomes more murky upon closer inspection.
A well-known Navy SEAL—Jocko Willink—has stated that he enjoyed killing people,[2] albeit possibly from a command center. He has written bestselling books.[3] He has well-known podcasts.[4] He writes children’s books. He sells supplements and merchandise.[5] His words have been made into music.[6] He sometimes apologizes for desiring and enjoying his duty of killing people which the state lawfully gave him. Is it morally joyworthy for Willink to have enjoyed the elimination of enemies of the United States? Would it have been better if he had viewed all elements of his duty as drudgery? Was it morally righteous for him to desire that duty? The legendary sniper Chris Kyle worked with him. Presumably, some of the Navy SEALs under his command used FGM 148 javelins, named after the weapon used by Saul, Joshua, and possibly David in the Bible. Joshua killed far, far more men than Willink by orders of tens of thousands, if the cities Joshua captured in chapter 11 of the book that bears his name can be assumed to have roughly the same amount of people as Ai. In Ai alone, 12 thousand men and women are stated as being killed by Joshua’s javelin in accordance with God’s instruction (Joshua 8:24-27).
David was no stranger to violence. If David took joy in violently rearranging the copulatory apparatuses of the men he killed and brought them to Saul as trophies of his kills (1 Samuel 18:27), would that have been categorically sinful? Was that morally joyworthy? If he desired to produce those trophies, would that have been categorically sinful? Was that morally joyworthy? If David felt joy and desired to point out to Saul that he could have killed him, but didn’t, would that have been categorically sinful (1 Samuel 24)? Or would it have been morally joyworthy? Would it be wrong to project a measure of cruelty onto David, or did he act justly in these actions? David shows a wide variety of emotions, that modern people might term as bi-polar. He sometimes is confident in the Lord and thanks God for strengthening him to war against his and God’s enemies (2 Samuel 22:35). Other times he seems to shift closer to an anti-hero in exile who drools on his beard (1 Samuel 21:13). Sometimes he warns to be angry and sin not (psalm 4:4). Other times he says that he has a perfect hatred (Psalm 139). Other times he kills his commander, sleeps with his wife, becomes angry at a prophet’s story, then repents, then has joy that he has a son, then fear and humility when the son is sick, but immediately ceases to mourn when the child dies, and writes a classic prayer of confession (Psalm 51, Samuel 11, 12; 1 Kings 1, 2). While it may be unclear if some of David’s dutiful kills would be morally joyworthy or not, it is clear that his murder of Uriah was not morally joyworthy.
Like David, some poets are no strangers to massive shifts in emotion. It has been said that many poets during the Romantic period might not have committed suicide had they been treated for bipolar disorder, but we also would probably not have received their poetry. Robert Schumann for example wished for entry into an insane asylum, and returned after jumping into a lake when barred from admittance because he was obviously sane.[7] By imagining what a person who exhibited the same behavior as David in the current time would be labelled we can gauge how differently modern day culture is from David’s time. They are not generally considered joyworthy.
Violence and war are not inherently good or evil, but they are generally not considered joyworthy outside of voluntary sports. All violence glorifies God, but not all violence pleases God. Some violence is good and some violence is evil. Some wars are just, and some wars are unjust. Drudgery is not inherently good or evil. It appears that drudgery can be inherently unpleasant even if done with a good attitude, or motive. If it is proper to see Woman Wisdom in the book of Proverbs as a symbolic pseudonym for Christ, it would appear that Christ uses violence, or abandons fools to violence, in Proverbs 1. See Canticles 4:12-15, 7:6-9. III, Luke 7:35. While Proverbs 24:16 somewhat conflicts with wisdom laughing at the destruction of the foolish in Proverbs 1:26, Proverbs 24:16 and its context suggest that laughing at the world’s foolishness is inadvisable.
Violence and war is not inherently good or evil. Some wars are just, and some wars are unjust. All wars glorify God, but presumably few wars please God. In a book about Proverbs, it is stated how woman wisdom, God’s ideal woman personified, is code for Jesus by virtue of Christ’s words (Luke 7:35).[8] Bullying and cruelty are often defined as joy from the pain of others. This is generally considered not morally joyworthy in the present age, unless those being bullied are being punished for some egregious action. So it is a paradox when Christ seems to take joy in the pain of fools, mocking them. Especially when it is advised against in Proverbs 24:17-18. This is mirrored in the final judgment in Revelation when Christ kills the inhabitants of the earth in vengeance for the martyrs. This is a part of the Bible that Jordan Peterson has trouble accepting.
It can’t really be said that Christ is harmless if he is the greatest of all warriors who will singlehandedly fight the greatest and last battle in all of history. It also begs the question how statements regarding God not taking joy in the deaths of sinners is balanced with God laughing at fools (Ezekiel 33:11, Ezekiel 18:23, Psalm 37:13, Psalm 59:8, Proverbs 1:26-27). Can God laugh and take no pleasure in something? Was David exaggerating? If he was exaggerating, is the psalms the naked splendor of God’s soul, or just an analogy? Is it an anatomy of the God-man Christ’s soul as Bonhoeffer implies, or an anatomy of Adam’s soul, as Lewis implies? Is it possible to damage yourself by memorizing Scripture? The Pharisees memorized 5 books of it. Christ called them Satanic vipers. Demons memorized the entire Bible, but they don’t have Christ’s spirit. Are the imprecatory psalms absolutely true, or just analogically true, or is this an unsolvable paradox of God’s infinite nature? Did Christ live as if they were an analogy? He arguably dunked on Solomon’s poetry (Matthew 6:29), and Paul never mentions it. Paul does repeat David’s delineation between anger and sin (Psalm 4:4, Ephesians 4:26). The sun should always be let down on hatred of sin (Proverbs 8:13). While Christ’s joy is necessarily morally joyworthy, it is not clear whether humans joy in violence is morally joyworthy.
Joshua was the forerunner of Christ. He has the same name as Jesus in Hebrew. And vice versa. God gave Joshua a javelin and told him to use it (Joshua 8:18). Violence is morally indifferent before application to an object so that it can be good or evil depending on the object: God gave Joshua the same weapon he later gave Saul. Joshua feared God and used the javelin to please God. Saul did not (1 Samuel 18:11). Joshua feared God’s chair and bowed down to it even though it had graven images of angels on it (Joshua 7:6). Saul failed in his suicide attempt and ended up being pinned to a sex god’s fertility cult wall by his own javelin (1 Samuel 19:10). Joshua killed tens of thousands of people in a special case in which God gave direct instructions that certain people were to be completely wiped out. This does not occur at the present time, but in Revelation 14:14, this happens on a global scale, where instead of wielding a javelin, Christ, or an angel associated with Him, wields a scythe. Some might say that Joshua and Christ are from a belligerent and pugnacious age.
Would it have been morally joyworthy for Joshua to have desired his duty to kill tens of thousands of men? Would it have been morally joyworthy for Joshua to haved desired his duty of killing not just the men, but the women, and the children too? If he did not desire that duty, should he have? Most people would say no, that it is never morally joyworthy to kill women and children. In fact, most say that in most situations, such actions are morally egregious and the excuse of following orders is deemed to be moral cowardice. It is often with great difficulty that modern man can approach Joshua’s duty given to him directly by God, in a manner that is not given to men today. It is usually never asked or assumed that Joshua desired this duty, or that such a desire could be joyworthy. Or was it drudgery that Joshua had to endure? Was it drudgery to have to kill women and children? It is usually met with horror by nonCalvinists who are not thoroughly steeped in the idea that—with the obvious exception of Christ—there is no innocence but only various levels of guilt and depravity before God. It is worth emphasizing that it is never asked whether the desire towards his duty is never asked of one of the forerunners of Christ’s incarnation.
This shift in hesitancy toward courage may be part of why C. S. Lewis leaned on the passages of Scripture wherein God refers to Himself as a Lion. Aslan sometimes engages in a path of belligerence, of war, and rips a witch in half with his teeth. That’s not harmlessness, and attempts to label it otherwise may be excuses to indulge laziness and fear of man. Is Christ meek, or humble? Is Joshua meek, or humble? Emphasizing the destruction of walls for Joshua may deemphasize God telling Joshua to be strong and of good courage seven times, and orders him to use a javelin. Joshua’s warfare is also echoed in Christ’s warfare in Revelation. Can you see the naked splendor of God’s soul in the psalms? What about the belligerent imprecatory psalms of anger? Maybe we live in an age that distrusts all courage thinking that it is just belligerence and all violence, thinking that it is just pugnaciousness. Or maybe we live in an age in which courage is not considered a virtue. And that the only form of virtue comes from those who are being oppressed. An age in which any parts of the book of Joshua other than walls being divinely dematerialized without human hands is looked on in horror. An age that shrinks back from the realization that evil must be punished, if not in this life by a lawful fallible government, then in the next by an infallible one. That is the core of the book of Revelation: just vengeance for the martyrs achieved by Christ Himself returning to earth in judgment of the world. You are free to call Christ and Joshua belligerent, pugnacious, and toxic, but to destroy your ideal leads to chaos. There is no ideal higher than The God-Man.
Christ did not desire to be crucified, but He did so because it was the Father’s will (Matthew 26:39). Christ did not desire that duty. It is safe to say that the Roman soldiers who tortured Christ for breaking the false unity of the Pharisees enjoyed torturing Christ. We can assume that their desiring to do their duty of torture was sinful. Nonetheless, it was ordained that Christ be legally executed by a lawful government. We can assume that those who worked for the Pharisees and enjoyed mocking Christ by saying blasphemies had nonjoyworthy torture. The Pharisees took joy in mocking Christ and this mockery was not joyworthy. If the Roman soldiers who executed Christ took joy in that execution, it would not have been morally joyworhty. Who would say that desiring their duty in that circumstance would have been johyworthy?
In the Problem of Pain, Lewis sets up a metaphor for time as “time pockets” to understand culture in history:
Different ages and cultures can be regarded as “pockets” in relation to one another. I said, a few pages back, that different ages excelled in different virtues. If, then, you are ever tempted to think that we modern Western Europeans cannot really be so very bad because we are, comparatively speaking, humane — if, in other words, you think God might be content with us on that ground — ask yourself whether you think God ought to have been content with the cruelty of cruel ages because they excelled in courage or chastity. You will see at once that this is an impossibility. From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors looks to us, you may get some inkling how our softness, worldliness, and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to God. [9]
According to Lewis, the way to do this comparison between different ages and our own is to read old books. Reading old books is a way of attempting to gain perspectives on the joyworthiness of war and violence.[10]
Was it morally joyworthy for Jocko to kill people in war? Should he have desired that duty? Would it be morally joyworthy if David had enjoyed killing people in battle? Should he have desired that duty? Would it have been morally joyworthy if Joshua had enjoyed killing people? Should he have desired that duty? Will it be morally joyworthy if Christ enjoys killing people in judgment? Would it be morally joyworthy for them to desire those duties? Desire for some duty is virtuous and some desire for some duty is vicious. Desire for duty glorifies God, but it does not always please him.
Imbalance can occur when emphasizing Joshua’s actions to the exclusion of God’s actions and vice versa. God taking action against the nations of Canaan does not change the fact that Israel and Joshua killed tens of thousands of Canaanites. Both can both occur simultaneously without contradiction. God destroying the walls of Jericho supernaturally does not change the fact that Joshua killed everyone in Jericho except Rahab (Joshua 6:21). Joshua stating that God brought trouble on Achan does not change the fact that Israel stoned Achan and his family with stones and burned their bodies with fire (7:26). God gave orders for Joshua to stretch out his hand with his javelin to destroy Ai, and it is recorded that Israel struck Ai down, and that God gave it into their hand. 12,000 of them. These are not contradictory. It also states that Joshua burned Ai (Joshua 8:27). While the case could be made that Joshua holding up his javelin to attack was supernatural in the way that Moses holding up his hands assured victory (Exodus 17:12), it does not change the fact that Joshua and Israel killed 12,000 men, women, and children. God gave them, and Joshua struck them (Joshua 11). Nor does it change the fact that Exodus 17:13 states that Joshua overwhelmed Amalek, even though Exodus 17: 14 states that God will blot out the name of Amalek. It is also a memorial for what Joshua did: God told Joshua to write down that Aaron and Hur held up Moses’s arms, that Joshua defeated Amalek, and that this should be repeated to Joshua. Moses killed giants (Joshua 12-13). Any minimization of the divine or human actions in this will lead to Docetism.
Or maybe when God says that he destroyed the armies and that it was not by their sword and bow that they won (Joshua 24:8-13). Is God denying that Joshua killed tens of thousands of people, is this an exaggeration, or was it an illusion that Israel killed anyone? When Israel struck down various armies and cities, was this just metaphorical language? Was God possessing Joshua when Joshua lifted up his javelin? Was God possessing Joshua when he killed tens of thousands of men, women, and children? Was God possessing Israel when Israel possessed the land of Canaan and killed its inhabitants? Or is God emphasizing how much he gave the inhabitants into Joshua’s hand, before Joshua stabbed them with his javelin? The battle belongs to the Lord, but Joshua still holds the javelin (proverbs 21:31). Different denominations of the body of Christ will use a different emphasis, but imbalance of emphasis will lead to distortion.
Works Cited
[1] Augustine, Trans, Marcus Dods. The City of God. 500. New York: Modern Library, 1950. The City of God (2.15).
Neville Chamberlain holding a symbol of false unity
Unity is not inherently good or evil. Unity with political leaders is not inherently good or evil. Unity with religious leaders is not inherently good or evil. Disagreement is not inherently good or bad. It is a tool that can be used either to clarify or to confuse thinking. Unity is indifferent as a concept. It can be good or evil.
Unity with political leaders is not inherently good or evil. Idolizing unity over truth results in inner rings of group think, not consistency with the truth. In World War II, Neville Chamberlain had superficial unity with Hitler, and this was his undoing. He even quoted the book of common prayer when he announced the superficial peace that he imagined in his mind, so that the meaning of that phrase began to fade, along with Christianity in England. His simulation of peace vanished when reality emerged. Winston Churchill did not have unity with Chamberlain, because he knew that this was a false unity that Chamberlain had constructed. It only lead inevitably to future conflict. Unity with political leaders can be good or evil, so unity itself is not inherently good or evil.
Unity with religious leaders is not inherently good or evil. The Bible is a continual cycle of the religious leaders of Israel having unity with themselves but not with God, and his prophets, before being chastised or punished. The people who constructed the Tower of Babel were trying to reach heaven were unified in speech and purpose, so God deliberately de-unified them. The political and religious Egyptian leader Pharaoh United his people against God, and they were humbled. The first high priest, Aaron, united Israel by creating a golden image of a bull for Israel to worship, and they were humbled when Moses returned. Often, the prophet is crucified. The prophet Daniel had unity with God but did not have unity with the political leader nebuchadnezzar, so he was thrown into a pit. With lions. Jeremiah had unity with God and Nebuchadnezzar, but did not have unity with the king of Judah, so he was thrown into a pit. Of sewage. The king of Judah watched as all of his sons were executed by Nebuchadnezzar, then the king’s eyes were put out, and he was carried to Babylon in shackles. Paul says in the book of Romans that humanity is united in trying to suppress the awareness of God’s existence (Romans 1). Paul complained about the inconsistency of the Greeks by debating with them on a hill dedicated to the Greek god of war (Acts 17). If Paul had total unity with the Greeks, he would not be a Christian, but he can become a Greek to the Greeks, by acknowledging their borrowed capital. In Revelation, the people of Earth are unified in murdering every last Christian, and then having a party, before Christ returns to reap the grapes of wrath in an extraordinarily violent fashion. Unity with religious leaders is not inherently good, because those leaders may be evil and have unity with the devil.
Unity with the truth is good. Unity with Falsehood is bad. Unity is not inherently good. Christ was not unified with the religious leaders of his day, the Pharisees. He called them vipers (Matthew 12:34, John 18:36, Mark 12:17, Matthew 23:23). He did not seek unity with them, and said that He did not come to bring unity (Matthew 10:35,Luke 12:53). They no doubt viewed him as a difficult individual. The Pharisees were unified with themselves in crucifying Christ. Agreeing with something you know to be false for the sake of unity is lying. John Hus, Martin Luther, Latimer, and Ridley did not perceive unity with the dogma of the church as greater than unity with Scripture as they understood it. They were excommunicated or burned, but from the reformed perspective, their lack of unity with the church is of lesser worth in comparison to unity with Scripture. From the Roman Catholic perspective, Protestants’ unity against Rome is not good. From the reformed perspective, the church of Rome valued unity over truth, and it cost them unity of the church, so that the church shattered into factions. Unity with religious leaders can be good or evil. From the reformed perspective, the Church of Rome lost unity precisely because they valued it above unity with scripture. Avoidance of conflict of this sort is really just delaying it to the Future. Romeo and Juliet were united in death. So were Hamlet and Ophelia. Unity can be good or evil.
It is easy to assume that God is one’s side, rather than one being on God’s side. Joshua was corrected by God for this confusion (Joshua 5:13-15). Anger and complaint was directed toward Moses by the Israelites, when it was really anger and complaint against God (Numbers 14, Exodus 16, Psalm 106). It is easy to assume that because anger or complaint is directed toward one, that it is really directed against God, that one has unity with God, that unity with himself is unity with God, and that unity is inherently good. But these are the beliefs of the Pharisees, and they were not unified with God. On the contrary, they were unified with the devil and directly opposed to God manifested in the flesh. Unity can be either demonic or angelic in nature. Unity is only as good as its object. Unity with darkness is darkness. He who calls for unity often wishes for unity with himself. He who draws a distinction from others, as Christ did, may be seeking truth over unity.
Terrestrial unity is of temporal value; celestial unity is of eternal value. The object with which one is unified is the cutting edge that distinguishes between idolatry and obedience. Honest conflict has more social value than dishonest, but superficial harmony. What may appear to be a call for unity may be in fact a worship of comfort through isolation. Unity is inherently neither good nor evil in and of itself. Unity is a state of being that may apply to both Good and evil. If unity can be both Good and evil, it stands to reason that it is not inherently good or evil, regardless of object.
Unity with good political leaders can be good. Unity with evil political leaders can be evil. Unity with good religious leaders can be good. Unity with evil religious leaders can be evil. Unity is not inherently good or evil.
One of the most famous lines of Jeremiah is condemnation of false peace and false unity (Jeremiah 6:14). Jeremiah warned the king of Jerusalem that he should surrender or the city would be burned and the nobles killed (Jeremiah 38). The king said that if he did that, the Israelites who defected to Babylon would torture him, so he convinced Jeremiah to say to the nobles that he begged the king to let him go to Jonathan’s house. For the sin of refusing to confront inevitable conflict, the king of Jerusalem’s children had their throats slit in front of the king, the king’s eyes were removed, and Daniel and his friends were presumably castrated before being carted off to Babylon to enter into the false joy of the false peace that the king believed in despite Jeremiah’s warning (Jeremiah 52, Daniel 1). Avoiding inevitable conflict leads to hatred and bitterness, not peace, and not joy. Jeremiah warned the king that avoiding unpleasant truths would lead to his death, which the king refused to acknowledge, so he lost his sight. Daniel was presumably castrated as a result.
To paraphrase Robert C. Roberts, it is as wrong to say that peace and unity is always good is as wrong as it is to say that anger and hatred is always bad. All unity glorifies God, but not all unity pleases God. Some unity is good, and some unity is evil.
Don’t seek joy in unity Seek the kingdom of Heaven, for that is the only way to true joy and meaningful unity. Everything else is vanity. To seek happiness in unity instead of God is to reverse causality. Many seek happiness in unifiying with the terrestrial city of destruction, but few reach the narrow gate to the Celestial City. All men glorify God, but few please Him as Christ’s body. “Seek God, not happiness,” is what the martyr Bonhoeffer wrote in his book. If you seek happiness in unity, it will flee from you. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and happiness will be added to you knowing that you are setting off for a pilgrimage to the Celestial City. Seeking peace and unity in the terrestrial city is to follow after Lot’s wife, who would rather look to the city of destruction and leave her children motherless than to seek the kingdom of Heaven. Unity and peace with man is fleeting, but unity and peace with God is everlasting. Everything is indifferent to seeking the Celelstial City. Seek for peace and it will abandon you. Seek for joy, and it will flee from you. Seek for unity, and it will break you. Seek for self-control to reach the Celestial City, and you will have the fruit of the spirit through trials, without which there can be no happiness in the best of all possible worlds. Many that seek happiness in the terrestrial city of vanity will glorify God by being destroyed. Few please God in the body of Christ pilgriming to the Celestial City. The martyr Bonhoeffer did not have the option peace and unity with Hitler, because it was his duty to have disunity and war with evil. Chamberlain should have been at war and not unified with Hitler. Chamberlain’s intentions did not lead to peace. Zedekiah’s intentions did not lead to peace, unity, or joy. They lead to war, death, and Jeremiah’s lamentations.
Or maybe we are wiser than Christ, who said to seek God’s kingdom rather than unity with the world and the flesh that passes away.
Unity with the world is enmity with God if James 4:4 is to be believed.
Unity is indifferent as a concept. It can be good or evil. All things must necessarily glorify God. As a corollary, all unity must necessarily glorify God. It is not necessarily true that all unity pleases God as a Father or edifies the body of Christ. All things necessarily glorify God, but not all things necessarily please God as a Father.
John Calvin placed great importance on the definition of words, especially those of a spiritual nature. Francis Schaeffer placed great importance on the definition of words, especially those of a spiritual nature. Jordan Peterson places great importance on the definition of words, especially those of a spiritual nature. Paradoxes offer opportunities to analyze unclear thinking and to define words more clearly.
Plato said that there are usually two kinds of men: Those who think either too much or too little, at least for governing purposes.[1] Saying that an interest in paradoxes is an excuse to not deal with problems is really a false presentation of the issue. A fear of paradoxes means ignoring them completely, much less dealing with them in any real sense. “A fear of paradoxes or lack of interest in them is a defect of the epistemic will,”[2] because it encourages cognitive dissonance to live with two ideas that appear to be at odds with each other, but ignoring that fact. Ignoring cognitive dissonance is not the opposite of dealing with contradictions. In fact, it is often a form of being double minded, which is condemned in scripture.[3] Downplaying paradoxes often leads to the pride of believing oneself above dealing with them. In reality, having an interest in paradoxes often leads to an opportunity to deal with contradictions and eliminate them from one’s thinking. Focusing on paradoxes may be used to eliminate the arrogance of believing oneself above their contemplation. To assume that you already have the answers and have no need to wrestle with issues is an act of laziness or arrogance in the philosopher Jay Wood’s reckoning.[4] To assume that philosophy is merely the wrangling of dotards who believe themselves better than others is an excuse to avoid one’s responsibility as a cognitive agent, because doing so makes communication of the gospel, or anything, less possible.
A love of paradoxes may cover a multitude of contradictions. But a fear of paradoxes may cover a multitude of errors in one’s thinking. In this case, a paradox is an apparent contradiction which is not. Take for example Christ being angry at Lazarus’s death, according to Frnacis Schaeffer. If anger were a sin, this would be a contradiction. But anger is not inherently sinful. So the paradox is solved because the apparent contradiction is illusory. One presupposition was false. Schaeffer could be wrong, but he states that the exegesis is very clear. C. S. Lewis indicates that the solving of paradoxes is a powerful form of sanctification, because not understanding part of the Bible indicates that part of one’s thought processes is in error.
This is similar to something that Francis Schaeffer said. Following in Paul’s example, Francis Schaeffer became so to speak an atheists to atheists, a naturalist to naturalists, and a modern man to modern men, so that by understanding the thought patterns of others, he might save some. Schaeffer realized that the use of words such as “God,”[5] “Christ”[6] “faith,”[7] and “truth”[8] were so distorted during his time that the church needed to understand the thought patterns of the world in order to speak to it. According to Schaeffer, to understand thought patterns, philosophy and history need to be understood. Part of philosophy involves an interest in paradoxes. Paradoxes often occur when two principles appear to be at odds with one another. This is not an avoidance of contradictions or a Hegelian glory in them. On the contrary, it is an awareness that many things that we think are pure contradictions may in fact be paradoxes that we would rather not consider, because doing so requires effort. And as T. S. Elliot said, we will do anything rather than think.[9] Living with two contradictions has a name: hypocrisy.
Jordan Peterson has been referred to as a “Jungian Francis Schaeffer.”[10] This is true in that instead of being educationally the product of a seminary, he is partially the product of political science and psychology programs. He applies Jungian ideas to scripture, but he also reads many commentaries— sometimes quoting Christian luminaries such as the 17th century Nonconformist minister Matthew Henry[11]— thus allowing him to see the thought patterns as thought patterns. This is very similar to Francis Schaeffer’s focus: seeing thought patterns of culture in dialogue with the cultures and philosophies of the past to find truth, and to show that the Bible is self-consistent truth that can be acted out in the world. Francis Schaeffer said that not considering the thought patterns of different belief systems in terms of borrowed capital and counter distinctions lessens, if not makes completely impossible, the ability of the church to speak to the world, especially if the world has coopted religious language and replaced its definitions.
Jordan Peterson mirrors Francis Schaeffer in a number of ways. He is on the edge between secular and religious culture. He uses psychological and philosophical structures to see how people think. He focusses on the way that people use words. Most notably, he focusses on how little people understand what words they are using when they ask him if he believes that God exists.[12] He realizes like Schaeffer that acting as if God exists is better for everyone than acting as if God does not exist, but he is very careful to define the word “God” carefully. Peterson seems to have indirectly developed an appreciation for the havoc brought onto language by the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth,[13] which redefined words of transcendental import into undefined words requiring “leaps into non-reason,” in Schaeffer’s later terminology. Unlike Schaeffer, Peterson is not a minister of a Presbyterian Church. In this way, Peterson acts as a bridge of meaning between the secular and the religious.
Francis Schaeffer stated that in the foreword to Escape From Reason that Christianity must learn the thought Patterns of the world in order to speak to them:
If a man goes overseas for any length of time, we would expect him to learn the language of the country to which is he is going. More than this is needed, however, if he is really going to communicate with the people among whom he is living. He must learn another language—that of the thought-forms of the people to whom he speaks. Only so will he have real communication with them and to them. So it is with the Christian Church. Its responsibility is not only to hold to the basic, scriptural principles of the Christian faith, but to communicate these unchanging truths “into” the generation in which it is living.
Every generation of Christians has the problem of learning how to speak meaningfully to its own age. It cannot be solved without an understanding of the changing existential situation which it faces. If we are to communicate the Christian faith effectively, there, we must know and understand the thought-forms of our own generation. These will differ slightly from place to place, and more so from nation to nation. Nevertheless there are characteristics of an ager such as ours which are the same wherever we happen to be. It is these that I am especially considering in this book. And the object of this is far from being merely to satisfy intellectual curiosity. As we go along, it will become how far-reaching are the practical consequences of a proper understanding of these movements of thought.
Some may be surprised that in analyzing the trends in modern thought in this book I should begin with Aquinas and work my way forward from there. But I am convinced that our study must be concerned at one and the same time with both history and philosophy. If we are to understand present-day trends in thought, we must see how the situation has come about historically and also look in some detail at the development of philosophic thought-forms. Only when this has been done are we ready to go on to the practical aspects of how to communicate unchanging truth in a changing world.[14]
Francis Schaeffer zeroed in on the idea that Biblical faith requires an object.[15] Faith in faith is really faith in yourself, not God.[16] Schaeffer wanted to help people have genuine meaning through interacting with their thought patterns in a deep way to show that Christianity is true by their own actions. Schaeffer mentions a profile of the musician John Cage, who made music consistent with his view of the universe as chaotic but didn’t gather mushrooms that way. In other words, Cage acted as if the world is ordered when his life was in danger, but not when making music.[17] Like Cage, unbelievers often act consistently with Christianity when it costs them.
Francis Schaeffer is indirectly echoed by Peterson when he considers what words of this sort mean:
People often ask me, “do you believe in God,” which, I don’t. . . like that question. First of all, it’s an attempt to box me in, in a sense, and the reason that it’s an attempt to box me in is because the question is asked so that I can be firmly placed on one side of . . . A binary argument and. . . The reason I don’t like to answer it is because A, I don’t like to be boxed in, and B, because I don’t know what the person means by “believe” or “God.” And they think they know, and the probability that they construe “belief” and construe “God” the same way I do is virtually zero. . . It’s a question that doesn’t work for me on multiple levels of analysis. . . . I act as if God exists. Now you can decide for yourself whether that means whether that I believe in him so to speak but I act as if he exists. Then with regards to these other issues, the divinity of Christ: Well, I would say the same problems with the question formulation obtain: What do you mean by “divine” and also, what do you mean by “Christ”?
These are very, very difficult questions. Now I believe that for all intents and purposes, I believe that the logos is divine . . . If by “divine” you mean “of ultimate value, of ultimate transcendent value.” Yes it’s divine. It’s associated with death and rebirth, clearly, because the logos dismantles you, and rebuilds you. So that’s what happens when you make an error when you make an error: some part of you has to go. That’s a sacrifice. You have to let it go. Sometimes it’s a big part of you. . . Sometimes it can be such a big part of you that you actually die. . . Instead of dying and being reborn. Is there something more than merely metaphorical about the idea of being, of dying, and being reborn? Yes there is, because those are associated with physiological transformations. . . What’s the ultimate extent of that?
