Dissident Veteran For Peace

What follows are a few thoughts on God, faith, and Christianity from mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). The text is taken from A. J. Krailsheimer's translation of Pascal's Pensées (Penguin, 1995). Specifically, they are derived from sections 418 - 424, according to Louis Lafuma's numbering scheme.

The first two excerpts are from a larger text commonly known as "Pascal's wager". I am not so interested here in Pascal's actual argument, almost all of which I have omitted, as I am in what Pascal concedes and what he believes about faith, unbelief, and Christianity.

If there is a God, he is infinitely beyond our comprehension, since, being indivisible and without limits, he bears no relation to us. We are therefore incapable of knowing either what he is or whether he is ...

Who then will blame Christians for being unable to give rational grounds for their belief, professing as they do a religion for which they cannot give rational grounds? They declare that it is a folly, stultitiam, in expounding it to the world, and then you complain that they do not prove it! ... Let us then examine this point, and say, "God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. [418]

Pascal's position is that reason cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. However, Pascal argues, reason can and does prove that one should choose to believe and/or act as if God does exist.

The idea is that the cost of the erroneous belief in a non-existent deity is low compared to the high cost of erroneous disbelief in a God who does exist. Conversely, as Pascal would have it, becoming a Christian is a win whether God exists or not.

Having assumed that his imagined interlocutor accepts his reasoning, Pascal concedes that faith in God cannot necessarily be turned on or off like a switch.

... at least get it into your head that, if you are unable to believe [in God], it is because of your passions since reason impels you to believe and yet you cannot do so. Concentrate then not on convincing yourself by multiplying proofs of God's existence but by diminishing your passions. You want to find faith and you do not know the road. You want to be cured of unbelief and you ask for the remedy: learn from those who were once bound like you ... They behaved just as if they did believe, taking the holy water, having masses said, and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally ... — 'But this is what I am afraid of.' — 'But why? What have you to lose? But to show you that this is the way, the fact is that this diminishes the passions which are your great obstacles ...' [418]

Pascal's point, then, is that disbelief in God is not grounded in reason but in an emotionally or psychologically-based resistance he calls "passions". Here are few more excerpts that are not generally considered part of Pascal's wager.

No sect and no religion has always existed on earth except Christianity. [421]

***

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

I say that it is natural for the heart to love the universal being or itself, according to its allegiance, and it hardens itself against either as it chooses. You have rejected one and kept the other. Is it reason that makes you love yourself? [423]

***

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason. [424]

Labels: Christianity, philosophy, quotations, religion and science

'You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the LORD. - Leviticus 19:28 (NASB)

From now on let no one cause trouble for me, for I bear on my body the brand-marks of Jesus. -Galatians 6:17 (NASB)

In the Septuagint (Vetus Testementum Graece LXX Tischendorf 1856), the phrase "tattoo marks" in Lev. 19:28 above appears as γράμματα στικτὰ, which is transliterated as grammata stikta. Liddell and Scott indicate tattoo is indeed the correct translation.

In the Greek New Testament (Novum Testamentum Graece Nestle-Aland 28th ed. 2012), the phrase "the brand-marks" in Gal. 6:17 above appears as στίγματα. It is transliterated as stigmata and, according to Danker's The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (UChicago Pr., 2009), is defined as an "indelible graphic mark made on the body".

Lucian of Samosata's (born 120 A.D.) De Dea Syria is another ancient Greek text that mentions tattooing. Section 59 of that work says: "στίζονται δὲ πάντες, οἱ μὲν ἐς καρπούς, οἱ δὲ ἐς αὐχένας: καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦδε ἅπαντες Ἀσσύριοι στιγματηφορέουσιν". Strong translates this passage as: "They all tattoo [στίζονται] themselves—some on the hands and some on the neck—and so it comes that all the Assyrians bear stigmata [στιγματηφορέουσιν]."

