Toward Attention

Public Orthodoxy and Private Heresy

From a New York Times article (here):

When religious commitments are more comprehensive and religious institutions more resilient, faith is more likely to call people out of private loyalties to public purposes, more likely to inspire voters to put ideals above self-interest, more likely to inspire politicians to defy partisan categories altogether. But as orthodoxies weaken, churches split and their former adherents mix and match elements of various traditions to fit their preferences, religion is more likely to become indistinguishable from personal and ideological self-interest.

Interesting.

Our Heritages, Our Selves

I have met several people who, upon being asked, stated each that he or she had absolutely no identification with his or her cultural and ethnic heritage whatsoever. Not many, though. There are plenty more, however, for whom this is a minimal part of their identity, especially in America. 

We are what we are. We may elect to identify or not, but it's simply ours. I feel bad for these people -- hearing their non-identification is like hearing someone state that they don't identify with their own body. There is something profoundly unhealthy about it.

 

A Barbarian Land

We are a barbarian land. This is not a historically Orthodox country, and the population is not a majority Orthodox.

We are a diaspora Church. Russian, Serbian, Arab, Greek, Georgian, Romanian, Albanian, etc.: there are a few Western Rites. Even those parishes and jurisdictions that are mostly-English or all-English are transparently, if not self-consciously (*cough* OCA), inheritors of one of these traditions. That there has been no attempt, as with the Byzantine mission to the Slavs, to translate the Church's heritage into a cultural idiom appropriate to the various regions of the U.S. (with Alaska the sole exception), it is clear that Orthodoxy in the U.S. is not a mission phenomenon, but a diaspora phenomenon. We are a diaspora Church, no matter how many generations into the diaspora we go. There is no way to avoid this. Succeeding generations of American-borne ethnics will not change this. Neither will a steady influx of converts.

When Anglo-Celts stop naming their chilren after Russian and Greek saints to the neglect of their native traditions, and Churches in the U.K. and the U.S. are dedicated to Anglo-Celtic saints, then we'll have some initial movement to approach becoming a local Church.

The fact that converts willfully give up on this matter -- and that those spouses, who do not want to give up on naming their children according to saints that are part of the local cultural heritage, usually concede to their (sometimes ethnic, sometimes not) spouse who do -- this is not a mark of the Catholic Church, but of an ethnic sect, an exotic bird. And locals, even if they get their Divine Liturgies in English, are being assimilated. 

Unless the Orthodox Church can accomodate other cultural histories other than the ancestral lands that the Churches come from -- especially when these cultural histories are Christian -- it can never claim to be Catholic.

I do not want to be a distracting Celtic sideshow in an exotic bird zoo.

Man of Steel

Finally. First pics here and here.

Charles Finney and Calvinism

Last night I came across Charles Finney's name -- some Calvinist had made a DVD and titled it "Beware of False Prophets: Charles Finney [etc., etc.]," and had put up an advertisement for this DVD on a webpage that I was looking at for some reason I can no longer remember. I didn't see a single excerpt from the DVD, but I was curious who Charles Finney was (I remember seeing his name a great number of times in relation to Protestantism), so I looked him up on Wikipedia.

Interesting -- he looks to be the father of evangelicalism/Revivalism in North America. He was also a Presbyterian, and not a Calvinist. It looks as though the DVD was made by Calvinists who "want people to know that Finney perverted the pure Gospel," etc. An excerpt from his journal on these issues:

I have spoken at considerable length of my protracted controversy with my theological teacher, Mr. Gale. Upon reflection I think that I should state a little more definitely some of the points upon which we had so much discussion. I could not receive that theological fiction of imputation. I will state, as nearly as I can, the exact ground that he maintained and insisted upon. First, he maintained that the guilt of Adam's first transgression is literally imputed to all his posterity; so that they are justly sentenced and exposed to eternal damnation for Adam's sin. Secondly, he maintained that we received from Adam, by natural generation, a nature wholly sinful, and morally corrupt in every faculty of soul and body; so that we are totally unable to perform any act acceptable to God, and are necessitated by our sinful nature to transgress His law, in every action of our lives. And this, he insisted, is the estate into which all men fell by the first sin of Adam. For this sinful nature, thus received from Adam by natural generation, all mankind are also sentenced to, and are deserving of, eternal damnation. Then, thirdly, in addition to this, he maintained that we are all justly condemned and sentenced to eternal damnation for our own unavoidable transgression of the law. Thus we find ourselves justly subject to a triple eternal damnation.