That’s a good question. You know, the question is “what happens to the world around you as you embark, as you increasingly embody the logos.” And the answer to that is, “we don’t know.” . . . The hypothesis is that there has been one or two individuals who managed that, and that in their management of that, they transcended death itself. Well, then you might ask yourself, “well what do you mean by transcended death?” Well, in the case of Christ let’s assume he was a historical figure, for the for the time being . . . . Is his resurrection real? Well, his spirit lives on that’s certainly the case. In what sense do you mean “spirit”? . . . . Well, let’s imagine that a spirit is pattern of being, and we know that patterns can exist, [and] patterns can be transmitted across multiple substrates. . . Vinyl electronic impulses, air vibrations in your ear, neurological patterns dance, it’s all the translation of what you might describe as a spirit. . . It’s that pattern. . . Independent of its material substrate. Well, Christ’s spirit lives on. . . It’s had a massive effect across time. Well, is that an answer to the question? Did his body resurrect? I don’t know. I don’t know it is the accounts aren’t clear for one thing what the accounts mean isn’t clear. I don’t know what happens to a person if they bring themselves completely into alignment. I’ve had intimations of what that might mean. We don’t understand the world very well. We don’t understand how the world could be mastered, if it was mastered completely. We don’t know how an individual might be able to manage that. We don’t know what transformations that might make possible.[18]
Jordan Peterson said that the possibility that others are using the same definitions of God and faith are virtually zero. Francis Schaefer said something very similar. Francis Schaeffer said we need to understand the thought forms of the current culture’s philosophy in order to speak to it.
Peterson states that your actions show what you actually believe:
I’m an existentialist, in some sense, and what that means is that I believe that what people believe to be true is what they act out, not what they say.[19]
Peterson says that he acts as if God exists. This definition of existentialist is similar to Schaeffer’s because Schaeffer included the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard under the classification of “Christian existentialism.”[20] Like Schaeffer, Peterson wants to help people have genuine meaning, but he has trouble reconciling his beliefs regarding evolution—the philosopher Alvin Plantinga suggests these are not actually as contradictory as usually thought[21]—and Christianity, as well as Christ’s final judgment in Revelation when a sword appears from his mouth to judge the earth.[22]
Francis Schaeffer underscores the importance of defining the word “God”:
Semantics (linguistic analysis) for a certain period made up the heart of modern philosophical study in the Anglo-Saxon world. Though the Christian cannot accept this study as a philosophy, there is no reason why he should not be glad for the concept that words need to be defined before they can be used in communication. As Christians, we must understand that there is no word so meaningless as the word god until it is defined. No word has been used to teach absolutely opposite concepts as much as the word god. Consequently, let us not be confused. There is much “spirituality about us today that relates itself to the word god or to the idea god; but this is not what we are talking about. Biblical truth and spirituality is not a relationship to the word god, or to the idea god. It is a relationship to the One who is there. This is an entirely different concept.[23]
Like Peterson, Schaeffer realizes the almost inevitability that if words are not defined clearly, heresy, paganism, and orthodoxy become indistinguishable. Ignoring the words of intellectuals like Peterson decreases the ability of the church to preach the gospel or even communicate concepts at all. It could be argued that in terms of comparing different thought-forms to the thought-forms of Christianity in a publicly digestible fashion, the closest living person the world has to Francis Schaeffer is Jordan Peterson.
Because Christians tend to speak from the viewpoint of God, modern secular man tends to view their words with great skepticism.[24] This skepticism may be broken down with an acknowledgement of the possibility that the Christian’s words could be a fallible projection of the Christian onto Christ, while at the same time maintaining that the Christ’s word and the Bible are absolute truth. A thing can be absolutely true and still be misapplied. Likewise, a focus on a true thing is not necessarily edifying or productive if done to an unedifying extreme or in an unedifying manner. Speaking fragments of God’s word as if it is the whole can be damaging. This is why the reformed branch of the church stresses human fallibility in applying scripture.
But studying Francis Schaeffer can bring about the realization of some paradoxes in his thought. Francis Schaeffer claims in his book The God Who is There (1968) that art during the Reformation used extremely accurate portrayals of reality that flowed from the worldview of a creator who communicates truth.[25] He goes through various levels of culture showing how the philosophical shifts that crossed the Atlantic in the early 1900’s changed art.[26]Escape from Reason (also 1968) is broader in scope and refers to various works of art throughout history. Schaeffer states that artists[27] such as Picasso, as well as others, saw the spirit of the age earlier than other people did, and shifted their portrayals of reality as a result. Impressionism includes an awareness of both fallibility of perception and a presaging of quantum physics, that if you look at even light itself, it changes dynamically.[28] This is the kind of art that Viktor Frankl refers to when he states that a painter’s purpose is to show his own point of view rather than the way the world actually is.[29]
The Chicago Museum of Art sadly touches on none of the philosophy that is in the background of the impressionists. The museum only mentions technique. In Escape From Reason, Schaeffer shows the various paths of philosophy as he sees it shaping art up to the present day. Schaeffer states that philosophy was closer to a straight line of reasoning, but when the philosopher Frederic Hegel came upon the scene, he broke this line into two directions so that something could both be true and not true and the same time.[30] From this, Schaeffer reasons, springs (post)modern art. The subjectivity in art is shown in Picasso’s work when he paints things from many directions (cubism) because there is no one right direction.[31] At other times, however, when he paints his wife, he shifts back into realistic painting.[32] Some claim that postmodernism was a result of the effects of war, but this view ignores the fact that, according to Thomas Sowell in Intellectuals and Society,[33] World War I veterans thought of themselves as heroes, only to be painted as victims in schoolbooks in some countries. The underlying philosophy (thought forms) had fundamentally changed, states Schaeffer. This affected art. Schaeffer emphasizes that it was not the technology and war that caused the shift in art, but Hegel disrupting philosophical thought that shifted the course of art. Schaeffer says that modern art followed the renaissance replacing man at the center of the universe, but extended it farther so that all of the particulars completely lose meaning.[32.5] Modern art is good art in the sense that it accurately portrays a materialist worldview.
It is worthy of note that the cover of a recent history book written from a Christian point of view[34] features a work of art by Salvador Dali. Schaeffer states that in this phase of Dali’s work, “the Christian symbols are painted using their connotative effect, rather than verbalized, as in the new theology.”[35] Schaefer states that Salvador Dali’s depiction of Christ’s crucifixion, do not depict “Christ dying on the cross in history.”[35.5] This is shown also in Dali thinking of his wife as the eucharist.[36] Schaeffer draws a distinction between the culture of the Reformation which was Biblical, and the culture of the Renaissance which had a grace-nature dichotomy which eventually degenerated into the determinism of modernism.[37]
Some say that we should preach Christ crucified and not John Calvin, but this is like saying that we should preach Christ and not C. S. Lewis. Calvin and Lewis were scholars who tried to bridge the average person’s understanding so that they could understand Scripture in the way it was originally understood. Attempting to convert the thought patterns of the past into the thought patters of their current time was the goal of both Calvin and Lewis. Schaeffer says that this is the only way to speak intelligibly to others whose minds have been steeped in nihilism, otherwise, church language will pierce the eyes and go straight through the back of the skull without taking residence in the mind. When Paul the metaphor of the soldier, he was speaking in line with Christ’s parable in Matthew 21, wherein the nature of obedience is analyzed in narrative form. Calvin sought to emphasize the seriousness with which Paul places on disciplining his body. You might as well say that Calvin should not preach Paul when he should preach Christ. Paul is not preaching his own righteousness by saying that he disciplines his body to be obedient to God.[38] To say that we should preach Christ and not Calvin smacks of anti-intellectualism. Who preaches John Calvin? When one hears that we should not preach Calvin to people, this may have the effect of praying less, because Psalms teach us how to pray, and Calvin (or any commentator on the psalms for that matter) attempt to teach what the Psalms mean. Augustine has a commentary of the psalms, but no one says that reading Augustine is antithetical to preaching Christ crucified. The non-reformed parts of the body of Christ claim that Calvinists preach Calvin, and the reformed parts of the body of Christ state that Calvin preached Augustine, Paul, and Christ. The latter say that Calvin may be more precise than Augustine on matters of predestination—not determinism[39]—and that Augustine explicitly confirms predestination’s existence.[40]
Or is John Calvin biased? Does Calvin not preach the gospel? Is John Calvin subjective? Does Calvin project himself onto God? Calvin called the psalms “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul.”[41] Is psalms an anatomy of the human soul given by God, or is it just an analogy? Is it the revealed literal word of God, or the revealed analogical word of God? If it is an anatomy, is it an anatomy of Adam’s soul or Christ’s? C. S. Lewis seems to think that some of the psalms anatomize a fallen man’s soul, and not Christ’s. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the psalms are “Christ’s vicarious prayer for the church.”[42] Similarly, modern art claims that the impression of reality is more important than the way reality actually is. Does that make Psalms which value impression of reality, over reality modern art? This is a paradox. Both the psalms and modern art have partially subjective natures. To shy away from such a paradox would be a defect of the epistemic will and a failure to learn.
To fear paradoxes, ignore them, and claim that only contradictions exist and not paradoxes would be to seek to suppress God’s glory. C. S. Lewis spoke about the importance of the Christian focusing on those parts of the Bible that he does not understand:
If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know. [43]
It is God’s prerogative to hide secrets, but proverbs states that it is the king’s prerogative to uncover those secrets.[44] In fact, that’s the beginning of the book of proverbs: an invitation to study the secrets of the wise, or at least their riddles.[45] The alternative is to fall into ruts in a false humility, of fear of the world, and be afraid of paradoxes. To ignore parts of the Bible that do not make sense to the Christian is to deny in practice that all of Scripture is for the edification of the Christian.[46] To ignore parts of the Bible that do not make sense to the Christian is for the Christian to start to die. It is easier to relegate paradoxes and the book of proverbs into prideful pryings into God’s secrets, but this is an excuse. Science could also be called a prideful prying into God’s secrets, but this is a ridiculous statement. Nature declares the glory of God,[47] and so do the parts of Scripture that are confusing. God created some puzzles to be solved. The alternative is to deny that Christ grew in knowledge and stature as a child,[48] and was a docetic ghost, and not really a man. Doing so would devalue his legal status as a savior that is fully God and fully man. Paradoxes are the bridges connecting what you do not know and what you do know. Far from being a sign of arrogance, the right pursuit of paradoxes can be a profound act of humility in accepting that one is not God, does not know everything, and needs to learn in order to grow and be conformed to Christ’s image. You cannot learn if you already know the answers. The possibility also exists that a paradox is incomprehensible to fallible finite minds, but this should inspire awe and wonder, not a legalistic bible-rutting of portions of scripture already understood, while ignoring that not yet understood, but given for edification.
A heretic once said that the world needs the church’s confession rather than its technical expertise. This is echoed in the the character of father Zossima, in Dostoevsky’s the brothers karamazov, which heavily influenced Jordan Peterson. To ignore borrowed capital is to ignore God’s command to spoil the Egyptians. When the Israelites were delivered from Egypt today were commanded to take the Egyptians rare jewelry. This is the narrative version of the idea that all truth is God’s truth. The theologian Cornelius Van Till called this idea “borrowed capital,” wherein all truth is really borrowed from a Christian worldview. To ignore borrowed capital is to throw away tools given by God, or to bury a talent underground where it is of no profit. The alternative is to go into ruts of vain repetition, using plaquetostic parts of ideas rather than the whole. As a result, a Christian ghetto is created, limiting the ability of the church to communicate the gospel to anyone outside itself. Disabling the church’s ability to fulfill the Great Commission is not unsinful.
It may be wondered whether Christians who make light of Jordan Peterson’s achievements invalidate them in order to elevate the orthodoxy of those doing the invalidating. Jordan Peterson’s success in being all things to all people using all of the available means at his disposal should not be denounced as syncretism and cast aside without analysis. To do so would be to isolate the church further into the Christian ghetto. Paul and Solomon reclaimed Capital taken from Christianity, and this is the basis of presuppositional apologetics of which Francis Schaefer tried to live out in the world. To cast aside Jordan Peterson’s perspective is to hinder the spread of the Gospel in a false attempt to protect the gospel. Avoiding the perspective of popular intellectuals is damaging because it hurts the church’s ability to interact with the thought-forms of the culture and this is precisely what Jordan Peterson appears to be stumbling onto. In fact, Jordan Peterson’s unique perspective may lead to being closer to thanking God starts after him then mere repetition of already known orthodoxy. To ignore Jordan Peterson as just a repetition of the Gospel mixed with psychology is to ignore his dealing with the thought patterns of the culture. To ignore the thought patterns of the culture is to do a death blow to the church’s ability to communicate outside itself. All truth is God’s truth, and ignoring this fact hurts the church and the world, because the church is Christ’s body.
Francis Schaeffer makes a similar distinction:
Mature Christians, and Christians in places of responsibility, must summon the courage to distinguish, under the Holy Spirit, between unchangeable biblical truth and the things which merely become comfortable for us. Often one hears people speak of “the simple gospel only,” when in reality they do not really care enough for those outside the churches, or their own children for that matter, to be willing to face what preaching the simple gospel may mean in a changing and complex situation.[49]
The gospel must be preached to the thought-forms of the current generation, or its ability to be understood is eviscerated. Otherwise, according to Schaeffer, the Holy Spirit is grieved, and “an intellectual and cultural snobbishness or elitism” develops.[50] Part of this involves considering paradoxes. Paradoxes can be a bridge between what you know and what you do. You can choose to see paradoxes as a box of ego pain to avoid, or as a puzzle to learn from and grow.
Works Cited
[1] Cornford, Francis, Trans. The Republic of Plato. 1941. (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 178-179.
[2] Roberts, Robert, and W. Jay Wood. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012),
[4] Wood, W. Jay. Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998).
[5]Schaeffer, Francis. The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy: The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, He Is There an He Is Not Silent. 1968, 1968, 1972. (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990. God faith truth), 214, 231, 257.
When we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.
Jacobs, Alan. How to Think: a Survival Guide for a World at Odds. (New York: Currency, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017), 22.
The Perfect Critic. T.S. Eliot. 1921. The Sacred Wood; Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Accessed May 10, 2020. https://www.bartleby.com/200/sw2.html.
[18] Transliminal. “Jordan B Peterson: *Spring 2017*: Full-length Interview.” YouTube. May 05, 2017. Accessed September 20, 2021. https://youtu.be/YC1pvjyKYr4?t=5746.
A song version of this transcript is here: Akira the Don “I Act As If God Exists Ft. Jordan Peterson ( ＪＢＰＷＡＶＥ ).” YouTube. August 29, 2018. Accessed September 20, 2021. https://youtu.be/SG7mKcIVvQQ.
[21] Plantinga, Alvin. Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
[22] In his Biblical lecture series, the psychologist Jordan Peterson makes a statement regarding Christ’s role in the book of Revelation:
“When Christ comes back in the Book of Revelation to judge people, virtually everyone gets cast out with the chaff, and not saved with the wheat. He says something very interesting. He appears in the vision with a sword coming out of his mouth. It’s a horrifying vision. He divides humanity into the damned and the saved. He says something very interesting. He says, ‘to those who are neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth.’ It’s a disgust metaphor, right? What it says is that the worst punishment isn’t waiting for those who committed to something and did wrong: the worst punishment is reserved for those who committed to nothing and stayed on the fence.”
The book of Revelation features a vision of Christ that most people have not ever seen, of Christ in judgment. This is not a form of meekness.
Virtual reality may encourage Gnosticism. Science Fiction sometimes predicts the future in regards to technology. Brave New World had more to say about society than just technology. The use of new technology comes with costs as well as benefits.
The title of this essay is taken from a former music journalist and creator of Meaningwave, Akira the Don.[2] Virtual reality is the next form of extreme pleasure that is likely to dominate the next seven years. But extreme pleasure shatters us. Pleasure is understood through the part of the brain that processes that feeling, so it is fitting that extreme pleasure would be stylized through the cranium channeling vast amounts of electrical signals as in the above image. The original quote of Lewis from the Four Loves has to do with eros, and virtual reality has great potential for distorting the nature of this love. Virtual reality is likely to be the next step on the magician’s bargain Lewis speaks of in the Abolition of Man. A bargain that gives pleasure for losing one’s humanity. Lewis takes the dark side of technology to similar extremes in That Hideous Strength. The abolition of man will likely take a more virtual theme.
Increasing usage of virtual reality in the coming decades will in all likelihood create a new sense of Gnosticism, or belief that the world is a mere simulation or unreality covering actual reality. Elon Musk, who has recently stated that he is ramping up the rocket schedules of his company to build a technocracy on Mars,[3] believes that we are living in a simulation of reality. If you can escape from a simulated world in a game, why can’t you do the same in the real world? In reality, death is not always a portal to an improved existence, unless the inability to sin is considered an improved existence.[4]
If this trend continues, cities will increasingly replicate the cyber-punk genre, in which cyber-technology is increasingly prevalent in all aspects of civilized life to the point that it consumes the organic. You may think this is jumping to conclusions. For comparison, consider the fact that the idea of cell phones and self-opening doors were thought completely unrealistic when Star Trek[5] presented them six decades ago. Now every five-year-old is born with a cell-phone in its mouth. Now the poorest hobo in America can walk through an automatic door at Walmart. The crew of the starship Enterprise used phasers to stun people. Now our police have tazers. In Star Trek: The Next Generation,[6] people talked to each other through the medium of video through vast distances instantaneously, and now we have zoom. In the show, they had replicators that could recreate anything in the physical universe, such as food and technology, and while this may not be the case now, we do have microwaves, keurigs, and 3d printers. Bill Gates is building machines that can turn human waste into clean drinking water.[7] The Enterprise had holodecks on the enterprise, that could simulate reality in three dimensions, and now we have nascent virtual reality games. Star Trek has a fairly good track record of predicting the future of technology.
Star Trek: The Next Generation drew on Isaac Azimov’s[8] robot novels,[9] which featured positronic men, like Data the android. While there are no androids, Elon Musk regularly explains why his automated cars crash,[10] and is beginning to work on computer interfaces in human brains.[11] H. G. Well’s Island of Dr. Moreau[12] predicted human-animal hybrid[13] experimentation—in 1896.The paralyzed man best known for portraying Superman lobbied for stem cell research before his death.[14] Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451[15] predicted reality tv shows conducted through Zoom. Much of this technology was just science fiction decades ago.
Despite Aldous Huxley’s indication[16] that Brave New World[17] takes place after 1984,[18] and despite Neil Postman’s belief[19] that Brave New World was the true prophecy and 1984 the false, the first few pages of 1984 feature more televisions than all of Brave New World. Huxley’s vision features copious amounts of state funded test tube babies, state-funded predestination shock therapy rooms to guide infants to their predetermined socioeconomic castes, state funded birth control, state funded orgies, state funded narcotics, and dopamine spraying water hoses to pacify the unruly, all governed by a global dictatorship. Neil Postman wrote a book called Technopoly[20] 29 years ago, in which he states that those who most understand new technology first become an aristocracy. Lawmakers may be concerned with the addictive patterns that social media use can entail,[21] but lawmakers can be blocked from the newest version of media if its owners see fit.[22] What is unthinkable now may be reality soon.
Visions of a false cyber world have been presented through anime for decades, one of which[23] heavily inspired The Matrix,[24] a film which ended with a song about breaking the system entitled “Wake up,” written by a politically charged alternative rock band Rage Against the Machine.[25] Now the terms “redpill” and “bluepill” have become political jargon in our culture. If the waves of depression that followed heavily digitally produced 2009 movie Avatar[26] are any indication, the cyber trend will likely lead to the aforementioned Gnosticism of wanting to break out of a superficially perfect world. In Technopoly, Neil Postman warns that there is a cost to adopting the terms of machinery and applying them to biology and theology.[27]There is no free-will without the context of dangerous consequences in the best of all possible worlds.
Works Cited
[1] Lewis, Clive. The Four Loves. 1960. (New York City: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1988).
[2] Don, Akira The. “Welcome to the Neo Psychedelic Age 🍄 Https://T.co/xwiL5PGWfc.” Twitter, Twitter, 4 Nov. 2020, twitter.com/akirathedon/status/1323855867687653377.
[3] Musk, Elon. “Accelerating Starship Development to Build the Martian Technocracy.” Twitter, Twitter, 23 June 2019, twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1142890265369202688.
[5] Handel, Alan, Julian Jones, William Shatner, Chip Walter, and William Shatner. 2007. How William Shatner changed the world. Woodland Hills, CA: Allumination FilmWorks. https://youtu.be/LC64B7GWums
[6] Encounter at Farpoint. Season 1 Episode 1. Star trek, the next generation. Roddenberry, Gene, Michael Piller, Rick Berman, David Livingston, Lee Sheldon, Alan J. Adler, Hilary Bader, et al. September 28, 1987. [California]: Paramount Pictures.
[12] Wells, H. G. Nar. Jonathan Kent. The Island of Doctor Moreau. 1896. (Connecticut: Tantor Audio, 2006).
[13] Regalado, Antonio, and Meeyoung Song. “Fusing Human DNA and a Cow Egg Creates Embryo, World-Wide Debate.” The Wall Street Journal. March 19, 2002. Accessed April 24, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1016494298564652120.
The path to glory for the Christian is necessarily one of suffering. It is the agonizing way, the narrow gate, which leads to life (Matt. 7:13-14). The easy road is the devil’s lie.
Emotion being neutral in and of itself has implications for the concept of drudgery. Of all the definitions and uses of drudgery mentioned below, the work itself is considered distasteful in and of itself, rather than as an attitude that is placed onto neutral work by the worker. Christ endured drudgery. Drudgery is really a synonym for suffering. Suffering is a part of life. Christ endured suffering. Drudgery is often Christian’s duty.
The word “drudgery” is sometimes used in ways that is at odds with many dictionaries. Some say that “work done without desire is drudgery,” but this is sometimes explicitly contradictory of some well documented literary and historical uses of the word that carry the current connotation. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “drudgery” as “The occupation of a drudge; mean or servile labour; wearisome toil; dull or distasteful work.”[2] This term has an independent denotative attitudinal component embedded in the term itself. To place an attitude from the agent onto this word is outside the definition. Drudgery can exist inside or outside of duty. Drudgery can exist inside or outside of either desire or despair. Drudgery is work that tends to inculcate an attitude, but not an attitude itself. Attitudes toward work in the abstract are outside of the definition of the word. The work may be distasteful, dull, or wearisome, but that is not generally due to the attitude of the worker. Drudgery is a type of work that is inherently wearisome, but definitionally, it is not a thing to which work can be degenerated. Drudgery is work. To say that work can be treated of as drudgery is not helpful, and is a corruption of the definitions presented.
The Oxford English Dictionary states a number of prominent times in which the word “drudgery” was used in literature. The first is of 16th century English clergyman Robert Crowely using drudgery in his book, as a neutral word in 1548:”To tyll the grounde and doe your other droudgery.” In this sentence, drudgery is roughly synonymous with tilling the ground, or farming. Farming is not usually considered bad in and of itself. Some consider farming to be more natural than living in a more urban environment. Crowely uses the word drudgery as attitudinally independent of the worker. The worker does not impose the meaning of drudgery onto the work. The work is drudgery regardless of how the worker feels about the work.
The next use of the word drudgery is from 17th century English clergyman and metaphysical poet George Herbert in 1633:”A servant with this clause Makes drudgerie divine.” Although this line in the poem “The Elixir” has more connotative negativity, it is still mainly neutral, because it implies that a servant can do drudgery with desire to please his divine master. This is in contrast to the way that some in the present day use the term. Herbert uses drudgery in a way that makes drudgery as a relatively attitudinally neutral noun that can be accomplished with desire. Herbert uses the word drudgery as attitudinally independent of the worker.
The next use of the word drudgery is from 17th century Church of England clergyman and historian Peter Helyn to a similarly fairly neutral use of the word in 1652: “Who put them to all drudgeries and servile works.” This again shows the word to be used in a sense that denotes menial work that may be implied to be of a low social position, thus making the one doing the drudgery rather ordinary. The word is here still used as a neutral noun that has no attitudinal component. One imposes an attitude onto the social level of work. The social level of work in the 21st century is not necessarily always drudgery as it likely was in the 17th century, but it is likely to be more manual and therefore more menial and wearying. Helyn uses the word drudgery as attitudinally independent of the worker.
The next use of the word drudgery is from Lawyer, diarist, and biographer of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell. In 1791 Boswell wrote: “He now relieved the drudgery of his Dictionary..[.]by taking an active part in the composition of ‘The Adventurer’.” The use of the word “adventurer” in contrast to the act of “drudgery” is in line with the former uses of the word to denote very mechanical and socially low work. The agent is to be relieved from the work itself, which is wearisome. The agent is not changing his attitude toward his work. The work of the drudgery of compiling and editing the dictionary itself is not changing. The worker is doing different work (writing a composition involving an adventurer) that is less inherently wearisome and dull. The worker is not changing his attitude toward the dull work of compiling the dictionary. The worker is not repenting for calling the wearisome work of compiling the dictionary wearisome. Samuel Johnson uses the word drudgery as attitudinally independent of the worker.
The next use of the word drudgery is from 19th century scholar M. Pattison, who in a book on Milton in 1879 wrote: “If there is any literary drudgery more mechanical than another, it is generally supposed to be that of making a dictionary.” As in the other examples, the word drudgery is used in regard to its mechanical or menial nature, not the attitude of the one doing the drudgery. The drudgery is itself neutral and mechanical, with no attitudinal component. The speaker is stating, in agreement with the other proof above, that compiling a dictionary is inherently wearisome, and therefore qualifies as “drudgery,” regardless of the thought of the compiler. It is not within the realm of possibility that a compiler of a dictionary would find such compiling to not be drudgery, but it is nevertheless stated as a usual state of affairs that dictionary compiling is indeed inherently drudgery regardless of how the author feels about the work of compiling the dictionary in and of itself. Pattison uses the word drudgery as attitudinally independent of the worker.
The next use of the word drudgery is from the 19th century Unitarian heretic W. C. Gannett, who wrote in his 1890 book Blessed be Drudgery that: “Drudgery is the gray Angel of Success.” Again, the use of the word drudgery is in regard to its mechanical, menial, and low nature, but not to the attitude of the agent. Drudgery is the gray angel, so the work, or drudgery, is gray, but the agent need not be. Gannett appears to have written this book in the presence of the slave-trade, with reference to how evil in the world can be used to show that drudgery can be a blessing. If drudgery can be a blessing, it is unlikely to be inherently sinful. It is unlikely that if the slaves bore a good attitude toward their masters, the work itself would be less draining, wearisome, and painful. The work slaves tended to do in fields harvesting crops tended to be inherently hard, menial labor. The attitude of the slave cannot greatly change the hardness of the labor, so it qualifies as drudgery, regardless of how the laborer feels about the labor. Heretic Gannett uses the word drudgery as attitudinally independent of the worker.
In all of these usages, the word “drudgery” is inherently wearisome and dull work, independent of the worker. To Crowley, Farming and drudgery are roughly synonymous. If the worker enjoys the work, and Herbert suggests, the work is still drudgery, even though it is done with desire. Helyn uses the word drudgery to suggest servile labor, of which the agent is attitudinally neutral, except in so far as it implies that a low social “ordinary” position is thought undesirable. Again, the attitude of the agent does not determine the work to be “drudgery”; The work in and of itself is referred to as “drudgery.” Boswell uses the word drudgery in contrast with adventure, but he assigns neither sin nor attitude to the agent of the drudgery. Similarly, Pattison makes reference to the mechanical and menial state of the work itself, not the attitude of the worker. Gannett also references the mechanical and menial state of the work, probably in relation to social position of slavery, and the weariness attendant to it, but he does not mention the attitude of the slaves, thus making the drudgery attitudinally independent of the worker.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines “drudgery” much like the Oxford English Dictionary: “dull, fatiguing and unrelieved work or expenditure of effort : work of an irksome or menial nature done through necessity.”[3] Again, the definition points to the work itself a having negative states that encourage a state of mind as necessary response to the work itself, not as an optional attitude toward the work. Some work, such as road construction, is hard on the body. As such, it could be construed as drudgery, because it is inherently wearisome and dull work. The attitude of the work does not enter into the definition, because the work itself has the qualities of drudgery embedded into it.
The American Heritage International College Dictionary similarly defines drudgery as “Tedious, menial, or unpleasant work.”[4] The Oxford Universal Dictionary defines “drudgery” as “The occupation of a drudge; mean, servile, or wearisome toil; distasteful work.”[5] As in the other definitions, the work itself is considered distasteful in and of itself, rather than as an attitude that is placed onto neutral work by the worker. It is not the drudge who makes work drudgery; It is God who makes the work drudgery.
Most translations of the Bible do not use the word “drudgery.” The semi-heretical paraphrase of the Bible The Message uses it, but even then, it is used as a concept attitudinally independent of the agent doing the work: “I’ve known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather.” Eugene Peterson uses drudgery in his paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 11:22-27 as a neutral concept to Paul. In his paraphrase, Peterson has Paul engaging in drudgery, while not sinning through his attitude. Peterson then uses drudgery as an antonym to leadership in his paraphrase of Hebrews 13:17: “Be responsive to your pastoral leaders. Listen to their counsel. They are alert to the condition of your lives and work under the strict supervision of God. Contribute to the joy of their leadership, not its drudgery. Why would you want to make things harder for them?” Peterson uses the word drudgery to refer to work that is itself difficult. Even though the work is made harder by agents, the work itself is not made difficult or wearisome by the agent doing the drudgery, thus the term in this example is altitudinally independent of the worker.
In all of these definitions and uses, the work itself is considered distasteful in and of itself, rather than as an attitude that is placed onto neutral work by the worker. It is not the worker who makes work drudgery; It is God who makes work drudgery. Drudgery is a neutral concept of inherently difficult work. In these definitions, it is attitudinally independent of the worker. In periods of extreme stress, however, C. S. Lewis goes so far as to indicate that God enjoys the prayers of sadness of those in hard times more than prayers of those joyful in good times.