The Coptic church of Egypt is believed to have been established around 50 A.D. Copts have long used tattoos with distinctive Christian motifs, sometimes to their peril. According to Carswell, as quoted in Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt by Febe Armanios (Oxford UP, 2011; p. 208, n. 145) Syrian, Armenian, and Ethiopian Christians also followed this practice.

Coptic tattoo design print from John Carswell's Coptic Tattoo Designs, 2nd ed. (American Univ. of Beirut, 1958) via http://www.crosscrucifix.com/glossaryhome.htm

Labels: art and literature, Christianity, culture, history

Blind faith renders religious beliefs incoherent. Faith, in its journey toward authenticity, embraces the search for the intelligibility of the religious truth we affirm.

Source: Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (Paulist Press, 2002) p. 2.

Labels: Christianity, quotations, religion

Arson in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020

In the wake of the George Floyd protests and riots a particular quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been repeatedly trotted out (see e.g. here and here and here). As Time noted after the Freddie Gray riots: "One quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., has become a touchstone for those who seek to understand [sic] why those individuals have taken to the streets: 'A riot,' King said, 'is the language of the unheard.' " (On the origins of this quote see the 2013 CBS News piece "MLK: A riot is the language of the unheard".)

It is doubtful that there has been any time in American history when more Black people occupied positions of prominence in the media and power in politics. Even Demon Trump has the same percentage of Black cabinet members as Obama did in his first term.

In Minneapolis, the police chief and the state attorney general are both Black men. The city's representative in Congress is a Somali-American woman. There are apparently four Black members on the city council, one of whom is the son of the state attorney general.

So, how is it that the Minneapolis rioters are supposedly "unheard"? What are they saying and who isn't listening? More importantly, why is it that when pundits, politicians, and other propagandists quote King about the "language of the unheard" they seldom quote the text below from his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech?

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.

In 1968, shortly before his death, King reiterated his position on the "language of the unheard" while "condemn[ing] riots", saying: "... I am still committed to  militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the [race] problem from a direct action point of view ... And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method  that  brings about tangible results."

Labels: Black America, Christianity, crime, critical thinking, Ilhan Omar, Martin Luther King, nonviolence, Obama, police, quotations, race, Trump, violence

The video below is from a 2012 presentation at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference in Bethlehem, Palestine by Gary Burge. It contains a fairly concise and direct Bible-based evangelical refutation of key theological errors of Christian Zionism. Burge is the current Dean of the Faculty and Visiting Professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.

Labels: Christianity, Israel Lobby, Palestine, religion, video, Zionism

I have long felt uncomfortable hearing people say, "There but for the grace of God go I". I realize that most people who say it have good intentions. They mean it as an expression of sympathy for someone who has, to their mind, fallen into misfortune or sin. They may also mean to convey a sense of humility to the effect that only God's grace, and not their own merit or efforts, prevents them from likewise falling.

Good intentions notwithstanding it seems to me that there is an implied arrogance and judgmentalism in the phrase. The problem is in the idea that you can look at the external circumstances of another person's life, discern the presence or absence of God's grace, and assert that somehow explains the situation. Then, too, there is the implication that God's grace has formed a hedge keeping you from descending down into the same condition. Given this how do you imagine someone who is experiencing what is perceived as misfortune or sin would feel about learning that another has assessed their situation and declared, "There but for the grace of God go I"?

It's worth also noting the phrase is not biblical. Rather, it is attributed:

to the English evangelical preacher and martyr, John Bradford (circa 1510–1555). He is said to have uttered the variant of the expression - "There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford", when seeing criminals being led to the scaffold. He didn't enjoy that grace for long, however. He was burned at the stake in 1555, although, by all accounts he remained sanguine about his fate and is said to have suggested to a fellow victim that "We shall have a merry supper with the Lord this night".

