Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments

More Moore

Over at our Treaders discussion site, participants have been discussing Russell Moore's All Things Dark & Terrible article from the June issue of Touchstone. Now, we have posted another discussion. This time it is of Moore's editorial from the July/August issue about "peace and justice" Christians. Please join the discussion.

Stephen's Witness

A new website that may interest those of you who are Anglicans but many others as well: Stephen's Witness, written by Evangelical Episcopal leader Stephen Noll, who is now vice-chancellor Uganda Christian University. Steve is also an old friend of Patrick Reardon's and mine.

Some of the items deal with his work at the university, an impressive institution, while others address the turmoil in the Anglican confusion. One that might be of interest to Mere Comments readers, especially those of you in mainline denominations, is No Compromise on Essentials, subtitled "Why dialogue cannot resolve the sexuality issue in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion." Steve's gift as a biblical scholar (he wrote a very interesting book on the biblical theology of angels) is in drawing out the lessons of biblical history for the present.

Russia's Love Oasis & Putin's Youth?

Is Russia simply decades behind the US in equating sex with love? Well, no Woodstock, this Love Oasis, but the Sex is there. The difference, however, will become clear when the aftermath will not be merely mud, but babies nine months from now. Any Russian kid with a birth date around the end of April, 2008, will wonder whether his parents, if he knows who they both are, ever visited the Love Oasis.

But the article is not clear whether procreation is being encouraged along with marriage, ceremonies for which were conducted at the camp.

The darker side of this story as written is its comparison of the "Nashi" to the Hitler Youth.  One parallel comes to mind, though I don't have nearly enough knowledge to set this down as anything other than an observation inviting comment: the rise of dark forces in Germany occurred in a period after Germany "lost" a major struggle in Europe (WWI), and was having a much harder time of it than the other countries it had fought. All this after an armistice and a seeming end to a bad period.

Russia certainly "lost" the Cold War, and in the aftermath still struggles, and it seems a certain segment of a younger generation is looking for someone to have some answers. Germany and Japan also lost (WWI), but American occupation and treatment of the vanquished perhaps ultimately changed the situation. Post Cold War, did the general wisdom simply assume Russia would become a capitalist democracy?

This story about voter fraud published in the Wall Street Journal makes Chicago sound like old hat.  Which reminds me of something a prominent local citizen told me few weeks ago:
Although he lives in a near suburb, he has arranged to be buried in a cemetery within the city limits of Chicago so that after he's dead he can still take part in Chicago politics.

Seriously, I've sometimes wondered about who gets to vote. Do they have to be American citizens? In Washington State you don't have to show any identification to vote? Doesn't this constitute something close to the breakdown of democracy? Who's running the show? But, hey, I live in Chicago, the one-party system that "works," where the city's unofficial motto is "Where's mine?"

Ideal Christian Sociopaths

A reader recommends the three-part series Christian Sociopathy from a website called Jesus and the Culture Wars. He quotes Harvard's Martha Stout's book The Sociopath Next Door to define the term:

About on in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience.  It is not that this group fails to grasp the difference between good and bad;  it is that the distinction fails to limit their behavior.

. . . many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy- murderers, serial killers, mass murderers . . . [but not] the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.  Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one’s boss about a coworker.  But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling.

The writer, a Rev'd C. J. Connor, then finishes the first installment in the series:

As Dr. Stout points out, however, more often than not the evil that they create in the world is not something that you can go to jail for- and in the Church nowadays, the characteristics of the Christian Sociopath have become rather idealized and admired.

Bible Babble Revisited

Because the problem of ghastly contemporary Bible translations is a perennial interest of Touchstone readers, they should not miss Richard John Neuhaus's exasperated (and wryly amusing) posting at the First Things website about the New American Bible (NAB). As the other links that he provides will illustrate, this is a longstanding concern of Fr. Neuhaus's, and an entirely just one. "The NAB is a banal, linguistically inept, and misleading translation," Neuhaus asserts, bending over backwards to be charitable. "Why did the [American] bishops force it upon the Catholic people, demanding that it and it alone be used in the readings of the Mass?"

Why indeed. I have wondered the same thing. I am a Protestant, and so do not have regular contact with the NAB; but when I do encounter it, the experience comes as an unpleasant shock. For a number of years I have made it a practice to attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, which means that year after year, I get to hear how the NAB has mangled, for no reason that I can comprehend, some of the most magnificent and familiar language in all of Scripture. But let me allow Richard Neuhaus to tell the story (this is taken from a 2006 article, to which a link is provided in the above blog entry):

Everyone who has sung or listened to Handel’s “Messiah” knows the words: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6, KJV). Magnificent. Here, as of this week’s amended Missalette, is the New American Bible: “For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” Try singing that. Whether under the rules of literal accuracy or of what, taking liberties, translators call “dynamic equivalence,” that is no more than a pedantic transliteration of the Hebrew. It is not a translation. It is a string of possible signifiers. It is not English.