If doing God’s will when all trace of God appears to have vanished from the world is drudgery, then 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐫𝐮𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐲 by dragging his cross, while bleeding, across Jerusalem to the hill of The Skull where he would die. If such is the case, 𝐝𝐫𝐮𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞, and to endure it is to imitate Christ, and as far from sin as the Earth is from Epislon Eridani 5. Without drudgery, virtue would be superficial. If such premises are true, then to call drudgery sin would be Damnably sinful inconsistency.
If Romans 6:18 does accurately translate as “slaves to righteousness,” then the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “drudgery” being akin to “what slaves do,” applies. A drudge is a slave, or something close to it. Drudgery is what drudges do. Are drudges not ordinary? Sometimes drudgery is duty with desire. Christ wanted to please the Father, did He not? He was dragging a cross like a slave. This appears to meet the requirements for the term. Sometimes drudgery is inevitable. Pilgrim drudged his way through a slew of despair.[5.5] It was an inevitable part of his journey. If drudgery were a sin, then pain would be a sin. If pain were a sin, pain killer addiction would be ensured. But pain is not a sin. In the end, drudgery is synonymous with suffering.
Many theologians have stated or implied throughout the centuries that suffering is necessary for salvation. In Knowing God, J. I. Packer states that to equate the image of Christ with suffering is the mark of an immature Christian, and that such images “equate devotion with brooding over Christ’s physical sufferings.”[6] Many of the collected prayers of the Puritans emphatically equate devotion with the feeling of guilt, sometimes analogizing the nails in Christ’s body to the Christian’s sin.[7] One of the prayers in this book was written by Richard Baxter, who unfortunately equated devotion—specifically believing the promises of Heaven—with being suicidal.[8] Packer suggests reading Baxter.[9] But the opposite extreme is to equate the image of Christ with the complete lack of suffering, thus creating a Christ of Docetism, who does not feel pain. The German-Dutchman Thomas à Kempis said that Christ was in “constant anguish” on earth.[10] In Knowing Christ, Mark Jones states that many reformed authors thought of Christ’s existence while on earth as a “perpetual gethsemane.”[11] The Presbyterian scholar J. Ligon Duncan mentions in his book on suffering that there is no recorded mention of Christ laughing, but plenty of his sorrowing, and that the job of the Christian is to suffer.[12] Christ is not known as a man of laughters. The martyr Eric Bonhoeffer said that says that the psalms are “Christ’s vicarious prayer for the church.”[13] But if Christ had experienced no pain, there would have been no need for the psalms, much less the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah.
But the Biblical Christ has such great pain that he was sorrowful unto death (Matthew 26:38). He quoted many psalms, but he never quoted Canticles, and on the cross, he quoted Psalm 22 in asking why God had forsaken him. Christ’s life featured great suffering that can could be called worse than drudgery—torture and crucifixion. Jesus did not want to die, but he focused on the kingdom of Heaven.[13.5] To some, the image of this is an idol, but to others, the cross is in part a realization that to engage in life one must live in the center of suffering to live in the world through “voluntary suffering transcended.”[14] Without an awareness of the drudgery that Christ endured, Easter is hollow. Instead of speaking of drudgery, Christ calls us to seek first the kingdom of God as “our master concern,” to use Robert C. Roberts’s phrase, [15] however drudgerous the journey may be. Sometimes, drudgery is duty, regardless of the attitude of the drudger. Adam’s fall sent men into an estate of sin and drudgery.[15.5] The point of the phrase using the word is that those who do work without focusing on the kingdom of God will have more pain than if they focus on the Celestial City as their master concern, even while drudging through the slough of despond near the terrestrial city.
If emotion can be good or bad, so can drudgery. Drudgery is a fact, not an attitude. Christ did drudgery. Drudgery is synonymous with suffering. Christ suffered worst than anyone can or ever will.[16] Much of life is suffering. Suffering is the Christian’s duty. Drudgery is often the Christian’s divinely ordained duty.
Works Cited
[1] Jones, Mark. Knowing Christ. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2015), 112.
The Enemy’s human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that suffering is an essential part of what He calls Redemption; so that a faith which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying. I am speaking now of diffused suffering over a long period such as the war will produce. Of course, at the precise moment of terror, bereavement, or physical pain, you may catch your man when his reason is temporarily suspended. But even then, if he applies to Enemy headquarters, I have found that the post is nearly always defended
C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letter V
The philosophical undercurrents of children’s stories, like comic books, is of profound importance, for they are a sign of what children may be taught to think through this medium. It is fitting for a comic book symbol to be used in comparison with this quotation. Lewis would consider comic books a legitimate area of study as a form of mythology. Lewis would not hold in contempt such a medium that considers the moral virtue of suffering and the problem of evil. There are more connections between Murdock’s and Lewis’s suffering than appear on first sight. They involve connecting but deviating lines of the necessity of suffering in redemption. Their faiths have different paths.
It is important to remember that to understand a culture, one must consider the highest and lowest forms of literature, according to the philosopher Slavoj Žižek.[1] The highest form of literature could be considered philosophical works or semi-philosophical works such as The Screwtape Letters and The Abolition of Man. The lowest form of literature might be children’s books such as the one that Lewis begins The Abolition of Man with, or books children read, such as comic books, like Daredevil.[2] Lewis’s third science fiction novel was subtitled “A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups,”[3] implying that many think fairy-tales childish. Similarly, the most well known spokesman for Marvel Comics, the late Stan Lee, said that comic book superheroes “are like fairy-tales for grown-ups.”[3.5] These may be the most complex morality plays[4] that some people ever experience, even though they may be simple. In the past, I have sought to show how Lewis’s words are so far-reaching that they can be applied even to children’s books. This is an important area of study because it is The Abolition of Man which begins by uncovering the philosophical underpinnings of a children’s book:
I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text books. That is why I have chosen as the starting-point for these lectures a little book on English intended for ‘boys and girls in the upper forms of schools’. I do not think the authors of this book (there were two of them) intended any harm, and I owe them, or their publisher, good language for sending me a complimentary copy. At the same time I shall have nothing good to say of them. Here is a pretty predicament. I do not want to pillory two modest practicing schoolmasters who were doing the best they knew: but I cannot be silent about what I think the actual tendency of their work. I therefore propose to conceal their names. I shall refer to these gentlemen as Gaius and Titius and to their book as The Green Book. But I promise you there is such a book and I have it on my shelves.[5]
Lewis goes on to critique the ideas presented by this children’s textbook. He did not disdain to consider the philosophy embodied in children’s books.
Lewis’s words on most things have such broad applicability to so much of life that merely attaching his words to a picture of him would likely not please him. Lewis is not a symbol of suffering, pain, or the virtue of pain. Therefore, a picture of Lewis with words attached by him on the nature of suffering would not be meaningful for the purpose of communicating the value of suffering in Lewis’s eyes. Nor is there a connection that Lewis and Murdoch are both Catholic. Lewis was not Catholic. He was Anglican. Lewis grew up in an Irish setting. Murdock grew up in an Irish New York neighborhood.
Lewis would likely take some interest in comic books as a popular form of mythology. Some artists have stated that comic books are a mythology.[6] They sometimes say this more boldly with titles like, “the new gods,” of the DC universe. Lewis was very interested in mythology and in The Weight of Glory[7] Lewis said that humans have the tendency to personify things and make gods everywhere. This tendency is alive and well in comic books. They are no longer just for children with childish themes. Watchmen,[8]which was written by an occultist,[9]was listed in Time’s 100 best novels.[10] Lewis was also interested in the filtering of religions and cults into popular culture in the form of literature, whether it be for children or adults. He referenced a satirical magazine which was a sort of proto-comic-book— Punch—in The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature.[11] He wrote books for children and books for adults. If Lewis were present to see how far comic books have filtered into present day culture, he would not hold them in contempt, but be curious about how they rework old mythologies and ideas into the present. He would not seek to hold them in contempt, and put them in their place. He would welcome their presence in libraries, because they would be portals to understanding how the common child tends to think.
God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata — of creatures that worked like machines — would hardly be worth creating.[12]
A world without evil would have no suffering, but a world without evil would have robots. Bravery is only possible in a world of suffering and evil.
Daredevil embodies the idea that suffering is necessary to live in such a world, because it viscerally demonstrates the moral virtue of suffering, as well as the inner conflict of the protagonist enjoying the chastisement of criminals, while suffering from the realization that his enjoyment may be more vicious than virtuous.[13] The main character of Daredevil, Matt Mardock, enjoys hurting criminals. This is unlike Lewis in that Lewis did not enjoy writing The Screwtape Letters[14] which features copious amounts of cynicism. In another way, Lewis is similar to Murdock, because Lewis enjoyed formal debating, as well as constantly arguing with Owen Barfield.[15] According to Alan Jacobs, when Lewis lost some theological arguments, he rethought the value of debating.[16] Similarly to Lewis, Murdoch’s suffering changed him. If there is no pain in the world, there is no bravery. If Lewis had not been called to serve in the Army and been injured, he would not have entered Oxford University, and may have never written anything. [16.5] And the subreddit in his name may never have existed. Attaching a picture about pain to a man who is happy would not communicate the moral virtue of suffering.
Again, this quotation about suffering is not merely about suffering, but about the necessity of suffering in redemption. In Screwtape Letter 5, Lewis pounds the point that there is no redemption or sanctification without suffering:
Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.[17]
This is a description of Christ on the cross—the center of redemption in the Christian worldview. Lewis indicates that without Christ obeying when he felt abandoned by His Father, there is no redemption. And neither would there be sanctification. The cross cannot be sanitized into a mere symbol of redemption without purging the infinite cost of God becoming man and feeling pain and death.
How does this relate to the picture of Matt Murdock? Look at his eyes. His eyes are covered with glasses which are rose-colored, or blood-colored, depending on your point of view. He endured the suffering of losing his sight, and pain at heightened senses as a result of an accident. Murdock eventually comes to view this as Lewis does, that the suffering is meant to make him better spiritually—through suffering. Look at the blood on his knuckles. He seeks out suffering, because he thinks it will make him better. The purpose of the quotation is to highlight the moral virtue of suffering in certain circumstances under a certain worldview. A picture of Lewis would not convey this message. It would convey that C. S. Lewis is knowledgeable, and that we should do what he says. We have no picture of Lewis in pain for the wounds he sustained during World War I. Therefore, a picture of Matt Murdoch with signs of pain on his body have more signifying power than a picture of Lewis.
There are also similarities between Lewis and the recent film incarnation of Daredevil in that they struggled to see how God can allow evil to exist. Lewis’s faith was tested when his wife died. He maintained his faith in God. Eventually, Murdock’s faith is tested. Unlike Lewis, he loses his faith in God. Similar to Christ, Lewis had times when the awareness of God’s presence was eclipsed by pain, where he could only act consistently with his knowledge of God’s love when its awareness had left him. If Christ had not suffered in this manner, he could not have felt the Christian’s sorrows.[18] The quotation form The Screwtape Letters is relevant in this because Lewis says “that a faith which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying.” Murdock took on the shape of a demon, and then lost his faith in God, while Lewis, who sometimes write in the guise of a demon, did not.
Lewis would not hold comic books in contempt because he did not hold children’s books in contempt. Lewis would be fine with some of his words being used to consider the meaning of such books. Lewis might even study comic books if they gauged the public’s use of mythology. Lewis might find it interesting that such a medium considered theological issues such as the moral virtue of suffering and philosophical issues such as the problem of evil. Matt Murdock and Lewis have more in common than is commonly believed. Their ends were not the same. Lewis would warn us not to become snobs in this matter and reject an entire medium.[19] We should apply Lewis’s ideas to wherever they reside, whether in his children’s books, Marvel’s children’s books, DC’s children’s books, Japanese cartoons, science fiction, or Lewis’s science fiction.
Works Cited
[1] Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998.
[2] Especially the Netflix adaptation. Steven DeKnight creators. Daredevil. DeKnight Productions and Netflix, 2015-2018. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/title/80018294.
[4] Jordan Peterson stated that professional wrestling is a simplified morality play. Comics may be seen in a similar light. “Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority Transcript.” Jordan Peterson. April 17, 2018. Accessed March 05, 2021. https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/transcripts/biblical-series-iii/.
[5] Lewis, Clive. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. 1943. (Québec: Samzdat university Press, 2014), 1. http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/AbolitionofMan.pdf.
[6] Waid, Mark Dale, and Alex Ross. Kingdom Come. New York: DC Comics, 2012.
[7] Lewis, Clive. The Weight of Glory: and other addresses. 1949. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1980), 1-13.
[8] Moore, Alan, John Higgins, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. 1987. (Burbank: DC Comics, 2019).
[9] Babcock, Jay. “MAGIC IS AFOOT: A Conversation with ALAN MOORE about the Arts and the Occult.” Arthur Magazine. February 19, 2021. Accessed March 05, 2021. https://arthurmag.com/2007/05/10/1815/#more-1815.
[14] Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. 1942. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001).
[15]Jacobs, Alan.The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis. (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 89.
[16] Ibid. 229. Lewis states the following about the dangers of the apologist:
One last word. I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters, into the Reality — from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself.
C. S. Lewis makes some curious statements regarding finding joy in humor relating to the dynamics of human pair bonding.[0] These statements create a contrast between Lewis, who was an Oxford Don, and John Owen, who was an Oxford administrator. The main thrust, or at least perception, of Owen’s work is that of mortifying sin. The perception of Lewis is largely of writing highly allegorical children’s stories which contain themes mirrored in his apologetic works. Symbolically, Owen’s attitude toward the mortification of sin can be compared to Batman, while Lewis’s attitude in this instance can be compared to Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. Lewis’s attitude in writing The Four Loves can be compared symbolically to another Batman villain, Hugo Strange. Hugo Strange can be seen as a middle ground between the seriousness of Batman and the joy of cruelty in the Joker.
In The Four Loves,[1] Lewis makes a statement about the propriety of jokes about intimate physical relationships:
We must not be totally serious about Venus. Indeed we can’t be totally serious without doing violence to our humanity. It is not for nothing that every language and literature in the world is full of jokes about sex. Many of them may be dull or disgusting and nearly all of them are old. But we must insist that they embody an attitude to Venus which in the long run endangers the Christian life far less than a reverential gravity. We must not attempt to find an absolute in the flesh. Banish play and laughter from the bed of love and you may let in a false goddess. (99)
Lewis speaks about the danger of completely obliterating jokes about intimate physical relationships. He sees more danger in doing this than in shaming joy in such jokes.
The background for this image is two statements that are given by John Owen and C. S. Lewis that are at odds with each other.
When speaking on the value or disvalue of making jokes about intimate physical relationships, Lewis makes the following statement in The Four Loves:
We can’t be totally serious without doing violence to our humanity. (99)
The propriety of making this statement in the immediate context of 1960’s may be questioned. It should be noted that Lewis also mentions Ovid ambivalently earlier in the book (41). This places Lewis in this matter on the side of valuing joking, even about intimate physical relationships. This is a view that is symbolically similar to the Joker.
A few centuries earlier, a Puritan academic administrator at the University of Oxford made a statement that could be viewed as the opposite point of view in The Mortification of Sin:
This is a view symbolically similar to Batman, who never jokes, and whose focus in life is symbolically the limiting of sin through force. Given the title of Owen’s other well-known book, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, it is reasonable to assume that Lewis and Owen are at odds over the propriety of jokes about intimate physical relationships. If Lewis had lived a little longer, he may or may not have considered “a reverential gravity” to be less dangerous than jokes of this nature. The Mortification of Sin is a treatise on Romans 8:13, which is reverential gravity in the extreme, and casts shame on joy of such jokes.
C. S. Lewis stated that a culture should not warn against a vice when a shift toward the opposite vice is imminent on a national scale. He was using the Aristotelian model in which a virtue is balanced between two vices, like a pendulum held still between two extremes. But culture is a pendulum that moves back and forth through iterations of time, especially in a democracy. So just as a western culture was moving away from stiff upper lips to unbridled passion, C. S. Lewis warned about the dangers of Stoicism. Case in point: He wrote in The Four Loves that adulterous love is closer to “Love Himself” than “self-protective lovelessness”—in 1960, on the eve of a major shift toward mass promiscuity:
I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. (169-170)
If he had lived longer to see the general shift of this decade, he may have backtracked on some of these statements, or at least some of his phrasing choices. This may not have been the case had it happened. Lewis gives warnings about over-emphasis on eros as well as the danger of each love becoming a god and then a demon. But he may have been more careful if he had had a wider view of the future of society taking joy in what was formally shamed as evil.
Considered in this context, the Batarang in Hugo Strange’s hand is symbolic of a more disciplined and concerned view of the enjoyment of such jokes. The figure shown in this image is Hugo Strange from the Arkham series of Batman videogames. [2.4]In general, The Joker and Batman are polar opposites. Batman is always serious, because he views the entire world as serious, as he is locked in the view of the world as a tragedy. The Joker is never serious, because he views the entire world as an absurdist play―meaningless―in which he takes joy. While Lewis is mentioned as loving practical jokes in the preface to The Weight of Glory,[2.5] John Owen is not usually remembered as joking, because he is usually extremely serious.
Hugo Strange represents a sort of middle ground between the Oxford Puritan Owen and the Oxford Don Lewis. Strange is similar to the dehumanized conditioners that Lewis speaks of inthe Abolition of Man. Strange is a psychologist who sees humans as objects to be manipulated. Batman is a semi-governmental agent who uses force to instill fear. The Joker is a criminal who gives full vent to his passions, no matter how depraved his object of joy.
In picture of Hugo Strang holding the batarang, it could be said that Strange holding the batarang at arm’s length is like Lewis viewing the utility of jokes about intimate physical relationships. The Batarang might be the cutting foundations of Puritan theology, which is not known for its laxity. The blood on the Batarang is the Joker’s. The blood represents Lewis analyzing the jokes about intimate physical relationships and concluding that they represent less harm to the Christian life than a reverential gravity. In other words, being a joker in regards to the concept of intimate physical relationships is, in Lewis’s view, less dangerous than being coldly serious like Batman, or John Owen. This does not even touch the presence of double entendres in Canticles. References to Ephesians 5 are usually made to reject the propriety of making such jokes, but if there are such double meanings regarding this subject in Canticles [3] and Proverbs, [4] and both are considered canon canon, it is uncertain if that is the proper interpretation. If Canticles and Proverbs were not canon, there would be no such issue.
So in summary, for the first picture above of Hugo Strange holding a batarang, the blood represents jokes about intimate physical relationships. The batarang represents efforts to stop jokes in general. Hugo Strange represents Lewis analyzing the concept of jokes about intimate physical relationships. Lewis made questionable value statements about joy regarding these kind of jokes. Another Oxford person made value statements in the opposite direction. It is unclear which statement is more authoritative, because Canticles is in a grey area.
Works Cited
[0] This phrasing is taken from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Kassar, Mario, John Brancato, Michael Ferris, Jonathan Mostow, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, et al. 2003. Terminator 3: rise of the machines. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video.
[1] Lewis, Clive. The Four Loves. 1960. (New York City: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1988), 41, 99, 169-170.
[2] Owen, John. The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 9.
[2.4] Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Batman: Arkham City. Rock Steady Studios, 2011.Humor tends to be inherently transgressive of boundaries.
[2.5] Lewis, Clive. The Weight of Glory: and other addresses. 1949. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1980), 1-13.
[3] See Canticles 4:12-15, 7:6-9. III, Tremper Longman. How to Read Proverbs. (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 137.
[4] See Proverbs 5:15-20, 30:18-20. III, Tremper Longman. How to Read Proverbs. (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 136.
This essay is the fifth part of a series on The Abolition of Man,[1] the first four of which can be found here, here, here, and here.
In The Abolition of Man, Lewis lays out his definition of the magician’s bargain for power which reduces man to material bit by bit. Lewis’s character in The Magician’s Nephew[2] loses himself for power which reducing him bit by bit. Lewis lays out the idea of “time pockets” to understand history of cultures in The Problem of Pain.[3] Lewis creates a narrative version of this metaphor in the wood between the worlds in The Magician’s Nephew. Lewis in The Abolition of Man shows the consequences of stripping objective morality and holding one part of it as all of ethics. Lewis then shows the effects of taking the survival of the species as all of ethics—making power a god. Lewis uses a narrative version of this idea by Jadis in The Magician’s Nephew who uses a part of ethics to destroy her entire world. Uncle Andrew’s words regarding power in the same book mirrors the views of Jadis. The abolition of man profoundly affects the sense of beauty. Lewis shows this in the narrative of The Magician’s Nephew by describing Jadis as cruel, and Uncle Andrew, and Digory, but not Polly, viewing her as beautiful. Lewis mirrors this language more precisely in The Screwtape Letters.[4]The Magician’s Nephew ends with the former magician praising the beauty of Jadis.
In The Abolition of Man. Lewis compares the slow reduction of man to raw material to the magician’s bargain:
I have described as a ‘magician’s bargain’ that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak. (38)
This description of the magician’s bargain bears a striking resemblance to the attitude of Uncle Andrew. He cares as much for his nephew as he cares for the guinea-pig he teleported into and left in the limbo of the wood between the worlds. He is willing to sacrifice his nephew just as he sacrificed a guinea pig.
Uncle Andrew’s description of his loss of health bears similarity to the description of the magician’s bargain mentioned by Lewis in The Abolition of Man:
“Meanwhile,” continued Uncle Andrew, “I was learning a good deal in other ways (it wouldn’t be proper to explain them to a child) about Magic in general. That meant that I came to have a fair idea what sort of things might be in the box. By various tests I narrowed down the possibilities. I had to get to know some—well, some devilish queer people, and go through some very disagreeable experiences. That was what turned my head grey. One doesn’t become a magician for nothing. My health broke down in the end. But I got better. And at last I actually knew.”
Uncle Andrew also bears the opinion of many modern scientists who conceive of science as a savior of mankind, a supposedly more inherently rational replacement for religion. Lewis indicates that the manipulation of matter is different from true and deeper knowledge.
In the Problem of Pain, Lewis sets up a metaphor for time as “time pockets” to understand culture in history:
Different ages and cultures can be regarded as “pockets” in relation to one another. I said, a few pages back, that different ages excelled in different virtues. If, then, you are ever tempted to think that we modern Western Europeans cannot really be so very bad because we are, comparatively speaking, humane — if, in other words, you think God might be content with us on that ground — ask yourself whether you think God ought to have been content with the cruelty of cruel ages because they excelled in courage or chastity. You will see at once that this is an impossibility. From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors looks to us, you may get some inkling how our softness, worldliness, and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to God. (37)
According to Lewis, the way to do this comparison between different ages and our own is to read old books. Reading old books is a way of attempting to gain perspective on the current era. When the main characters of The Magician’s Nephew take Uncle Andrew’s magic rings to teleport the wood between the worlds, they are in an analogous situation to the “time pockets” that Lewis speaks of in The Problem of Pain. When Polly and Digory enter one of the worlds, they encounter worlds with very different moralities than their own.
In The Abolition of Man, Lewis speaks about the destructive power of stripping objective ethics into subjective morality:
Since I can see no answer to these questions, I draw the following conclusions. This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) ‘ideologies’, all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in. (21)
Lewis deconstructs the so-called progress of morality to be in actuality breaking objective ethics and holding onto parts of it as gods. And as Lewis is fond of repeating in The Four Loves, if they become gods, then they become demons. Note that Jadis in The Magician’s Nephew is unable to create a new sun, but is able to destroy worlds. “Progression” of morality leads to the abolition of man.
In The Abolition of Man, Lewis describes the consequences of taking the survival of the human race from the Tao and treating it as the whole of ethical reality:
The latter point is not always sufficiently emphasized, because those who write on social matters have not yet learned to imitate the physicists by always including Time among the dimensions. In order to understand fully what Man’s power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes — the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct—the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future. (29-30)
If goodness is power over nature, then goodness becomes power of some men over other men, and ultimately survival. This stripped-down ethical perspective leads to the abolition of man.
Lewis’s words regarding the gradual abolition of ethics that leads to the abolition of man are extremely similar to Jadis’s words in The Magician’s Nephew:
“It was my sister’s fault,” said the Queen. “She drove me to it. May the curse of all the Powers rest upon her forever! At any moment I was ready to make peace—yes, and to spare her life too, if only she would yield me the throne. But she would not. Her pride has destroyed the whole world. Even after the war had begun, there was a solemn promise that neither side would use Magic. But when she broke her promise, what could I do? Fool! As if she did not know that I had more Magic than she. She even knew that I had the secret of the Deplorable Word. Did she think—she was always weakling—that I would not use it?”
“What was it?” said Digory.
“That was the secret of secrets,” said Queen Jadis. “It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it. But the ancient kings were weak and soft-hearted and bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it. I did not use it until she forced me to it. I fought and fought to over-come her by every other means. I poured out the blood of my armies like water——”
“Beast!” muttered Polly.
“The last great battle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn itself. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen, and the accursed woman, my sister, at the head of her rebels was half way up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another’s faces. She flashed her horrible, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Victory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Victory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.”
….
“Don’t you understand?” said the Queen (still speaking to Digory). “I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will.”
“It was rather hard luck on them, all the same,” said he.
“I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”
Digory suddenly remembered that Uncle Andrew had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much grander when Queen Jadis said them; perhaps because Uncle Andrew was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful.
Digory and Polly are repulsed by Jadis’s discordant morality that takes power and survival out of the Tao of objective ethics and idolizes power. Once power and manipulation of others as if they were just atoms to be split is assumed to be the whole of ethics, Jadis uses the equivalent of nuclear weapons to kill every living person on her planet.
Jadis’s words regarding how the morality of the common people do not apply to her mirror Uncle Andrew’s words earlier in The Magician’s Nephew:
“Rotten?” said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. “Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I’m sure, and I’m very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys—and servants—and women—and even people in general, can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.”
As shown above, Digory realizes that there is a commonality between Uncle Andrew’s and Jadis’s words, and that she is more impressive than Uncle Andrew because of her physical stature and beauty. Both Jadis and Uncle Andrew believe that they are above normal people’s morality. The Abolition of morals and the abolition of man also affects man’s ability to perceive beauty. After Digory and Polly go through the pools in the wood between the worlds to reach the world of Charn, Digory’s perception of beauty is shaped by the idea of beauty reflecting power.
In the Abolition of Man, Lewis, by quoting Plato’s Republic, lays out the profound effects on aesthetics that necessarily occur when truth is thought to be subjective:
The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful. In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.’ (8)
Because humans are only partially rational, their upbringing has a profound effect on what they think is beautiful. If they are taught to believe that objective ethics is just subjective morality, this has a profound effect on their belief that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
This aesthetic shift is shown earlier in The Magician’s Nephew, when Polly and Digory find Jadis frozen on the world of Charn, they have starkly different perceptions of the beauty of Jadis:
The faces here looked very strong and proud and happy, but they looked cruel. A little further on they looked crueller. Further on again, they were still cruel but they no longer looked happy. They were even despairing faces: as if the people they belonged to had done dreadful things and also suffered dreadful things. The last figure of all was the most interesting—a woman even more richly dressed than the others, very tall (but every figure in that room was taller than the people of our world), with a look of such fierceness and pride that it took your breath away. Yet she was beautiful too. Years afterwards when he was an old man, Digory said he had never in all his life known a woman so beautiful. It is only fair to add that Polly always said she couldn’t see anything specially beautiful about her.
It is worth noticing that despite going through a interplanetary adventure together, Digory and Polly have no romantic connection. It is explicitly mentioned that Digory, as an old man, remembers the beauty of Jadis .
The description of Jadis mirrors Lewis’s description in letter 20 of The Screwtape Letters of the two Venuses of sexual taste that the demons have taught the humans to be attracted to at various times:
As regards the male taste we have varied a good deal. At one time we have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men’s vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium. . . .
[Y]ou will still find it possible to encourage your patient’s desires in one of two directions. You will find, if you look carefully into any human’s heart, that he is haunted by at least two imaginary women — a terrestrial and an infernal Venus, and that his desire differs qualitatively according to its object. There is one type for which his desire is such as to be naturally amenable to the Enemy — readily mixed with charity, readily obedient to marriage, coloured all through with that golden light of reverence and naturalness which we detest; there is another type which he desires brutally, and desires to desire brutally, a type best used to draw him away from marriage altogether but which, even within marriage, he would tend to treat as a slave, an idol, or an accomplice. His love for the first might involve what the Enemy calls evil, but only accidentally; the man would wish that she was not someone else’s wife and be sorry that he could not love her lawfully. But in the second type, the felt evil is what he wants; it is that “tang” in the flavour which he is after. In the face, it is the visible animality, or sulkiness, or craft, or cruelty which he likes and in the body, something quite different from what he ordinarily calls Beauty, something he may even, in a sane hour, describe as ugliness, but which, by our art, can be made to play on the raw nerve of his private obsession. (39-40)
Jadis bears many marks of the infernal Venus, and Polly bears many marks of the terrestrial Venus. Despite this, any romantic feeling mentioned of Digory’s is that of the witch who destroyed her world with magic—Jadis.
The Magician’s Nephew ends with the former magician’s description of Jadis:
“But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.”