In the case of Bradford the expression may have had a markedly different meaning than in modern times. It is possible that Bradford meant to suggest that those facing death were in some measure the beneficiaries of God's grace. There, after all, was a time when Christians more commonly understood suffering as a powerful means of identification with and faithfulness to the cause of Christ (Phl 1:29;  2Th 1:4,5; 1Pe 4:12-16). I have no conclusive evidence that this is what Bradford had in mind but I think it is from far inconceivable.

There is though considerable cause for doubt that the expression originated with Bradford. As one source states, the earliest appearance in print of any version of the saying goes back only to 1771. In any case, as I have already said, the expression is not biblical. Although there are numerous references to the grace of God in the Bible there are none I am aware of that hold up God's grace as a reference point for interpersonal judgment or comparison.

The Greek New Testament phrase most frequently translated as "grace of God" appears only once in the Gospels. It appears in Luke 2:40 to describe Jesus' spiritual maturation while still a child. In considering "There but for the grace of God go I" four other biblical passages come to my mind.

First, there is Jesus' admonition to "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Mat 7:1; cf. Luk 6:37). I do not take this as a blanket exhortation to never judge any thing or any actions but to refrain from making judgments about the spiritual conditions of others. Taken in context, it seems to me that Jesus is saying, among other things, that spiritually judging others is an example of false piety and that we are really in no position to make such judgments. It follows then that we likewise should not presume to know where God's grace is to be found.

Second, in John 9 there is the blind man whom Jesus sent to wash in the pool of Siloam. Jesus' disciples ask, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answers, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." So, in this instance, it would appear that the man was born blind—something many sighted people would consider a misfortune—by the grace of God.

Third, there seems to be a special place reserved for sexual sins/sinners in the working of God's grace as is apparent from the genealogy of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both describe the paternal lineage of Jesus. Unlike Luke, Matthew's version (1:1-18) includes, among the many men, four women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Including Mary, an unwed mother, there are five women listed in Jesus' family tree.

Tamar "played the harlot" in order to deceive her deceased husband's father into impregnating her (Gen 38:15-24). Rahab didn't pretend to be a prostitute; she was a prostitute (Jos 2: Heb 11:31; Jas 2:25). Tamar and Rahab are also both reckoned by scholars to have been Canaanites. Ruth was a Moabitess, meaning she was a descendant of Lot, who engaged in incest with his eldest daughter (Gen 19:36, 37) and part of a group who worshiped Chemosh (Num 21:29; Jer 48:7, 13, 46). And Bathsheba, as you may recall, was the mother of Solomon by King David who first impregnated her (with another son) in an act of adultery. In order to try to conceal that adultery, David essentially murdered Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. As if to underscore this, Matthew makes specific mention of Uriah in verse 1:6.

Finally, there is the fact that Jesus was repeatedly judged a sinner. For example, by strict (mis-)interpretation of the Law he was indeed a sinner for, among other things, aiding and abetting the violation of the Sabbath after he healed the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda as recounted in John 5:

Jesus said to him, "Get up, pick up your pallet and walk." Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the [Judaeans] were saying to the man who was cured, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet." But he answered them, "He who made me well was the one who said to me, 'Pick up your pallet and walk.' " They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Pick up your pallet and walk'?" But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you." The man went away, and told the [Judaeans] that it was Jesus who had made him well. For this reason the [Judaeans] were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. But He answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working."

For this reason therefore the [Judaeans] were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

The mandate to keep the Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments, along with, for example, the prohibition on murder. Thus, violating the Sabbath was a very serious offense, as is evident from the text below (Num 15:32-36).

Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation; and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp." So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.

Through his life, death, and resurrection Jesus completed the Law and finally terminated its claim on the lives of humans. We are under grace, not the yoke of the Law (Mat 5:17; Jhn 1:17; Rom 6:14; Gal 3:13). Jesus also challenged and overthrew the false understanding of the Law, declaring, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" but more importantly from Matthew 22:

But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend [lit. "hang"] the whole Law and the Prophets."