How especially unfortunate that these particular words, on that particular occasion--the one moment of the year when all the pews are full, and when even the most jaded hearts present are open to the incomparable mystery and wonder of Christ's birth--so signally fail to express the moment's full majesty, but instead offer something that sounds like an anthropologist's earnest, literal-minded rendering of Stone Age deity names. Fortunately, there is more on offer than just that, and it is not enough in itself to empty the pews. But it all seems a remarkably unnecessary self-inflicted wound. One hopes that the complaints of Neuhaus and others will eventually be heard and acted upon. Until then....how many time-units, O Sky-Sovereign?

The Hippy Bonobo

An interesting "Our Far-flung Correspondents" article from The New Yorker, relayed to me by our contributing editor Phillip Johnson: Swingers, by Ian Parker. Phil writes:

I hope that link will take you to a marvelous article in the July 30 New Yorker, about bonobos and the scientists who study them.  The much- celebrated bonobo is supposed to be matriarchal, peaceful, promiscuous and the epitome of the 60s slogan, "make love, not war"  "If chimps are from Hobbes, then bonobos are from Rousseau, and represent the kinder, gentler nature we might have had if evolution had been smarter." That is the myth. But is it true?

As the writer puts it:

This pop image of the bonobo—equal parts dolphin, Dalai Lama, and Warren Beatty—has flourished largely in the absence of the animal itself, which was recognized as a species less than a century ago. Two hundred or so bonobos are kept in captivity around the world; but, despite being one of just four species of great ape, along with orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees, the wild bonobo has received comparatively little scientific scrutiny.

It is one of the oddities of the bonobo world—and a source of frustration to some—that Frans de Waal, of Emory University, the high-profile Dutch primatologist and writer, who is the most frequently quoted authority on the species, has never seen a wild bonobo.

Iceman Cometh

This story about ice falling from the sky reminds me about a book I've yet to read: Snowball Earth. At the end of July in the Midwest, ice is usually, but not always, welcome. Could it be there are extraterrestrial icemen? Somehow global warming got mentioned in the story, too. One thing is for sure, though: if the Cubs make it to and win the World Series this year, forget global warming. A hellish Ice Age cometh.

Atheist Rabbi & Religion

James Altena sent me this link to a New York Times obituary about an atheist rabbi who founded a secular Jewish religion. (Sorry, I can't write those last three words to really make much conventional sense.)

Nothing in this article surprises me (except the passing reference to his companion that was not further explained--I guess enough said?). What we see in his crisis of faith raises an issue that I think will become increasingly debated, not less: God. Wine had problems with any sort of personal God. (The holocaust didn't help.) But he clung to some sort desire for ethical principles and religion, after a (new) fashion and probably when it came to it on his own terms (like most of us try to flex and shape even the religions we adopt, even those with a definite form that is simply "given"--we are still tempted to bend things for our comfort). But to the question of a personal God?

An increasingly number of scientists, it seems, are grudgingly acknowledging that there seems to be design and order in the cosmos, that it's seems to designed perfectly for us, that it seems as if it knew we were coming. (That is, the strong Anthropic Principle). The question is what lies behind this all?

First, science can't really get behind it, so you have to deal with metaphysics or philosophy or theology. But that won't do for a materialist, though sometimes they sneak in a metaphysical proposition or idea here and there.

Some scientists are granting the design, even purpose, but to seek a material explanation in the cosmos itself: complexity theory is part of this effort. Somehow within the cosmos it's all there. But God isn't anywhere in the scheme and for good reason: for if you posit a Sunday School version of a Personal God who is simply a bigger version of what we are--or even infinite version--all-knowing, all-powerful, always present and everywhere--who seems like a cleaned up version of, say, Zeus, and could be imagined as an old man with a beard, then I see how the scientist isn't impressed.

But the problem, it seems to me, layman that I am, is that those writing about how they see purpose and design but no "personal God" do not seem well versed on the full range of philosophical, theological, patristic thought about what "God" must be: ultimately ineffable, and, yes, beyond our categories. Beyond personal in a sense, as well. I suppose that's why a dose of apophaticism seems required by the evidence. We stand at the brink of a mystery.