The aesthetic terminus of the abolition of man in The Magician’s Nephew is that the magician views a world-ending witch as beautiful—and not just beautiful, but the most beautiful woman. If Digory’s apparent lack of romantic relationships in the book that follows The Magician’s Nephew is any indication, his beholding Jadis as beautiful may have deterred him from marriage.[5]
In The Abolition of Man, Lewis lays out his definition of the magician’s bargain for power which reduces man to material bit by bit. Lewis’s character in The Magician’s Nephew loses himself for power which reducing him bit by bit. Lewis lays out the idea of “time pockets” to understand history of cultures in The Problem of Pain. Lewis creates a narrative version of this metaphor in the wood between the worlds in The Magician’s Nephew. Lewis in The Abolition of Man shows the consequences of stripping objective morality and holding one part of it as all of ethics. Lewis then shows the effects of taking the survival of the species as all of ethics—making power a god. Lewis uses a narrative version of this idea by Jadis in The Magician’s Nephew who uses a part of ethics to destroy her entire world. Uncle Andrew’s words regarding power in the same book mirrors the views of Jadis. The abolition of man profoundly affects the sense of beauty. Lewis shows this in the narrative of The Magician’s Nephew by describing Jadis as cruel, and Uncle Andrew, and Digory, but not Polly, viewing her as beautiful. Lewis mirrors this language more precisely in The Screwtape Letters. The Magician’s Nephew ends with the former magician praising the beauty of Jadis.
Works Cited
[1] Lewis, Clive. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. 1943. (Québec: Samzdat university Press, 2014), 8, 21, 29-30, 38. http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/AbolitionofMan.pdf.
[5] Whether or not Lewis intended to draw a contrast between Digory and Polly of The Magician’s Nephew and Aravis and Cor of The Horse and His Boy, there is a contrast. In the Magician’s Nephew, the magician, Uncle Andrew, and his nephew, Digory, admire Jadis. It is specifically mentioned that both of them thought of Jadis as the most beautiful woman they had ever seen and maintained that until they died as bachelors. It is specifically mentioned that Digory and Polly remain lifelong friends.
This is in contrast to Cor and Aravis, who like Digory and Polly, quarrel, have an adventure. Unlike Digory and Polly, they marry and have a son. The fact that The Magician’s Nephew was written two years after The Horse and HIs Boy suggests that Lewis was consciously making a contrast between the more medievally minded Narnians and the more cynical Britons. Lewis may be suggesting that if Digory had read similar stories as Cor and was brought up in Narnia, his relation to Polly might have been very different. Either way, a clear contrast exists in the relations between the main characters of these works.
This essay is the fourth part of a series on The Abolition of Man,[1] the first three of which can be found here, here, and here.
Neon Genesis Evangelion[2] is a sort of an anime version of TheAbolition of Man. The Abolition of Man is largely about the consequences of reducing mere to raw material. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the entire human race is literally reduced to raw material. Neon Genesis Evangelion has themes tied to 2001: A Space Odyssey[3] for the melding of machinery to humans, specifically vehicles. As a result, in Neon Genesis Evangelion, major elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey are mimicked. The revulsion of the reduction of man into raw material in Neon Genesis Evangelion, as well as Lewis’s aforementioned works, is in contrast to the relative optimism of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of particular note is Neon Genesis Evangelion’s portrayal of humanity melding with technology similar to 2001, but which C. S. Lewis rejected in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. Clarke’s description of extraterrestrial explorers is far more optimistic about technology than That Hideous Strength’s and Neon Genesis Evangelion’s in its description of bodies of technology. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Neon Genesis Evangelion also features the merging of consciousnesses as a result of personality being disintegrated into raw material.
Neon Genesis Evangelion has themes tied to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Themes of melding with technology is a very prominent theme in both works. The beginning of the movie of 2001[4] shows an evolution of primates who are given the knowledge of how to use the tool of a donkey’s jaw bone to kill other primates. This may be a veiled reference to the Old-Testament judge Samson. The bone is thrown by the primate into the sky and is replaced with a satellite, implying that man has not changed from the material from which he is presented as having descended. The climax of the movie involves a computer evolving beyond his programming and murdering his creators, except for one human who deactivates the computer. The end of the movie concludes with a psychedelic wormhole leading to the protagonist seeing himself at various stages of life around the monolith seen at the beginning of the movie. The final form of the protagonist is as a transcendent ubermench baby orbiting the earth.[5] As will be shown below, the book is more explicit that this is indeed what happened. He becomes the vehicle.
Of particular note is Neon Genesis Evangelion’s idea of melding with technology similar to 2001, but which C. S. Lewis rejected in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. In That Hideous Strength, a shadowy British government organization called NICE, which is really transhumanist cult, seeks to become machines and executes its members. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, a shadowy Japanese government organization is the last line of defense against machines from space, uses child soldiers working in machines, and in the end literally liquifies the entire human race.The series is replete with the idea of the characters becoming one with the vehicle, or EVAs. This is also shown graphically in one episode in which an angel takes control of Rei’s EVA and grapples Shinji’s EVA. Shinji, the protagonist, has a vision wherein he is asked by each of the female characters if they want to become one with them. The female character Rei rejects this idea and allows her EVA to self-destruct. As mentioned earlier, the protagonist, Shinji, becomes absorbed in the EVA, in effect becoming the vehicle. This alarms the humans, so they seek to return him to his non-liquid and absorbed self. In contrast to the sense wonder of a similar process in 2001, the melding of the vehicle and the person in Neon Genesis Evangelion is met with disgust and revulsion. Melding with technology in Evangelion is presented as unnatural, a form of the abolition of man, not a means of effortlessly transcending planes of reality, but entering into madness.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the elements of thebook form of 2001: A Space Odyssey are mimicked. Instead of a computer murdering its creator, the human race is revealed to be the descendants of an alien extraterrestrial race which attacks another alien extraterrestrial race. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, technology of the humans advances to the state that two groups of humans attack each other with the help of an angel who is really an idealized version of the protagonist from another timeline, and at the same time, the spirit of the first being sent to colonize the earth eons in the past. The series ends with a psychedelic journey of the character flying in the character of a Nietzschean ubermench similar to 2001. The redone conclusion to the original series of Neon Genesis Evangelion, The End of Evangelion, [6]involves a series of of multi-verses in which the characters are shown to exist in various different universes, all of which revolve around the protagonist. The protagonist has become the new ubermensch. All of the other people in the world besides him and the character Asuka have melded into the same consciousness.
In 2001, Arthur Clarke describes his vision of merging with technology after the astronaut Dave Bowman deactivates Hal 9000:
And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood: as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and plastic.
In These, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.
But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter. (186)
This description of extraterrestrial beings merging their bodies and minds with technology is a more optimistic view of technology than those presented in That Hideous Strength and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In That Hideous Strength, technology is revealed to be a tool for demonic beings to destroy humanity; in Neon Genesis Evangelion, technology is more ambiguous, but has roughly the same effect. If Shinji is not turned into a monster, he shows signs of post traumatic stress as a result of being a child soldier.
Clarke continues his description of the extraterrestrial explorers who created the monoliths in 2001, A Space Odyssey:
Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into dust.
Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of the sea. (187)
Clarke’s description of these extraterrestrial explorers is far more optimistic about bodies of technology than That Hideous Strength and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The machines in 2001 are spoken of as more advanced by the narrator in a way similar to how Filostrato extols the wonders of the machine people on the moon in That Hideous Strength. In 2001, organic and mechanical bodies alike are just twitching shells to be discarded once the next stage of evolution occurs. Neon Genesis Evangelion and That Hideous Strength feature horrifying visions of death from accessing technology from beyond the world.
Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Neon Genesis Evangelion also features the merging of consciousnesses as a result of personality being disintegrated into raw material. The mecha genre, which is centered around people controlling giant robots, is deconstructed, and the psyches of the characters are taken apart and sometimes violated mentally to the sound of Handel’s Messiah. All of the faults of the characters are heavily emphasized to the point that their entire characters consist almost entirely of flaws with no virtue. At the end of the series, a mass psychology session of the entire human race takes place, in which each person is seen in terms of the other person. This is also an allusion to Childhood’s end,[7] which involves the combining of all of humanity into one consciousness. C. S. Lewis stated that he liked the book Childhood’s end.[8]The Abolition of Man has similar themes to it.
In Childhood’s End, which was written 15 years before 2001, Clarke has one of his characters speak of technology in less positive terms:
Was it possible, he sometimes said to himself that despite all their enormous intelligence the Overlords did not really understand mankind, and were making a terrible mistake from the best of motives? Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man? (125)
Clarke’s tone towards technology in Childhood’s End is more consistent with Neon Genesis Evangelion and That Hideous Strength than is 2001. More research is needed to understand why this is the case.
In The End of Evangelion, which is a sort of extended ending to the series, all humans on earth are turned into jelly, and crosses show where they have merged into the collective. In all of these works, the main theme dealt with is the idea that all men are atoms that are bounding off of each other without any real moral quality. The End of Evangelion ends with the two main characters in an eternal mortal embrace, trying to choke each other to death. Every other human joined the instrumentality project, and became united by being reduced to raw material, or LCL. Man has been abolished. All that remains are two individuals who refuse to be united to each other.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a sort of an anime version of TheAbolition of Man. The Abolition of Man is largely about the consequences of reducing mere to raw material. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the entire human race is literally reduced to raw material. Neon Genesis Evangelion has themes tied to 2001: A Space Odyssey for the melding of machinery to humans, specifically vehicles. As a result, in Neon Genesis Evangelion, major elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey are mimicked. The revulsion of the reduction of man into raw material in Neon Genesis Evangelion, as well as Lewis’s aforementioned works, is in contrast to the relative optimism of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of particular note is the Neon Genesis Evangelion’s idea of melding with technology similar to 2001, but which C. S. Lewis rejected in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. Clarke’s description of extraterrestrial explorers is far more optimistic about technology than That Hideous Strength’s and Neon Genesis Evangelion’s in its description of bodies of technology. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Neon Genesis Evangelion also features the merging of consciousnesses as a result of personality being disintegrated into raw material.
Works Cited
[1] Lewis, Clive. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. 1943. (Québec: Samzdat university Press), 2014. http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/AbolitionofMan.pdf.
[2] Anno, Hideaki. 1996. Neon genesis evangelion. Noriko Kobayashi: Tokyo TV.
[3] Clarke, Arthur Charles. 2001: A Space Odyssey. (United States: Penguin Books, 2016).
[4]2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Keir Dullea,Douglas Rain. United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp, 1968.
[5] The musical theme of the movie also informs this view: Also Spake Zarathustra by Richard Strauss takes its name from a book by Frederic Nietzsche with the same name. The book of 2001 features a non-linear plot wherein the value of the ubermensch (Superman) is extolled due to the proverbially “death of God,” though not in those terms. The musical theme for the 1978 movie of Superman shows great similarity with Strauss’s theme.
Superman: The Movie. Dir. Richard Donner. Perf. Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve. Warner Bros., 1978.
Note: This essay refers to events in The End of Evangelion[1]as if it were a part of the main series, even though time incongruities exist between the two. This essay is the second part of a series on The Abolition of man,[2] the first of which can be found here.
Neon Genesis Evangelion[3] is a sort of anime version of TheAbolition of Man. While Neon Genesis Evangelion has similar themes regarding materialism, it only has shallow references to Christianity. The protagonist of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji, is the personification of Lewis’s “man without a chest.” Shinji’s father is a personification of the self-preservation instinct of the species removed from the rest of the Tao, which Lewis speaks of in the Abolition of Man. The cosmology for the entire series of Neon Genesis Evangelion is that the very material that made humans is at war with itself. The Abolition of Man is largely about the consequences of reducing men to raw material as a direct consequence of rejecting objective ethics. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the entire human race is literally reduced to raw material. Due to the inhuman conditioner-father of Gendo Ikari, his son Shinji is at a loss as to what to do. After objective of ethics has been jettisoned, and men’s chests have been removed, all that remains is conquering nature, which according to Lewis, really means men conquering other men. The series concludes with the entire human race being reduced to orange liquid, symbolizing man’s abolition of itself.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a sort of an anime version of TheAbolition of Man. Neon Genesis Evangelion has similar themes regarding materialism, but only has a shallow reference to Christianity and none about evangelism. Many Christian symbols are used because they are convenient symbols for self-sacrifice, but lack any real depth of meaning beyond that. One of the main female characters, Major Misato Katsuragi, wears a cross that has no meaning for her other than that it belonged to her father whom she hates. Yet she continues to wear the cross every day and work at the organization (NERV) that took him away from her through a catastrophic accident. Misato eventually gives her life to protect the protagonist, but there is no evidence that she is a Christian.
The protagonist of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji, is the personification of Lewis’s “man without a chest.” Neon Genesis Evangelion features characters who are the reverse of gender archetypes of the past, in other words “men without chests.” The main male character, Shinji Ikari, is the epitome of Lewis’s famous line about men without chests: he is unheroic, cowardly, entirely cerebral, and dominated by the female characters. He even runs away from the battle numerous times despite his being the last main defender of the entire earth against “angels” who attack earth in a vague yet disconnected possible reference to the book of Revelation. The protagonist of Neon Genesis Evangelion is a modern man or modern man-child. He has no chest. He has no virtue. The English dub of this show went a step farther than in the past by casting a voice actor modified by science to be stripped of gender and sex and then reassembled.[4] At one point in the anime, the protagonist is completely converted into raw material (LCL) and absorbed into a machine before being reconstituted into his body.
Shinji’s father is a personification of the self-preservation instinct of the species removed from the rest of the Tao (objective ethics), Lewis speaks of in the Abolition of Man. In contrast to the protagonist, Shinji, Shnji’s father is dictatorial, visceral, and has no humanity. All steel and no velvet.[5] The protagonist is all impulses and no resolve. All velvet and no steel. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, this survival instinct turns on itself when a rival government organization attacks NERV to stop the human instrumentality project which will unite all men on earth by reducing them into raw material. Shinji’s father is a personification of a dehumanized conditioner who has little concern for his own children as they are reduced into instruments for his will.
The cosmology for the entire series of Neon Genesis Evangelion is that the very material that made humans is at war with itself. Lewis states that because men have rejected objective morality, arbitrary fragments of the Tao (or objective morality) are held to exclusively rather than together naturally with the other principles of the Tao. This is this case with Shinji’s father, NERV Commander Gendo Ikari, as well as the entire the cosmology for the series, because the very material that made humans is at war with itself. Lilith and Adam are extraterrestrial entities that seeded the Earth with life. These entities are beings of pure energy on the one hand, and pure material on the other, so that the very fabric of the universe is at war with itself. This is mirrored by NERV reducing humans to raw material by stripping them of their souls to pilot machines, and rival governmental agencies warring with each other. No natural moral law can come from anything in the Neon Genesis Evangelion universe because they did not create the substance of the universe itself. The head of NERV grasps a precept of the tao that he happened to find, the instinct for self-preservation, and “rides it to death” in Lewis’s words.
The Abolition of Man is largely about the consequences of reducing men to raw material as a direct consequence of rejecting objective ethics. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the entire human race is literally reduced to raw material. C. S. Lewis’s words from the Abolition of Man could be reworded to be about all of the characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion, especially Gendo Ikari, the father of the protagonist of Neon Genesis Evangelion: It is not that Gendo is a hard man. He is not a man at all. Stepping outside of humanity, he has stepped into the void. Nor is his son an unhappy man. He is not a man at all. He is an artefact. NERV’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man. Shinji repeatedly sees himself as viewed by his father as merely an instrument, which is an accurate interpretation. He turns his son and the entire human race into raw material. He has power to make some men as he pleases (Lewis 29). If nature is taken as the standard, “whatever men can do to nature, they can do to each other, and to some extent, always do.”[6]
Due to the inhuman conditioner-father of Gendo Ikari, his son, Shinji, is at a loss as to what to do. He sees no benefit in giving his life to preserve the human race because his estrangement from his father particularly results in a alienation from all of humanity generally. At times he is impelled to action through seeing the suffering of others, but left to himself, he becomes a coward who sees his father’s instincts at war with themselves. He sees self-preservation to be “dying in the deserts of vast futurity,” to use Lewis’s words (17). When the judge becomes the jury, all judgement is thrown into confusion, and the hierarchy of values loses its solidity and is reduced into liquid. All reality becomes sentimental, and this abolition of values is symbolically represented shown at the end of the series proper by Shinji going through a psychedelic experience into overlapping realities.
After objective ethics has been jettisoned, and men’s chest have been removed, all that remains is conquering nature, which really means men conquering other men. Lewis’s phrase about men not having chests pales in comparison to the line about them not being men at all because they have been so completely separated from objective ethics that they regard themselves as just raw material to be manipulated by inhuman conditioners. It has been Preordained by their conditioners how they are to use the tools. Shinji’s father does this by giving him mechanical tools of a giant robot to pilot, but at the same time strips away his mother and strips his sister down, extracts their souls, and into places them into machines. The conquering of nature by man in reality becomes the rejection of absolute ethics and in the conquering of Man by nature. The conquering of raw material really means Shinji’s father, Commander Gendo Ikari, ability to arbitrarily apply parts of the Tao and join humanity together by dividing them from their material existence.
Shinji’s instincts are constantly at war with one another. In the beginning of the series, Shinji is overcome by sympathy for Rei, his sister of sorts who is a clone of his mother of whom he has no memory. By the end of the series when he realizes that Rei’s body has been separated from her soul and that her clones are just smiling husks of raw material. The chief NERV scientist, Naoko Akagi, strangles the original natural-born Rei, and then throws herself off of a platform onto a massive super-computer. Her brain is then inserted into said supercomputer. Her daughter, Ritsuko Akagi, clones Rei, eventually reduces the clones to liquid by killing them, and then is shot by Gendo. Ritsuko treats the Rei clones as raw material to be destroyed at a moment’s notice. Gendo treats Ritsuko as raw material to be dstroyed at a moment’s notice. Shinji no longer has any connection to objective ethics in the Tao, so he and Rei are ambivalent about whether the universe has any stable existence, and the entire population of the world is reduced to raw material, symbolized by crosses covering the globe. Lewis’s statement about the phrase “killing bad men” has been replaced with “liquidizing unsocial elements” is given literal form when the entire human race is reduced to an orange liquid called “LCL,” which is the blood of the angel trapped at the bottom of NERV HQ, which produced human race eons in the past. This orange liquid is also symbolic of the Abolition of Man.
Some say that the mild Rei is a superior character to the energetic Asuka because Rei is able to transcend her circumstances while Asuka is beholden to others. The problem with assuming that Rei is a superior character for these reasons is that if Rei is or becomes all soul, she has no soul, and becomes a husk that can be fitted to do anything. She acts as if she does not have a will of her own most of the time. Even when she denies Gendo to reunite with his dead wife, she gives the choice to Shinji, and is not deciding for herself. It may be asked whether Asuka is superior than Rei in terms of being natural. Rei is lowercase stoic in the sense of being able to withstand great amounts of pain, but she is not clearly differentiated from automata at the metaphysical level. Even when she transcends physical limitations due to being linin, she largely is still raw material that can be shaped by Shinji. Instead of being shaped by Gendo, she is shaped by Shinji. It is not that Rei is a good woman. She is not a woman at all. Stepping outside of humanity, she has stepped into the void. Nor is she an unhappy woman. She is not a woman at all. She is an artefact. Shinji’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Rei.
One reason that Evangelion has such powerful staying power in the cultural consciousness is that archetypes have been drilled down until nothing unnecessary remains. Each of the women represents different stages of modern day feminism. Misato is relatively mentally stable, is possibly the most powerful human on earth, but her words to encourage Shinji that imply to some an actual offering of her body to Shinji rather than dying words haunt the memory of her character. Asuka is mentally stable on the surface, but being mindraped by Azrael and being reminded of her mother’s mental stability and the stress of defending the human race and having no strong man to support breaks her. Rei could be seen as the most mentally stable due to living like a machine with almost no affection from her father/husband. Rei could be seen as the spirit transcended the ailments of the body, or could be seen as someone so broken that she only functions as a machine. These are the three stages of feminism, or the abolishment of woman: The powerful confident woman who dies, the confident girl who breaks down through psychic assaults, and the machine. Asuka is the abolition of woman in anime.
The analogue to the female trio in Evangelion is the powerful confident man in Gendo, the confident and lecherous Kaji, and the confident and then broken Shinji. Shinji is the abolition of man in anime. Gendo and Kaji present to Shinji no reason why he should survive outside of the survival instinct, and Shinji finds this wanting. Misato and Asuka’s mother present to Asuka the survival of the human race through the means of human reproduction as a reason to survive. After being mindraped by an angel, Asuka finds this reason wanting. No other anime has entered the public consciousness to this degree to ask the question whether it is better to be (to live) or not to be (to die). Evangelion’s answer is that there is no rational reason why a person would want to continue living. This is the conclusion of modern existentialism, and that it is only through a leap into non-reason that people continue to live and act as if there is purpose to the world. This is in sharp contrast to the Christian worldview. In contrast to the savior figure that everyone wants Shinji to be that he can never be, Christ is the savior of those chosen by God to be saved.
Similar to the Nasuverse, in the Evangelion universe, there is no ultimate standard of right or wrong. There is only force in the long run. There is no clear differentiation between creator and creation in either story. All of the evangelion universe is at war with itself. Gendo’s final conquest is Rei, but when Shinji becomes stronger than Gendo, Rei shifts her power to aiding Shinji. This is in contrast to the Christian worldview in which there is a clear distinction between the creator and the creation. The creation is righteous to the degree that it is in line with the absolute standard of the creator in His expressed decrees. There is no clear creator in Evangelion. There is Shinji who recreates himself to try to achieve happiness, but fails. While in some ways Rei is in more control of herself than Asuka, Asuka in the original series is not a clone like Rei. Asuka has a nature that can be broken. Rei is unbreakable because she has become raw material in the void.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a sort of anime version of TheAbolition of Man. While Neon Genesis Evangelion has similar themes regarding materialism, it only has shallow references to Christianity. The protagonist of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji, is the personification of Lewis’s “man without a chest.” Shinji’s father is a personification of the self-preservation instinct of the species removed from the rest of the Tao, which Lewis speaks of in the Abolition of Man. The cosmology for the entire series of Neon Genesis Evangelion is that the very material that made humans is at war with itself. The Abolition of Man is largely about the consequences of reducing men to raw material as a direct consequence of rejecting objective ethics. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the entire human race is literally reduced to raw material. Due to the inhuman conditioner-father of Gendo Ikari, his son Shinji is at a loss as to what to do. After objective of ethics has been jettisoned, and men’s chests have been removed, all that remains is conquering nature, which according to Lewis, really means men conquering other men. The series concludes with the entire human race being reduced to orange liquid, symbolizing man’s abolition of itself.
This series is continued in an essay comparing Neon Genesis Evangelion to That Hideous Strength and 2001: A Space Odyssey, here.
Works Cited
[1]The End of Evangelion. Dir. Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki. Perf. Megumi Ogata, Kotono Mitsuishi, Fumihiko Tachiki. Toei Company, 1997.
[2] Lewis, Clive. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. 1943. (Québec: Samzdat university Press), 2014. http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/AbolitionofMan.pdf.
There are more impressions of joy than there is joy. Wisdom is necessary to discern between true and false joys. Pasting the word joy over pain is not necessarily sanctifying. The are many times in the Bible when the impression of the patriarchs’ joy was merely a foretaste of sorrowful folly. Pride is a form of joy, hence the closeness of the two words in the phrase “pride and joy.” Some of David and Solomon’s joy was vanity and the joy they prided themselves in was destroyed. Pasting the word joy over pride is rarely edifying, and mostly vanity. But this is not always the case. There are more impressions of joy than there is joy.
There are more impressions of joy than there is joy. Much apparent joy leads to death, and some death leads to joy.[1] The are many times in the Bible when the impression of the patriarchs’ joy was merely a foretaste of sorrow, such as idolatry and sin. The appearance of joy may be an illusion of sorrow. Pride is a form of joy. Folly is a form of false joy. We have a term for this: prima facie. Many things that look true and authentic on the surface are lies in actuality. Solomon may have plumbed the depths of this idea more than his father, because none of Solomon’s psalms survive. It could be said that the Bible is a long account of man seeking joy in the appearance of good things while suppressing the actual good. Joy is justified by its object.
Wisdom is necessary to discern between true and false joys. Stoicism is wisdom literature and borrowed capital from Christianity. One of the focuses of Stoicism is that the impressions of what seems good, like joy, may be just impressions, and not reality. Boethius echoed this sentiment when he said that people snatch at false happiness, or false joy.[2] This is a theme in the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In a society in which patience is considered a sin, it is reasonable to test objects of joy to see whether they lead to good ends and whether they are consistent with Goodness Himself. Broad is the way to false joy and narrow is the path to true joy. Many will seek but not find it. Claiming that the Christian’s sole source of joy denies the reality of idolatry, sin, abiding sin, and the old man of the flesh. To not test sources of joy to see their end is to engage in arrogant pride of ignoring Scripture that requires thinking on what appears to look sweet and good, but is in reality bitter folly. He who takes joy in the world will eat the bitterness of its fruits.
The are many times in the Bible when the impression of the patriarchs’ joy was merely a foretaste of sorrowful folly. Many impressions that are perceived as joy may in fact be lies. Take the forbidden fruit for example. Adam enjoyed eating the fruit, but that joy was a lie and led to the entropy and eventual heat death of the universe. That joy was a lie. Consider Cain, who had joy in killing his brother. That joy was a lie, and led to a century of death before the world was immersed in floods. Consider Abraham, who lied to save his life by sacrificing his wife to a sovereign. That joy was illusory, for it was a lie. The joy of the pharaoh who took her as his wife was also illusory, because it led to death and disease. Consider Jacob, who had joy in receiving his wife only to realize that that joy was a lie, and he had been tricked into fourteen years of servitude. Consider the sons of Jacob, who had joy in committing genocide to avenge the rape of their sister. Consider Moses, who had joy in smacking a rock so that water, his namesake would spill out of it onto the ground. When God told him to talk to the rock instead of bludgeon it, he felt joy. But that joy was a lie, and led to Moses being unable to enter the promised land after wandering around it for half a century. Joy that is a lie may not be a fruit of the spirit at all. It may be forbidden fruit that has the appearance of holiness. It may even be idolatry. Seeking joy in idolatry is folly.
Pride is a form of joy, hence the closeness of the two words in the phrase “pride and joy.” It might be said that pride is in many cases a false form of joy. David was proud of his psalms as a man after God’s own heart. Was that sinful pride, or humble pride? Or is this mere projection of attributes into the past? He was proud of his accomplishments enough to take joy in them and take a census, which explicitly angered God. He took joy in the idea of building God a temple, but God said that he was not good enough to do this. David had joy in murdering one of his captains and taking his wife, but this was false joy, and the fruit of that union perished, followed by the destruction of his kingdom in which the women were raped and the men were castrated.[3]
Before that, Solomon took joy and pride in his wisdom, but this was revealed to be a false joy that vanished into sand. He took pride in making the best temple he could build, and presumably enjoyed that process, an emotion which C. S. Lewis indirectly alludes to when he says that a proper type of pride (humble pride) happens when a man build a cathedral. Temples were the cathedrals of the day, and were archetypes to which cathedrals point. So great were Solomon’s accomplishments that legends have been created that Solomon had magical powers and rings that could control demons, leading to various conspiracies that continue to the present day.[4] But that joy was a lie. The glory of the temple was smashed to tiny bits and blown away over the mountain. Everything Solomon created in joy was destroyed, except the people, who were enslaved. Pride is a form of joy. Joy that is really pride may not be a fruit of the spirit at all. It would be useful if negative pride were referred to only as” vanity”[5] and pride were only considered a positive attribute, but unless pride is reordered as not a deadly sin, this negative form of (arrogant) pride is likely to overshadow all positive (humble) pride. Ask Solomon. He wrote a whole book on it. The arrogant pride eats up the humble pride so all that is left is the negative definition. All his pride and joy turned to vanity even though God had given it all to him, then he began to take joy in hardcore idolatry. Did he drive himself to idolatry in pride or in despair? [6]
David’s other son had so much joy in the pride of his body that he had his hair weighed annually. This had the unfortunate effect of hanging him from a tree so that he was executed there. He presumably had joy in displaying his hair, murdering his brothers, and causing a civil war, but this was a false joy. The joy was evil because the object of that joy was evil. Murder is not a proper object of joy, and it does not proceed from the Holy Ghost. David presumably had joy in writing through the power of the Holy Spirit that children of his enemies be smashed into rocks. Today, this joy is questioned because of the current view of violence in conjunction with joy.Solomon presumably had joy in his harem of prostitutes, but this was a joy in the wrong object, making it false joy that left him hollow, jaded, and empty. All of the sins of the patriarchs presumably had joy in committing their sins, which they knew to be sins, but the objects of those joys were evil, so the joys were evil. They were not lasting joys and they lead to death. Judas betrayed the first and last patriarch for rocks, which he presumably had joy in before killing himself in a fit of passion, without bothering to ask for forgiveness. The object of Judas’s joy was evil, so his joy was evil, and a false joy. It was a lie that killed him. His joy was a lie to serve the father of lies. Praising the impression of joy without substance is eating rotten fruit in an unnatural form, not the fruit of the spirit.
There are more impressions of joy than there is joy. Wisdom is necessary to discern between true and false joys. Pasting the word joy over pain is not necessarily sanctifying. The are many times in the Bible when the impression of the patriarchs’ joy was merely a foretaste of sorrowful folly. Pride is a form of joy, hence the closeness of the two words in the phrase “pride and joy.” Some of David and Solomon’s joy was vanity and the joy they prided themselves in was destroyed. Pasting the word joy over pride is rarely edifying, and mostly vanity. But this is not always the case. There are more impressions of joy than there is joy.
To not study the psychology of emotions, which is a branch of ethics, is often quenching the Holy Spirit. [7] Rejecting the wisdom of experts of this branch is often a failure to interpret scripture by scripture. Not acknowledging that the words stated as the fruit of the spirit can be twisted into idolatry in an age in which objectivity is considered a myth is often sadly a means of directly quenching the Holy Spirit. Joy is not always holy. Joy in evil is evil, and to imply otherwise quenches the Holy Spirit and encourages idolatry and broken character. To ignore this is to substitute a simple formula for a complicated set of problems. Doing so makes quenching the Holy Spirit all but inevitable.
