Christian Carnival CVI

The 106th Christian Carnival is up at Technogipsy. It's the St. Isaac of Syria edition. I submitted my post on Obadiah. I found the post at "dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos" on the Sign of Jonah to be particularly interesting. I was delighted to see a post on Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, one of the best-written science fiction novels of all time, about the faith that carries hope. It's a work that's filled with fascinating ambiguities.

Notes for Noting and Links for Thinking

* There is some interesting discussion of principles of rational requirement at Philosophy, etc., in two posts: A Paradox for Subjective Rationality and Disjunctive Requirements. The latter is a particularly useful introduction to the difference between a wide-scope disjunctive requirement and a narrow-scope disjunctive requirement -- a slight difference that makes a lot of difference.

* The Bible and Graphic Novels: A Review and Interview with the Authors of "Marked" and "Megillat Esther" at SBL Forums (HT: NT Gateway). The Megillat Esther graphic novel, by JT Waldman, looks like it might be awesome.

* Canon lawyer Edward Peters has an interesting post that shows how important it is to keep a distinction between parish and diocese when handling liability obligations arising from clerical sexual misconduct. To put it very roughly it involves forcing victims to pay (collectively) for settlements given to the victims (individually).

* An interesting discussion by Stephen Carlson of the application of phylogenetic techniques to manuscript traditions: New Testament Stemmatics

* Art and Images Related to the Book of Revelation

* A taste of Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est:

Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness.

* An interesting post on Newman's dedication of the Oxford University Sermons to Dean Church, at "Zadok the Roman"

* A nice little article on critical thinking that can be applied outside its specific domain: Critical Thinking for the Military Professional, by Col. W. Michale Guillot at Chronicles Online Journal, the online companion to Air & Space Power Journal.

* A nice online logic puzzle game: Inspector Parker. It's fairly simple, but whiles away the time quite dangerously.

* There is an interesting discussion, with lots of comments, on national inefficiencies at Crooked Timber. I think that what the comments show is that 'inefficiency' in this sort of context means absolutely nothing without a precise goal in mind. On the sales tax issue: I prefer that the sales tax not be included in the labeled price. It makes more clear , and people are perhaps more likely to think through their priorites in voting on sales taxes or supporting/opposing sales taxes if they have a clear sense of the difference the sales tax is already making. But the real reason it tends not to be done, I think, is that people (quite rightly, I think) tend to regard taxes as something superadded: it is an additional imposition. An acceptable imposition, but an additional one. They don't want taxes factored into the labeled price, because they don't consider the after-tax price to be the correct price. Rather, it's the correct price plus the government's mite. And it must be noted that there's nothing wrong or irrational about this way of looking at it. On tipping the U.S. doesn't seem particularly unusual, since Canada's expectations are much the same. In Atlantic Canada, by all accounts, tipping expectations are much greater than in the U.S.: their idea is that you should be tipping anyone who makes minimum wage or close to it. So if you go into Tim Horton's for a coffee in Nova Scotia the expectation is that you will not only pay for the coffee but that you will tip the people who work there. (But it's still your choice, not theirs.) On metric, it's noteworthy, by the way, that Canada is a good example of conversion to metric that never quite worked. Partly because it's next door to the U.S., and partly because Canadians tend to have similar views to Americans on this point (with the occasional additional, "If it was good enough for the British Empire, it's good enough for me"), the attempt to convert to metric has just led to Canadian measurements being a mess. It's not uncommon for a Canadian to measure his height in feet, his sports distances in metric, his travel distances in metric, long distances that aren't travel distances in miles, short distances in yards, lumber in feet, very short distances in centimeters, the weight of bananas in metric, his own weight in pounds, temperatures in Celsius (usually) &c. Among common measures only speeds are consistently measured in metric. I'm even told that while houses are technically designed in metric, they aren't built in it. But -- and this is really the only thing that matters -- Canadians don't have much trouble handling it at all. You have to learn different scales of measurement for all sorts of things anyway, even in metric, so the gain of an all-metric system would be relatively small. It's not as if you're actually coming up with a new and simple scale that would usably cover weight, length, temperature, and speed indifferently. That would be a gain in efficiency worth having in everyday life. If the U.S. converted it would inevitably be more like Canada in its conversion than the ideal metric enthusiasts always have in their head.
UPDATE: It's also noteworthy that the advantages in mental computation provided by metric are often exaggerated. Metric's primary advantage occurs if you do work that requires a lot of decimal changes. If you work in fractions (e.g., if you do work in which it's useful to divide things in half) you tend not to think in metric terms anyway. And for weather temperatures, Fahrenheit is a more convenient scale for precisely the reason Celsius is often lauded: on a Fahrenheit scale, really hot weather temperatures are near 100 and really cold weather temperatures are near 0. The convenience or efficiency of one or the other just depends on where you put the emphasis.

