Abysses
The abyss seems a recurring image, but views of it differ decidedly.
1741, Puritan New England
[T]hus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
1921, Lake Ochrid (Serbia)
In the evening the Stardust begins to sparkle above my head, and I sense the abyss over which my life is dangling. And with a trembling soul I stretch out my hands to You and cry out: O Lord, the terrifying world has enveloped me from every direction, as the sandy desert envelops a small tiny oasis.
I shall not be able to hold out, if You do not brace me with Your strength.
St. Nikolia Velkmirovich, Prayers by the Lake, Prayer LXXVIII
2023, Omaha
[Jordan] Peterson seems to want there to be something more beyond our individual selves and their striving after excellence. He opened the evening with an account of a passage in Tolstoy where that great Russian imagined himself in a dream suspended over an infinite abyss. But then, Tolstoy continued, he looked up: and he saw that stretching above him was a rope, holding him over the abyss and supporting him so that he would not fall. From this Peterson took the lesson that the strength of our support is as great as the danger of our pit.
I think that’s true. But I think it’s true because the “rope” is a person. And not only do I think the rope that supports is a specific person, I think that person is even capable of rescuing us out of the abyss after we have fallen. “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still,” as one great Christian put it.
The question I left with last Thursday is this: I know Peterson thinks there is a rope. But what is that rope? Where does it come from? Who or what is securing it? And why should we trust it?
Jake Meador, What I Saw at the We Who Wrestle with God Tour.
Sundries
On the proliferation of Bibles
A hallmark of the evangelical Protestant project is novelty. And so, new versions of the Bible came along fairly regularly, describing in ever-plainer and more pedestrian language those truths that were not really misunderstood to begin with.
More schisms
New fractures are forming within the American evangelical movement, fractures that do not run along the usual regional, denominational, ethnic, or political lines. Couples, families, friends, and congregations once united in their commitment to Christ are now dividing over seemingly irreconcilable views of the world. In fact, they are not merely dividing but becoming incomprehensible to one another.
Michael Graham with Skyler Flowers, The Six Way Fracturing of Evangelicalism, quoting Tim Dalrymple of Christianity Today.
The reality is that while many in the evangelical movement thought their bonds were primarily (or exclusively) theological or missional, many of those bonds were actually political, cultural, and socioeconomic.
IVF and theocracy
The estimable Ryan T. Anderson has an odd column, ostensibly about the Alabama Supreme Court IVF decision, on the First Things website.
First, he mocks the bafflegab cries of “theocracy!” from progressive columnists who need a topic for today’s scribblings. Then he explains what the Alabama Supreme Court actually did and why it was not at all in opposition to IVF. Then, unable to resist, he explains why IVF is bad:
The media’s manipulations would be risible if IVF weren’t so morally and emotionally fraught. Many couples experiencing infertility ache to start a family. Doctors don’t always impress on them the human costs of IVF. For one birth, doctors might create ten to twenty embryos, transfer several of the “most promising,” freeze the rest, and if more than one implants, abort the others. So the typical IVF cycle results in multiple dead and frozen embryos. And unlike in European nations, there are almost no laws in America regulating how many embryos can be created or destroyed, or how frozen embryonic human beings can be treated.
To some, this casual disregard is no accident, because IVF itself treats children as products of technical manufacture. It thus fails to respect the equal dignity of human beings in their very origins. Or as some have put it, persons should be begotten, not made. They are to be welcomed as the fruit of an act of marital love. Relating to a child instead as a producer relates to a product is the seed of all the abuses of the IVF industry—the causal creation and destruction of “spares,” the filtering out of “defectives,” the selection for sex (boys) and other specs (eye color), the commodification of (often poor) women’s bodies as incubators. Nor are the fundamental moral concerns about IVF sectarian. While today the Catholic Church most prominently teaches that IVF itself is wrong, the three most prominent moral thinkers who opposed IVF’s introduction in the 1970s and ’80s were non-Catholic: The University of Chicago’s Leon Kass (Jewish), Princeton’s Paul Ramsey (Methodist), and Oxford’s Oliver O’Donovan (Anglican).
The arguments stand or fall on the merits, not the religious identity (or lack thereof) of those making them ….
All three of Anderson’s points were important, but I’m only quoting his short case against IVF because it needs to be aired from time to time and I haven’t seen anybody doing that for a while.
Tom Holland’s narrative of Christendom
Just as the Bishop of Oxford refused to consider that he might be descended from an ape, so now are many in the West reluctant to contemplate that their values, and even their very lack of belief, might be traceable back to Christian origins.
Tom Holland, Dominion
I read Dominion before everyone seemed to be talking about it (e.g., Ayan Hirsi Ali cited it when announcing that she now is a Christian), and only recently returned to it (via my Readwise highlights).
Bearing in mind that Holland is a historian, not a theologian or even a believing Christian last I’d heard, it’s a very worthwhile read.
More Tom Holland
Most Church leaders—conscious that to condemn Nazis for blasphemous kitsch might prove risky—opted to bite their tongues. Some, though, actively lent it their imprimatur. In 1933, the year that Hitler was appointed chancellor, Protestant churches across Germany marked the annual celebration of the Reformation by singing Wessel’s battle hymn. In Berlin Cathedral, a pastor shamelessly aped Goebbels. Wessel, he preached, had died just as Jesus had died. Then, just for good measure, he added that Hitler was ‘a man sent by God’.
Tom Holland, Dominion
… that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:17-19 (NKJV)
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 