It is hyperbole to say that Christ is the only source of our joy when the old man is still active in the believer if not mortified daily. False joy can be taken in perceptions that do not reflect reality and will be revealed to be empty vanity rather than lasting goodness. Joy is not always the fruit of the spirit. While Moses escaped the temptation to jump on the idolatry bandwagon, he still broke a clear instruction of God.
Your sight is clouded by shadows of happiness and cannot see reality. . . . The desire for true good is planted by nature in the minds of men only error leads them astray towards false good. . . . Snatching at a false appearance of happiness.
Boethius, Ancious. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. V. E. Watts. Ca. AD 500. London: Penguin Group, 1969), 78,79, 83.
[5] Smith, Adam, David Daiches Raphael, and Alexander Lyon Macfie. The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982, 279-88.
[6] Note that the Marine Corps has pride in its selflessness, and this is a virtue, not a vice:
Marine Corps culture is strongly defined by the notion of pride—of service, of self (or more specifically, selflessness), and of belonging to an elite organization.
Jackson, Kimberly, Katherine L. Kidder, Sean Mann, William H. Waggy, Natasha Lander, and S. Rebecca. Zimmerman. Raising the Flag: Implications of U.S. Military Approaches to General and Flag Officer Development. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020.
The pride the Marines’ place in their selflessness is an attribute of faithfulness, not arrogance or vanity.
The original Sherlock Holmes was written as a character in order to teach the undereducated police how to do detective work. Sherlock was originally portrayed as benevolently teaching Watson how the science of deduction works in a society highly stratified by class. In 2010, Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat seemed to recreate Sherlock Holmes for a different purpose: teaching the overeducated how the science of empathy works, or how to interact well with others in a more egalitarian society, which functions as the foundation for all human interaction.[1] Sherlock has little experience with either. This version of Sherlock has no empathy. In the new version of Study in Pink, Sherlock’s absence of empathy is shown in him violently beating a corpse.[2]
Gatiss’s version of Sherlock fluctuates between dismissing others as sub-humans in his prideful arrogance, and projecting himself onto others so that he hates others because he hates himself, as evidenced by his abuse of various substances throughout the show. In Screwtape Letter XVI, Lewis has a similar theme of self-hatred being projected onto others in the portrait of Father Spike. In this portrait, the unifying factor is hatred, not pride. Even when Screwtape suggests stirring up rivalries between factions in the church, he mentions hatred as the unifying factor rather than pride.[3] Watson in Gatiss and Moffat’s Sherlock tries to disabuse Sherlock of the notion that his hatred is normal, to show that other people do not think the way he does, and are not as cynical and cruel as Sherlock. Sherlock’s prideful arrogance combined with his projection make his pride much more destructive than it would have been otherwise.
The more Sherlock talks to himself, the less connected with humanity he becomes. His relationships enter into the realm of fantasy, except for with Watson who slaps him in the face for Sherlock’s hubristic projection and cruelty.[4] Part of Sherlock’s inability to interact with others without being slapped is the tragedy in his childhood.[5] Given his description of children other than himself and his brother, he evidently had little meaningful interaction with others of his own age outside of his immediate family. Sherlock has trouble internalizing the fact that not everyone thinks as logically as a calculator and as a result is extremely arrogant. In reality, he is shutting out his ability to see the motivations of others except those that originate in cruelty.
Sherlock’s locking his mind to empathy is reversed over time as Watson teaches Sherlock how to humbly listen to others. His previous inability to sympathize or empathize is emphasized when his nemesis becomes a man who is likened to the coldness of a fish. Moriarty is a psychopath, and Sherlock is a self-described sociopath.[6] Unlike Moriarty, Sherlock misanthropy seems more rooted in inability than malice. As Sherlock grows in his ability to understand normal people, Moriarty is progressively revealed as the opposite of normal people, and therefore similar to Sherlock, but far more advanced in extreme self-hatred.[7] While Sherlock has a shallow ability to understand others in order to manipulate them, Moriarty has a deep hatred and boredom of normal people that allows him to cruelly manipulate them. When Sherlock begins to appreciate his friendship with Watson, Moriarty kills himself to escape the hell of other people ― including Sherlock. In order to save Watson from death, Sherlock must escape from normal people into exile in a foreign land. He also finds this boring. Sherlock starts to see other people as ends in themselves, but Moriarty only sees other people as trinkets that break.
When he returns, he is physically attacked by Watson because of his callousness in pretending to be Watson’s waiter.[8] Despite being a genius detective, he is still locked in permanent adolescence without Watson constantly rewiring his neural circuits, being unable to interact harmoniously with others,[9] even those who know him best of all people.
If people mistreat you—you see this with antisocial kids. It’s a very tragic thing to see, because if you’re an antisocial child by the time you’re about four, you’re very hostile and distrustful to people. So you’re like a growling puppy. If you’re a growling puppy, you tend not to get petted. You’re more likely to get kicked. And if you’re a growling puppy and you get kicked, you have even more reason to growl. That’s sort of the story of antisocial kids: if they’re not well socialized by the time they’re four and they’re more on the aggressive side, then they alienate themselves from the community, and all they get is rejection. Then they look at the rejection and think, ‘to hell with humanity.’ And no wonder they think that. Part of the catastrophe is that they get what they evoke. I’m not saying it’s their fault, precisely, but it doesn’t matter. That’s still what happens. And so you might ask yourself, if you’re not getting from people what you need, there is some possibility that you’re not approaching—especially if this happens to you repeatedly across people. This is a virtual certainty: if it happens to you repeatedly across people, especially if you have the same bad experience with people, it’s not them: it’s you. I would say three is the limit. If something happens to you once, you write it off. If it happens to you twice, you open your eyes, but you write it off. But if it happens to you three times, it’s probably you, or it’s the rest of the world. Better it’s you, because you’re not going to change the rest of the world.
Maybe you can think about this as a dominance hierarchy, but wolves look for credibility and competence, as well. Chimpanzees don’t like brutal tyrants, and so we’ll talk about it as the hierarchy of authority. This is kind of how it starts to develop: these girls are negotiating the domestic environment, how to behave properly, how to share, take turns, and all that. They’re negotiating the hierarchy of authority. If you’re good at reciprocity, sometimes you’re the authority and sometimes the other person is the authority. That’s fair play, right? These boys are doing the same thing, and you see they’re all smiling away. It looks like aggressive behavior. People who are not very attentive, and who are paranoid, and who don’t like human beings, confuse this with aggression, and they forbid it at schools. When my kids were going to school, for example—this was quite a while ago—they were forbidden to pick up snow on the off chance they might throw a snowball, and we know how terrible that is. I told my son he was perfectly welcome to pelt any teacher he wanted to in the back of the head with a snowball as long as he was willing to suffer the consequences of doing it. I don’t know if he ever did, but he was certainly happy with the idea, which made me very happy about him.
Kids need to do this. They really, really, seriously need to do this. It’s what civilizes them. That needs to happen between the ages of two and four, because if they’re not civilized by the time they’re four, you might as well forget it. That’s a horrible statistic, but it’s unbelievably well-borne out in the relevant developmental literature. There’s lots of aggressive two-year-olds. Most of them are male. If they stay aggressive past the age of four, they tend to be lifetime aggressive. They make no friends. They’re outcasts, and they’re much more likely to end up antisocial, criminal, delinquent, and in jail. Your kids need to be socialized between the ages of two and four, and that’s particularly true for the more aggressive males. Most of aggressive two-year-olds are male—and that isn’t socialization, by the way. There’s a more abstract representation of the same sort of thing.
All governments have politics, so all church governments have politics. For Aristotle, extremes are inherently dangerous. Defaulting to the majority is easy, but not virtuous. All of these facts must be taken into account in order to genuinely think.
All governments have politics so all church governments have politics. For Aristotle, all relationships were political in nature.[1] Relationships are not optional, and therefore neither is politics. Being aware of them and nurturing them, however, is a choice. How to Think[2] is in essence a treatise on Screwtape letter XXIV and the essay “The Inner Ring” by C. S. Lewis.[3] The foundation of American politics is that politics is the outflow of religious values. Anyone who thinks that the church is not a political organization in this sense is extremely naïve. In this sense, religion is the source politics, because it supplies values which are formally applied to society through politics and legislation.[4] The Federal Government is implicitly patterned after the Presbyterian form of government because power is separated so that no one party or faction can become so passionate that it corrupts the whole. Even so, moderates are the most powerful people in any such system, because they are the only ones who genuinely think. Everyone else is often possessed by party spirit and have their opinions assigned to them by ideologues on the fringes of the Overton window of what is accepted as a legitimate opinion. Those possessed by such a spirit often assume that their spirit of party is holy, if not the Holy Spirit Himself, and that any passion on their part is extreme goodness. This happened before World War I began.[5] Possession by the Holy Spirit is frequently not the case. Inner rings exist in all organizations, and assuming that they exist only in explicitly political organizations does not fit with reality. The word “politics” itself comes from the Greek word for “city.” Wherever cities exist, the spirit of Cain is never wholly extinguished.
This may seem like playing into the framework of which C. S. Lewis warns in Screwtape letter 7, but this is not the case. In that letter Lewis warns of the church becoming an means for a cause rather than and end. [5.5] This is not the same as stating that the application of theology has an inherently political application in the form of government because politics is fundamentally how people interact with each other, if Aristotle’s fashioning of the word have any bearing on the matter. C. S. Lewis makes this point more clearly in his essay on Membership.[5.6] In the current era, governments are often seen as antithetical to God’s kingdom because a chain between the king and God is not seen. However wicked a government may become, its original purpose was as an institution to limit evil. [5.7] In the current age, it was seen as pragmatic to limiting evil to end the practice of earthly kingdoms. This has implications for how we view governments and politics. Separating spirituality and politics is meaningless if all relationships are political in this sense of the word. Politics receive their value from theology or its lack.
In the interactions of human beings, which is politics, extremes are inherently dangerous. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Cato could have agreed to Caesar’s demands, but he refused, because he trained himself to be completely indifferent to what others wanted if it did not accord with virtue. Similar to John the Baptist, he wore rough clothing and went barefoot even though he was a senator, not a prophet. This was Cato’s strategy for dealing with the inner ring. As a result, he became a standard for others. Imagine your senator going barefoot and wearing rough clothing in the senate chamber.
For Stoics like Cato, anything that is not virtuous is wrong. Vice is the extremes outside of virtue. Practicing “extreme goodness” can falter in many ways, because it often means excusing excess for the good of the espoused cause of the faction. Pushing something to an extreme tends to nullify its virtuousness. Extreme anger may lead to cruelty. Extreme hope may lead to audacity.[6]Extreme self-love leads to pride, according to John Calvin. Extreme “love” leads to nepotism or favoritism.[7] Extreme gentleness leads to a lack of self-control. Extreme peace leads to war, as in the case of Oswald Chambers. False peace is no peace at all. Extreme kindness is cruelty, in the case of coddling and sugarcoating reality.[8] Extreme goodness is legalism, if it was ever goodness at all.[9] Extreme faithfulness leads to party spirit, in the case of Eichman,[10] Extreme patience leads to anarchy.[11]Extreme joy leads to denial.[12] Any virtue pushed to an extreme can become a vice through the heart of a fallen human and be rendered a false virtue. The golden mean is an implicit recognition of marginal utility, in which excess is not virtue. Emotions are morally indifferent before application to objects.
In any environment regarding other humans, defaulting to the majority is easy, but not virtuous. It is easier to default to the opinion of the majority in political disagreements in the church that may on the surface be about doctrine. It is easier to demonize others outside of the inner ring than to understand a subject completely. Gordon Clark’s expulsion from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church took place under questionable circumstances. He was not in the inner ring and suffered the scorn of others for his beliefs. Why is it offensive to call God logic when it does not offend to call him a word, or breath?[13] Breath was used extensively in the Old Testament and it referred to vanity.[14] Yet this is perfectly orthodox. God refers to Himself as existence in Exodus, yet it is offensive to call him logic. This may be because logic is associated with coldness even though one of the most celebrated hymn writers of all time wrote an entire book on logic.[15] If logic is “the fundamental science of thought and its categories,” or metaphysics, and the study of the Godhead is the greatest of all sciences,[16] then rejecting logic as fundamental to all understanding is nothing more than a psychological tick.[17]It would be unfortunate if Gordon Clark was expelled from a denomination because of the feelings of Cornelius Van Til with no Scriptural warrant. It is not obvious that this was a phrase over which men should fight rather than an indifferent cause. Such is the power of the inner ring to those outside it to spoil saints into inquisitors. The dark side of a hothouse of mutual enthusiasm is an inquisition of those outside of the inner ring. It is always a danger that a proposition will be required not because it is true, but for another reason.[18] A noble lie.
All governments have politics so all church governments have politics. Extremes are inherently dangerous. Defaulting to the feelings of the majority is easy, but not thinking virtuously. All of these facts must be taken into account in order to genuinely think.
Works Cited
[1] Aristotle. T. A. Sinclair, trans. The Politics. 1962. (New York: Penguin Books, 1992).
[2] Jacobs, Alan. How to Think: a Survival Guide for a World at Odds. (New York: Currency, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017), 23.
[3] Lewis, Clive. The Weight of Glory: and other addresses. 1949. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1980), 141-157.
But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay ; Edited by Iaac Kramnick. The Federalist Papers. 1788. London: Penguin Books, 1987. (Federalist No. 51).
[5] Woodrow Wilson had the same pragmatic emphasis as Hitler and Mussolini, but with a veneer Christianity so that he believed that “power was God’s instrument on earth,” resulting in state worship so that “individualism means tyranny,” and men become raw material to be remade in the “hands of the consummate leader.”
Goldberg, Jonah. Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton. (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 84, 88, 89.
Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here,
Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), Letter VII.
I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority Of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen, Filmer would be right, and patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that ” all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ” The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction Of equality. The authority Of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused.
Equality is for me in the same position as clothes. It is a result of the Fall and the remedy for it. Any attempt to retrace the Steps by which we have arrived at egalitarianism and to reintroduce the old authorities on the political level is for me as foolish as it would be to take off our clothes. The Nazi and the nudist make the same mistake. But it is the naked body, still there beneath the clothes of each one of us, which really lives. It is the hierarchical world, still alive and (very properly) hidden behind a fagade of equal citizenship, which is our real concern.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not in the least belittling the value of this egalitarian fiction which is our only defence against one another’s cruelty. I should view with the strongest disapproval any proposal to abolish manhood suffrage, or the Married Women’s Property Act. But the function of equality is purely protective. It is medicine, not food. By treating human persons (in judicious defiance of the observed facts) as if they were all the same kind of thing, we avoid innumerable evils. But it is not on this that we were made to live. It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense—if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining—then it is nonsense. It if tmeans that all are of equal value as immortal souls, then I think it conceals a dangerous error. The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is love. It may be that He loves all equally—He certainly loved all to the death—and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality, it is in His love, not in us.
Equality is a quantitative term and therfore love often knows nothing of it. Authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live. Even in the life of very lines along which our spirits live. Even in the life of the affections, much more in the Body of Christ, we step outside that world which says “l am as good as you.” It is like turning from a march to a dance. It is like taking off our clothes. We become, as Chesterton said, taller when we bow; we become lowlier when we instruct. It delights me that there should be moments in the services of my own Church when the priest stands and I kneel. As democracy becomes more complete in the outer world and opportunities for reverence are successively removed, the refreshment, the cleansing, and invigorating returns to inequality, which the Church offers us, become more and more necessary.
In this way then, the Christian life defends the single personality from the collective, not by isolating him but by giving him the status of an organ in the mystical Body. As the Book of Revelation says, he is made “a pillar in the temple of God”; and it adds, “he shall go no more out.” That introduces a new side of our subject. That structural position in the Church which the humblest Christian occupies is eternal and even cosmic. The Church will outlive the universe; in it the individual person will outlive the universe, Everything that is joined to the immortal head will share His immortality. We hear little of this from the Christian pulpit today. What has come of our silence may be judged from the fact that recently addressing the Forces on this subject, I found that one of my audience regarded this doctrine as “theosophical.” If we do not believe it, let us be honest and relegate the Christian faith to museums. If we do, let us give up the pretence that it makes no difference. For this is the real answer to every excessive claim made by the collective. It is mortal; we shall live forever.
Lewis, Clive. The Weight of Glory: and other addresses. 1949. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1980), 168-172.
[6] Mark Jones makes a statement in his book Knowing Christ that faith without a promise is audacity. There are issues that occur in considering faith a form of imagination. If faith were synonymous with imagination, then Imagination without a promise would amount to audacity. This seems unlikely to be the case. If it were the case, it would mean that any state of affairs that is not explicitly promised would be audacity. This would make imagination as it is commonly understood to be audacity. On the other hand, was Jacob audacious to wrestle with God? Was the one who wrestles with God audacious when he negotiated with God? Was Moses audacious to question God? Was David audacious to sing psalms of grumbling? Or is grumbling different from complaining in psalm 142? Was Job audacious to question God? Is it audacious to imagine blessing that is not promised?
One definition of “audacious” includes wickedness: “Unrestrained by, or setting at defiance, the principles of decorum and morality; presumptuously wicked, impudent, shameless.” Whether this definition should be applied to all of the forementioned examples is not clear. The patriarchs are displayed in Hebrews as examples of faith. If faith were imagination, then they would be examples of imagination.
Another definition of “audacious” is “Daring, bold, confident, intrepid.” This definition is probably more appropriate to these individuals if they are to be viewed as examples on the whole. But if this definition were taken and faith were imagination, then asking for more than God has promised would be morally exemplary. It is not certain that this is a valid conclusion.
[8] Lukianoff, Greg, and Jonathan Haidt. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure. (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).
[9] Compare Matthew 5:3, 10, 19-20; 18: 1-4; 19:30; 25:29.
Thus, we are perhaps in a position to answer Judge Landau’s question – the question uppermost in the minds of nearly everyone who followed the trial – of whether the accused had a conscience: yes, he had a conscience, and his conscience functioned in the expected way for about four weeks, whereupon it began to function the other way around.
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. (London: Penguin, 2006).
Clark expects Christians to be shocked, but says, “Why is it offensive to Call Christ Logic, when it does not offend to call Him a word is hard to explain.”
Sproul, Robert Charles, John H. Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley. Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 76.
[15] Watts, Isaac. Logic, Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry after Truth with a Variety of Rules to Guard against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as Well as in the Sciences. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1996).
William Bouwsma states that Calvin used a neo-platonic tripartite view of the self (79).[1] He uses this frame to claim that Calvin used semi-Gnosticism to devalue the body to a non-scriptural way. A discussion of whether or not this is true would include a discussion of Gnosticism. A discussion of whether Presbyterians inherited any of this from Calvin would need to include a discussion of Gnosticism. In any case, the use of Stoic texts referenced by Calvin is interesting. The English Standard Version of the Bible could replace every mention of folly in proverbs with passion, and it would mean the same thing. This bears contemplation. The framers and founders of the Constitution of America also tended to view passion and folly as synonymous.
Bouwsma makes the case that Calvin’s commentaries and sermons are heavily biased by Calvin’s psyche, so that the objectivity of his analysis of Scripture is thrown into doubt. It may be asked if Machen’s claim that any attack on Calvin is really on attack on Christ is relevant.[2] Once a theologian is portrayed as merely projecting his psychological issues through eisegesis, his work is devalued by those who hold that view. In the current era, this takes an extreme form of which Machen warned: downplaying objective guilt as mere subjective shame. It cannot be ignored that Bouwsma inhabits a time in which anxiety over doctrine and the aseity of God is greatly downplayed, if not ridiculed, especially in Bouwsma’s employer, UC Berkeley.
Chapter 1-2 — Projection
Bouwsma claims Calvin’s projection: “’we’ was an abstracted and slightly protective ‘I’”(98). Bouwsma frames Calvin’s system as proceeding from Calvin’s anxiety, because chaos proceeds from sin, which lead him to a hatred of “mixture” and blaming sin on anxiety (34-35, 38). As a result, he reprimanded men for engaging in the “feminine” trait of complaining (35). Bouwsma indicates that Calvin’s reductionistic categories limited his imagination and curiosity when he was consistent with them (35, 39).
Chapter 6 – Disembodied Intellects on Stakes
Bouwsma also claims that Calvin conceived of a human being in abstract terms: “a hierarchy of faculties governed by the mind and an assumption that the mind is adequate to grasp the world as it actually is. . . an intellectualized Christianity” (98). He also claims that Calvin’s value of Plato led him to a type of Neoplatonism and “primacy of the intellect” and a conception of faith as “intellectual assent” rather than “trust in God’s promises” (99). He quotes Calvin on faith: “There is no faith where there is no knowledge” (100). Bouwsma also claims that Calvin “was inclined to identify his own views with God’s,” and favored execution of heretics, using “abstractions that relieved him of the need to recognize their humanity” (101). Abstracting reality led Calvin to see “theology as a rational quest” (102). The evidence Bouwsma uses to support this claim is the following quote by Calvin: “The more one endeavors to approach God, the more he proves himself endowed with reason” (102). Calvin viewed the value of nature as so important that we should “take pains to be good scholars” and ascend to their author or “have our eyes put out” (103-104). Astronomy was “the alphabet of theology,” but curiosity was audacity (104). This value of natural theology led to problems because “ the God of the philosophers” gave discursive knowledge, while Calvin’s conception of God gave immediate knowledge (105). If Calvin changed his mind over exegetical issues, God gave discursive rather than immediate knowledge, Bouwsma states. These kind of intellectual categories are not currently known in the current era.
Bouwsma claims that Calvin’s God is a nominalist God, who was “chiefly concerned that his human creatures acknowledge and pay tribute to his glory. This God too was a philosophical construction” (107). This framing by Bouwsma implies a view that God is a creation rather than a creator. Bouwsma claims that Calvin believed that Christ was illiterate (196). This suggests that there is some truth in Machen’s claim that an attack on Calvin is also an attack on Christ.
Bouwsma claims that Calvin’s focus lead him to insist on God’s glory and man’s abasement by necessity: “Calvin’s tendency to assume God’s intelligibility was counterbalanced, therefore, by his insistence on God’s transcendence and a nominalist conviction that the first duty of man is to glorify his Creator. . . . ‘The True definition of piety,” he repeated, ‘is when the true God is entirely reverenced, so that he alone is exalted and that no creature obscures his majesty.’ . . . . There is also a negative corollary of the glorification of God: the humiliation of man. ‘God does not receive his full due,” for Calvin, “until all mortals are reduced to nothing.’ This may suggest that his insistence on the weakness and sinfulness of human beings was not simply a reflection of his realism; it was the necessary obverse of the glorification of God.” (107)
Chapter 3 — Anxious Projection
Bouwsma states that Calvin had anxiety that affected his exegesis. Bouwsma states that the Calvin’s projection of his anxiety onto others led to a “terrible triad of attritional subjectivity: the fear of death, the torments of a guilty conscience, and apprehension of judgment” (40-41). Bouwsma adds that Calvin saw hope and fear, rather than fear and anger, as intrinsically linked: “…the conception suggested a way of reclaiming for Christianity what the Stoics considered the two great obstacles to human happiness: fear and hope. In choosing instead to insist on their utility, Calvin also pointed out their interdependence. They may see contrary affections, ‘but experience shows that hope truly reigns where fear occupies part of the heart. For hope does not operate in a tranquil mind, nay it is almost dormant. But it exerts its power where it uplifts a spirit worn down by cares, soothes it when troubled by grief, and supports it when it is stricken by terror’” (41-44). As a result of this preoccupation with anxiety, its relief is viewed by Calvin as the greatest of all possible goods, and an abyss of chaos as the worst of all possible evils (45-47). This kind of obliteration of man is what might be ordinarily expected of Lutheran theology which generally separates good works and sanctification. That a pillar of modern science fiction writing considers Calvinism a belief that man’s actions are of no consequence suggests that this view of Calvinism is widespread.[3]
Bouwsma continues to present Calvin’s theology as suspect because of its heavy influence by Calvin’s personality. Bouwsma continues to claim that Calvin’s theology flows from his need to classify reality and regulate others in order to decrease his own anxiety, which sometimes distorted his exegesis (49-50, 52). Bouwsma frames Calvin’s concern for wrongdoing to be a “search for and denunciation of wickedness” as a “universal obligation” that flows from Calvin’s anxiety, which Bouwsma claims is similar to the arch-heretic Pelagius’s anxiety when the Roman Empire was collapsing (49). Bouwsma may imply that Calvin’s view contrasts with Christ’s, because Calvin mentioned that none should be kept from correcting or punishing the sins of others because of his own sins (49). Bouwsma states that Calvin’s tendency to equate righteousness with control and unrestraint with sin led to a distrust of zeal, which is shown in Jeremiah (with whom Calvin incidentally identified) by placing “boundaries around himself”.(50, 64). Similarly, pride caused by too much self-love leads to ambition, particularly in the church, according to Calvin (51). Bouwsma summarizes this: “Every sin weakens the system of controls within the self” (51). Bouwsma indicates that Calvin was so strict in part because he viewed “the fury of the Epicureans” as more dangerous than the legalism of Roman Catholicism (65). Bouwsma presents Calvin’s theology as suspect because of its heavy influence by Calvin’s personality.
Chapter 4 — Neoplatonism
Bouwsma claims that Calvin was substantially influenced by Neoplatonism. William Bouwsma states that Calvin used a neo-platonic tripartite view of the self (79). Bouwsma states that the medieval era was an authoritarian Platonic one, in which the intellect removed from “the vagaries of sense” and was able to see the cosmos ordered by a heavenly being, and was considered true reality (69-71). Viewing theology as a science had the unfortunate effect of Calvin opposing Copernicanism in the heavens and opposing hierarchy on earth as bitter contrarianism against God, or worse (72, 78). Bouwsma states that Calvin rejects the pagan belief that knowing the good is sufficient to do good, but sometimes he talks as if it is (75, 139). At times, Calvin tried to “anomalous heart into an alien classical anthropology by intellectualizing it” (79). He would venerate the intellect as being closer to God, and say that those who condemned it were blind perpetually, not regulating their passions, even though at other times he spoke of an overemphasis on balance as a vice (79, 116). Bouwsma quotes Calvin equating creativity and fantasy with insanity (80). Bouwsma states that Calvin showed that God showed the body as worse than a prison for the soul, but dust made into carrion (80). He also states that Calvin used Augustine, whom he relied heavily upon, to show that the fall reversed the natural order of the intellect governing the body in a hierarchical fashion (80, 83). Even though Calvin often emphasized the effect of the fall on the intellect, he also “encouraged the possibility of reform by strengthening the mind through education and by moral effort” and had a “Stoic reliance on moral self-discipline as the source of order in human affairs” (81, 84). Bouwsma sees Calvin’s intellectual framework as being heavily influenced by Neoplatonism.
Chapter 5 — All this has happened before
Bouwsma states that in Calvin’s system, order was paramount, and so moderation was next to godliness, and to Calvin, “the prayers of those who prayed moderately were never unanswered” (86). Once again, Calvin uses Platonic vocabulary in concert with Pauline teaching on reason and “the light of intelligence,” sometimes through the use of shaming (87-89). “Nothing alienates us more than heeding instruction than to see that we are considered hopeless” (90). Some cultures value one virtue higher than others, and are subject to its corresponding vice. William Bouwsma states that John Calvin was prepared by Quintilian’s view of history: “the validity of imitating past behavior depends on similarity of one age to another,” though as a general rule history repeats itself in a “Stoic cycle of sins from luxury and abundance through pride and cruelty” (90-91). Bouwsma claims that despite Calvin’s value of moderation, he saw fit to engage in rhetorical eisegesis to impress upon his congregation the gravity of the text (93). Bouwsma claims that this practice distorted his exegesis and prevented him from understanding poetry (94-95). Bouwsma also claims that Calvin’s “facile moralism” was at odds with his “nominalist conception of an incomprehensible God” (97).
Chapter 7 — Stakes of Projection
Bouwsma sees a conflict in Calvin’s work between considering God’s word reasonable and its use of rhetoric, which Calvin distrusted but also used (108-109). He states that Calvin’s exegesis is based more on the rhetoric of the renaissance which valued persuasion rather than the scholastic education which valued logic (113-114). Calvin suggested reading Plato, Cicero, Aristotle, and Demosthenes in comparison with Scripture to show its superiority over human writings (114). Bouwsma also claims that to Calvin language was used “not a mirror of reality but simply as a conventional instrument for human communication,” that was merely “a cultural artifact” (113-115). Bouwsma’s view suggests an unstated similarity between modern day post-structuralism which views language as arbitrary and the renaissance’s view of language. This may be a projection into the past.
Bouwsma states that Calvin’s adapting of his words to his audience so that they could understand involved substantial amounts of hyperbolic persuasion: “’A wise teacher,’ he insisted, ‘accommodates himself to the understanding of those who must be taught. He begins with first principles in teaching the weak and ignorant and should not rise any higher than they can follow’ . . . . ‘It would be a cold way of teaching,’ he observed, ‘if the teachers do not carefully consider the needs of the times and what is appropriate to the people, for in this matter nothing is more unbalanced than absolute balance.’” (116). This again appears to Calvinists as more akin to Lutheran theology than to Calvin’s. Calvin is generally known in the modern era for his piercing logic rather than his use of persuasion, but this statement suggests that Calvin exaggerated for rhetorical effect more than is commonly attested.
Bouwsma also states that Calvin knew that “the division of the biblical text into verses, and at least in some senses into chapters, was arbitrary and in some cases misleading” (120). Calvin made a dictum concerning legalism: “each may use his own judgment, provided no one tries to force all others to obey his own rules” (120). That the numbering of verses is arbitrary makes some value judgments of the importance of certain words in certain orders questionable. Presenting some words as close to the beginning of a verse when the verse numbering is arbitrary adds a possible layer of subjectivity to the analysis of Scripture.