The Old Testament and the Gospels make clear that this is not a novel idea but Jesus, by his actions and his words, repeatedly challenged Pharisees and others stuck in legalism to go beyond a shallow, intellectual understanding of this important truth and to incorporate it in a meaningful way in their lives, practices, and doctrines.

I think this understanding of the Law is important when considering judgments about God's grace in the case of those who seem to be fallen not into misfortune but into sin. The point being that even sinfulness is not always so easy to discern when thinking about God's grace or its absence.

Labels: Christianity, Jesus, religion

We have to hear again and again who God is for us and what God has done on our behalf. We must free each other from bondage through our confession and forgiveness.

I think this is why we at House for All Sinners and Saints sometimes say that we are religious but not spiritual. Spiritual feels individual and escapist. But to be religious (despite all the negative associations with that word) is to be human in the midst of other humans who are as equally messed up and obnoxious and foreign as ourselves.

Source: Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People (Convergent Books, 2015) p. 170 (emphasis in original).

See also: "Quotable: Spirituality as Do-Without-Religion"

Labels: Christianity, quotations, religion

Happy Misappropriation of a Christian Martyr's Death for the Crass Commercial Exploitation of a Basic Human Need Day!



See also:

• "Martyrdom of St. Valentine" on Christianity.com 
• "The Feast of St. Valentine, martyr" on HigherThings.org

Labels: capitalism, Christianity, psychology, religion

There are many ways to deceive—one is the lie by omission. Critics of Islamic militants often use this tactic. One common example is to highlight suicide attacks and then to strip the acts of their larger context and ascribe purely or mostly carnal motives to the attackers.

One prime example of this is the "Martyrs rewarded with 72 Virgins" trope. The most effective lies often have a kernel of truth and that is the case here but the hadith at issue says rather more:

That the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: "There are six things with Allah for the martyr. He is forgiven with the first flow of blood (he suffers), he is shown his place in Paradise, he is protected from punishment in the grave, secured from the greatest terror, the crown of dignity is placed upon his head - and its gems are better than the world and what is in it - he is married to seventy two wives along Al-Huril-'Ayn of Paradise, and he may intercede for seventy of his close relatives."

Here's a different translation of that passage:

It was reported in the hadeeth of al-Miqdaam ibn Ma'di Karb that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said:

"The martyr (shaheed) has seven blessings from Allaah: he is forgiven from the moment his blood is first shed; he will be shown his place in Paradise; he will be spared the trial of the grave; and he will be secure on the Day of the Greatest Terror (the Day of Judgement); there will be placed on his head a crown of dignity, one ruby of which is better than this world and all that is in it; he will be married to seventy-two of al-hoor al-'iyn; and he will be permitted to intercede for seventy of his relatives."

In English, Al-Huril-'Ayn/al-hoor al-'iyn is the term usually transliterated as "houris" and translated as "virgins". At least two more things are worth pointing out: First, it's not transparently evident that the marriage depicted in Paradise is a physical one consummated sexually. By analogy, the New Testament describes the Church—the collective body of believers—as the virginal Bride of Christ (see e.g. 2 Corinthians 11:2 and Ephesians 5:22-32). Second, there is reason to believe that this alleged motivation is exaggerated or even fabricated.

To be clear, it may very well be that the 72 houris are widely understood by Muslims as a carnal reward for the shahid in Paradise. Muslims are no less capable than Jews or Christians of ignorance or dissimulation in defense of their faith. In any case, the Western media have generally chosen to decontextualize the (rather infrequent) act of the Muslim suicide bomber and to emphasize a salacious explanation to the detriment, in my opinion, of all except those want to add fuel to the fires of conflict. For a discussion of the larger context of suicide attacks I recommend Jacqueline Rose's "Deadly Embrace" in the London Review of Books.

Labels: Christianity, critical thinking, Islam, media, religion, resistance, violence

Fundamentalism ... differs from traditionalism or orthodoxy or even a mere revivalist movement. It differs in that it is a movement in conscious, organized opposition to the disruption of those traditions and orthodoxies.