Then the second branch of this wonderful imputation is as follows: The sin of all the elect, both original and actual--that is, the guilt of Adam's sin, together with the guilt of their sinful nature, and also the guilt of their personal transgressions, are all literally imputed to Christ; and therefore the divine government regarded Him as an embodiment of all the sins and guilt of the elect, and treated Him accordingly; that is, the Father punished the Son precisely as much as all the elect deserved. Hence their debt being thus fully discharged by the punishment of Christ, they are saved upon principles of exact justice.

The third branch of this wonderful theological fiction is as follows: First, the obedience of Christ to the divine law is literally imputed to the elect; so that in Him they are regarded as having always perfectly obeyed the law. Secondly, His death for them is also imputed to the elect; so that in Him they are regarded as having fully suffered all that they deserve on account of the guilt of Adam's sin imputed to them, and on account of their sinful nature, and also on account of all their personal transgressions. Thirdly, thus by their Surety the elect have first perfectly obeyed the law; and then they have by and in their Surety suffered the full penalty to which they were subject in consequence of the guilt of Adam's sin imputed to them, and also the guilt of their sinful nature, with all their blameworthiness for their personal transgressions. Thus they have suffered in Christ, just as if they had not obeyed in Him. He, first, perfectly obeys for them, which obedience is strictly imputed to them, so that they are regarded by the government of God as having fully obeyed in their Surety; secondly, He has suffered for them the penalty of the law, just as if no obedience had been rendered; thirdly, after the law has been doubly satisfied, the elect are required to repent as if no satisfaction had been rendered; fourthly, payment in full having been rendered twice over, the discharge of the elect is claimed to be an act of infinite grace. Thus the elect are saved by grace on principles of justice, so that there is strictly no grace or mercy in our forgiveness, but the whole grace of our salvation is found in the obedience and sufferings of Christ.

It follows that the elect may demand their discharge on the score of strict justice. They need not pray for pardon or forgiveness; it is all a mistake to do so. This inference is my own; but it follows, as everyone can see, irresistibly, from what the Confession of Faith itself asserts, that the elect are saved on principles of exact and perfect justice.

I found it impossible to agree with Mr. Gale on these points. I could not but regard and treat this whole question of imputation as a theological fiction. Upon these points we had constant discussion, in some shape, during the whole course of my study.

The whole journal entry for this particular matter of Mr. Gale and Calvinism can be found here. It's not long, and very enjoyable to read.

Vietnamese Jesus Statue

I am conflicted about this.

At first I thought "the man can't imaginably need a 40-foot statue on a bluff for devotional purposes. If his statue was 10 feet tall -- even 15 -- I can't imagine this kind of opposition and resistance." But then James kindly corrected my hasty skim-read of this article, and noted that the statue is 7 feet tall. Which makes all opposition to his statue look much, much more pathological than the worst conceivable pathology-born motivation for erecting it in the first place -- and that's only positing a pathological origin for the Jesus statue for rhetorical purposes, to show how absurd the whole thing is, and not because I'm convinced that the statue's presence has its origins in a pathology.

It's not OK to destroy someone's personal property just because you object to it or its "content." This must be stopped. Especially when it's barely taller than the average human being.

In the same vein, it's definitely not OK to impose zoning laws on someone just because they want to put up a statue of Jesus. It's not a flaming penis or anything. If it's actually unsafe, however (i.e., if it's liable to fall on a road underneath), that's another story. It's not. It's on the water.