At times Calvin contradicts himself, according to Bouwsma: “Allegorizing was too likely to degenerate into ‘playing games with the sacred word of God, like tossing a ball back and forth’” (122). Calvin thought little of Origen for overemphasizing the metaphorical to the detriment of the literal. At other times, Calvin states that if the prophets had merely narrated information, they would not have reached the people with their frigid words untaught by the Holy Spirit (123). Calvin realized that Moses, David, and Christ were eloquent, but spoke in the common tongue so that they could be understood, so Calvin spoke in a less precise way to accommodate his listeners (124-125). Bouwsma states that God uses rhetoric rather than philosophical discourse, so Calvin was prepared to use embellishments or exaggeration to achieve the intended effect (126). Exaggeration has the unfortunate effect of increasing the possibility of contradiction.
Chapter 8 — Intellectual Categories
Bouwsma mentions some of the intellectual categories that Calvin inherited from the past. Bouwsma states that Calvin inherited a plethora of philosophical categories of “a hierarchy of discrete faculties” that influenced his thinking, but were in some ways rejected (131-133). By reacting to scholastic categories, Calvin emphasized the effect of sin on the mind, thus dethroning reason (133, 138). Scorning Stoicism and its devaluing of passions, Calvin states that those who do not acknowledge Christ as emotional do not recognize him as human: “Those who claim that the Son of God was immune from human passions do not seriously acknowledge him as a man within the capacity of a sane and unspoiled nature, he was struck with fright and afflicted with anxiety” (134). Christ had feelings of a negative state, and was not in a perpetual state of nirvana. The modern era’s conflation of Christ with Ghandi has no reflection in Scripture. Calvin states that the bitterness of David as exemplary because his distress was “a more effective stimulus to prayer than if he had overcome his fear, grief, and bitterness” (134). To Calvin, emotions in and of themselves were not sinful because God made them, but just as the intellect is tainted by sin, so too are the emotions (139). Both are affected by sin, so both the totality of man is affected by sin, and natural theology has little to say about it.
Bouwsma goes farther in quoting Calvin’s mentioning that the intellect is useless (140). Bouwsma states that Calvin views boundaries and categories as powerless to deal with sin which springs from disbelief, which leads to anxiety and sin (140-141). “Calvin’s seriousness on this matter is indisputable. Nevertheless it should always be remembered, in assessing his intention, that he was a rhetorician, less concerned with the objective truth of his message than with its effect on the audience. His discourse was often calculatedly therapeutic and one-sided; especially on so momentous an issue as sin, he would have thought nothing more unbalanced than absolute balance. His first purpose, when he discussed this subject, was to bring sinners to repentance. But it was also important, to Calvin, as we have observed, for God to be glorified, and this required that man should be humiliated” (141). Exaggeration often hurts the credibility of the speaker. Once again, it should be considered whether Machen’s statement that an attack on Calvin is really a veiled attack on Christ is a true statement.
Bouwsma states that failing to recognize Calvin’s use of rhetoric is to mistakenly believe that he believed the humanity was completely obliterated by sin: “Here lies the glory of our nature, that the devil has his throne within us and inhabits us body and soul” (142). At other times, Calvin enjoins that we should always remember that no matter how depraved people are, they still have the image of God within them, albeit a deformed image (142-143). Sin reduces fathers to be equal with sons but what Fathers do is taken as virtuous (144-145). The ancients are admired, but many of their lives, like Alexander the Great, consist of an entire life of inebriation (146). The “cult of glory,” as well as the patristic fathers, were not praised by Calvin (148). Calvin’s rhetoric sometimes obscures to modern readers the meaning of his words, according to Bouwsma.
Chapter 9 — Epistemological Curiosity
In considering Calvin’s epistemology, Bouwsma mentions some views of knowledge such as the skeptical nominalists: “While nominalists distinguished between words or terms [termini], which are general, and things, which are particular, humanists were discovering that language serves many functions besides the communication of information about things, and indeed that some communication that appears to transmit knowledge really has a quite different purpose: persuasion, perhaps, or even deception” (151). If the connection between words and things is suspect, the current epistemological system is suspect. If the epistemology of the day is suspect, knowledge itself is suspect.
During this time, scholasticism was not in vogue: “From this perspective, philosophical discourse, especially as represented by Scholastic theology, seemed at best useless, at worst morally suspect, and usually misleading” (151). Some fled from this chaos and turn to authoritarian fideism (152). An alternative was applying knowledge to the external world to prove its validity. Anything else was just chaotic “curiosity” of imagination, or worse, man imposing superficial rules for his own purposes (152-153).
Chapter 14 — Means
Bouwsma quotes Calvin in stating that nothing was more execrable for a man “to make up his own mind about what he should believe” (216). Bouwsma states that Calvin believed that the church needs discipline, and those who throw off that yoke show themselves allied with the pope rather than Christ (217-218). Bouwsma states that Calvin’s horror of mixture inclined him toward authoritarian methods of control, and rejected Luther’s perception of the priesthood of all believers (219). True pastors are to Calvin the sinew and soul of the church, and a bridle for the people, like Jeremiah who are intimidated by no one (219-221). Yet Calvin could be flexible: “A good pastor, he thought, succeeded in preserving a middle position between excessive severity and excessive softness, but too many failed” (228). This view is reversed in the present age. The golden mean is often thought of in the present age as indifference and apathy rather than a virtue between two vices. Outrage is considered a virtue and moderation considered a vice. Extremes are considered inherently good and a middle road is considered being on the fence of indifference.
Chapter 9 — Audiaphora
Calvin at times spoke negatively of reason, especially for salvation (154). As a result, he considered the proper response to the gospel to be “emotional rather than intellectual” (154). When Scripture was unclear, Calvin suggested “a deliberate agnosticism” (155). Calvin could utter anti-intellectual remarks for persuasive effect: “Philosophy is nothing but persuasive speech that insinuates itself into the minds of men with fine and plausible arguments” (156). Bouwsma states that this hyperbole was used for rhetorical effect, and used especially against the “abstract intellectuality” of what Calvin called the “sophistical,” “frivolous,” “secret magic,” “infinite quarrels,” and “word battles” of Scholastics. This terminated in a distrust of curiosity and subsequent elevation of humility (157). Like the Stoics, for Calvin, if knowledge did not affect the whole being, it was not worth knowing, and vanity (157). Bouwsma states that for Calvin, curiosity and speculation is driven by wild appetites that lead to unedifying knowledge (159). “Those who do not know a word of Latin speak Latin to make themselves more stupid.” This did not mean that Christians should be ignorant: “Christianity requires us to be children not in intelligence but in malice” 161). Calvin states that we are to be mature in not trying to hurt others, not in intelligence. Intelligence is required to learn how to not hurt people in malice.
Chapter — 10 More Neoplatonism and Machiavelli
Calvin’s emphasis on the fall affecting the intellect is not always balanced. Bouwsma’s statement that Calvin was engaged in Neoplatonism philosophy is on full display with his statement that Calvin’s “ethic of self-control” was based on the idea that the passions could be governed by reason, yet Calvin rejected Plato (162-163). This conflicts with Calvin’s exaggerating reason’s lack of usefulness for persuasive purposes. Bouwsma claims that Calvin’s humanist learning allowed him to see knowledge as valuable for what it can do rather than its truth content (162). According to Bouwsma, Calvin rejected secondary causes and the value of nature because they diverted attention from God’s power (165). Bouwsma also states that Calvin attacked secondary causes lest they be idolized (165-166). This may be a major influence in the perception of Calvinists as fatalists. Attacking secondary causes is like attacking gravity. One’s view of the world cannot be helped but be shaped by such an emphasis.
Calvin’s emphasis on the fall’s effects on both the intellect and the body resulted in a cynical view of humans in government. Bouwsma likes to compare Calvin to his contemporary Machiavelli (54, 106, 82). He also likes to compare Calvin’s providence to Machiavelli’s fortune, and God to “a Machiavellian prince” (168, 172, 232). Similar to Machiavelli, Calvin had a cynical view of rulers who more often than not feigned religion in order to accumulate power (204). Possibly as a result, Calvin believed that the clergy should have no political power. Because the church had no power to enforce rules, the government, for Calvin, was to enforce the dictates of the church (211). Bouwsma frames Calvin’s view of laws as a form of social control (76). Bouwsma also states that Calvin believed that the Biblical character was raped because she had abdicated her place in the home, and was opposed to the choice of children in their spouses (77).
Chapter 13 — Civil Magistrate
Rulers were for Calvin ministers of God to severely suppress the passions of the people (205-206). However, a ruler without self-control was a tyrant, “a perversion of order” who turned his whims into law (207-208). The king should act as a father to those whom he condemns (212). Nonetheless, Calvin also stated that it would be deplorable if political careers were entirely rejected (210). Bouwsma does not touch on the execution of Servetus. This is interesting because if Calvin were in charge of the execution of Servetus, and the execution were a miscarriage of justice, then all Calvinists would be by extension murderers. All levels of Calvin’s ideal society should be governed by God’s order.
Chapter 11 — The Dark Side of Rhetoric
Despite Calvin’s negative statements about rhetoric, he associated coldness with death, and action with power, and that all means should be used “to awaken us from out indolence” (173-175). Bouwsma draws a contrast between Calvin and the Stoics: “The Stoics aspired to rise above fear and hope; Calvin aimed to cultivate both as stimulants to action” (175). Yet Calvin was suspicious of poets who would rouse superficial passions (179). Instead, Calvin suggested censorship of self: “The only way to please God is to be severe in censuring ourselves” (180). This may have been a theatrical exaggeration. On the other hand, God’s servants, if they consider that God is the source of their power, are unstoppable (181). Conflict was used as a metaphor for Calvin, but this has the unfortunate effect of eliciting the hatred of men (183-184).
Calvin mentions the value of reading history:
“It is not enough to have our eyes open and to note well and mark what God does during our own lives, but we must profit from ancient histories. In fact this is why our Lord has wanted us to have some notable judgments left in writing, so that the memory of them would remain for ever. And we should not only profit from what is contained in Holy Scripture, but when we hear what is spoken by the histories written by the pagans, we should also have the prudence to apply to ourselves what God has done” (169).
This is not anti-intellectual.
“Ignorance of providence is the ultimate misery” (172).
[1] Bouwsma, William J. John Calvin: A Sixteenth-century Portrait. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
The story of Corvus Corax in the forty-first millennium of Warhammer 40k is a sad story. He mercy killed the mutations which had his gene seed. After brooding in his castle for a year, he became even darker and started personally eliminating the forces of a traitorous primarch one by one from the shadows.
Complaining is morally indifferent without an object. If the expression of pain, such as complaining, is removed from the psalms, they are nullified. If Complaining is viewed as always wrong, a pile of absurdities accumulates. If complaining were wrong, then Stoicism would be read rather than the Psalms. If complaining were wrong, then the Psalms would not be normative for the Christian. If complaining were wrong, then all satire would be burned. If complaining were wrong, all negative statements in the Bible would be slashed out of it.
All definitions of complaining in the Oxford English Dictionary center on the expression of negative feelings. The Stoic says, “stop complaining.” The Psalmist says, “I WILL LIST MY COMPLAINT BEFORE GOD!” Laments are formalized poetic complaints. If psalms are the anatomy of Christ’s soul, then that involves complaining. Or are the Psalms the anatomy of a fallen person’s soul, and not Christ’s? If this were the case, it would render the Psalms non-normative for the Christian, and an example of what not to do, and how not to feel.
If complaining is wrong, then burn and blacklist all satire. Satire is complaining. Burn Gulliver’s Travels. It complains about imperialism. Burn A Modest Proposal. It complains about orphans. Burn Don Quixote. It complains about tales of knight-errantry. Burn Animal Farm. It complains about the realities of socialism. Burn Catch-22. It complains about the bureaucracy of the military. Burn The Princess Bride. It complains about fantasy stories. Burn The Screwtape Letters. It is Horatian satire that complains about the vanity of British culture. Burn all of these things if complaining is wrong, because they are the stuff it is made of. Satire is a kind of formalized narrative complaint about society. If you don’t wish to slit the wrists of Jesus and burn works of satire, don’t say that complaining is wrong unless you quote a Stoic saying it. Burning complaining burns satire and the imagination. It might be said that the satirist is given a license to be cynical. The cynical individual absorbing satire may become over immersed in the cynicism and tear down things that ought not be torn down.
If complaining were wrong, then it would be wrong to read Psalms or Lamentations or Job. Bibles would have the psalms and lamentations that are complaints against God burned out of them. If complaining were wrong, then all prophets in the Bible saying anything negative about anyone else would be struck from the Bible. Elijah mocking false prophets would be burned. If complaining were wrong, Christ’s condemning the Pharisees would be struck from the Bible. If complaining were wrong, then the words Christ quoted from Psalms while on the cross would be struck from the Bible.
If Complaining is viewed as always wrong, a pile of absurdities accumulates. If complaining were wrong, then Stoicism would be read rather than the Psalms. If complaining were wrong, then the Psalms would not be normative for the Christian. If complaints were inherently sinful, then the psalms of complaint would be inherently sinful. But complaints are not inherently sinful, so that satire, or running narrative complaint, is not inherently sinful. Or perhaps The Message is a better interpreter of Scripture than the translation authorized by the British House of Lords, which mentions the psalmist listing his complaint before God (Psalms 142:2). If complaining were wrong, then all satire would be burned. If complaining were wrong, all negative statements in the Bible would be slashed out of it. In other words, the view that complaining is wrong castrates the Psalms. If complaining can be used for good or bad, then it stands to reason that it is morally indifferent in itself before application to an object.
People say that hate is evil, by hating it. They complain that complaining is wrong. They mock satire and comedy for mocking. But Elijah hated evil, mocked the religious establishment of Baal, and asked God to show how much he hated the prophets of Baal with fire. Some people thought Christ was Elijah risen from the dead. Christ hated the evil of the Pharisees, and called them vipers. Christ acts as if hate and complaining are morally indifferent before application to an object. Some hate and complaining and hate is evil. Some hate and complaining is righteous.
All redemption requires pain. All joy in the best of all possible worlds requires pain. All humor requires pain. Hymns and reconciliations require pain. The present era views endurance negatively. Scripture views endurance as a virtue. Christ’s empathy requires his pain. To confuse the connection of pain to endurance with masochism is a mistake. To apply the term of masochism to the Marine Corps is a mistake. To call endurance masochism is to mock the Holy Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to devalue the fruit of the Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to encourage masochism.
The quotation in the above image is a verbatim quotation of Ralph Sawyer’s translation of the Art of War[1]. If pain were not a necessary component of sanctification,[2] then self-murder would be considered a viable way of dealing with pain by ending it,[3] as Hamlet’s soliloquy[4] makes clear. Therefore, any diminution of the status of pain in the life of the believer has the danger of decreasing the sanctity of life. Conceptions of the importance of pain have far-reaching implications that should not be taken lightly.
This quotation from the Art of War is contrasted with the foolishness of Dwight Schrute of the television show The Office. Dwight is most known for yelling that he is awesome to a stairwell[5] in order to prepare himself to be enthusiastic for his employer’s annual review of his work. The employer, Michael Scott, brushes over Dwight’s accomplishments despite Dwight’s attempt to express all of the things he has ostensibly done for the company in the last year. Dwight’s pain in being ignored is necessary for the joke to make sense. If there were no pain from Dwight, there would be no joke.
All jokes are predicated on pain.[6] Even the platypus, if considered a cosmic joke, requires pain, because the incongruity[7] between the duck bill and the beaver body causes cognitive dissonance which finds release in amusement. The pain experienced will vary from individual to individual because different individuals have a different threshold for mental strain resulting from pain issuing from cognitive dissonance. While the pain experienced from the cognitive dissonance may be slight at times, it is pressure nonetheless. The effort to think requires pain at some level, so there is no humor without pain in the best of all possible worlds. Or perhaps this is not the best of all possible worlds, and to escape this world is to enter that other, better, world. In either case, the conception of pain is strangely vital to understanding much that is not seen.
Pain is linked to joy.[8] There is no justification or sanctification without pain. If there is no pain, there is nothing to heal. Well people need no doctor.[9] The Lord’s Supper means nothing without pain. The crucifixion means nothing without pain. A crown of thorns means nothing without pain. A trial means nothing without pain. A cross means nothing without pain. Hymns that have no reference to pain or the effects of pain do not participate in the real and are vanity. Only their form in having a lack of pain is itself painful to the degree that attempts to portray a state of affairs that is a denial of the real in the world that is. A hymn that does not reference pain cannot reflect the gospel, because the gospel is the good news of justification in the context of a world of sin and misery. The gospel without pain has no cross, or thorns, or Christ. The gospel without pain is no gospel at all.
Such hymns that sanitize pain are in effect Docetist hymns that treat life and pain as idealized nonreality, thereby cheapening the experience of life and encouraging ways of escaping the real that is. If the expression of pain that creates pain in others were sinful, then the psalmist would have made no reference to his own pain, thus creating the sensation to a degree in the minds of others. Creating pain in others is not necessarily sinful, otherwise, God would sin in creating pain in people when He shows to them how they looked to Him, in the case of Hosea’s performance art of marrying a promiscuous woman. Repentance and reconciliation is impossible without creating pain in others by letting them know the pain they caused. The deeper the offense, the deeper the pain caused. Neglecting to do this and issuing a surface level apology often encourages bitterness as retained pain. Hymns or reconciliations that do not deal with pain are void.
The word endurance has fallen on hard times. In the past, perseverance was considered a virtue. Then it was stripped down to endurance, which still maintained some association of virtue. Now, it is merely “stick-to-it-iveness,” which is closer to stubbornness than a virtue. It recalls the words of Augustus Cray of Lonesome Dove, whose policy is to stick to whatever he has chosen to do, even if it does not make a lick of sense.[10] In the present day, the word endurance is still retained to describe athletic competitions. Perseverance sometimes is interchanged with endurance in some translations of Hebrews 12:1, which references sanctification, becoming like Christ, as well as comparisons to athletic competitions. Endurance has fallen on hard times.
Endurance is often referred to negatively in the present day, but it is referred to in Scripture positively. Reference to endurance as cold would label it with a negative association relegating it to sin, thus the endurance of the saints would be rendered sinful. The references Paul makes to endurance in punching himself or running a race in 1 Corinthians 9:27 would be rendered sinful. Glorying in sufferings that produce endurance in Romans 5:3 would be rendered null. Receiving any reward for doing the will of God through endurance in Hebrews 10:36 would be demoted to legalism. Meeting trials with endurance in James 1 would be cut down to pride. Being strengthened by the will of Christ in Colossians 1:11 would be turned to arrogance. Patience in affliction in Romans 12:12 would be returned to vanity. God granting endurance in Romans 15:5 would just be psychological poppycock. References to the crucifixion would become in appearance meaningless if endurance is associated with sin and coldness. Cheapening pain cheapens endurance. Cheapening endurance cheapens grace. Downgrading the concept of endurance in any of these verses would have the effect of diminishing the sanctity of life and encouraging death.
Dwight does not know any of this, because he is an idiot.
Endurance is not only referred to positively in Scripture, but also is tied to Christ. As a child, Jesus endured the threat of genocide conducted expressly to kill Him.[11] Jesus likely endured the cold of a stable in a desert at night.[12] Temperatures could have been as low as 40°F.[13] Or perhaps Christ could produce spontaneously infinite amounts of heat contrary to the laws of entropy like Admiral Nelson so that his is zeal for his king and country kept him warm. [13.5] Otherwise, he would probably have had to endure the cold, even in a stable. Or perhaps angels kept him warm so that he did not have to endure the cold. If they did, would we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses,[14] but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin? The nativity is a scene of cold endurance, or endurance of the cold. To ignore these factors would be to look at the nativity through a lens of romanticism which ignores the real of cold, and the subsequent endurance of it. Or perhaps he was in a stable during the Summer, and he was merely enduring the threat of genocide expressly against him. Unless these alternate possibilities are true, endurance is tied to Christ.
Perseverance is endurance. Did Jesus endure the cold in the wilderness? It can become cold in the desert at night. Did Jesus endure pains of hunger, and would this have involved a lowering of caloric body temperature, thus resulting in a cold endurance? Did Christ persevere in his mission when his blood ran cold down the sides of his body? Perseverance is the obverse side of endurance. If the two are identical, endurance is the fruit of the spirit, or a fruit of the fruit of the spirit. Endurance is concentrated patience.[15] Patience is the fruit of the spirit.[16] If patience is the fruit of the spirit, and endurance is concentrated patience, then endurance is a product of the fruit of the spirit.
Christ’s endurance is tied to his empathy. If Jesus did not endure cold, then could he sympathize with anyone who did so? Could he sympathize with martyrs who endured cold and chains in Roman prisons? Christ is God imaged. If Christ did not endure coldness or pain, how would he be an example? Christ endured more than the body of Christ, or Christians.[17] Why does Christ mention endurance as the opposite of coldness? He speaks of enduring through coldness, or reversing coldness through action.[18] If Christ did not endure coldness, he could not have empathized with his people.
It is also not advisable to associate the fruit of the Spirit with mental illness. Vanity could be associated with the logos, because the word for vanity in the old Testament was breath, but this would be unedifying. Comparing Masochism, a sexual perversion, to Endurance has a similar effect. Patience should not be tied to mental illnesses, such as masochism. Endurance is a concentrated form of patience, so differentiating endurance from masochism as if they are similar has the unfortunate result of associating the fruit of the spirit with mental illness. From an Aristotelian balancing frame, too much patience is coldness. A right amount of patience, if concentrated, is endurance. Too little patience is wrath, or passionate anger. None of these have to do with masochism, and a differentiation between the two implies that there is a similarity, which there is not.[19]
Stephen Pressfield equated the duty of both the marine and the artist with the love of being miserable. Stephen Pressfield served in the Marine Corps and wrote a book about the 300 Spartans that is a part of the 2011 edition of the Army Chief of Staff’s Professional Reading List.[20] Part of what Steven Pressfield meant when he wrote in the War of Art that “Marines love being miserable,”[21] is that (in his words from The Gates of Fire) Spartans enjoy shedding “tears now that [they] may conserve blood later.”[22] In other words, “being miserable” means enduring pain in the present for a goal in the future—delayed gratification through self-control. If this love of misery were to be equated with masochism, then the entire Marine Corps would be designated as sexual perverts, because masochism is a sexual perversion in which sexual pleasure is felt from pain, or a passion for pain in and of itself. Equating the love of being miserable with such a perversion is a meaningless designation, unless discipline as a word has lost all martial and spiritual import, and should be struck from translations of Scripture. This is not the case.
If the love of being miserable were a sexual perversion, then the Apostle Paul would be a sexual pervert.[23] This would be to mock the Holy Spirit. When Paul rejoices in suffering, it is not rejoicing in the suffering itself, but in seeing them as proof that he was acting as a steward for Christ.[24] The love of being miserable that Pressfield speaks of is tied to the will to excel, which Paul exhorts in Scripture.[25] To seek to excel one’s limits is to be miserable that those limits are not reached, or miserable in effort to reach those limits. Christ did not die so that the church would remain static without striving to excellence. To call striving “masochism” is a form of pride, or passion of self-exaltation through the tearing down of others. Its effect is to call patience a violation of the seventh commandment. Its effect is to call the fruit of the Spirit a violation of God’s law.
Does it grieve the Holy Spirit to call his fruits perversion and illness? To call evil good? Good, evil? Virtue, vice? To imply that all pursuits that require endurance are masochism? That Lewis and Clark’s expedition was masochism? Apollo 11? That Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica on TheEndurance? [25.5] That Job was a masochist? That every prophet who went out into the wilderness to wear camel’s hair was a masochist? That Christ was a masochist in divesting himself of glory, going into the wilderness and being executed by the state for crimes that he did not commit?[26]
To call endurance masochism is to devalue the fruit of the Spirit. To equate patience with masochism is ridiculous. It would be to state that only fair-weather patience is true patience, while casting down bitter-weather patience in the face of obstacles as masochism. It might be said that endurance is patience combined with self-control, because the discipline of self-control over a long period looks not to the pain of the present as its goal (which masochism does) but to the goal of which pain the long-term goal produces in its pursuit. Christ sought the redemption of his people, and endured pain to that end through patience and self-control brought about by the love of his people and the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in his human nature, even though the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.[27] To imply that this is masochism would seem to attack that which there is no law against its natural form— the fruit of the spirit. Their joy is of serving their master, not pain in itself.
It is possible to rejoice from persecution of seeking to be like Christ, but if this is overgeneralized, pain can be associated with a Christian identity, so that problems in general, harsh treatment, and ridicule seen as categorically good signs of following Christ. This can lead to valuing pain indiscriminately, without evaluating exactly the reason for the pain. The reason may be extrinsic to Christianity, and not related to it at all. This may take an extreme form in the case of a persecution complex that seeks attention rather than seeking to ministering to others for their good. Creating an inner ring of mutual enthusiasm for those inside and contempt for those without is not imitating Christ. To do so would be to make the church into not only a hot-house of mutual enthusiasm, but also an echo-chamber with an excessive estimation of the echo-chamberites. Christ had joy in the fact that he was pleasing his father, not enjoying the pain in and of itself.
All redemption requires pain. All joy in the best of all possible worlds requires pain. All humor requires pain. Hymns and reconciliations require pain. The present era views endurance negatively. Scripture views endurance as a virtue. Christ’s empathy requires his pain. To confuse the connection of pain to endurance with masochism is a mistake. To apply the term of masochism to the Marine Corps is a mistake. To call endurance masochism is to mock the Holy Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to devalue the fruit of the Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to encourage masochism.
Works Cited
[1] Sun, Wu, Ralph D. Sawyer, and Sawyer Mei-chün Lee. The Art of War. Ca. 500 BC. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2002), 223-224.
[2] J. Ligon Duncan seems to indicate that learning to suffer is a subordinate goal of learning to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever:
If we want to benefit most from our suffering, by prayer and meditation, we will approach our suffering as a good soldier approaches war. What do I mean by that? A good soldier who has trained and trained is not surprised when he finds himself in war! He has been trained for it. Likewise, consider it your Job to be prepared to suffer. That puts a whole different cast on Sunday morning, doesn’t it? You are gathering with God’s people Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day to train as good soldiers of Jesus Christ so that when your time of trial and testing sand suffering comes, you will be ready. (46)
Duncan, J. Does Grace Grow Best in Winter?. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 46.
Duncan’s words using the Biblical metaphor of soldiering mirrors Stephen Pressfield’s words about both marines and Spartans. Is this how Duncan thinks we should view Sunday morning? Is self-control the fruit of the Spirit? If not, why is fruit singular?
Duncan also states that the phrase “lean to suffer” is in effect given as a normative statement by Christ:
Admiral Nelson won the great Battle of Trafalgar against the French during the Napoleonic Wars. The Viscount of Camperdown, who also won many battles during that period, was one of the admirals under Nelson. The Viscount of Camperdown’s family crest had a ship with full sails on it and with two little Latin words: Disce pai—’Lean to suffer.’ That is precisely what Peter and Paul and Job and Moses and Jesus would say to you and me as believers in the fallen world. ‘Learn to suffer.’
Duncan, J. Does Grace Grow Best in Winter?. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 12-13.
J Ligon Duncan also mentions that there is no recorded mention of Jesus laughing, but plenty of his sorrowing. He is not known as a man of laughters.
C. S. Lewis explains some purposes of suffering in The Problem of Pain:
In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) The simple good descending from God, (2) The simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted; suffering and repented sin contribute.
Lewis, Clive. The Problem of Pain. 1940. (Quebec: Samizdat University Press, 2016), 69-70.
Claiming that God is not omnipotent because he would have created a world without pain is an extremely shallow assertion. Similarly, associating both the lack of pain and the enjoyment of the present with Holiness is questionable.
The lines also mirror C S Lewis’s words on pain in the fifth Screwtape letter:
The Enemy’s human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that suffering is an essential part of what He calls Redemption; so that a faith which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying. I am speaking now of diffused suffering over a long period such as the war will produce.
Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), 38.
In Lewis’s view, there is no salvation without suffering. Is being miserable and suffering the same? Did Jesus love being miserable? Did His assuming an infinitely lower state entail misery? What about the garden of Gethsemane? When Lazarus died before he died? Did He learn to suffer? Did He enjoy suffering? Did He enjoy being miserable? Did He enjoy knowing that the pains He took were necessary for the best of all possible worlds? Can enjoying pains necessary for the best of all possible worlds to reach the highest state of reality be the same as loving the state of being miserable? Was Jesus proud of His work, or was it just suffering that He had to endure? Christ had joy in the fact that he was pleasing his father, not enjoying the pain in and of itself.
Either paganish unbelief of the truth of that eternal blessedness, and of the truth of the Scripture which doth promise it to us; or, at least, a doubting of our own interest; or most usually most sensible of the latter, and therefore complain most against it, yet I am apt to suspect the former to be the main, radical master-sin, and of greatest force in this business. Oh! If we did but verily believe that the promise of the glory is the word of God, and that God doth truly mean as he speaks, and is fully resolved to make it good; if we did verily believe that there is, indeed, such blessedness prepared for believers as the scripture mentioneth ; sure we should be as impatient of living as we are now fearful of dying, and should think every day a year till our last day should come. We should as hardly refrain from laying violent hands on ourselves, or from the neglecting of the means of our health and life, as we do now from over-much carefulness and seeking of life by unlawful means. . . . Is it possible that we can truly believe that death will remove us from misery to such glory, and yet be loth to die?