Canada Goes Blue

In Canada, the Conservatives beat the Liberals, sweeping the prairie and making modest gains in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces to form a minority government with 124 seats. Stephen Harper is the 22nd prime minister of Canada. Canadian policy will probably not change much; the basic Conservative platform this time was to take steps to eliminate corruption in Canadian government, to reduce taxes, and to crack down on crime. Canada will almost certainly pull out of Kyoto; Kyoto has a lot of support in Canada, but with typical Canadian inconsistency only vague and incomplete efforts were ever made to find ways for Canada to comply with it.

I think the major changes won't be for Canada but for the Conservatives; this is the first government for the party in its current form, which is only a bit more than two years old. It's a re-formation of the old Tories out of its two major fragments, the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party (later Canadian Alliance); the two conservatisms have tended to be very different, and have sometimes not liked each other at all. This government, I think, will be crucial for the Conservatives, to show their credibility as a governing party and their ability to act as a unified party.

A Poem Second Draft

This is a revised draft of a poem draft I'd already posted. It's unusual; I don't usually post later drafts, just earlier ones, partly because I don't usually get beyond the first. But here's a second, and for the first time. Got that? You can compare it to the original. The allusion, of course, is to The Bacchae of Euripides

The Bacchae

When the god of wine and revel
made dizzy the city's prince,
the omens darkly muttered
with a strange malevolence.

But the king kept to his folly;
he was slain by the godly bull
and carried home in his mother's arms.
Amen: the gods are cruel.

You are proud in your ways, O mortals!
Better to make oneself to mourn
than to march through mocking Theban streets
to where the beasts are torn.

You are vain with the vain cosmetics
by which you hide your soul;
you boast of your civic order,
but destruction is your goal.

You speak the name of Justice?
But Justice moves like a sword
to slit the throats of mortals
with a fate no charm can ward.

And when your life is over --
when we see the path you've trod --
we will see not boasted glory,
but the mocking of the god.

Beauvoir's Positive Side

Simone de Beauvoir has received a great deal of criticism over the years -- some of it quite justified -- for being excessively negative about the status of women: a great many people who have read The Second Sex have come away with the impression, easy to get, that her argument really implies, despite her occasional contrary statements, that women are doomed, and will never cease to be oppressed, because every liberatory move they could possibly make is tainted by prior definitions of Self and Other. But Beauvoir has a positive side that shows up here and there, and that, had she developed it a bit more, would give a very different picture. Some notable passages:

An authentic love should assume the contingence of the other; that is to say, his lacks, his limitations, and his basic gratuitousness. It would not pretend to be a mode of salvation, but a human interrelation. Idolatrous love attributes an absolute value to the loved one, a first falsity that is brilliantly apparent to all outsiders. (ch. xxiii)

Genuine love ought to be founded on mutual recognition of two liberties; the lovers would them experience themselves as self and as other: neither would give up transcendence, neither would be mutilated; together they would manifest values and aims in the world. For the one and the other, love would be revelation of self by the gift of self and enrichment of the world. (ch. xxiii)

[Discussing transcendence in the case of men] It is possible to rise above this conflict if each individual freely recognizes the other, each regarding himself and the other simultaneously as object and as subject in a reciprocal manner. But friendship and generosity, which alone permit in actuality this recognition of free beings, are not facile virtues; they are assuredly man's highest achievement, and through that achievement he is to be found in his true nature. But this true nature is that of a struggle unceasingly begun, unceasingly abolished; it requires a man to outdo himself at every moment. (ch. ix)

See also the passage I quoted in a previous post from the conclusion of the book. Passages like these, although fragmentary and scattered, give us hints of a very attractive path to liberation: friendship and generosity, honesty and mutual recognition, between men and women but (just as importantly, since the last passage is primarily discussing interactions among men alone) between women. This is a side of Beauvoir's feminism, however rarely glimpsed in The Second Sex, that needs to be more widely recognized.

