From the Narrow Desert: Paul

Showing posts with label Paul. Show all posts

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Susan, Aslan, and dot-connecting

On April 22, William Wright posted "Shushan!", which included a clip from the James Bond spoof movie Johnny English Reborn in which a Chinese man who apparently turns out to be a spy or gangster or something is wearing a nametag that says Susan, prompting English's sidekick to say, "Sir, I don't think he's a Susan." Here's a slightly longer version of the clip William posted, since what happens afterward is also relevant.

On April 23, I left a comment there saying that it reminded me of a scene in the 2000 Guy Ritchie movie Snatch where Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) says, "You can call me Susan if it makes you happy."

On April 24, I checked my students' homework, and one of the prompts was this:

"Susan call me last night" -- intentionally ungrammatical, as the students are supposed to correct it by changing the verb to the past tense. The only way "Susan call me" (without a comma) could be grammatical would be if it meant "Call me Susan," with the word order changed for emphasis -- like that Billie Holiday song, "Crazy he calls me / Sure, I'm crazy."

Susan call me. Sure, I'm Susan.

In a comment on the "Shushan!" post, William Wright wrote this to me:

Do you have a story that attempts to connect these dots, or is it just the dots themselves - the fact that they exist - that are most interesting to you? I only ask, because your comments here, and your writing on your blog definitely focus on identifying dots, but not really connecting them.

I understand what he means -- that I mostly just document syncs without interpreting them -- but I don't think the connect-the-dots metaphor really works. Noticing syncs just is connecting dots. (In fact, one of my first sync blogs was called No Cigar, alluding to the TMBG song "See the Constellation": "No cigar, no lady on his arm / Just a guy made of dots and lines.") Sync is inherently about connections and relations; a fact considered in isolation can't be a sync. I think what he means is that I connect lots of dots but rarely succeed in stepping back and seeing what kind of picture all those connected dots are forming. Or even if I do see a larger picture, I don't know what it means.

For William Wright, though, each connection is a dot, and "connecting the dots" means interpreting these connections as contributing to an unfolding story.

Anyway, that comment got me sidetracked thinking about connect-the-dots puzzles. I thought about how we always called them "dot-to-dots" when I was a kid, but I hadn't heard that term in a long time and wondered whether it was still common. I ended up skimming the Wikipedia article on the subject, which had this illustration of a dot-to-dot of a front view of a face:

Later the same day, I opened the Brave browser to start writing this post. The home screen has various background images that change from time to time, but this time it was this:

Its a starry sky in which some of the star "dots" have been connected with lines to form the Brave logo, which is a stylized front view of a lion's face, as a constellation. It's conceptually very similar to the dot-to-dot from Wikipedia, and the shape even suggests a drooping mustache.

The night before (April 23), I had been reading Henry M. Morris's literalist commentary on the Book of Job. Noting that constellations are referenced more in that book than anywhere else in the Bible, Morris says that this obviously has nothing to do with astrology as we know it (which he naturally views as satanic) and speculates that perhaps the constellations originally had some theological meaning and served as a sort of proto-Bible. That is, before the actual Bible had been written, people would look at the constellations to remind themselves of certain revealed doctrines. What these may have been he cannot say, since the key to their meaning has been lost, and in any case they have been superseded by the Bible proper.

In some way, therefore, these constellations must have symbolized to the ancient patriarchs God's purposes in creation and his promises of a coming Redeemer. This primeval message has been corrupted Satanically into the fantasy messages of the astrologers, but since we now have God's written Word, it is no longer needed. To the early generations, however, it may have served as a memory device, perpetually calling to mind the primeval promises given to Adam, Enoch, and Noah, and those in the line of chosen patriarchs. Even when the world was destroyed in the great flood, the starry heavens remained the same, conveying God's promises to future generations, at least until enough of the written Word was available to make the sidereal signs no longer necessary.
It may be impossible at this late date to fully recover this ancient "gospel in the stars," though a number of attempts have been made.

This syncs closely with William Wright's comment -- or rather with my own modification of his metaphor. Today we still "connect the dots" in the sky and see constellations, but the meaning of the resulting pictures remains opaque. Morris's theory is that in the past God had revealed what the constellations meant, but that now, without access to that revelation, figuring out their meaning may be impossible. "A number of attempts have been made," but I'd wager no two interpreters have read them the same way.

Early on the morning of April 25, I was skimming /x/. The first thing to catch my eye was the image used for this astrology post:

I first noticed it simply because it was a connect-the-dots constellation (Scorpio), but a closer look reveals a more specific sync: Unlike a typical constellation diagram, which has lines connecting one star to another, this one has the stars connected by dots. This matches William Wright's use of the metaphor, in which each individual connection or sync is a dot, not a line.