Tradition, orthodoxy, and revival exist within an ongoing, stable system. Fundamentalism exists in the midst of change. Clifford Geertz describes this difference in Islamic societies he has studied as the difference between "being held by" one's beliefs and "holding" those beliefs, between having faith and having reasons. In a culture in which there is a great deal of stability and agreement on the way life should proceed, beliefs are part of the fabric of life. To be part of one's culture and to affirm those beliefs are inseparable. In such situations, one is held by beliefs about ultimate reality. But once that culture is disturbed by change or outside intrusion or mobility, beliefs lose their taken-for-granted character. They must be consciously held.

Source: Nancy T. Ammerman, "North American Protestant Fundamentalism" in Fundamentalisms Observed (Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1991) by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., pp. 14-15.

Labels: Christianity, Islam, quotations, religion, sociology

Labels: Christianity, film & television, history, philosophy, religion and science

In the 1920s, the Cristero War took the lives of an estimated 250,000 Mexicans. When I learned this I was shocked that I had never heard of the war until I watched this remarkable film.

Labels: Christianity, film & television, history, Mexico, War

... to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Source: Character of Canon Tom Tallis in Madeleine L'Engle's The Young Unicorns (Macmillan, 2008), p. 202.

... when evil declares itself in its absolute form, it declares itself as an angel of light.

Source: Tallis, p. 237.

... Utopia ... is always a heresy, no matter how nobly conceived.

Source: Tallis, p. 241.

Labels: art and literature, Christianity, freedom, Madeleine L'Engle, philosophy, quotations

... Jewish involvement in the X-rated industry can be seen as a proverbial two fingers to the entire WASP establishment in America. Some porn stars viewed themselves as frontline fighters in the spiritual battle between Christian America and secular humanism. According to [Luke] Ford*, Jewish X-rated actors often brag about their 'joy in being anarchic, sexual gadflies to the puritanical beast'. Jewish involvement in porn, by this argument, is the result of an atavistic hatred of Christian authority: they are trying to weaken the dominant culture in America by moral subversion. ... Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw, said (on lukeford.net), 'The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't believe in authoritarianism.' Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged. ...

It is a case of the traditional revolutionary/radical drive of immigrant Jews in America being channelled into sexual rather than leftist politics. Just as Jews have been disproportionately represented in radical movements over the years, so they are also disproportionately represented in the porn industry.

* Elsewhere in the article Ford is referred to by the author as an "Orthodox Jew and porn gossipmonger".

Source: Nathan Abrams. "Triple-exthnics". Jewish Quarterly (Winter 2004). No. 196, p. 30.

Ron Jeremy as Jesus in the 2012 film Bloody Bloody Bible Camp. Nathan Abrams calls Jeremy "The doyen of the Hebrew studs ... one of America's biggest porn stars." Note: I have not seen the film and cannot confirm this image appears in it.

Labels: Christianity, Hollywood, Jews, media, prostitution, quotations

Happy Misappropriation of a Christian Martyr's Death for the Crass Commercial Exploitation of a Basic Human Need Day!



See also:

• "Martyrdom of St. Valentine" on Christianity.com 
• "The Feast of St. Valentine, martyr" on HigherThings.org

Labels: capitalism, Christianity, psychology, religion

Below are some excerpts from "The Law of Love and the Law of Violence" by Leo Tolstoy as translated of Mary Koutouzow Tolstoy (Rudolph Field, 1948) and transcribed and edited by nonresistance.org. I think the translation by Jane Kentish in A Confession and Other Religious Writings (Penguin, 1987) is superior but I don't have access to an electronic version of that text.

 Nothing should be more natural than that the working class should thus express itself [by rejecting government--VFPD]. But most of them continue their existence as martyrs in the police service, in financial offices, and in the regiments. Others, the minority, try to free themselves from oppression by revolt and by committing violence in their turn on those who oppress them, or, in other words, try to quench fire with fire and thus increase the violence from which they are suffering.