Baxter, Richard. The Saint’s Everlasting Rest. 1657. (Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 465-466.
The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field. I am not thinking primarily of indecent or bawdy humour, which, though much relied upon by second-rate tempters, is often disappointing in its results. The truth is that humans are pretty clearly divided on this matter into two classes. There are some to whom “no passion is as serious as lust” and for whom an indecent story ceases to produce lasciviousness precisely in so far as it becomes funny: there are others in whom laughter and lust are excited at the same moment and by the same things. The first sort joke about sex because it gives rise to many incongruities: the second cultivate incongruities because they afford a pretext for talking about sex. If your man is of the first type, bawdy humour will not help you—I shall never forget the hours which I wasted (hours to me of unbearable tedium) with one of my early patients in bars and smoking-rooms before I learned this rule. Find out which group the patient belongs to—and see that he does not find out.
Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), 54.
[8] A perfectly satisfied person cannot be seduced. Tension and disharmony must be instilled in your targets’ minds. Stir within them feelings of discontent, an unhappiness with their circumstances and themselves. The feeling of inadequacy that you create will give you space to insinuate yourself, to make them see you as the answer to their problems. Pain and anxiety are the proper precursors to pleasure. Learn to manufacture the need that you can fill.
Greene, Robert. The Art Of Seduction. (United Kingdom: Profile Books, 2010), 203.
The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candy-asses don’t know how to be miserable.
The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
The artist must be like that Marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.
Pressfield, Steven/ McKee Robert (FRW). The War of Art Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. (New York: Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2012), 68.
[22] Pressfield, Steven. Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2005), 139.
World War II was an anti-authoritarian war. The authoritative personality is to be preferred over the authoritarian personality. God is authoritative. This authoritative pattern of God is shown in Scripture. Cults are authoritarian. Churches should be authoritative.
The difference between the words “authoritarian” and “authoritative” is worth remembering. This definition of “authoritarian” is from the Oxford English Dictionary.[1] World War II was effectively an anti-authoritarian war which informed the ideals of America for the rest of the twentieth century. A number of supremely authoritarian personalities were removed from power through this war. This picture of Superman in front of two such authoritarians comes from an else-world story in which Superman lands in the USSR rather than the USA.[2] As a result, he becomes far more authoritarian than his traditional counterpart.
In psychology, an authoritarian [2.5] father is one who strictly enforces something like rules through punishment but tends to be more capricious and does not explain the rules. Stalin was authoritarian.[2.7] Winston Churchill was authoritative. An authoritarian father is in contrast to an authoritative father who explains the rules so that the child can understand and obey them. The children of authoritarian parents are often driven by the emotion of fear. The children of authoritative parents are often driven by more positive emotions. Likewise, the soldiers in Stalin’s authoritarian regime were driven by emotion—fear. The soldiers in Winston Churchill’s armies and navies were also driven by emotion—courage. All of these are driven by emotion, just different kinds. The man who is driven by no emotion does nothing and dies.
The God of the Bible is authoritative.[3] In the Bible, God sets down laws and disciplines his people for breaking those laws. It always clear that this process is followed, because God sends a prophet to tell the people that they have broken those laws. God sets a tree in the middle of the entire universe for Adam and Eve to not eat. They eat it. God gives discipline and or punishment in a logical explanation. God has Noah build a boat for one hundred years. The people ignore the warning and the entire earth is flooded. God sets a covenant that he will not destroy the earth again until he destroys it with fire.[4] God makes a covenant with Abraham that God will kill himself if he broke the covenant.[5] Those who broke the covenant would be cut off.[6] God had Moses write his laws in stone and had the people say that they would be punished if they broke those laws.[7]
The cycle that repeats through the rest of the Old Testament is that the people break the laws, are warned, go into exile, and then return to the promised land. This is an example of authoritative governance, in which reasons are given for punishment or discipline, not authoritarian governance. God does not randomly come down from the sky and start hitting Israel with a stick. He responds to their actions and notifies them with feedback on their actions through the prophets. Some frame Christ as being more authoritarian than God the Father in the Old Testament, but this is a denial of Christ’s affirmation of the seriousness of God’s law.[8] The law is not abolished because it is applied to Christ as the sacrifice to atone for the sins of His people.
A psychology textbook describes a person with an authoritarian personality: “The authoritarian personality is marked by rigidity, inhibition, prejudice, and oversimplification (black- and-white thinking, so to speak). In addition, authoritarians exhibit right-wing authoritarianism, placing a highly value on social conformity”[9] Being authoritarian is highly questioned in democratic societies. The children of authoritarian parents tend to be emotionally stunted, like cerebrums on poles.[10]
This textbook also mentions an authoritarian personality in reference to cults and brainwashing: “The People’s Temple was a classic example of a cult, an authoritarian group in which the leader’s personality is more important than the beliefs that she or he preaches. Cult members give their allegiance to this person, who is regarded as infallible, and they follow his or her dictates without question. Almost always, cult members are victimized by their leaders in one way or another.”[11] The results of this authoritarian cult have entered the English language in references to the drinking of Kool-Aid. The drinking of Kool-Aid in Jonestown is a sick parody of the Lord’s Supper. Cults are authoritarian. Cults drink Kool-Aid. Christ drinks wine. The church should be authoritative, not authoritarian.
World War II was a victory of authority over authoritarianism. To be authoritative is superior to being authoritarian. Authoritarian cults destroy themselves. The church should be authoritative and edifying. The church should not be authoritarian. God’s being slow to anger also suggests that God is more authoritative than authoritarian.[12] The church should not be authoritarian.
A political science textbook has this to say about Authoritarianism:
Among the so-called Third World nations, we often encounter another approach to government. It is generally referred to as authoritarian government. Those nations that do not aspire to democracy will either accept some form of authoritarian rule or perhaps submit to something worse—totalitarianism. . . Authoritarian government is the oldest kind of government and the most widespread. It can exist in a tribal form; it can be found in a theocracy, wherein a priest or judging class exists to rule over people, as in the case of contemporary Iran; and it can be seen, and often is, in the government of a charismatic leader such as former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. Latin America has often seen authoritarian governments in one form or another. They vary from civilian dictatorships to military juntas and from one-person rule to collegial oligarchy. We can say some things about authoritarian governments that might help us understand both their prevalence and their numbers. First, there is a limited purpose to authoritarian government. It has limited objectives. Its goals are rather simple and straightforward: it wishes first to control the treasury of the nation and with that the major economic resources that produces the wealth of the nation. Thus, it would control copper, sugar, precious metals, or whatever a nation-state is most apt to produce as a money-making crop or resource. Second, authoritarian government wishes to eliminate any possible opposition to its control. To that end, it devotes a powerful military, a police force within all major municipalities, and a secret police to warn it of impending political opposition. Third, it wishes to tax the citizens so that it has additional sources of income and reminds the citizens of is power and its presence. Finally, the authoritarian regime may even wish to engage in certain public services that are either essential to the running of a civilized society (sanitation, water, power, etc.) or even to do something for the people in the name of the government, such as building hospitals or schools or enshrining national monuments. There is, after all, the desire for ego satisfaction even among dictators. Whatever else the government may do, the important point is that its impact on the daily lives of the people of the state is often rather slight. The people’s responsibility, under an authoritarian government, is to pay their taxes, to obey the laws, and not to attempt to involve themselves in political decisions. Generally, they should not organize political parties or engage in too many demonstrations. A rigged election every now and then is sometimes used to help legitimize the regime. It makes no difference to the authoritarian government where people live, where they travel, and what they do for a living, whom they marry, or what they believe. There is a general area of activity wherein a man or woman may be born, raise a family, pursue an occupation (even get wealthy), enjoy leisure, or choose not to work at all, and the government will take no special note of any of these activities. Although the press is usually controlled, in order to make the government look good, what and individual thinks about the government, God, or anybody else is pretty much his or her own affair, as long as the individual keeps it to himself or herself. In some instances, authoritarian governments can be seen in a positive light, especially in the case of relatively new nation-states that face the twin challenges of establishing new and alternative institutions of public order and pursuing economic development at the same time. Depending of the conditions that may have existed prior to the nation-states’ independence, there might be relatively few individuals with the know-how and experience to rule. The nation-states might cast their regimes in such euphemisms as “guided democracy” (as was done in Pakistan in the 1960s) or “caretaker regimes” (as in Chile since 1973), but they don’t seem to mind being seen for what they really are. In any case, a new state facing such problems as national identity, industrialization, population control, social mobilization, and internal disorders often cannot afford the luxury of a political democracy much less contain within it a knowledge of an appreciation for the prerequisites of democracy that we have just examined. That alternative is simply not available for some time. What of the traditional authoritarian regimes, such as those in Latin America, the Middle East, and parts of Africa? In many cases, they result from the failure of previous attempts at democratic government. Such failures may have been the result of the lack of a strong middle class, a low literacy rate, major economic failures, outside military threats, or other indigenous problems. The authoritarian figure or group comes forward to “reform the nation’s finances,” to “restore governmental stability,” or to “save the nation from outside aggression,.” In some instances, they do. It is generally recognized that Kemal Ataturk was primarily responsible for the integration and modernization of Turkey in the 1920s through the use of an authoritarian government. However, the precedent of authoritarian oligarchy makes attempts at other approaches to government more difficult. Further, even when the “success” of the dictator is ephemeral, as in the case of Juan Peron in Argentina, the habit of authoritarian rule is still hard to break. This leads us to the consideration of governmental transition in authoritarian regimes. This problem seems to be common to almost all types of authoritarianism. It stems from the fact that stability of the regime is so highly prized that the mere suggestion of an orderly transfer of power can be seen as a weakness of the present government. Major exceptions can be seen in the long, drawn-out transfer of power in Spain from the dictator Franco, to o King Juan Carlos and thence to a parliament in the early 1970s and in the military control of both Peru and Argentina giving way to civilian government in Peru during 1980 and in Argentina in 1984, but these kinds of changes are rare. More often than not, especially in military juntas, power simply passes from one group of military officers to another, accompanied by different degrees of instability, ranging from hardly noticeable transitions to bloody revolutions up to and including civil war. To the inhabitants of many nation-states, that is what government is lie. Government is similar to death, natural disasters, and other things of an unfortunate nature that are apt to come along during one’s lifetime and about which one can except to do very little. The infrequent rise of revolutionaries only serves one of two purposes: either to cause great local disturbance in which innocent people may be killed and property destroyed or simply to replace the current leaders with a new regime that will do little more than did the old. As a result, there is a great deal of apathy and a great deal of stability in these authoritarian regimes. Justice, morality, and ethical conduct are not to be expected in any great degree from the government, and authoritarian governments need not concern use in theism study except to be seen as rather unfortunate alternatives to preserving our own form of democracy. A more modern and sophisticated form of authoritarian government is totalitarianism. Probably the father of modern totalitarianism was Joseph Stalin, although seeds were certainly planted by Lenin in the former Soviet Union. Other practitioners of the art of include Mao Tse-tung of China; Kim Il Sung in North Korea; and Hitler to some extent, however briefly, in Germany. There was also a rather lame attempt by Mussolini in fascist Italy. Perhaps totalitarianism. In its full theoretical form, has only truly been approached in the former Soviet Union in North Korea, and in Maoist China. Hitler’s regime had totalitarian characteristics for only a brief period of time, and I am unsure as to its ultimate continuation beyond World War II even and Hitler been triumphant. Mussolini attempted totalitarianism, but the Italian population could never quite adjust to it or fully accept its purposes. A bizarre form of religious totalitarianism appears to exist in contemporary Iran under its Koranic-based fundamentalist government. Its continuation since the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1990 remains problematical. Totalitarianism has become and integral part of the ideologies of communism, and fascism. . .
Coulter, Edwin M. Principles of Politics and Government. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark, 1997, 152-154.
Compare post-classical Latin auctoritativus (9th cent.; from 14th cent. in British sources).
1. Issued by a person or group in authority; proceeding from an official source and requiring compliance or obedience. Also: of the nature of authority.
2. Of a text, statement, institution, etc.: possessing due or acknowledged authority; widely accepted or respected; definitive.
3. Of a person, his or her attributes, appearance, behaviour, etc.: conveying an impression of authority; characterized by an air of authority; commanding and self-confident.
[4] 2 Peter. The day of the Lord comes like a convict who escaped from the local penitentiary and is breaking into your house at 3 AM when you are asleep.
[5] Robertson, O. Palmer. The Christ of the Covenants. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Pub. Co., 1985, 130.
Other research suggests that prejudice can be a general personality characteristic. Theodore Adorno and his associates (1950) described what they called the authoritarian personality. These researchers started out by studying antisemitism. In the process, they found that people who are prejudiced against one group tend to be prejudiced against all out-groups (Kteily, Sidanius, & Levin, 2011; McAvoy, 2012).
To measure these qualities, the F scale was created (the F stands for “fasicsm”). This scale is made up of statements such as the ones that follow—to which authoritarians agree (adorno et al., 1950.
Authoritarian Beliefs
* Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues the children should learn.
* People can be divided into two distinct classes: the weak and the strong.
* If people would talk less and work more, everybody would be better-off.
* What this country needs most, more than laws and political programs, is a few courageous, tireless, devoted leaders in whom the people can put their faith.
* Nobody ever learns anything really important except through suffering.
* Every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions are obeyed without question.
* Certain religious sects that refuse to salute the flag should be forced to conform to such patriotic action or else be abolished.
As you can see, authoritarians are rather close-minded (Butler, 2000; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). As children, most were severely punished. As a result, they learned to fear authority (and to covet it) at an early age. In general, people are more likely to express authoritarian beliefs when they feel threatened. One example would be calling for more severe punishments in schools when the economy is bad and job insecurities are high.
It should be readily apparent from the list of authoritarian beliefs that the F scale is slanted toward politically conservative authoritarians. To be fair, rigid and authoritarian personalities can be found at both ends of the political scale (Ray, 1983). It may be better, therefore, to describe rigid and intolerant thinking as dogmatism, an unwarranted certainty in matters of belief or opinion. Dogmatic person find it difficult to change their beliefs, even when the evidence contradicts them (Butler, 2000; White-Ajmani & Bursik, 2011).
Coon, D. and Mitterer, J. O. (2016). Introduction to psychology: Gateways to mind and behavior. (14th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 560.
Psychologist Diana Baumrind (1991, 2005) has studied the effects of three major parental styles, which are identifiable patterns of parental caretaking and Interaction with children. . . Authoritarian parents enforce rigid rules and demand strict obedience to authority. Typicaly, they view children as having few rights But adultlike responsibilities. The child is expected to stay out of trouble and to accept, without question, what parents regard as right or wrong (“Do it because I say so”). Authoritarian parents tend to discipline their children through power assertion—physical punishment or a show of force, such as taking away toys or privileges. Power-oriented techniques —particularly harsh sever physical punishment —are associated with fear, hatred of parents, and a lack of creativity, spontaneity, and warmth (miller, Lambert, & Neumeister, 2012; Olson & Hergenhahn, 2013).
As an alternative, authoritarian parents may use withdrawal of love, or withholding affection, by refusing to speak to a child, threatening to leave, rejecting the child, or otherwise acting as if the child is temporarily unlovable. The children of authoritarian parents are usually obedient and self-controlled; but they also tend to be emotionally stiff, withdrawn, apprehensive, lacking in curiosity, and dependent on adults for approval. In addition, they can develop low self-esteem. If you regard yourself as a worthwhile person, you have self-esteem. Low self-esteem is related to physical punishment and the withholding of love. And why not? What messages do children receive if a parent beats them or tells them they are not worthy of love?
Overly permissive parents give little guidance, allow too much freedom, or don’ hold children accountable for their actions. Typically, the child has right similar to an adult’s, but few responsibilities. Rules are not enforced, and the child usually gets his or her way (“Do whatever you want”). Permissive parents tend to produce dependent, immature children who misbehave frequently. Such children are aimless and likely to “run amok.”
Some overly permissive parents genuinely wish to empower their children by imposing few limits of their behavior, making them feel special, and giving tem everything they want (Marman, 2004). But such good intentions can backfire, leaving parents with children who developed and artificially high level of self-esteem and a sense of entitlement. Overly empowered offspring are often spoiled, self-indulgent, and lack self-control (Crocker, Moeller, & Burson, 2010).
Baumrind describes authoritative parents as those who supply firm and consistent guidance, combined with love and affection. Search parents balance their own rights with those of their children. They control their children’s behavior through management techniques, which combined praise, recognition, approval, rules, reasoning, and similar means of encouraging desirable behavior. Effective parents are firm and consistent, not harsh or rigid. In general, they encourage the child to act responsibly, to think, and make good decisions. This style produces children who are resilient (Good at bouncing back after bad experiences) who develop the strengths that they need to thrive even in difficult circumstances (Azadyecta, 2011; Bah& Hoffmann, 2010). The children of authoritative parents are competent, self-controlled, independent, assertive, and inquiring. They know how to manage their emotions and use positive coping skills (Kudo, Lonhofer, & Floersch, 2012; Lynch, Geller, & Schmidt, 2004).
Christian women were put on this planet to be pilgrims, not princesses. Mattel usually presents Barbie as a princess who owns the Earth and cares little beyond the present moment. This is not the same as Cinderella. Cinderella was humble but then she was exalted. Her sisters were humbled after exalting themselves. There is a real recognition of sin nature and its effects in Malice in Cinderella. From everything that I have ever seen of Barbie up until the Barbie movie there is no clear awareness of sin. The dozens of Barbie movies have been summed up as “blonde girl gets what she wants.” It may be cruel to dangle in front of girls a version of the world that is closer to the 1950s only to have it yanked from them and then propagandize to them that being in the workforce is more important than being a mother, and that the hardship of being in the workforce may be far more difficult and less fulfilling than they were led to believe. If nothing else, Barbie pre-2023 suggests a world that is sinless, a world that does not exist. A simulacrum. A copy of a copy — something that doesn’t exist in the real world. A world without rules or boundary. A world where anything is possible. There is no awareness of sin or sickness or death or an estate of misery. This is what the Barbie movie changes. The Barbie movie introduces sin and misery into the world of Barbie.
Barbie has to deal with the effects of sin and the encroaching awareness of death. Barbie has to deal with the real world. Barbie is forced to take the red pill. She can no longer live in a fantasy world in which there is no scarcity, at least for the Barbies. Barbie is forced to live with the effects of sin. The worst sin of Barbie is encouraging girls to not think about death and to not consider what happens once we have ended our mortal life. In this way, the Barbie movie is like Hamlet. Ophelia has dreams of being a princess and is even prodded to resume romantic encounters with Hamlet, only to be slapped by Hamlet with his realization that the power of beauty will transform an honest girl into a whore, much easier than it can make a beautiful girl into someone pure. The real girls who meet Barbie are not wearing pink as she is, but wearing the death black of Hamlet, and they aren’t just wearing black. They realize that he effects of sin in a hyper Augustinian fashion yet removed from God. I realized that their heart is not pure, then men’s hearts are not pure, and like Hamlet they realize that men are vengeful, proud, ambitious, and have more evil thoughts than they can even name. They can’t imagine all the horrible things that they want to do all the time even to do them. In effect, the girls in the movie mirror Hamlet’s words that Barbie should go home and become a nun: why would they want to be mothers of sinners?
They in their rejection of makeup mirror hamlets words to Ophelia: “I know all about women and makeup. God gave you one face, but you make another.” Both the girls and Hamlet see beauty as a illusory and unworthy of pursuit. They both look at Barbie and see a two-faced whore.
Ken in his speech against Barbie mirrors Hamlet’s word says He slaps Ophelia: “you dance, and you saunter, and you talk a good game, giving cute names to everything. You say you don’t realize you’re leading Men on. I won’t allow this anymore. It has made me mad.” The girls realize as Hamlet does that Barbie and makeup are only skin deep covering up the corruption of a black heart. They see patriarchy and feminism as both games to seek control for power, nothing to do with God but only the effusion of an evil heart.
It might be asked whether the Barbie movie and the girls portrayed in it are feminist, or hyper Augustinian. They are skeptical of all forms of power. They see men as illegitimate and weak. Hamlet’s father was usurped by his brother who married his mother. The main girl in the Barbie movie from The real world, is implied to not be the legitimate daughter of her father. The king in Hamlet is often portrayed as an inept fat drunkard. Likewise, the father in the Barbie movie is so inept at learning Spanish that his wife corrects what he learns on Duolingo. In both works, characters have an extreme aversion to authority figures flowing from a distrust of human nature, but a Hamlet’s distrust is far more explicitly theological.
In both works, the encroaching awareness of death plays a large part. Hamlet’s first words are about his father’s death. Some of the first words in the Barbie movie are explicitly about thoughts of death. In both works, the speaker of these words is surrounded by a feast celebrating life. And hamlet, the celebration is the marriage of Hamlet’s mother and the king’s brother, as well as the reign of the king. In barbie, the celebration is of Barbies rein as matriarch. In both works, the male lead is dissatisfied with the matriarch’s reign. In both works the male lead is Keen to keep the love interests of the female lead away from her. Hamlet is disgusted by his mother’s incestuous marriage to his uncle. Ken is existentially angry when Barbie pays any attention to any other Ken. At the end of the play, all of the characters are dead except Horatio, it is heavenly implied that the king is going to burn in Hell. At the end of the movie, all of the characters are metaphysically dead, because they have lost their symbolic value and are only objects drifting in the void of purposelessness.
In a way, Hamlet’s mother Gertrude is Barbie. She is not only a princess but a queen with the privileges greater than anyone in the entire Kingdom. The issues of incest of marrying her husbands brother are glossed over as are the circumstances of the King’s death. The queen is content to covert and alcoholize her bloodstream to her heart’s content with no awareness of the encroaching presence of death except for Hamlet who refuses to wear anything but black in mourning of his father. As time goes on, Hamlet becomes more Sharp in his criticism of his mother’s lack of self-awareness and even goes to the lengths of inserting lines into a play to prick his mother’s conscience. After the play, Hamlet’s awareness of death becomes brutal. Hamlet’s mother watches Hamlet drive a sword through his ex-girlfriend’s father. Mirroring the descent from ideals to cynical reality in the Barbie movie, Hamlet instructs his mother to become celibate. Like the titular character in the Barbie movie, Gertrude is the queen of an entire land who spends her life partying, only to have thoughts of impending death, a realization of the gravity of her actions, a rejection of her assigned mate, and a rejection of her life. It could be argued that Barbie has worst poison to drink than Gertrude. Decades of Barbie’s career are rendered to her as meaningless to destructive and she leaves that world in disgust and existential confusion. At the end of Hamlet, Gertrude tells her son, the dying product of her life to the world, “good night sweet prince,” before she rolls over and dies.
This is an outline of why Pilgrim’s Progress is better than the sequel. The sequel even features a bodyguard who as Pastor Bennett stated, is the allegorical equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger (or at least an 80’s action hero) who is armed to the teeth. It’s kind of an example of why the gospels are known worldwide, while Athanasius’s biography of Anthony the Great is not. Christ had necessarily greater challenges than Christian. Imagine liking Anthony the Great’s desert adventure more than the gospel of John. Imagine referring to only the gospel of John as authorized, like Martin Luther seems to have done. Pilgrim’s Progress is to the sequel as Moby Dick is to Caillou. Caillou goes to the Celestial City. While the narrative may be useful in a pragmatic sense, its allegorical effect is greatly diminished to the point of being almost non-existent. As if the enchantment was leaving and being replaced by realism. Pilgrim almost drowns. Twice. The second time he drowns himself to the Celestial City because both of those are totally necessary. Unless they aren’t in the next book. Going through vanity fair and being burned to death by Roman Catholics is totally necessary for all pilgrims. Unless it suddenly isn’t because the world changed. Imagine if Hopeful had just been a figment of Christian’s imagination the whole time like Tyler Durden. That would kind of detract from the meaning of the story. Unreliable narrators can do that.
For God to be glorified in the highest possible manner, suffering must exist in the world according to the best of all possible worlds theory. This is one reason that the first half of Pilgrim’s Progress is better than the second: the first half prepares people for suffering to the point of martyrdom at the hands of Roman Catholics. The second prepares you to have other people fight your battles for you. The first half prepares you to be like Daniel whose super power seemed to be self-control through fasting, individualism, and being a eunuch. The second half prepares you to follow the herd, assuming that the herd is Christian, which it may not be. While pragmatically, not everyone has the same job in an organization, in terms of the human heart being conflicted with itself, Pilgrim’s Progress is far superior. Unless of course it is possible to kill your own sin using other people. Usually this is considered legalism, but this may be unexplored conceptual territory.
I follow Charles Murray’s rule for pronouns, in which the author’s gender is used rather than the plural vagueness that strips men of individuality and places them in an amorphous collectivity. But this points out a feature of the sequel to Pilgrim’s Progress: there is no main character. There is only a group of pilgrims so that it becomes Pilgrims’ Progress, or holiday.
This is partially what I mean: the protagonist is splintered into a group of people, distributed consciousness, if you will. If the protagonist were Pilgrim’s son, then this would formally be the children’s version of Pilgrim’s progress. As it is, the title is merely an artifact. It is no longer Pilgrim’s progress. It is more like Pilgrim’s child following in his footsteps at a far more leisurely pace with the rest of his family blending in so much that he is no longer the main character. The cheems and swole doge meme works by comparing one to the other. In a way this is actually about gender, because it could be framed that Christina is the protagonist of the sequel in so far as she makes decisions, but again, she is protected by a bodyguard. It could be said that the only males in the sequel are side characters. So in that way it is about gender. both the son and the wife arguably are less virtuous than Christan because the don’t go to the valley of the shadow of death. It is generally less virtuous to follow the herd than to go against it, and the form of this meme highlights the fact that each character by itself is less than Pilgrim. In other words, the format of the meme itself does not allow for treating a family as an individual. The format of the meme only allows comparing Pilgrim with his son, whose main act is eating an apple and having a stomachache. The rest of the sons acts are mainly to agree to quasi-arranged marriages. So anyway, writing “their battles” in this meme is not an option if the format of the meme is to remain unaltered. Another way of saying this is that all of the sons’ personalities lack distinctness so that to speak of one is to speak of all of them. If this is true, there is no need to mention the plural of the one son who is merely multiplied.
Jonathan Edwards in his fifty-sixth resolution, made the resolution that he would continue to preserver despite making no progress. This is not a resolution that most people make on new year’s day, because it requires perseverance. They sometimes say that it is more preservation of the saints than perseverance, but I am cautious to deemphasize man’s responsibility given how many visceral metaphors Paul used for sanctification. In His human nature, Christ has more to do with Batman than Superman in a sense: Christ had to be punched and bleed many times to follow His father’s will. It might be that I am drawn to Batman as a symbol of self-control given the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. It might be said that perseverance is concentrated self-control as endurance is concentrated patience. Christ didn’t carry Christian to the Celestial city in Pilgrim’s Progress. He had to walk, despite how Christians may joke about being carried. He had to walk one step at a time, a reality which is heavily emphasized in the Great Divorce. This fact jumps out to me probably because I thought God wanted me to join the Army, but my feet were inadequate. Somehow the image of neither Batman nor Christ eating donuts seems real. I wonder how much leaven is in them. Neither are they men of laughters.
I imagine that C.S. Lewis would say that there is no better way to see how different English speaking society views the concept of patriarchy than by reading Ephesians 5:22 in The Message and comparing it to the 1599 Geneva translation.
The 1599 Geneva translation features a more strict rendering of Ephesians 5:22-24:
Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord.
For the husband is the wife’s head, even as Christ is the head of the Church, and the same is the Savior of his body.
Therefore as the Church is in subjection to Christ, even so let the wives be to their husbands in everything.
Words such as these in modern times that are by those presumed to be more enlightened are shunned by females steeped in cultural feminism. Even Christian women have a tendency to shrink from this verse, as they state that marriage is meant to be a team, and deemphasize this passage.
In Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. Ephesians 5:22-24 are rendered much less stringently:
Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ. The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.
That Christian women reject the language of the earlier translation demonstrates how different the concept is viewed now and how atheistic feminism really is. Barbie may be the final fruition Genesis 3:16 before our country is destroyed by those countries who crush the family structure less flagrantly.
It appears that the common implied definition of patriarchy is “authoritarian anti-intellectualism buttressed by an extremely literal interpretation of scripture” commonly referred to as “fundamentalism,” which in turn functions through the forced acceptance of extra biblical rules known as legalism. In such a system, the conscience is interpreted primarily through the leader. Or put in another way, the Bible is interpreted through the leader’s conscience with no Liberty reserved for anyone. What is more surprising is that someone might use the word fundamentalist to describe the Alabama-originating Presbyterian Church in America, if reddit, gatekeeping incarnate, is any indication. So the way that fundamentalism currently is used is usually in reference to the level of literal interpretation as opposed to metaphorical interpretation, and rather than whether a historical document is to be viewed as a historical document. No one claims that Julius Caesar should be read metaphorically. Some history is written by the winners but the literature may be more written by the losers.
The Barbie movie doesn’t offer a prescription for what should happen but a description of what has happened, and the title character finds it wanting. While the intention of the Egyptians to create jewelry may have been evil, God can use the borrowed capital for good.
It is important to note that Julius Caesar was not the winner. He was stabbed. Repeatedly. In the Senate. With knives. No one claims that his memoirs were rewritten by someone else. So in his case, history was written by the loser. One of the most famous historical losers wrote history. From a materialist perspective, if it is assumed that Jesus died and therefore “lost,” his “losing” did not affect his writing of History. Even limited to a materialist perspective, His Spirit lived on in his followers. It is doubtful whether the same could be said of Julius Caesar. It is therefore all the more striking that Paul states that if Jesus were to have not resurrected, then faith in him would have been useless. No one says this about Julius Caesar.