Another /x/ post really got my attention:

Like the Brave background image, it's a front view of a lion's face in a starry sky. Rather than a typical dot-to-dot constellation, though, this looks like a supernatural apparition. It made me think of Aslan, the lion Messiah of The Chronicles of Narnia, and I wondered if he had ever been depicted that way in art. After a few image searches -- aslan stars, aslan sky -- failed to yield anything, I tried spirit of aslan. This didn't yield any faces-in-the-stars, either, but one of the results caught my eye because of past syncs dealing with red doors and green doors:

I clicked through to the page it comes from, a 2021 blog post by Stephanie McGann called "Narnia #9: The Last Battle." Here's how it begins:

Before reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis with my five- and six-year-old sons, I spent some time reviewing the storyline. Though I had read it more than once as an adult, I was still searching for something new about Susan. As you’ll see from the story summary below, her path does not follow that of her siblings or any of the other friends of Narnia. She is “left out,” so to speak, of their glorious ending, and I was worried about how to handle that with my sons.

In my hunt to learn more, I was somewhat dismayed to find so much criticism of C.S. Lewis for his treatment of Susan. Perhaps the most pointed (and dramatic) was a short story called The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman, in which the author imagines her as a grown-up with all sorts of psychological problems.

Since the name Susan had unexpectedly cropped up again while I was pursuing lion-constellation imagery, I decided on a whim to do an image search for susan constellation. The first result to show an identifiable constellation was this one:

That's Scorpio, the same constellation from the /x/ post.

I remembered that various forms of the name Susie had been in the sync-stream a few years back, and looking them up reminded me of one of the reasons I'm hesitant to interpret syncs too much these days: Back then, I was extremely confident that all the syncs were predicting that Trump would be back in the White House in 2021, and that obviously didn't pan out. (It's weird to see how political the sync fairies were back then; I'm glad that seems to be over.) One of these Susie/Trump posts was "Hey, Suzy, where you been today?" That's the opening line of the 2019 Weezer song "The End of the Game" -- which also features an unexpected Aslan reference:

Hey, Suzy, where you been today?
I'm looking for you every way
No sign of you when I wake up
I'm on an island with no sun
I feel like I've known you my whole life
You got me crying like when Aslan died
Now you're gone

Going back to the Johnny English Reborn clip, Tucker says, "Sir, I don't think he's a Susan" -- saying "a Susan" as if it were a common noun. I know Debbie has posted several times in comments here about a dream in which she was told that she was "a Susie," but I can't find it because comments aren't searchable. Could I trouble you to post it one more time, Debbie?

In the Snatch scene, Bullet Tooth Tony is sitting between two female twins when he says "You can call me Susan." Shortly after that line, he says to the twin on his right, "Pass us the blower, Susie." It's a bit odd saying people can call you Susan when you're sitting right next to someone who actually is called Susan.

This theme of female "twins" -- or at least two women who are hard to tell apart -- also appears in the Johnny English clip. Johnny is at the home of Pegasus, the head of MI7, and her elderly mother is there, too. Also in the house is a Chinese assassin dressed as Pegasus's mother, so that they look the same from behind. Johnny keeps mistaking them for each other -- attacking the mother, then apologizing to the assassin, then attacking the mother again.

Female twins -- and stars, and lions, and crying -- were featured in my March 25 post "She's so rocky, shisa star."

One other thing before I forget it. In his April 22 "Shushan!" post, William Wright compares something Johnny English says to a passage from the Book of Mormon. English says:

Now I know what you're going to say: It's a pretty small object. Well, it's often the little things that pack the biggest punch. After all, David killed Goliath with a pebble. The mighty Vortex has been slain by my possession of this small key.

The BoM passage (with boldface added by William) is:

Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls. (Alma 37)

I've been reading through the Bible a few chapters a day, and included in my reading for April 24 was this passage in 1 Corinthians:

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty (1 Cor. 1:27).

This is obviously very similar the the BoM passage, so much so that skeptical readers will say Joseph Smith plagiarized from Paul. Besides the identical "confound the wise" wording, though, Paul also mentions confounding "the things which are mighty" -- a link to Johnny's claim that "The mighty Vortex has been slain by my possession of this small key."

English compares the key to the stone with which David felled Goliath. Interestingly, a "key of David" is mentioned in the Bible:

These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth (Rev. 3:7).

The speaker -- "he that hath the key of David" -- is Jesus Christ. Since Aslan also represents Jesus Christ, this is a link to the "Aslan closed the door" picture above.