Why do men act so irrationally? It is because the long duration of the lie has caused them to lose all notion of the bond that exists between their servitude and their participation in violence.

Why do they not see this bond? Because they no longer have faith, and without faith, men are guided only by interest. In fact, he who is guided by interest alone cannot do otherwise than deceive or be deceived. [p. 16]

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The Christian revelation was the doctrine of human equality, of the fatherhood of God, of the brotherhood of man. It struck at the very basis of that monstrous tyranny that then oppressed the civilized world; it struck at the fetters of the captive, at the bonds of the slave, at that monstrous injustice which allowed a class to revel on the proceeds of labor, while those who did the labor fared scantily. That is the reason why early Christianity was persecuted. And when they could no longer hold it down, then the privileged classes adopted and perverted the new faith, and it became, in its very triumph, not the pure Christianity of the early days, but a Christianity that, to a very great extent, was the servitor of the privileged classes. [This text appears in the epigraph to chap. 10 in the Kentish translation (although this is not the same version she uses); it does not appear at all in M. K. Tolstoy's translation. The text comes from "Thy Kingdom Come" (1889) by Henry George.]

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Do not think that Church Christianity was an incomplete, one-sided, formal view of Christianity, but nevertheless Christianity. Do not think this: for Church Christianity is the enemy of true Christianity and stands in relation to true Christianity as a criminal caught in the act. It must either destroy itself, or continue to commit new crimes. [This text appears in the epigraph to chap. 10 in the Kentish translation; it does not appear at all in M. K. Tolstoy's translation. According to notes in the Kentish edition, Leo Tolstoy is quoting himself from another work.]

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The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.

It is said that one swallow does not make a summer, but can it be that because one swallow does not make a summer another swallow, sensing and anticipating summer, must not fly? If every blade of grass waited similarly summer would never occur. And it is the same with establishing the Kingdom of God: we must not think about whether we are the first or the thousandth swallow. [This text appears in the epigraph to chap. 13 in the Kentish translation; it does not appear at all in M. K. Tolstoy's translation.]

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The Christian can ignore the laws established by the State because he has no need of them for himself, or for others; he considers that human life is better assured by the law of love professed by him than by the law of violence that one wants to impose on him … Having recognized the efficacy of the law of love, he does not consider the law of violence obligatory, and he denounces the other as the most horrible of mistakes ...

The profession of true Christianity, which includes the precept of nonresistance to evil by violence, relieves those faithful to this doctrine from any external authority. Much better, it gives them the possibility of obtaining better conditions in life, those that men seek vainly by changing its external forms. In reality, these forms change only after the modifications that have arisen in men's consciences, and in the measure in which this conscience has evolved.

It was not the orders of a government that abolished the murder of children, tortures, or slavery, but the universal conscience that caused these orders. Since the evolution of conscience determines the changes in the modes of life, the contrary, as well, should happen (or so they say). As it is more agreeable and easier to modify external forms (because the results are more apparent), this activity is preferred to the one whose aim is to modify conscience. That is why one is more frequently occupied with the foundation, rather than with the form. [pp. 29-30]

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A man who continues to live in error sees the incarnation of power in certain sacred institutions, which are the indispensable organs of the social body. The man who awakens to the truth sees this assumed by men sunk in error and who attribute to it a fantastic importance having no possible justification, and who accomplish their will by force.

For those with insight, these lost people, bribed as often as not, resemble brigands who hold up travelers on the high roads. For anyone who has awakened to the truth, the entity called the State does not exist, and therefore there is not the slightest justification, for him, for the acts of violence committed in the name of the State. And any participation in these acts is impossible for him.

