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Le non-affaire Pence
Half-hearted creatures
I knew some Orthodox podcasters who seemed to have a real fondness for Hank Hanegraaff, “The Bible Answer Man” — with whom I was otherwise completely unfamiliar until Tuesday. He must have risen to prominence after I ceased “day jobs” I could do while listening to Christian talk radio, which is roughly 45 years ago. (J. Vernon McGee’s Through the Bible radio I do remember — fondly!)
Well, here’s Hank, and I can find nothing to disagree with on this particular question:
The first minute or so, on Theosis, is quite sound and affirming, yet Theosis is the Orthodox doctrine that most troubled my late father between my conversion and his death. It sounded to him, from his frame of reference, like Mormonism’s “As man now is, so God once was; as God now is, so man shall be” (or something like that — they’re backpedalling hard from that these days). I’m glad that we’re not saved by right soteriology, because Evangelicalism has almost totally lost it.
But this part is just amazing:
If you look at Orthodox in general, I think that you find that it is well within the pale of orthodoxy — with kind of a play on words in a sense — but it is certainly compatible with the essentials of the historic Christian faith … absolutely!
Orthodoxy is fantastic in that it uses earthly, perceptible realities to point to spiritual verities, so it’s constantly pointing you to the worship of God through prayer, praise, the proclamation of the word; through the sacraments, the Liturgy pointing to the Eucharist … It’s the early church. That was the Church up until the split in 1054 between East and West, and essentially what the Church was teaching up until the time of the Reformation and even afterwards.
(H/T Journey to Orthodoxy) He’s right on the mark.
While I have no disagreement, I do have one pointed observation.
I know it is meant as approval to say that Orthodoxy is “compatible with the essentials of the historic Christian faith,” and I have already taken it as so intended. But it reflects a half-heartedness that is a meta-theme of what’s wrong with the Evangelicalism from which I came.
If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
We are far too easily pleased if we settle for “the essentials of the historic Christian faith” — roughly translating as “What’s the minimum I must believe to go to Heaven?” I remain Orthodox, after having been drawn to it for other reasons, in substantial part because I want “the fullness.“
I’m talking about the fullness to which great Praise Bands and exciting, edgy sermons and dynamite “youth programs” and even difficult-to-master doctrine (my special favorite in my Calvinist days) are irrelevant. They’re not even elementary principles from which we need to go on.
I’d tell you if I could, but I don’t have the words to “tell”
earthly, perceptible realities to point to spiritual verities … constantly pointing you to the worship of God through prayer, praise, the proclamation of the word; through the sacraments, the Liturgy pointing to the Eucharist ….
Why would you settle for less? Come and see.
* * * * *
Part of the fullness is feasts like Annunciation, which more historic Christianity celebrates today.
“Annunciation.” The announcement, if you will, by a certain Angel, named Gabriel, to a certain young Jewish virgin, named Mary, precisely nine months before a certain favorite holiday which needs no introduction.
Chaste Mary’s earth-changing answer (in Latin familiar to those who haven’t overdone the STEM stuff) was:
Maria dixit: Ecce ancilla Domini;
fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum
Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”
But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”
And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.”
Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
Luke 1: 26-38, ending with the Ecce ancilla Domini.
I wish I could claim this ravishing verse for Orthodoxy, but — alas! — it is from one formed spiritually as a High Anglican back when Anglicanism and Orthodoxy seemed close to reunion:
Annunciation
Gabriel
Mary, in the dream of love
Playing as all children play,
For unsuspecting children may
Expressing comic make-believe
The wish that later they will know
Is tragic and impossible;
Hear, child, what I am sent to tell:
Love wills your dream to happen, so
Love’s will on earth may be, through you,
No longer a pretend but true.Mary
What dancing joy would whirl
My ignorance away?
Light blazes out of the stone,
The taciturn water
Bursts into music,
And warm wings throb within
The motionless rose:
What sudden rush of power
Commands me to command?Gabriel
When Eve, in love with her own will,
Denied the will of Love and fell,
She turned the flesh Love knew so well
To knowledge of her love until
Both love and knowledge were of sin:
What her negation wounded, may
Your affirmation heal to-day;
Love’s will requires your own, that in
The flesh whose love you do not know,
Love’s knowledge into flesh may grow.Mary
My flesh in terror and fire
Rejoices that the Word
Who utters the world out of nothing,
As a pledge of His word to love her
Against her will, and to turn
Her desperate longing for love,
Should ask to wear me,
From now to their wedding day,
For an engagement ring.Gabriel
Since Adam, being free to choose,
Chose to imagine he was free
To choose his own necessity,
Lost in his freedom, Man pursues
The shadow of his images:
To-day the Unknown seeks the known;
What I am willed to ask, your own
Will has to answer; child, it lies
Within your power of choosing to
Conceive the Child who chooses you.