Friday, September 30, 2022

We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold

Paul's address to the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers at Mars' Hill (Acts 17:22-31) is short enough and eloquent enough to be worth quoting in its entirety.

Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, "To The Unknown God." Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" [Epimenides, Cretica]; as certain also of your own poets have said, "For we are also his offspring" [Aratus, Phenomena].

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

One of the extraordinary things about this address is the complete lack of Jewish exceptionalism; Paul implies that the Athenians are already worshiping the true God but have an incomplete understanding of him, and the way he quotes the writings of Aratus and Epimenides -- about Zeus! -- in his support is indistinguishable from the way Jesus cited Moses and Isaiah. The Greek didactic poet and the tattooed prophet of Crete may have seen through a glass, darkly, but they saw the true God. And it is implied that the vision of Moses and the Hebrew prophets, too, was incomplete: "God . . . dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything" -- hardly an unqualified endorsement of the Temple-based cult of animal sacrifice. It was in the milieu of the Hebrew religion that Jesus lived and taught, and that is reason enough for the religion of Moses to enjoy a special status among Christians, but Paul makes no claim that it was the one true religion, or that the Greeks worshiped false Gods; the implication is that all pre-Christian understandings of the divine were mixed with a good deal of "ignorance God winked at."

Given Paul's obvious familiarity with, and sympathy towards, Greek pagan writings, it is a bit jarring to find him criticizing those who supposedly "think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device." We are the offspring of God; therefore, God can't be a statue. Well, of course he can't! And Marcus Aurelius and his horse weren't actually made of bronze, either. Even the simplest of souls -- to say nothing of Athenian philosophers! -- understands the difference between a statue and what it represents. With all due respect to Isaiah and the other great ridiculers of "idolatry," I seriously doubt whether anyone in the history of the world has ever actually believed that the gods were like gold or silver or stone. Paul is arguing against a crude caricature of paganism. In implying that the learned Athenians might mistake a gold-plated statue for cloud-gathering Zeus himself, Paul seems to fall into the same sort of "idolatrous" error he accuses them of: He attacks a man of straw as if it were real.

And how does Paul attempt to discredit the supposed "idolatry" of the Athenians? By advocating a more anthropomorphic conception of God -- who, if we are his offspring, can hardly be anything so unlike a human being as gold or silver. This may also strike the modern reader as a strange tack to take, since "Greek paganism" as we imagine it was surely much more crudely anthropomorphic than anything Paul was promoting. After all, one of the meanings of "we are also his offspring" was that Zeus (who was basically a very powerful man living on a mountaintop in Thessaly) was a biological ancestor of the Greeks, appearing in multiple positions on their ethnic family tree with the various mortal women he had raped or seduced.

So if the Greeks never made the mistake of thinking Zeus was mineral in nature, and if they did often portray him as human, all-too-human -- and if Paul, no stranger to Greek religious thought, must surely have known that -- then what was he trying to say? Oh, probably nothing interesting. Probably just another point-missing dig at "idolatry," continuing the long monotheistic tradition of such attacks. Nevertheless, I can't help but read something else into Paul's words. I am not at all confident that it is what Paul intended, or what his listeners would have understood him to mean, but it is at any rate what his words mean to me.

Greek religion, though just as anthropomorphic in its roots as the religion of Moses, followed a similar trajectory to that religion, towards increasing idealization and abstraction. Paul was addressing Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, whose concept of Zeus was about as far removed from the thought of Homer and Hesiod as it is possible to be. Their "God" was highly abstract, with the Stoics tending toward the sort pantheism we today associate with the name of Spinoza, while the Epicureans tended toward a deism verging on an atheistic view of the gods as purely symbolic.

How did they, and their Hebrew counterparts, manage to get from the world of Homer and Moses to that? By what is called by its proponents the via negativa: by the process of taking one human characteristic of God after another, deeming it unworthy of the Supreme Being, and reconceptualizing him as lacking it. Isn't this, metaphorically, the process of making for oneself a God of gold? If gold is the noblest of substances -- glittering, pure, beautiful, incorruptible -- isn't it impious to think of God as being anything but gold? Mustn't he be more like that inorganic ideal of perfection than like anything human? But those who walk the via negative all the way to its end find themselves precisely where Moses warned his successors would end up: serving inhuman gods "which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell" (Deut. 4:28) -- but, Moses goes on to promise, "if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart" (v. 29).

So that is how I take Paul's injunction: In your pious desire to ascribe to the Most High every conceivable perfection, take care that you do not end up with a God of gold in which you can no longer recognize your loving Father. I have called this philosophers' idol -- this philosophers' stone? -- Supergod, etymologically "above God," but perhaps Ultragod -- "beyond God" -- would be more appropriate. Supergod theology comes from looking past God for something else, something he is not -- what the Nephite prophet Jacob in the Book of Mormon called "looking beyond the mark."