To sum up, State violence will disappear, not with the aid of external means, but thanks only to the calls of conscience of men who have awakened to the truth. [From the epigraph to chap. 15]

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We are quite accustomed to find ways of managing other people's lives, and these methods do not seem odd to us. They would be unnecessary, however, if men were religious and free. They are, in fact, the result of despotism and of the domination of one or a few over many. This error is harmful, not only because it causes suffering to those who feel the oppression of despots, but even more so because their consciences no longer warn them of the necessity of bettering their condition. But only this conscience can have an effect on one's fellow being.

Not only has one man not the right to dispose of a great number, but a great number have not the right to dispose of a single man. (V. Tchertkov, Daily Reading, November 22nd) [From the epigraph to chap. 16]

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The superstition that causes one to think that he can tell in advance how society will be organized in the future has its origin in the desire of the transgressors to justify their conduct, and in the desire of the victims to explain and lighten the weight of the constraint. The former persuade themselves and others that they know the way to make life take the form that they consider the best. The latter, who undergo such constraint that they do not feel strong enough to free themselves, have the same conviction, for it permits them to give a certain excuse for their position.

The history of nations ought to destroy this superstition entirely.  [p. 35]

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... our idea of our social organization, founded on violence, is so impressed upon us that we do not perceive all the crimes that they commit each day in the name of the public good. We see only the rare violent attempts of those who are called murderers, burglars, or thieves.

"He is a murderer, he is a thief, he does not observe the rule of not doing to others what you would not have them do to you," say the same people who go on killing in war, who force nations to prepare for carnage, and who steal from and despoil their own as well as foreign nations. [p. 37]

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Men already see the ignominy of the spy and executioner, and are beginning to see that of the police, detectives, and even to a certain degree, of military men. But they do not yet see it of the judge, the minister, the sovereign, chiefs of parties, or revolutionaries. And yet the work of the latter is as vile and as contrary to human nature, or even worse, than the work of the executioner or the spy, because it is more hypocritical.

Understand then, all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the good of men, is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, and is always hiding the lowest passions.

Understand it, you, men of tomorrow, and stop looking for an illusionary happiness by participating in the administration of the State by judicial institutions, by instruction, and by all kinds of parties that have the good of the masses as an aim. Pay attention to only one thing, that which you need the most, that which is the most accessible, and that which gives the most happiness to us and to everyone: the increase of love in us by the suppression of vices and passions that keep it from manifesting itself. [pp. 39-40]

Labels: Christianity, nonviolence, quotations, Tolstoy

Was Rome dispensing "God's divine Justice" when it forbade Pater and Paul from preaching public? Were Peter and Paul "justly reprimanded for their sins" by being imprisoned and executed? Was Jesus being justly punished for his sin when the Sanhedrin sent him to be executed by [Pilate]? Was Germany dispensing divine wrath to Israel, Poland, etc., when they plotted to take over the world and exterminate all non-Aryans? ... I am trying to say that the State does not have a license to do anything it wants ... and when we are ordered by the State to violate God's law, we must not bow to Baal. Civil disobedience is just as mandatory as civil subservience. It all must past through the filter of conscience, not to mention Christ's mandate that we recognize that the Kingdom has already come. We are now its citizens. ... we are under no obligation to abdicate conscience on behalf of the State. [pp. 64-65].

Every day I talk with the enemy. But I do not see an embodiment of "he who opposes goodness." If we approach the war on terrorism with the fervor of a Christian jihad against Islam, our battle is already lost, for we have become what we opposed and we are now the fundamentalists. Our battle is not one of flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers and principalities which rule this present darkness. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught up in "war mode" against a fleshly enemy, or the true enemy is already within us, and we have failed to believe in the power of a redemption which (we say) we believe has saved us. ... My comfort and liberty must not be won by the sacrifices of a new and foreign poor now paying the price for our moral failings of diplomacy. economy and statesmanship, turning our Republic into an Empire. [pp. 71-72].

Joining the army is not a sacrament, it's a pagan allegiance. [p. 91].