The public square does not need to be stripped of every expression of religion, either. That's absurd, and very un-liberal.

However, using the public square as a billboard for one's religion seems like an abuse of the public square and of the Lord's Name and Image. There are legitimate ways to express one's devotion in the public square. This statue, however, only being 7 feet tall, can't reasonably be claimed to be a billboard.

Discouraging Thought

Public education is simply an attempt to handle populations.

Armies and Poachers

I've been following the discussions on a friend's Facebook page for several months now, and have recently been chiming into the discussions. Often the issue of fear-driven theologies comes up, and the regular suspects brought out and flogged. One of the regular portraits is that of the fearful, tradition-loving, backwards Orthodox who cling to an outdated cosmology and anthropology.

The subtext for much of this is, of course, pro-women's ordination and pro-homosexual agendas. I have no interest in hunting that duck, or defending it: the two will simply never go down among the majority of Orthodox, except in odd pockets here or there, mostly under the radar. One cannot rally to change the feeling of the faithful on this issue.

What I find saddening, and frightening, is that this duck is just a distraction: there is a much greater threat, and it is already crouching at the tent-flap. Many busy themselves with this duck simply in order to make themselves feel in control, feel competent: character assasinate the perversely-traditionalist herald, and one does not need to deal with the issues he represents. He lies dead. But the army he was warning about still makes its advance, all the while these men and women go about preoccupied with their fowl.

"Nihilism is at the door: whence comes this most uncanny of guests?" --Nietzsche

Catholic College Fires Gay Part-Time Professor

I read about it here (posted to FB via an ex-Catholic gay friend of mine).

It is clearly unjust to allow for negligence with one's own moral conduct while heavily discriminating against the immoralities of others. I don't really wish to focus on that, because it's plain to all. I don't need to cathart about it, and am not interested in providing cathartic material for others regarding the situation in the Catholic College in PA. I would like to focus elsewhere. This scenario raises two different and interesting secondary ethical questions for me.

(1) The first is about consistency. I am now a parent of a child who can argue with me and who clearly registers frustration with the inconsistencies in my discipline. If I make a gross moral error, and then I risk losing her trust and love if I hold to a principle that I feel so strongly about I would lose my identity, should I hold to it? (This presumes that it is simply a principle internal to my self-identity and self-governance. If we make it a public moral principle, I might say: if, after I make a gross moral error, my daughter engages in a moral error, have I absolved myself of the moral authority necessary to speak to her on the matter?)

(2) The second is about institutions and responsibility. In the Roman Catholic Church, many priests acted wickedly with regard to minors (though the percentage of offending priests is very small), and many bishops did not hold them properly accountable. It is the latter part that is most disturbing -- that priests should go bad is no surprise, but that is an individual matter, and perhaps a cultural one; that their wickedness should be oft concealed and otherwise dealt with as it was is what seems to be the substance of the condemnation of the institution. It went from an individual and perhaps cultural to an institutional problem. So the question is, what is this institution which is saddled with the actions of both the wicked priests and bishops as well as the actions of the College and its officials? Can it be the Roman Catholic Church? Can the RCC be seen as an agent acting in all these different situations the way that I might act in this hypothetical situation with my daughter? Or are we scapegoating?

I'm sorry to say that I don't have any answers. Only questions. I might multiply them.

Modernity and Secularism

Regarding yesterday's post on the Greek state's supplying a mosque to the Greek Muslims, and the question of the ends of human nature, I found this definition of Modernity:

modernity is secularization. It is, in its essence, a project of detaching moral, legal, and governmental reasoning from any authority transcendent of the state or the individual. It is the project of an ethics conformed not to divine justice but to human reason and popular consensus; of a politics authorized not by divine ordinance but by the absolute sovereignty of the nation-state; and of a model of freedom based not on the perfection of human nature but on the unconstrained liberty of individual will.

Well said, no? (Quote from David Bentley Hart, found here.)