The Barbie movie is a history of feminism for the past 100 years. In that respect, it functions descriptively rather than prescriptively. Nothing that happens in it has not already occurred. The Barbies cheating on the kens to control them is not an instruction manual so much as it is art imitating life that already exists. It’s just another manifestation of feminism seeking to reverse God’s curse on Eve by controlling man and suppress the knowledge of God. In previous eras, humanity was viewed to orbit around God. Feminism seeks to reject this by implying that patriarchy means women orbit around men. The projection of patriarchy terminates in the orbiting of men around women. The political and religious manifestations of this are women pastors and an 83 year old woman governing the House of Representatives of the entire country, and second in the presidential line of succession. Another political manifestation of this is giving women the right to murder their children. In the Barbie movie, this is merely described as women having a matriarchy, and implied by there being no children in the Barbie world and the only pregnant Barbie described as weird.
What happens in the Barbie world is really just a microcosm of the real world. Ken cannot restore the patriarchy because he is ignorant of the source of patriarchy, which is Christianity. This is underlined by God at the end of the movie being presented as a woman. Barbie has access to the god of feminism, but Ken is ignorant and unable to reach the God of the patriarchs. The Barbie movie is nothing to fear. It is merely the movie representation of what has already occurred. At the beginning of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan led a surge of masculinity, but 40 years later All that remains in the mind of public is the image of Reagan without memory of him quoting the screw tape letters or the Bible. To ken, Ronald Reagan the Christian and Bill Clinton the adulterer are equal representations of masculinity.
Because Ken is ignorant of the God of the patriarchs in one sense, he is unable to restore patriarchy. It is also noteworthy that Ken seems to have no understanding of Christianity. Ken represents a foolish man with good intentions. His representation of all men is accurate to their degree that men are fools. Because he has no knowledge of God he is almost inherently foolish with no guidebook other than popular culture to inform him or instruct him. Ken thinks in pictures and has no real concept of books. Considering that most of America is alliterate, Ken in this respect is an accurate portrayal of the average American even caricatured.
When the baby dolls are thrown down at the beginning of the movie this was a result of patriarchy flowing from Christianity being replaced by feminism flowing from luciferianism. When the baby doll is smashed against the rock,ot is replaced by Barbie. When Barbie is smashed against reality, there is no replacement. There is just Ken unmoored from a creator. As a result, Barbie becomes unmoored from her creator. As her spiritual nature dies, she looks for answers in biology when she visits the gynecologist. When Barbie remove herself from a patriarchy infused Barbie world, she is really moving herself farther away from a theonomic worldview. In its place is a feminomic worldview in which nothing exists except material parts and depression. The god of feminism is a nihilistic void. The God of the patriarchs is God and the Lord of all horses.
If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.
— Proverbs 24:10
One reason that the first part of Pilgrim’s Progress[3] is better than the second part is that the first part is at great pains to distinguish between post-regenerate sanctification of the saved and unregenerate legalism of the unsaved. This is one thing that the defrocked antinomian Tullian Tertullian got right: “Sanctification” outside of Christ is spiritual suicide. Just ask Mr. Legality. If we take Faulkner’s qualification for the only thing worth writing about to be the human heart in conflict with itself, the first part of Pilgrim’s Progress is worth more than the sequel. This is partly because the distributed consciousness of the group means that there isn’t much conflict in the group. There are children and bodyguards. Some may say that this illustrates how each Christian’s journey to the Celestial City is not the same, but it is clear that these later pilgrims have yet to have resisted the world the flesh and the devil to the point of shedding blood. Because their experience is less harrowing than the archetypal Christian, their experience will necessarily be less inspiring by example. None of them watched their friend be burned to death in vanity fair. They skipped it because Bunyan was either being an unreliable narrator or engaged in retroactive continuity to explain that vanity fair is actually not required for everyone to go through anymore. Likewise the slough of despair has stepping stones in the second book, even though it is implied in the first part that slogging through the slough is required by every Christian.
In the first part, Pilgrim leaves the path, goes through a shortcut, and is imprisoned in Doubting Castle. He is told repeatedly Giant Despair that he should just kill himself because he will never get out. Because Giant Despair is a part of Pilgrim’s mind metaphorically, the Giant is weakened by sunlight, which relieves depression. After a long time, Pilgrim remembers that he has a key, the promises of the gospel, to the giant’s dungeon. by Pilgrim infiltrating Castles of Despair and defeating Giant Despair over and over and over until his spirit breaks completely, and he becomes a Despair Giant in a Castle of Despair himself precisely because he tried to help others out of despair. It seems so similar in some ways that it is hard to separate the true borrowed capital from the false mysticism of despair. As I have said before, I take issue with Bunyan placing Doubting Castle near a shortcut in the way. This is a strange thing for a man who was imprisoned for a decade to do. Yet it cannot be denied that Pilgrim left the path. It cannot be easily said that Bunyan did the same and was imprisoned as a result. This is a heart in conflict with itself the likes of which Pilgrim’s family in the sequel never encounter.
If you are not the protagonist of your life, then what does that make Pilgrim’s Progress? A lie? An undesirable frame of reference? Heresy? Pilgrim was the hero, not Jesus. Should Bunyan have made Jesus the protagonist instead of Pilgrim? The attempt to show the distance between the Holiness of Christ and the lowliness of Pilgrim necessitates Pilgrim being the protagonist. Saying that Jesus is the hero of your story sounds kind of knocks of Christological Gnosticism. It implies that there is nothing worth pursuing on earth, and that death is the only way for Christian be truly reunited with Christ, so the sooner the better.[4] If Pilgrim is not the hero of his story, he cannot do heroic things. He cannot fight Apollyon. He cannot apply the promises of the Gospel. He cannot share the Gospel with others. He cannot make a pilgrimage to the Celestial City. Jesus can do that. Not Pilgrim. These statements proceeding from that statement that Jesus is the hero of your life are irrational. I know how to use the subjunctive tense, but it takes away from the force of the consequences of an argument. Every choice has consequences. Jesus cannot make decisions for Christian. There is no hero in the sequel in this sense.
If Jesus is the protagonist of your life, then why is Christian the protagonist of Pilgrim’s Progress? If protagonists were unhelpful to the sanctification of the church, protagonists would be banned, and Jesus would be the only character. Having protagonists other than Jesus would encourage self-idolatry of placing oneself at the center of the universe. If Jesus is the protagonist of your life, why is he rarely mentioned in the Old Testament? It would be one thing if it were stated in Genesis 3 that all sin comes after pride, and that no sin comes without pride, but that a general proverb stating that pride comes before falls appears equivocal, and hardly universal. Having no knowledge of the original languages, I could be wrong, but emphasizing the sin of pride to the degree that encourages Giant Despair is itself sinful and unbalanced.
If the full armor of God does not involve the use of weaponry, then why is Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress portrayed with a sword, in mortal combat, with the devil? Tanks are called armor, but they also shoot non-defensive giant bullets. Armor generally contains both armor, and weapons. I doubt that Paul described the sword of roman legionnaire for nothing. Legionnaires generally fought wars; with weapons; while wearing armor. Christian wore armor. Paul said to put on the whole armor of God. The Bible is a sword. These are all metaphors that Paul used to describe necessities of the Christian life that Bunyan applies to pilgrim engaging in mortal combat. In the sequel, any combat is more muted and mundane, as the bodyguard of the group is not the hero. The pilgrims in the second part are just coasting on Pilgrim’s achievements, but not in the same way that Pilgrim depends on Christ.
Sometimes I wonder if the sometimes rejection of portrayals of Batman as dark is a form of rejecting the awareness of God’s glory and man’s evil. A hero is judged by the strength (and depravity) of his rogues gallery. Pilgrim’s Progress wasn’t nicknamed Dangerous Journey because of how much fun Pilgrim had. A journey with no obstacles ceases to be a story. In this way, Superman often reflects in a way a Docetic view of Christ in His incarnation: a being with no limitations and no pain. Batman often reflects Christ’s actual incarnationwith pain and suffering due to limitations put on Him to be the perfect sacrifice. Batman in the moral center of the DC universe, and the further removed from Christianity he becomes, his mission becomes aimless drudgery with a distorted view of justice. For now, Superman is Arminian positivity about man’s nature. Batman is Calvinistically pessimistic about man’s nature, and this is the closest analogue that most people get to pilgrim. Like Batman, if Pilgrim had no obstacles, he would be superman. His children have few obstacles, so their journey is far less dangerous by comparison.
One of the values of Pilgrim’s Progress is that merely stating that Pilgrim is not the main character of his life doesn’t really mean a lot. Pilgrim still has stuff to do and endure pain to reach the Celestial City of God. If God’s asei divine nature is emphasized too much, Christ becomes distorted into a Docetic ghost who never feels pain. If His human nature is overemphasized and a television show is made of Him, he becomes merely animated guts. The modern analogue for Pilgrim’s Progress more than Batman may be Berserk, considered widely to be the greatest manga ever made, and is often compared to the work of Gustave Doré. In Berserk, the protagonist Guts has two natures, so he is a part of two worlds. Forgetting that either of those exists can have deadly consequences and usually does for everyone around him. This is indirectly another way that the work of Kentaro Miura reflects that of Gustave Doré. Doré occasionally depicts the Damned in Hell as shocked that they can’t see through Dante, because he isn’t a Docetic ghost like they are. He has his mortal shell intact even though he is walking through Hell. Unlike Guts, Dante is often shocked by the acquaintances that he finds there working out their Damnation in pride and hatred of God. In Berserk, Guts isn’t shocked by the monstrously deformed nature of popes or similar clerics. There is some indications that Miura read parts of Revelation because there seems to be a reference in his work to it. There is little in fiction that can rival the darkness of Christ’s appearance in Revelation 14:14. There is no doubt that Bunyan, who was said to bleed Scripture, read Revelation. Pilgrim leaves the City of Man, except now it is called the City of Destruction. Christ didn’t carry Christian to the Celestial city in Pilgrim’s Progress. He had to walk, despite how Christians may joke about being carried. He had to walk one step at a time. This inevitably leads to pain.
The seesaw of Docetism is that whenever Christ’s humanity and divinity are not balanced, heresy will result, and this will have an effect on how sanctification is viewed. If the humanity side of the seesaw is overleaned on, Arminianism results, and Christ becomes more democratic and is viewed less as a king. If the divinity side of the seesaw is leaned on, Christ becomes an arenic docetic force that was never tempted and has no flesh. If Christ’s divinity is overemphasized, he becomes a docetic ghost and it is believed that no one can view God’s glory unveiled. If Christ’s humanity is overemphasized, Christ’s image becomes an item to be mass produced as a product. If the humanity side of the seesaw is over leaned on, Christ becomes merely an example to be imitated rather than the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). As a result, it becomes more obvious that imbalance will necessarily occur at some level, and that will result in projecting oneself onto God at some level as an inevitability. Any pretension toward balance will likely terminate in pride rather than humility.
Despair of some kind usually results from trying to hold Christ’s temporal nature in contact with his eternal nature. Individuals of an introverted nature will tend toward metaphors used by Paul which render the believer as a plant, and downplay sanctification as a military or athletic pursuit. Individuals of an extroverted nature will tend toward metaphors used by Paul which render the believer as an active adopted son of God working to bring about the end times. Focusing on the believer as a part of the scenery of the arena tends to downplay evangelism or works of great enterprise. Focusing on the believer as an agent created by God to do work tends to encourage evangelism outside of one’s comfort zone. The psychological state of the individual will naturally gravitate toward one end of these metaphor, but it would be an act of pride to pretend that one is perfectly balanced focusing on one set of Biblical metaphors while ignoring others. This may be why God thought it would glorify Him most to have a diversity of Christian denominations rather than a centralized power in the current age.
The balance of the seesaw of focus on Christ’s humanity and divinity will have an impact on what is considered eisegesis and exegesis. If Christ’s divinity is overemphasized as an arenic providential force, then the actions of those regenerated by God to be sons will be deemphasized. All acts of humans will be attributed to God, and the humans will be regarded as puppets—that no one acts, Christ does all the acting. It is rendered in such frames that Joshua did not really do anything. If Christ’s humanity is overemphasized, God’s power in allowing miraculous events to occur will be coordinately deemphasized— that God barely gives any power to do anything. In such cases, David’s killing Goliath will be seen as an act that can and should be imitated. A balance should try to be maintained so that when the Bible states that Joshua did something, it is maintained that Joshua did something, instead of being a puppet of God. It should also be maintained that when Joshua did something, he did it through the power of God in a miraculous fashion which God ordained. Any understanding of any action in the Bible that does not maintain both of these elements is likely a direct result of a Docetist view of Christ that overemphasizes his divine nature at the cost of his human nature.
Those who overemphasize Christ’s divinity will see it is an act of worship to downplay his humanity and the meaning of human actions. Those who emphasize Christ’s humanity will see it as an act of worship to restore the proper view of Christ’s humanity to its proper place as an example of how to act to those who are regenerated to the role of sons. Docetists will see the emphasis on Christ’s humanity as an act of pride and as a result more heavily emphasize Christ’s asei nature and those Scriptures which emphasize God as an asei providential force outside of the universe. Those who seek to have a balanced view of Christ’s person will and should state that emphasizing God’s transcendence without mentioning God’s immanence in Christ becoming flesh is unbalanced, and a neglect of seeing Christ on every page of the Bible.
If Christ’s humanity is deemphasized so that he is not seen as a man who was tempted in all ways expect without sin, he will be seen as a docetic and ascetic ghost. It follows that a docetic view of Christ would lead to a docetic sanctification, but this may not necessarily be the case. Ascetics of the ancient world made reference to fasting in the Bible which is often ignored by the modern church. Daniel fasted and then wrote a prayer of confession in Daniel 9. Hannah fasted and God answered her prayers. Daniel fasted for three weeks and then an angel with flaming eyes appeared to Daniel and said that he was greatly loved. Christ fasted for forty days. These passages are largely ignored as irrelevant by the church protestant. So it may not be that asceticism and Docetism are necessarily the same concept if asceticism in one way devalues Christ’s human nature, but in another way it in a way views the discipline of the body as paramount to sanctification.
When Christ’s divinity is overemphasized to be more real than his humanity, this tends to lead to a hyper focus on Christ stating that one should go into his closet to pray to avoid being a hypocrite whose reward is being heard by men praying, leading to imbalance. When Christ’s humanity is brought into balance with his divinity, this encourages evangelism to spread the good news that God descended from the heavens in humility to save those regenerated by the Father to be sons who repent of their sins. A tree doesn’t think it’s a tree. It is a tree. If Paul had only used metaphors of plants, then it would be fine for believers to identify as broccoli. But Paul also uses martial metaphors to identify Christians as soldiers. Soldiers who identify as potatoes tend to lack discipline. It is generally understood that a potato lacks the ability to see itself as a soldier, but it is not outside the realm of possibility.
Stating that any regenerated son of God is only being used by God as a demonically possessed puppet is likely a result of a faulty view of Christ’s nature. In this way, heresy at some level is inevitable, because projection onto God is at some level inevitable, because imbalance in emphasis on Scripture is at some level inevitable. Stating that Joshua did nothing and that Christ did everything in him sounds pious, but is probably an implied denial of Joshua’s responsibility, and according to John Flavel, heresy. Joshua can have no part in regenerating himself and still raise Moses’s arms. Jesus did not take manual possession of Joshua’s body and fight wars for his entire life. Christ gave Joshua the power of the Holy Spirit to fight an unending war for his entire life. To say that Joshua did nothing would be Damnable antinomian heresy that flies in the face of I Thessalonians 4:1. To say such is to say that the actions of the regenerated sons of God means nothing, because they are not their actions at all. This may be correlated to the use of the word glorify instead of please: if all things glorify God from the viewpoint of eternity in Romans 9, and this is stated without reference to God’s pleasure stated in (WCF 11.5), then all human actions become viewed as vanity. Christ cannot grieve the Holy Ghost, but the Christian can.
The focus on the believer as a plant seems to be antinomians’ predilection to focus on metaphors that place the sanctification of the believer as plants growing. Because of the infinite distance between the creator and the creature, any use of infallible Scripture will be a form of projection onto God because all of Scripture cannot be memorized in perfection, and even if it were in a semi eidetic fashion, choice still has to be made about which Scripture to apply, and this can and almost necessarily leads to imbalance. If Paul uses metaphors of both soldiers and plants to describe sanctification, sole use of one will be a form of unbalance and projection onto God necessarily. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite without projection because the comprehension will be finite, while true yet accompanied with error of understanding.
During a battle, when Moses’s hands were uplifted, the battle went well, but when he got tired and dropped his hands, the battle went badly. Joshua watched Aaron and Hur hold up Moses’s hands during a battle so that they would win (Exodus 17:12-14). While this is symbolic that God controlled the outcome of the battle, Moses’s hands still had an effect on the course of the battle. Joshua stated that the victory of the battles in the book of Joshua were given by God, but this does not change the fact that at the same time, Joshua fought a war his whole life. If either human responsibility or divine power is overemphasized, imbalance will result.
If you say that God only works and not Joshua, you are probably already accepting the antinomian frame and rejecting Christ’s humanity as the second Joshua. Docetism will result in ignoring injunctions to be strong and courageous as superfluous.
Saying that God is merely the projection of man is blasphemy. Stating that one man projected onto God by not taking into the whole of Scripture is theology. Stating that man will necessarily project to some degree onto Scripture is a recognition of man’s finitude. This is stated continually in a theological context when it is stated when one engages in eisegesis, which is the projection of oneself and one’s premises onto Scripture. Thus, projection onto God by fallible man can coexist in the present with God’s word being infallible, because this inevitably happens to some degree every time a fallen man reads the Bible.
A recent medal of honor recipient who had his face blown off by jumping on a grenade before going on to have his face reconstructed, accidentally parachuting into Arlington cemetery, and running a marathon, said that the common core of every human experience is struggle. This element of struggle is particularly lacking in the second part of the Pilgrim’s Progress. While Christian walked through the valley of the shadow of death, his family walked through the same area- in the day, where they could see where they were placing their feet, could avoid traps, and could see any fiends that might otherwise have attempted to assail them. Whereas Christian personally fought Apollyon and was in real mortal peril, his family has a bodyguard fight a lesser demon for them. Whereas Christian had to watch the trial and burning of his fellow pilgrim, his family almost completely ignores vanity fair entirely despite Christian being formerly told that all pilgrims must go through Vanity Fair. Whereas Christian is locked in Doubting Castle and told by Giant Despair to kill himself, the family walks straight into the castle and straight up kills the giant. Obstacles mean less if you do not have to move them. Boulders mean little if you can just walk around them. Removing boulders out of his way to allow his elephants to cross the mountain is a feat for which Hannibal was immortalized. Hiking in the mountains is a relatively easy endeavor by comparison.
While it could be said that there is some value in showing how different Christian pilgrimages to the Celestial City, this is not the same as saying that the second is better than the first. You might say that the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes are better than the gospels because they show that not everyone has as hard of a journey as Christ. This would be a ridiculous statement, because Christ is the ideal of Christianity because He is its source. Christ’s journey to the Celestial City was harder than any Christian, so any journey to the Celestial City that is significantly easier than others is necessarily less honored to the degree that it reflects Christ’s journey to the Celestial City less. This is of course moderated by the lack of perfect knowledge and the bias of pockets of time containing cultures that focus on one set of values to the marginalization of others, but any culture that disconnects the fruit of the Spirit from Christ ceases to be a Christian culture. A culture that values passion rather than self-control, patience, and joy tends to ignore eternal things such as the Celestial City.
The message of the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, and Vanity Fair was that “there is no easy way. There are no shortcuts.” The Slough of Despair must be crossed by anyone wishing to reach the Celestial City. Doubting Castle is where you are placed if you try to take a shortcut. Vanity fair is exists explicitly to be a barrier to pilgrims on their way to the Celestial City so that those who wish to avoid it must “go out of the world” to do so.
Whereas the Slough of Despond almost consumes Pilgrim before being dragged out of it, the pilgrims are guided over clearly visible stones in the midst of the slough. The pilgrims ignore any previous rules about leaving the path and attack doubting Castle. Vanity Fair is briefly mentioned, but none of the pilgrims is burned to death as Faithful was. The pilgrims rushing through these areas can be interpreted as life being something that is just passed through to get to the Celestial. However, the lack of death as a prominent force in the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress undercuts its tone. The second half does not have the same sobering effect as Foxe’s book of martyrs.
Jeremiads teach us the impermanence and misguiding of emotions through a false filter as shown by Amusing Ourselves to Death and the Screwtape Letters. My father valued Spiritual emotions as one of the greatest and most important books he ever read. In that book, Roberts combines the thoughts of these two authors by stating that there is nothing particularly Christian about joy experienced while going to church, because the same emotion can occur with regard to watching a movie. Jonathan Edwards would say that many hell-bound legalists who think of themselves as virtuous saints, yet have rotten fruits of maliciously mindreading others. Joy is morally indifferent before application to an object and the damned may glorify God and enjoy Him in church before realizing their true state in the future life. And Edwards’ congregation did use malicious mindreading on Edwards to assume that he had committed some crime of which he was innocent. He chose exile to head the Mohican Indians. Some might have thought that he bound their conscience to be more concerned about Hell than was warranted. Some bind the consciences of others to project themselves and their preferences onto God’s law in an emphasis that says more about them than God. Some have joy in doing this and mocking others who fail to live up to their man-centered standards. So joy even in the house of God is not inherently virtuous or righteous, which Edwards went to great pains to flesh out in his book Religious Affections.
Lewis goes farther and states that it is the demons’ goals to encourage Christians to become preoccupied with the feelings of their own minds, trying to produce the desired feelings. This focus on emotions by the demons reverses the normal state of affairs and makes emotions, which are largely the product of action and thought, into the cause. Joy is not a goal. Joy can only ensue through action. Or maybe the hymn about happiness resulting in trusting and obeying is a lie that should be removed from hymnals. Lewis goes to great lengths to show that dryness is not a sin but a natural state of affairs in the current broken world. Donald Robertson says that trying to suppress an emotion will ironically energize it, creating the opposite desired effect.[1] Lewis also states that joy in unworthy things is of little value, like when the demons delight in the suffering of humans if not use is made of that suffering. The emotions of a human in a church building may have no correlation to anything of a spiritual nature. Take my father for example, who spent one his last times in church bent over a cane collecting the offering during the worship service. If he felt a lack of joy at that time, in the worship service, no serious person would claim that the bitterness of cancer pressing down on his femur was the result of his spiritual lack of wellbeing. Joy and pain during any process may have no clear virtuous or vicious cause or correlation. Christ indicates that anyone who would make specious judgments on such matters is not wise if John 9:3 is to be considered God’s infallible word. To deviate from Christ’s example of analysis in this manner would be foolish. Lewis echoes this sentiment in flipping the usual understanding on its head and states that God is most pleased when his servants obey Him despite the intense bitterness he allows to be foisted on them, if Job 9:18, 42:7 is to be considered more than nominal and analogical. Anything else would be a Docetist religion that has little to do with Christianity.
It’s not what you feel or say but what you do that matters.[2] Christ asked who did the will of the father, the son who said he would go into the field but didn’t, and the son who said he wouldn’t, but did. Faithful in Pilgrim’s Progress makes a similar point. Referring to Christ’s words indirectly as legalistic and behavioristic can have serious repercussions. Derek Thomas made a similar point when speaking about Pilgrim’s Progress as he stated that John Bunyan had many feelings that did not matter.[3] What mattered was logic. Feelings did not matter. If he had blasphemous thoughts come into his head out of the red not of his own making that disturbed him, it did not matter. He focused on what was true and logical. This is a repeating pattern in Pilgrim’s Progress: When Christian focusses on how he feels, looking into himself rather than to God, the source of all logic, if not Logic Himself, he is thrown into disorder. When he focusses on what is true and logical, he maintains his vision of the master concern of seeking the Celestial City and being completely indifferent to the City of Man to be destroyed in vain glory. If Christian had focused on how he felt rather than what was true in the presence of legalist, he might have never made it to the Celestial City. It took Evangelist’s rebuking Christian to seek what was true rather than what was palatable and easy for him to regain his focus on his master concern. In this way, Pilgrim’s Progress and Puritan theology has this in common with Stoicism: a value of the predominance of logic over emotions as a guide. C. S. Lewis tends to downplay this similarity and caricatures Stoicism as a worship of death rather than as a format of logic to enduring pain to seeking the four virtues of wisdom, justice, moderation and courage. Curiously, the more ascetic prayers of Puritans who focus on the asei nature of God as inherently qualitatively higher than man and deemphasize Christ’s human nature match some of the language of contemptuous expressions of the Stoics. Man is a worm, a vapor, nothing at times in the psalms. It might be said that the psalms which focus on this are more ascetic than anything written by the Stoics.
The question is then what is the ideal emphasis on Christ’s nature? How the church thinks of Christ’s natures will be reflected on how man is thought of. If Christ’s human nature is deemphasized when it is stated that God has not a body like men, human nature will be deemphasized to a more ascetic degree of being nothing in comparison with God’s asei nature. Francis Schaeffer spoke about this being an error because man is something wonderful.[4] The fact remains, however, that the psalms speak of man as less than man at times. This will result in projection onto God to some degree because man is fallible, fallen, finite, and forgetful and God is infallible, unfallen, infinite, and omniscient. Focusing on man as a worm will result in imbalance just as focus solely on man as keeping the law in Psalm 119 will result in imbalance. Any psalm taken by itself with too much emphasis can result in imbalance and a projection of man onto God in a questionable manner. It might be said that humility in one’s conclusions is an awareness of fallibility. In this regard, humility is an awareness of fallibility; pride is projecting oneself onto God so much that one does not admit the possibility that his interpretation could be wrong, imbalanced, or mistaken. To assume that one’s position is infallibly God’s is an act of pride that will likely lead to painful humbling at some point in the future. At least Christ indicates that when he says that those who exalt themselves will be humbled. This was especially true of the Pharisees who presumed on having God’s view of Scripture and its application. Some might say that it is dangerous to learn about religions other than Christianity or expressions of Christianity deemed heretical and trust the experts while curiosity is vilified. Maintaining a fixed authoritarian soldier rather than a growth scout mindset in this regard may lead to greater condemnation.
[1] Robertson, Donald. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. St Martin’s Press, 2019,
The first five parts of this critique can be found here, here, here, here, and here.
Ryken’s analysis of gossip sounds reasonable enough. His lack of Scripture to support his argument is odd. One emphasis of Calvinism is cynicism toward the idea that man can save himself. The idea is eviscerated. But it’s not clear that the so-called cage stage of Calvinism is unbiblical. Most of the prophets were intensely cynical of Israel. They didn’t edify in the normal sense of the word. Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, all proclaimed that Israel was a whore. This is not usually considered edifying in the modern day, but it is God’s word. The question then becomes what the proper balance between focusing on justification and adoption.
The older brother is keener to mention divinely appointed genocide, slavery, burning people, because those things in that context glorify God by showing forth the power of justification and the magnitude of sin. As a result, the older brother denomination left the father Presbyterian denomination (known as the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America) decades earlier than the younger brother. The older brother realized that America had not been a Christian nation for 150 years. Adoption in the context of the abyss of warped humanity barely kept from imploding into Hellfire may not seem as edifying. Stating the effects of sin may not be seen as edifying if the focus is on adoption rather than justification. So the focus will determine what is considered edifying or cynical. A focus on Joshua’s wars and Christ’s kindness may be difficult to balance, especially if it a tendency is not known or acknowledged.
So the question is also how cynically man should be viewed. If the assumption is that every man is Damned to Hell, and not regenerated, then believing the worst about one’s neighbor will be a temptation. If the assumption is that all those in the church are saved, then believing the best may encourage their Damnation. But to say that this is an Arminian way of thinking is to forget Christ stating that many who did miracles in his name will be thrown away. The amount of gossip one uses will likely be a function of one’s cynicism. The amount of cynicism one has will be a function of one’s view of man. Francis Schaeffer however says that it is possible to be too cynical about man’s place in the universe and drift toward nihilism.
Ryken says that it is always wrong to damage one’s dignity with humor, but is this not what Elijah did? Was that wrong? The prophets were brutally honest, and the way that they are read often does not reflect that. Imagine John the Baptist rejecting his calling at the upper echelon of Israelite culture to eat bugs and live in the desert. He didn’t pull any punches and told Herod off. It isn’t stated that he did that in love. So was that wrong? Or should we not read the prophets? Or tell other people about them? Are they only pointers to Christ that have no bearing on our lives? Ryken implies that gossip does not equal truth, but some people think that telling the truth is telling gossip.
Ryken states that judging where it is not one’s place is not a good idea, and Stoicism agrees. But is it Biblical? The Psalms are replete with the righteous rejoicing when the wicked perish. So is using humor wrong when the wicked perish if the imprecatory psalms use it and if Elijah uses it? C. S. Lewis acts like Christ must have had a great sense of humor using it constantly, despite no evidence. Is it better to follow proverbs injunction to not laugh at the wicked when they perish like a Stoic rather than singing imprecatory Psalms? No one says to dare to be a Hosea. Or a Jeremiah. Or an Elijah. Why is that? Is it because mocking the wicked is not virtuous, or is it because we do not view it as virtuous in the current time? What one considers as worthy to be made fun of may be a factor of one’s belief in one’s righteousness, or it may not.
So was John the Baptist in a cage stage when he told Herod he was an adulterer? Was Elijah in his cage stage when he mocked the prophets of Baal? Was Woman Wisdom in her cage stage when she laughed at the destruction of fools? Was Elisha in his cage stage when he executed children with bears? Was Christ in his cage stage when he insulted the religious leaders? If Joshua had enjoyed his duty, would he?
Awry Stoic 