We must at least allow the pain inflicted upon us by our enemies to be a megaphone to our own deafness to the world, waking us up to the needs of others, to the violence inflicted upon them. [p. 92].

I don't complain about "the military" because of inconvenience or discomfort ... I complain about how perilous it feels to attempt an authentic Christianity in the midst of "exploiting persons of their intelligence value," and then listening to the news, hearing of the bombing campaign just undertaken in the town that I just wrote an intelligence report on only days previous. Those bombs are given coordinates by my reports. Mine ...

Since the day I walked onto Academy grounds at West Point, I have been in an ongoing and quite conscious battle with my military service. Whether it was my first decision in college to turn away from military service altogether, or my post-September 11th decision to return to service, I have been attempting to mitigate conscience and duty for the past seven years. In the absence of a clear and articulate objection to service, I have defaulted to evolving forms of duty as my guiding principle. ... Conscientious objection is now the only way dutifully to fulfill my obligations both to faith and to nation, and to my own internal commitments to personal courage. [From the conscientious objector application of Joshua Casteel, pp. 115-116].

Source: Joshua Casteel. Letters from Abu Ghraib. (Essay Pr., 2008). Casteel was an interrogator with the US Army's 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion. He based in the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and 2005.

Labels: Christianity, Iraq, military, quotations, War

Yesterday, I finished reading Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art (Yale UP, 2007), which documents a Kimball Art Museum exhibit of the same name. Three common motifs among early adherents of the Jesus movement/Christianity were the Good Shepherd, the Chi-Rho, and the Ichthys. The third image on the right below actually appeared in the exhibit.


Curiously, the book also includes a chapter on "Jewish Art and Biblical Exegesis in the Greco-Roman World". The most common "Jewish" motif was a seven-branched lamp stand a.k.a. menorah, which, according to Dr. M. D. Magee, was originally a Zoroastrian cultic object. In at least two ancient examples (Beth Alpha and Hammath Tiberias B "synagogues") in the book the menorah was paired with a Zodiac, which is of ancient Babylonian origin. Of course, the Star of David appears nowhere in the book as it only became associated with Judaism in modern times.

Labels: art and literature, Christianity, Judaism, religion

Chaos is life! As much as Order is death.

Source: Character of the keeper in Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee. (Center Street, 2011) p. 276.

Labels: anarchism, art and literature, Christianity

Pictured at right: The execution of William Sawtry, "the first Wycliffite martyr to be burned at the stake after the passage of the statute De heretico comburendo", as depicted in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments.

In "civilized" Europe, not so long ago--relative to the broad scope of human history--professing Christians killed other professing Christians over translating the Bible into the vernacular or common language of the people and related doctrinal matters. You see in 1401, inspired by the proliferation of so-called Wycliffe Bibles, the English Parliament passed an act known as De heretico comburendo, Latin for "Regarding the heretic who is to be burnt".

Among other things, it made it unlawful to "make or write any book contrary to the catholic faith or determination of the Holy Church". The "determination" of "the Holy Church" being that, as far as the laity was concerned, the Bible should be in Latin only because "... Scripture was given only to, and could only be understood by, either the extremely learned. 'the doctors', or the clergy". So writes David Daniell in The Bible in English (Yale UP, 2003; p. 68).

As Daniell notes: "Heresy was soon to include reading not just owning even a scrap of Scripture not in Latin" (p. 68). Daniell, citing Nicholas Watson, further writes: "the capacity of the English language was rejected; the lower classes were refused [English] texts; limitations were imposed on what it was 'necessary' to know; and the role of clergy as guardians of truth and controllers of its communications was emphasised" (p. 110).

De heretico comburendo was enforced well into the 1500s and, "between 1553 and 1558 ... about 300 men and women were burned alive" (p. 263) under the law. Perhaps the best known victim of the vernacular-Bible-as-heresy principle was English Bible translator William Tyndale, who was executed in October 1536 in Belgium.

Labels: Christianity, religion, thoughtcrime, violence