[T]hey despised the words of plainness, . . . and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, . . . God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble (Jac. 4:14)

Jacob was speaking of "the Jews" and the reasons that they would reject their own Messiah, but isn't what he describes even more characteristically Greek than Jewish? "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness" (1 Cor. 1:23).

In our philosophical quest to understand God, we must remain firmly tethered to the most fundamental Christian creed, consisting of only two words, the most profound that Jesus ever spoke: Our Father.

Friday, December 17, 2021

Fear not to build

"And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine."
His lord answered and said unto him, "Thou wicked and slothful servant!"

-- Matt. 25:25-26

I recently read this passage in Roger Hathaway's The Mystic Passion.

Now, entertain in your imagination for a moment, a world of diverse spiritual people who have such confidence in their own spiritual truths that they can permit others to differ and grant truths might be understood differently by other persons. Since the Spirit of God motivates within a seeker such insights for the purpose of that person's path of enlightenment, is it not incumbent upon us to stand aside and permit the God to do His own work? In such a world of loving and communing and worshiping of our eternal Father, there might be many differing opinions, many discussions, sincere arguments, formulations of defenses (apologies), and intense studies.

So what if one person believes the Holy Spirit of God to be a separate person from the Father while another believes it to be the extension of the essence and power of the Eternal Father himself? So what if one person believes Jesus to be co-eternal with the Father for a three-person-God while another person believes him to be begotten as a Word spoken in time? So what if one person believes Baptism should be by immersion and another by anointing? Spiritual fellowship need not be endangered but could be enhanced as the sharing of speculations and discussions!

There would be no hatred or anger, no insistence upon agreement, no condemnations of fellow seekers, no inquisitions, no organizations claiming exclusive rights of salvation. What there would be: implicit confidence that God is great enough to guide His own children to Himself in His own way. This God of all-that-is has never been so emotionally sensitive that He cannot tolerate the stumbling of his children while they learn to walk. As any mother reaches down to help a baby who has stumbled, so does God pull into His heart with special love a child who sincerely reaches toward him. It is hardly comprehensible to my mind that the so-called church of a loving God could fail to recognize the simple love that a mother knows instinctively.

Shortly thereafter, as part of my project of listening to the entire Bible read aloud, I listened to the following passage in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (3:10-16).

According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

Christ never intended that we should take his teachings as some finished and inviolable Temple, complete in every way, to be passively received, codified in creeds, and propagated. The Sower has sown his Word, and we who receive are to bring forth fruit -- new Word -- some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.

Some are hesitant to build on the foundation that is Christ, hesitant to think "beyond what has been revealed." Yes, much of what we build will turn out to be stubble and straw -- are we better builders than the incomparable Thomas Aquinas? -- but that is a finite loss, a risk well worth taking. We ourselves will be saved, and who knows if some of what we have built will survive as a precious stones in the Temple of God. In John's vision of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, he notes that "the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones" (Rev. 21:19) and goes on to list specific stones which his readers would have recognized as symbols of the twelve tribes of Israel -- that is, of God's people scattered throughout the nations. We -- we mere mortals -- are to be the precious stones garnishing the foundations.

The only danger is in becoming too attached to one's thoughts, in identifying with them, and thus being unwilling to part with them when the time comes. (See "No mercy for sin.") That is to say, the danger is in pride. Paul speaks of the day that will test every man's work and burn up all that can be burned of it. The structures of stubble we have built will be consumed, but we ourselves will be saved. What of the proud, though, those who have become so attached to their structures that they feel as if they are that stubble? Malachi has the answer.

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall (4:1-2).

That final clause is ambiguous in the Hebrew; another possible reading is "and ye shall go forth leaping like calves released from the stall." To those whose hearts are rightly centered, the burning of all that burns will bring only freedom release.

Aquinas was, by a happy coincidence, nicknamed the Dumb Ox. When he was granted his heavenly vision, when he saw that great Sun of righteousness that burns as an oven and tries every man's work, when he was moved to say of his own life's work, "All that I have written is as straw," I like to think that, saint that he was, he left it all behind lightly and went gamboling forth as a calf released from the stall. And it was not all straw, far from it. Surely some of the glittering gems in the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem are his.

As Malachi says elsewhere, "And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him" (3:17).

Thursday, October 14, 2021

A bit of perspective from St. Paul

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Let no man deceive himself.