(W.H. Auden, For the Time Being, A Christmas Oratorio, this portion of which is apt today)
I said “earth-changing answer.” Look at this again at those last four lines.
* * * * *
“It pays to increase your word power,” Readers Digest used to say. Today’s word it “typology.”
“When these days are over it shall be, on the eighth day and thereafter, that the priests shall offer your burnt offerings and your peace offerings on the altar; and I will accept you,” says the Lord God.
Then He brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary which faces toward the east, but it was shut. And the Lord said to me, “This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter by it, because the Lord God of Israel has entered by it; therefore it shall be shut. As for the prince, because he is the prince, he may sit in it to eat bread before the Lord; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gateway, and go out the same way.”
Also He brought me by way of the north gate to the front of the temple; so I looked, and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord; and I fell on my face.
Ezekiel 43:27-44:4 (emphasis added), the 4th reading for Vespers of the Prefeast of Annunciation)
Glory to God for all things, as Fr. Stephen says.
* * * * *
In the history of Middle Earth
this is the day Sauron was defeated and Barad-dûr thrown down. Now I have not investigated the matter in any detail, but I think it is unlikely to be mere coincidence that Tolkien chose this major feast day – one of the four great medieval Quarter Days – as the day in which good triumphs over evil in The Lord of the Rings. I can only conclude that he saw in the Incarnation of God’s only Son a similar triumph of good over evil.
That Tolkien fella was pretty shrewd.
* * * * *
The very least important news I’ll share today is that it’s Sir Elton John’s birthday. Believe me: I would not have know had Amazon not emailed me that he is taking over Song of the Day, an Alexa skill, for a week or so.
I suppose it’s too much to ask Amazon to take notice of the incarnation of God in the flesh since it can’t be monetized (in the usual Amazonian ways, anyway).
* * * * *
“Liberal education is concerned with the souls of men, and therefore has little or no use for machines … [it] consists in learning to listen to still and small voices and therefore in becoming deaf to loudspeakers.” (Leo Strauss)
Sophomoric humor from IN-GOP
The Indiana Republican Party continues sending me email under the illusion that I still care what they think (not that I’m a Democrat, mind you). Today’s mail brought this sophomoric gem:
|
Joe Donnelly may have Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and the liberal media in his back pocket, but we’ve got his domain name.
Thanks to the overwhelming response from Charter Members of the Defeat Donnelly Fund, your Indiana Republican Party secured: That’s right – we own www.JoeDonnelly.com!
While that’s a great start, we can’t slow down our efforts to Defeat Donnelly and put a solid conservative voice in the United States Senate.
Now, the question is…what should we do with www.JoeDonnelly.com? Reply with your ideas! |
* * * * *
“The truth is that the thing most present to the mind of man is not the economic machinery necessary to his existence; but rather that existence itself; the world which he sees when he wakes every morning and the nature of his general position in it. There is something that is nearer to him than livelihood, and that is life.” (G.K. Chesterton)
Hany Farid, Algorithm King
Sin, Spin & The Applause Meter
Nativity 2017
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves his welbelov’d imprisonment,
There he hath made himself to his intent
Weak enough, now into our world to come;
But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th’Inne no roome?
Yet lay him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars, and wisemen will travel to prevent
Th’effect of Herod’s jealous general doom;
Seest thou, my Soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how he
Which fills all place, yet none holds him, doth lie?
Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss him, and with him into Egypt goe,
With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
(John Donne, Nativity)
Steven Bannon
Steven Bannon, of Breitbart News and now the presumptive Trump Administration, has been covered by media like a “cloven-hoofed devil,” as he puts it. I know almost nothing about him, but it seems fair to let him speak for himself, which he does at length in a Saturday Wall Street Journal profile. (There’s a pay wall, I assume, but since it magically disappears for me I’m not positive.)
Why does he think that leftists are so fixated on him? “They were ready to coronate Hillary Clinton. That didn’t happen, and I’m one of the reasons why. So, by the way, I wear these attacks as an emblem of pride.”
…
He acknowledges that the site is “edgy” but insists it is “vibrant.” He offers his own definition of the alt-right movement and explains how he sees it fitting into Breitbart. “Our definition of the alt-right is younger people who are anti-globalists, very nationalist, terribly anti-establishment.”
