Category: “Spiritual” (maybe Religious)

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

I enjoy singing good Christmas carols about as much as I enjoy singing anything. With a bit of sentimentality, many of them communicate powerfully about that most transformative of events, God’s entry into human history, in human flesh no less.

But Tipsy’s URL is “intellectualoid” for a reason. As my amateur community chorus prepares for Lessons and Carols, the distinct flavor of Adam Lay Ybounden, a Middle English Christmas Carol – especially verses 3 and 4 – jumped out at me.

Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter,
Thought he not too long.

And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took.
As clerkes finden,
Written in their book.

Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne had never our ladie,
Abeen heav’ne queen.

Blessed be the time
That apple taken was,
Therefore we moun singen.
Deo gracias!

There’s a common belief (not dogma, I don’t believe; how could a counterfactual become a dogma?) that “our ladie” would have “abeen heav’ne queen” even if the apple “ne had been taken.” I think that belief may be a bit more common in the Christian east than in the west, but it’s present both places. An opposite view is hymned in the carol:

The third verse suggests the subsequent redemption of man by the birth of Jesus Christ by Mary, who was to become the Queen of Heaven as a result,[6]and thus the song concludes on a positive note hinting at Thomas Aquinas‘ concept of the “felix culpa” (blessed fault).[5] Paul Morris suggests that the text’s evocation of Genesis implies a “fall upwards.[7]

It’s not a question to which it’s easy to find western and eastern answers counterposed on the web, so let me just echo an unauthoritative source, Batteddy of Combox:

that Christ would have become incarnate whether man sinned or not, and that this was the whole point of creation, and the occasion for the envy and pride of the devil.

Anything that offends the devil is good by me. I hope he’s mightily offended by our new bishop, enthroned today.

* * * * *

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Schools and Evolution

Indiana Representative Dennis Kruse, a Republican from Auburn (the northernmost region of the state, be it noted) apparently intends in 2013 to take another legislative crack at, as he apparently sees it, leveling the playing field for teaching about the origin of life from perspectives other than that of evolution.

It’s news, or some journalists are trying to make it news, because our Governor-elect has been a notable culture warrior, if only in rhetoric, on radio and then in Congress. But that’s not how he ran for Governor. It’s thus thought that the Kruse bill landing on his desk will be some kind of defining moment. I think that’s a stretch.

There’s a lot to be said that I won’t try to say about whether “creation science” or “intelligent design” are science in any sense, let alone good science. All I’ll say is that there is no single scientific method, as I understand it – which does not, however, mean that just any ole’ notion can claim the mantle of “science.”

My thoughts are rather from the perspective of an attorney who is a traditional Christian (i.e., a Christian whose tradition reaches back to New Testament times) and who is zealous for religious freedom and for good education.

Religiously, I believe about creation what the Nicene Creed affirms about it. The early chapters of Genesis have been variously interpreted throughout history, long before Charles Darwin was a gleam in his father’s eye. My impression is that none of the Apostolic or AnteNicene Fathers were much concerned with wresting anything like modern science from the texts.

Scientifically, I think I’m a lawyer who should hold his scientific ignorance or truth pretty close to the vest. I used to say I went days at a time not thinking about evolution or its adversaries. It’s up to “weeks at a time” now.

As a citizen in the modern world, I think evolution has proven a very fruitful scientific theory, of which fruits I and every other reader am a beneficiary. (I’m told that alchemy also was a very fruitful scientific theory inasmuch as it got everyone on the same page for a while, and lots of things were discovered about how not to turn lead into gold – and other stuff, too.) If evolution is suddenly overthrown or gradually undermined by better scientific theories, it nevertheless will have had an illustrious run, and not just for its having been misappropriated for social and cosmological purposes.

Educationally, I think public schools should teach mainstream science. Evolution is mainstream science. I don’t think public school teachers should try to characterize or rebut “creation science” or “intelligent design.” I’ve seen what can happen when really good science teachers – teachers who adhere to some kind of Christian tradition that accepts evolution – try to do that. What I saw were crude caricatures (placing “creation science” down by geocentrism and flat earth on a spectrum, for instance) or religiously manipulative (essentially, “you can be a Christian and a scientist, too; all you have to do is give up fundamentalism and adopt more reasonable religious views”).