If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

— 1 Cor. 3:16-18

Saturday, August 28, 2021

The deceivableness of unrighteousness

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

-- 2 Thessalonians 2:10

This passage was brought to my attention when it was quoted in a review of That Hideous Strength at Bennett's Phylactery. Most English Bibles have deception or deceiptfulness, but deceivableness is also a possible reading of the Greek, and I think this is a case in which the King James translators were clearly inspired. What do we see all around us in 2020-21 but the deceivableness of unrighteousness, because they received not the love of the truth?

Francis Berger makes the same point in a comment on his post "The Unapologetic Cruelty of None Are Safe Until All Are Safe."

The masses may indeed be under some sort of spell, but this does not absolve them of personal responsibility. They chose to fall under the spell and continue to choose to remain under that spell. The masses are not passive victims, and we should not make excuses for them.

Only God searcheth all hearts, but it is my considered opinion that there are very few, if indeed any, innocent victims of the birdemic scam and the other Big Lies of our time. The deceived are complicit in their own deception. To quote the Bennett's Phylactery article I linked, "Everyone involved knows on some level that they are being lied to -- and they not only assent to the lie, but workshop it, and refine it, and pass it along."

There's an obvious paradox involved in knowingly being deceived -- Carlyle's "sincere cant," Twain's "believing what you know ain't so." To know that you are being deceived, you must know that what you believe is a lie -- but if you know it's a lie, in what sense do you believe it? I think that's an extremely important philosophical and psychological question that deserves careful reflection, and I've been nibbling away at it over the years. On rough-and-ready terms, though, everyone knows what "on some level" means and knows -- firsthand -- what it means to be guilty of sincere cant. These things are always easier to recognize in others, though, and the world of 2020-21 has given us all ample opportunity for that!

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Real intent of heart

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

-- Titus 1:15

Never been a sinner, I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus

-- Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit in the Sky"

I've been thinking about this passage from the Book of Mormon (Moroni 7:5-11).

[5] For I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also. [6] For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good.

For if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing. [7] For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness. [8] For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God. [9] And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such. [10] Wherefore, a man being evil cannot do that which is good; neither will he give a good gift.

[11] For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water; wherefore, a man being a servant of the devil cannot follow Christ.

And if he follow Christ he cannot be a servant of the devil.

The first paragraph (the paragraph divisions are my own) seems to be saying that we can judge people by what they do. If a man is observed to do a good deed, we can be sure that he is a good man, because evil people are incapable of doing good deeds. We cannot directly observe a person's inner nature, but it is revealed in his observable behavior. And not much observation is needed; since evil people cannot do good deeds, just one observed good deed is enough to establish that a person is good.

Well, that sounds rather simple! So if we observe someone doing a good deed -- praying to God, say, or offering a gift to someone in need -- we can conclude without hesitation that he is a good man, right?

Well, no. The next paragraph goes on to explain that "a man being evil cannot do that which is good" does not mean that evil people cannot pray or speak the truth or give alms or anything like that. In fact, evil people can exhibit all the same observable behaviors as good people -- but the same outer behaviors that are good when done by a good person, are evil when done by an evil person! That's why an evil person can never do a good deed -- because, no matter what he does, it will done by an evil person and will therefore by definition not be good.

But this seems to reverse the original statement that "by their works ye shall know them." Rather than judging people by what they do, we have to judge deeds by those who do them. An observed behavior, such as praying, cannot be judged good or evil until we know whether the person who does it is a good or evil person.

Most people are familiar with the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. I assert that no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge, and you object that your uncle Angus is a Scotsman and puts sugar on his porridge. In the canonical version of the fallacy, I retort, "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." Mormon's version would be, "Well, any porridge a Scotsman puts sugar on obviously can't be considered his porridge!" Thus is the evidentiary value of porridge-sweetening in establishing non-Scottishness destroyed.

The circularity of the definitions -- good people are those who do good deeds, and good deeds are those done by good people -- emphasizes the necessity of making an actual judgment, a choice. "Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit" (Matt. 12:33). Either judgment is possible; you just have to be consistent. "For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge" (Moroni 7:15).

⁂

As the quotation from Matthew shows, this is not some uniquely Mormon concept. Mormon's reference (for Moroni is quoting his father, Mormon) to a bitter fountain bringing forth good water alludes to James 3:10-12.

Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

What is James trying to say here? Is "the same mouth . . . blessing and cursing" something that, while regrettably common, ought not to be -- or is it something that is impossible, like a vine bearing figs? I think his deeper point is the latter. If you think you're a person who both blesses and curses, you're not -- not really -- and you had better search your soul and determine which is sincere and which is done without "real intent of heart."