So this scientist may well be rejecting a bearded divinity who casts down thunderbolts, figuratively speaking, to punish us men, who are, after all, demonstrably pretty awful at times (remember that holocaust?). But when this scientist comes to discuss what lies behind it all, the pull of metaphysics is strong. Resistance, as someone said, is futile.

But there is just one more piece to this whole cosmic puzzle: we've seen angels, have we not? I know too many people who have or know someone who has to not believe in angels. (Am I alone in this? Anyone else?) Now, perhaps a scientist might concede something is going on here that we don't really understand or have misunderstood. So maybe religious people don't really know everything. Granted. But if there are angels from beyond realms yet dreamt in our materialist philosophies, doesn't it suggest that those who've seen and heard from them might know something they don't? "Prove it," you say. What can one say? "Prove you exist"? My final question, or answer, depending on how you look at it, is "What think ye of the Christ?" That's not science, but it is a very serious question about a stunningly unique Rabbi.

Defining the Church . . . Badly

Another sad story of  people playing dress up: Women Anointed Catholic Deacons, Priest in S.B. from the Santa Barbara Independent. It's the usual story: lifelong Catholics, love the Church, feel called to priesthood, Church misogynist, hope for future change, women were priests in the early church, have to stay to promote change, accepted someday, international movement, and so on, though it leaves out the almost inevitable "the church is not the magisterium" line and adds the faux reassurance that excommunication "does not remove one from the church" but only bars one from the sacraments. (Not, of course, that they care.)

And like so many articles on this subject, the reporter took seriously and without question the claim that these women were Roman Catholic bishops and priests. They are doing what the Church expressly forbids, they don't represent any Catholic official or institution, they have no place in the Catholic system, no Catholic official or institution recognizes them (other than, perhaps, some secretive order of aging leftwing nuns and even they don't support them in public), but nevertheless the reporter and the editor who wrote the headline declare them to be Roman Catholics.

Let's imagine some reporters from the Independent started publishing a separate edition of the newspaper, complete with editorials taking positions contradictory to the official newspaper's. Suppose they talked about how they'd worked at the paper for years, and love the paper, and can't imagine not being a part of it, but it isn't living up to its founding vision, which they believe themselves to incarnate, and eventually the old guard will come to agree with them and accept their work, and they feel called to edit the newspaper, but for now they must do so secretly. And suppose the newspaper they put out looked a lot, at first glance anyway, like the official one.

The owners and editors of the real newspaper would insist that these people are imposters, whatever their ideals and feelings and would be imposters even if they'd worked for the newspaper since birth, and if forced to explain this the owners and editors would point out that they've got the newspaper's jobs and the titles, and they work in the newspaper's building, and they own the newspaper's copyright, and they've got the newspaper's bank accounts, and they say in its pages what the newspaper's always said, and they publish the newspaper that's been published for decades, and the city knows who they are (they get the tax bill), and every other newspaper knows who they are, and heck, everyone knows which is the real Independent.

In other words, the newspaper's version of the arguments a Catholic would make if asked why these poor people in the interfaith center weren't Catholics and why these women got up from kneeling no more Catholic priests and deacons than they were before. The arguments that would work for the newspaper work for the Church.

So why call the women in their collars "Roman Catholics"? You can't rule out simple incompetence and ignorance when asking this question of journalists.

But I think, whatever the case for this story, the repeated treatment of people who do this kind of thing as real official Catholics advances the secularist's cherished belief that the Catholic Church isn't so intransigently "sexist" as she appears and is just a change or two from endorsing the sexual revolution.

Plus, to be fair to the newspaper, which wants to sell copies, if these women aren't Roman Catholics there's not much of a story. A tiny group of eccentrics with no visible organization or presence in the community creating new officers is just not the kind of story people buy a newspaper to read. It's as interesting or relevant as "Children on Fourteenth Street Chose Sides for Kickball. Details on page 5." A degree of inflation is built into the journalistic enterprise.

Though whether lying because you're greedy is better than lying because you're an ideologue, I'm not sure. And this kind of exaggeration is, I think, a form of lying.

Also, while I'm writing on the story, the service featured a new hip inclusive name for God of which I did not know:

The ceremony, which took place on the feast day of Mary Magdalene, also differed from the standard Catholic ordination in the names the presiding clergy used for God, who is ordinarily referred to as “the Father.” The female priests instead referred to “Mother and Father” and to “God/de.” (The latter is pronounced like “God,” with the silent, extra letters hinting at a goddess that those in the ceremony declined to refer to explicitly.)

Not entirely honest, that hinting at a goddess while sounding to the people listening to you like you were praying to God. The reporter then reassures us that "Jesus Christ retained his masculine identity, however."