I don’t want public schools doing that sort of thing. Let them brush off questions, which are certain to come, with the truthful characterization that “X is not mainstream science. Our job here is to teach mainstream science so that you know about it and can consider careers in science. It probably isn’t possible for us to give fair treatment to theories that are not, or perhaps merely are not yet, mainstream science, and we risk offending people’s religious sensibilities especially if we try to critically engage theories that may be cherished by people partly for religious reasons. Let’s move on now.”

If parents of private school pupils want their children to have the option of careers in science, they should teach mainstream science as rigorously as do the public schools. If they want to teach non-mainstream science, they can do so unhindered by me, but I’d advise them to distinguish it from mainstream and tell the kids, in essence, “we believe because of A, B & C that X is true and evolution is bunk, but evolution is mainstream, and if you want to do fruitful science, you’ll adopt it for your working theory even if you disbelieve it ultimately. When evolution stops being fruitful, people will finally give X the respect it deserves. Meanwhile, we’re studying evolution assiduously. Can we move on now?” If they don’t take some such approach, they shouldn’t expect to boast any Nobel Laureates in the sciences among their graduates.

Legally, I believe I’ll wait to see what Kruse has up his sleeve and then, time permitting, I may have something to say.

* * * * *

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Reformation Day thoughts

Today is Reformation Day. In 5 years, there presumably will be a huge shindig for the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses.

Some people take this very seriously, as do I (it’s hard to understand America without it), but some are invested in it so much as to take it very, very seriously.

In the “very seriously” camp is Russell Saltzman, “dean of the Great Plains Mission District of the North American Lutheran Church, an online homilist for the Christian Leadership Center at the University of Mary, and author of The Pastor’s Page and Other Small Essays.” How he took it seriously is the subject of a recent essay:

The post in question was called “Why Can’t Lutherans Take Catholic Communion?” which would seem to be self-explanatory. Nevertheless, Reverend Saltzman explains how he, a Lutheran, came to receive Holy Communion in a Catholic church. (Hint: It required an archbishop.) He goes on to lament that, while Catholics are free in most cases to receive the sacrament in Lutheran churches, Lutherans are still barred from receiving in Catholic churches.

I read the same Saltzman essay Strange Herring (who’s in the “very, very seriously” camp) read, and had some of the same reactions. But since I am not now, nor have I ever been, a card-carrying member of the Lutheran party, I did not take time to do the take-down Strange Herring presented, from which the preceding block quote is taken.

I particularly like his quote of “Mary,” who commented on Saltzman’s essay:

Lutherans are welcome to take Communion on the same terms as everyone else. Make your profession of faith at the Easter Vigil and be received.

If you think your differences from us are too big for that, they are too big for you to receive.

The eventuality of Saltzman’s way of thinking – that no serious differences remain between Lutheran belief and Roman Catholic belief – if one takes schism as seriously as the Church always did until the centrifugal force of sola scriptura required turning it into a virtue, is what the late Richard John Neuhaus did 22 years ago: return to Rome.

My take on the Reformation is “Why, oh why, didn’t Luther & Co. return to the Church from which Rome is in schism?”

Demonology Lives

According to some modern interpreters of Christianity, “demonology” belongs to an antiquated worldview and cannot be taken seriously by the man who “uses electricity.” We cannot argue with them here. What we must affirm, what the Church has always affirmed, is that the use of electricity may be “demonic,” as in fact may be the use of anything and of life itself. That is, in other words, the experience of evil which we call demonic is not that of a mere absence of good, or, for that matter, of all sorts of existential alienations and anxieties. It is indeed the presence of dark and irrational power. Hatred is not merely absence of love. It is certainly more than that, and we recognize its presence as an almost physical burden that we feel in ourselves when we hate. In our world, in which normal and civilized men “used electricity” to exterminate six million human beings, in this world in which right now some ten million people are in concentration camps because they failed to understand the “only way to universal happiness”, in this world the “demonic” reality is not a myth.

Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World.

* * * * *

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.