The Gospels report Jesus saying both "he that is not with me is against me" (Matt. 12:30) and "he that is not against us is on our part" (Mark 9:40). This is sometimes presented as a "Bible contradiction" on atheist gotcha lists, despite the logical consistency of the two statements, because they appear to disagree on the status of the "neutral." Matthew seems to be saying that neutral people, because they are not actively with Jesus, are against him; while Mark says that, because they are not actively against Jesus, they are on his side. In fact, both are simply saying that no one is neutral. Anyone who appears to be neutral is in fact on the one side or the other.

Just as no one is on neither side, no one is on both sides. Every fountain yields exactly one kind of water, salt or fresh, and appearances to the contrary are just that.

⁂

Coming back to Mormon, it's fairly easy to accept the idea that bad people never really do anything good, that any superficially "good" deeds they do are in fact done from impure motives, without real intent of heart. A bad man doing such "good deeds" is a hypocrite -- literally, an actor. He's not a good person, no matter how well he plays one on TV.

Rather more startling is the vice versa Mormon adds at the end: ". . . and if follow Christ he cannot be a servant of the devil." Bad people never do anything truly good -- and good people never do anything truly bad. A good man who sins doesn't really sin, not in the truest sense, because he does not do it with real intent of heart. He is just as much a "hypocrite," an actor, as the bad man who does "good deeds."

To drive home how surprising this is, we could imagine Mormon spelling it out with examples, as he does for the opposite:

For behold, God hath said a man being good cannot do that which is evil.

For if he telleth a lie, or committeth adultery, except he shall do it with real intent it hurteth him nothing. For behold, it is not counted unto him for wickedness. For behold, if a man being good telleth a lie, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had told the truth; wherefore he is counted good before God. And likewise also is it counted good unto a man, if he shall commit adultery and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it hurteth him nothing, for God receiveth all such. Wherefore, a man being good cannot do that which is evil; neither will he tell an evil lie.

But who really believes such a doctrine? Who has the spiritual chutzpah to say sincerely what the non-Christian Norman Greenbaum said ironically, "Never been a sinner, I never sinned"? The First Epistle of John (1:7-10) -- likely by the same author as the Fourth Gospel -- has this to say.

[7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

[8] If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

[9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

[10] If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

This seems clear, and familiar, enough: Followers of Jesus still commit sin, and to be in denial about that fact -- to refuse to "confess our sins" -- is damnation. If sin is acknowledged, it is forgiven -- but only if it is acknowledged. It is impossible to stop sinning (anyone who thinks he has done so is delusional); what is required of us is simply to admit that we sin.

However, in the very same epistle (3:6-10), we find this.

[6] Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.

[7] Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.

[8] He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

[9] Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

[10] In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

But we know that Christians sin all the time -- that even the greatest of saints berated themselves as the greatest of sinners. There seem to be only two ways to reconcile this obvious fact with what John (and James and Mormon and others) have written:

1. No true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge. Any "Christian" who sins is not a true Christian and has not truly been born of God. But this essentially means that there have never been any true Christians, ever, and that everyone is damned. This is scarcely consistent with the idea that Jesus brought "good news."

2. Any porridge a Scotsman puts sugar on can't be considered his porridge. When Christians lie, or are slothful, or succumb to lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, avarice, or pride, they aren't really sinning, because it is impossible for a Christian to sin. Their actions, like a transubstantiated Host in Catholic doctrine, are entirely good in substance even if the accidents remain to some degree evil.

In the support of the it's-not-my-porridge interpretation, we have Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (7:14-20, 24-25).

[14] For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. [15] For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. [16] If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. [17] Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

[18] For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. [19] For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. [20] Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

. . .

[24] O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? [25] I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Now I am not a "Bible believer" in any simple sense. I do not believe that Paul was always right, or that his writings have the same authority as eyewitness accounts of the teachings of Jesus, and I certainly don't want to derive my deepest beliefs from the "dueling proof-texts" method of Abelard's Sic et Non. Nevertheless, when so many serious Christians converge upon the same non-obvious idea, it is certainly worthy at least of serious consideration.

Paul here seems to arrive at Mormon's criterion of "real intent of heart." When Paul sins -- against his own will, as it were -- doing "the evil which I would not" while at the same time "consenting unto the law" and recognizing it as evil -- he sins without real intent of heart, and it is therefore not in the deepest sense he -- not his True Self -- that sins. A good fountain cannot bring forth bitter water. When tares appear in a field sown with wheat, "an enemy hath done this" (Matt. 13:28).

I need to spend more time -- probably a lot more time -- brooding over this, meditating and praying. I post these tentative thoughts in the hope that some of my readers may have something helpful to contribute.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Was the prophesied Messiah really Jesus?