But he says Breitbart is also a platform for “libertarians,” Zionists, “the conservative gay community,” “proponents of restrictions on gay marriage,” “economic nationalism” and “populism” and “the anti-establishment.” In other words, the site hosts many views. “We provide an outlet for 10 or 12 or 15 lines of thought—we set it up that way” and the alt-right is “a tiny part of that.” Yes, he concedes, the alt-right has “some racial and anti-Semitic overtones.” He makes clear he has zero tolerance for such views.
It seems to me that he pretty well puts to rest the anti-semitism charge for one (his corroboration carries a lot more weight than an unsupported allegation by an ex-wife, it seems to me), but judge for yourself.
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Veteran’s Day 2016
Tertiary Things
Today, Tipsy’s all tertiary and too lazy to label items.
To this point, note this story from 2014, about John Podesta’s outfit:
A top liberal group has temporarily abandoned plans for a new project designed to court white working class voters after it could not marshal the necessary financial support for the project, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Center for American Progress planned to roll out a new effort last year called the Bobby Kennedy Project. However, insufficient funding for the project forced the group to postpone its launch until 2016.
The stated need for the project suggests potential pitfalls for Democrats in its eventual delay: In a midterm election year expected to heavily favor Republicans, CAP has apparently abandoned, for the time being, an effort to reach out to a constituency that it acknowledges could determine the viability of the Democrats’ voting coalition going forward.
Of course. Because the kind of people who fund the Democratic Party care more about gay marriage than they do about the Rust Belt. And now they know what that means.
Liberals focused on backlash to civil rights, and not at all on the Democratic Party’s decades-long retreat from the politics of organized labor and working people, and its concurrent embrace of metropolitan social liberalism and neoliberal financial capitalism. Seven million American men have dropped out of the workforce, and the liberal candidate was offering a few wonky tweaks to health care and paid maternity leave. Trump was right to call his supporters the forgotten men. The leading exponents of liberalism perform their politics as a self-admiring monologue about their moral superiority. If liberals noticed working-class people in rural Indiana, it’s only because they might have said something wrong on their “egg account” on Twitter or gave the wrong answer to a local news crew. Time to get the outrage mob to make them a national spectacle and possibly deprive them of their livelihood. Why is this form of liberalism surprised that people doubt the beneficence of its ministrations?
On Tuesday, America rejected a patrician and elected a tribune. Let us hope we see some genuinely Gracchian reforms, and let us hope they work this time. Because if not, I fear that, though I might not, my children will one day see a Caesar cross the Potomac.
(Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, concluding America now looks like Rome before the fall of the Republic)
Too bad for Democrats there are zero electoral votes in the State of Denial.
I have disagreed with President Obama on most things, while avoiding, by my lights at least, Obama Derangement Syndrome. The election of an African-American President was historic in a good sense, for reasons I’ll not attempt to enumerate.
My biggest regret about his presidency is its worst-ever records on religious freedom in the United States — bigger even than the Affordable Care Act, though the ACA might give a real run for the money if I weren’t on Medicare.
But I have always appreciated his gracious and irenic tone, and the absence of personal scandal. No known mistresses. No profiteering. Just an occasional glimpse of a cigarette, and not even that for a long time now.
The video in this story is a good example of his tone.
The blogosphere is teeming with post-election reflections. I’ve had to toss some out as I found others still better.
I see little point, for instance, in repeating Glenn Greenwald’s litany of what was wrong with Hillary as a candidate. She’s dead politically. It’s gone. Nothing to see here. Move along now.
I have several friends made disconsolate by Trump’s victory.
All I can think is they must have talked themselves into thinking Hillary would be at least okay, which was more than I could do. I went into the election assuming I would awaken November 9 to news of which unacceptable major party candidate was elected. Only because I believed the polls that Hillary would win did Trump’s strong showing lure me into hour-after-hour after incredulous results-monitoring.
To my disconsolate friends, without singling anyone out, I say “take heart!” America didn’t elect Donald Trump because he was a pussy-grabbing, naked-beauty-pageant-contestant-ogling misogynist and serial adulterer.
They elected him for some other reason, such as to avoid the candidate who considered their type “deplorable.” I haven’t quite sorted that out yet.
The dangers of which I warned remain, but there are silver linings for anyone with values like mine. I feel like a target has been removed from my back (I was going to say “yellow star from my sleeve,” but I’m not going to melodramatically go that far) and I’m now just in the mass of people who face the Trumpesque dangers together, without feeling singled out.
At least temporarily, I’m not going back to remind myself of all the potential downside because it’s totally out of my hands now. I didn’t expect to be happy after the election.
And with credit to President Obama for nominating someone as moderate as Judge Garland, I look forward to a new, more conservative, Supreme Court nominee from Trump’s list of 21.
* * * * *
“In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around for a while.” (Eva Brann)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 