First, some digressions. (Actually, this post is mainly digressions. Consider yourself warned.)

⁂

There were in the time of Elijah two rival cults in Israel. The first worshiped a God who may originally have had a name (contemporary scholarship suggests Hadad or Ishkur) but was generally known simply as "the Lord"; the second gave their God a proper name -- but, after centuries of superstitious refusal to pronounce that name or even to write it with its proper vowel points, its precise form is no longer known. Thus it has come about that, in our English Bibles, it is the second of these Gods that is called "the Lord"; while for the first -- the one that the Israelites called "the Lord" -- that Hebrew word is simply transliterated and used as if it were a proper name.

For my part, I shall use the title "Lord" as the Israelites did and deal with the uncertain name of the other God by means of the same expedient resorted to by Victor Hugo, Freud, and others when they had reason to avoid spelling out a particular proper name. Even choosing an initial presents some difficulties, since the Hebrew letter in question can be transliterated as I, J, or Y. Out of deference to Dante (see Paradiso XXVI, 133-138) and to English translations of Moses (Exodus 3:14), I have chosen the first option.

Regarding the detailed differences between the two cults, all we can say for sure is that the followers of the Lord used religious statuary in their worship, while those of I---- tended towards iconoclasm. Any other differences in religious belief or practice are a matter of conjecture.

Everyone will be familiar with the story of the showdown between these two cults on Mount Carmel, instigated by Elijah (whose name means "My God is I----"). The story is related in 1 Kings 18; except for punctuation, paragraphing, and the rectification of names explained above, I follow the King James Version.

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, "How long halt ye between two opinions? if I---- be God, follow him: but if the Lord, then follow him."

And the people answered him not a word.

Then said Elijah unto the people, "I, even I only, remain a prophet of I----; but the Lord’s prophets are 450 men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under. And call ye on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of I----: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God."

And all the people answered and said, "It is well spoken."

When the prophets of the Lord were unsuccessful in obtaining an "answer by fire," Elijah ridiculed them and their God.

And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of the Lord from morning even until noon, saying, "O Lord, hear us."

But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.

And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, "Cry aloud: for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked."

Elijah was, of course, more successful in eliciting from his God an apparently supernatural conflagration. (We are told that the fire consumed even the stones of the altar!)

And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, "I----, he is the God; I----, he is the God."

And Elijah said unto them, "Take the prophets of the Lord; let not one of them escape."

And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

Of course that wasn't the end of the conflict. Magic tricks never really converted anyone, nor has making martyrs ever been an effective way of stamping out an unwanted religion. Attempts were naturally made to avenge the 450 murdered prophets, and the feud between the two religions continued for some centuries. In the end, though, so complete was the victory of I---- that in modern languages it is he who is known simply as "the Lord," while his onetime rival, his cult now long extinct, is remembered only as a cartoonish devil once worshiped by idiots in the distant past.

⁂

One or two centuries after Elijah, the prophet known as Epimenides appeared in Crete. No one really knows where he came from; the story that has come down to us is that he just emerged from a cave one day, having slept there for 57 years. Although his line "Cretans, always liars" later became the basis of a logical paradox ("If a Cretan says Cretans always lie, is he telling the truth?"), it seems highly unlikely that this tattoo-covered shaman was in fact an ethnic Cretan. We can only speculate as to his true origins, but to me such sparse information as we have suggests that he may have been of Scythian extraction. At any rate, he actually put the line "Cretans, always liars" in the mouth of Minos -- a genuine Cretan -- in one of his poems, so the paradox is saved. In the poem, Minos berates his countrymen for having dared to maintain a "tomb of Zeus."

They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being.

Zeus is supposed to have been born in Crete, and apparently he once had a tomb there as well! Could "Zeus" have been a real man who lived and died in Crete in the distant past, one of such blessed memory that he was gradually deified in the minds of those who survived him, coming to be thought of as a god, and eventually as God? It's interesting to speculate, but at any rate, by the time Epimenides came along, Zeus was God and God was Zeus, and a "tomb of Zeus" was blasphemous
nonsense.

Later, around the 3rd century BC, Aratus of Soli began his Phaenomena, a didactic poem on the rather unpromising subjects of astronomy and meteorology, with a prayer to Zeus:

From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; [. . .] Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last. Hail, O Father, mighty marvel, mighty blessing unto men. Hail to thee and to the Elder Race! Hail, ye Muses, right kindly, every one! But for me, too, in answer to my prayer direct all my lay, even as is meet, to tell the stars.

As readers versed in the New Testament will already have divined, the only reason such obscure figures as Epimenides and Aratus are on my radar is that they are quoted there, in Paul's sermon at the Areopagus in Athens as reported in Acts 17.

Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him "we live, and move, and have our being;" as certain also of your own poets have said, "For we are also his offspring."

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

Although Paul begins with his famous reference to the Unknown God -- implying that the true God is someone over and above the named and "known" gods of the Greek pantheon -- he goes on to quote with approval two different poems about Zeus as if they are about the true God -- which, in my judgment, they are. Where an Elijah would have held Zeus up to ridicule and insisted that his own, better God be worshiped instead, Paul took a different tack. Never did he say that Zeus was a false god, a devil, or a figment of his worshipers imagination. He did not stoop so low as to quibble over names. (As recently as the 18th century, certain French pamphleteers were maintaining that their Dieu -- etymologically, Zeus! -- was the true deity, while the English God was nothing but another name for Lucifer; before you laugh, think if you have ever been guilty of the same thing.) Paul took it for granted that the Athenians already worshiped God and attempted only to correct and expand their ideas regarding him. So Dante says of the Greek pagans not that they worshiped false gods but that "they did not worship God in fitting ways."

Paul, like Elijah, triumphed in the end. It took a century or two, but his God eventually supplanted Zeus entirely.

⁂

Well, whose approach was right? Was Zeus God? Was Baal? Is Allah? . . . Is Yahweh?

Logically, either answer to each of those questions can be made consistent with the same facts, since there is no logical difference between believing in something that does not exist and believing false things about something that does exist. When, as often happens, I receive a letter addressed to Mr. Tychanievich or Mr. Pychonievich, is that the name of a person who does not exist, or is it my own name, spelt wrong? Is it more correct for a Yuletide spoilsport to say "there's no such thing as Santa Claus" or "You have some inaccurate beliefs about Saint Nicholas of Myra"? Should I call myself an atheist (which I am, when theism is narrowly defined) or simply say that my beliefs about God are somewhat unorthodox?

The question of which approach to take, then -- of whether to be an Elijah or a Paul -- is a practical rather than a factual one, a question of rhetorical or pedagogical technique, and different situations may call for different approaches. Looking back, and setting aside our squeamishness about mass murder, we can perhaps say that both Elijah and Paul made the choices that were strategically "right."

⁂

Which brings me -- finally! -- to Jesus and to the question posed in the title of this post. My current understanding is that, no, the prophesied Messiah was not "really" Jesus. The Hebrew prophets did not foresee Jesus, did not write about Jesus, and did not expect the coming of anyone very much like Jesus. Nor did Jesus really do most of the things the anticipated Messiah was supposed to do -- which is why believers in his Messianic character have granted him an extension with the idea of a Second Coming.

The Messianic prophecies were about Jesus in the same sense that the poetry of Epimenides and Aratus was about God. Jesus could have said, "There's no Messiah coming. Instead you get me"; or he could with equal justice have said (and generally did say), "I'm the Messiah, but 'Messiah' doesn't quite mean what you think it does." This explains the fact that Jesus did sometimes claim directly to be the Messiah but at other times seemed to be uncomfortable with the title and to discourage its use. (Particularly in the Gospel of Mark, he seems always to be saying, "Now, don't go around telling everyone I'm the Messiah!")

I would go even farther and say that Yahweh was no more (and no less!) "God" than Zeus was -- but perhaps few would be willing to follow me quite that far from orthodoxy. If that makes me an atheist, so be it; I have never denied the charge.

⁂

Note: Synchronicity alert: Just after writing the Epimenides part of this post, which mentions in passing the Liar Paradox associated with his name, I checked Bruce Charlton's blog and read his then-new post "Does the I Ching have a personality?" He quoted an interview of Philip K. Dick by someone called Mike, including this exchange:

Phil: No, I don’t use the I Ching anymore. I’ll tell ya, the I Ching told me more lies than anybody else I’ve ever known. [. . .] One time I really zapped it. I asked it if it was the devil. And it said yes. And then I asked it if it spoke for God, and it said no. It said I am a complete liar. I mean that was the interpretation.

In other words I set it up. I set it up. I asked two questions simultaneously and it said I speak with forked tongue, is what it said. And then it said, oops, I didn’t mean to say that. But it had already –

Mike: Then you get a paradox. [. . .] That’s the paradox. It’s lying when it says it’s lying.

⁂

Note added: I should make it clear that the form of my question is deliberate: not "Was Jesus really the Messiah?" but "Was the Messiah really Jesus?" I wanted it to have the same form as "Is Zeus really God?" -- where the status of Zeus is being questioned by asking if he is God, the status of God being taken for granted. In the same way, I am taking the divinity of Jesus for granted and questioning the idea of the Messiah, not vice versa.