Self-Deception and Belief Formation

An interesting post on Self-Deception and the Problem with Religious Belief Formation at "Philosophy Talk". In a sense it's a rather odd argument; the post, on close analysis, doesn't tell us anything about religious belief formation in general, but only provides a self-critique of the author's own earlier not-particularly-rational response to liturgical formation. I'm glad such a self-critique is out there, though, because these irrational responses do arise when (for instance) people take lines out of the liturgy out of context, or take no trouble to make an inquiry into their meaning or the reasoning behind them. In the particular case noted, it's clear that interpreting the line as a 'vilification of unbelievers' is a very strained interpretation that won't survive much critical examination. For one, thing the line isn't about unbelievers in general; it's about those who partake in communion without believing in the doctrinal principles that ground the practice. Further, the line doesn't stand on its own; in fact, it's version of a verse from 1 Corinthians 11, as a little research would show anyone:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

And, recognizing this context, we can see that the author's contention that 'judgment' here implies damnation is simply absurd. Since the author grew up in a Reformed church, a little look at Calvin is perhaps worth our time:

If you would wish to use aright the benefit afforded by Christ, bring faith and repentance. As to these two things, therefore, the trial [i.e., the self-examination] must be made, if you would come duly prepared. Under repentance I include love; for the man who has learned to renounce himself, that he may give himself up wholly to Christ and his service, will also, without doubt, carefully maintain that unity which Christ has enjoined. At the same time, it is not a perfect faith or repentance that is required, as some, by urging beyond due bounds, a perfection that can nowhere be found, would shut out for ever from the Supper every individual of mankind. If, however, thou aspirest after the righteousness of God with the earnest desire of thy mind, and, trembled under a view of thy misery, dost wholly lean upon Christ's grace, and rest upon it, know that thou art a worthy guest to approach the table -- worthy I mean in this respect, that the Lord does not exclude thee, though in another point of view there is something in thee that is not as it ought to be. For faith, when it is but begun, makes those worthy who were unworthy.

Throughout, here and elsewhere in discussing this passage, Calvin puts the emphasis on self-examination: Christians are not to partake of the bread and the cup without first examining themselves to determine whether they believe, as their fellow Christians do, in the body of Christ, and repent of any sins they may have. And Calvin is very clear about the reason for this: those who don't are making themselves into hypocrites, inclining themselves to treat important things (such as the unity of the Church expressed in communion) as unimportant, and inculcating self-deception. And Calvin's view, allowing for different emphases, is very common.

I think in some places the author is either being a bit disingenuous or hasn't thought through properly the way pedagogy actually works. Nobody criticizes medical students, for instance, on the grounds that making up little rhymes and rote memorization is a bad method of 'belief formation' about anatomy; the point of such things is not to induce belief but to aid memory, clarify details, and make belief practically useful. So with much song and chant and the whole schebang of liturgy and devotional life. And the author clearly never took any trouble to make a serious inquiry into the Reformed doctrine of faith, since his account of what was meant by faith is not even recognizably Reformed. So the lesson here to be learned is that it is not enough simply to listen; one must take this as a beginning and then take the trouble to inquire and learn. If we don't take this initiative, the author is quite right that our 'belief formation' will be irrational. This will be true for any field of thought, religious or not.

Jerome Against the Luciferians

Clicking around the web, I came across one of the classics of the anti-Arian debate: Jerome's Dialogue Against the Luciferians, at New Advent. It's an important source for the pre-history of Nicene orthodoxy. It's a good discourse, too, although not quite as exciting as the title makes it sound: 'Lucifer', of course, is a perfectly respectable Latin name, and the Luciferians in the question are the followers of a bishop named Lucifer. Lucifer was excessively zealous against Arianism (in particular, he refused to regard any formerly Arian bishops as legitimately ordained). To which Jerome rightly replies:

It is not the sheep only who abide in the Church, nor do clean birds only fly to and fro there; but amid the grain other seed is sown, "amidst the neat corn-fields burrs and caltrops and barren oats lord it in the land." What is the husbandman to do? Root up the darnel? In that case the whole harvest is destroyed along with it. Every day the farmer diligently drives the birds away with strange noises, or frightens them with scarecrows: here he cracks a whip, there he spreads out some other object to terrify them. Nevertheless he suffers from the raids of nimble roes or the wantonness of the wild asses; here the mice convey the corn to their garners underground, there the ants crowd thickly in and ravage the corn-field. Thus the case stands. No one who has land is free from care. While the householder slept the enemy sowed tares among the wheat, and when the servants proposed to go and root them up the master forbade them, reserving for himself the separation of the chaff and the grain. There are vessels of wrath and of mercy which the Apostle speaks of in the house of God. The day then will come when the storehouses of the Church shall be opened and the Lord will bring forth the vessels of wrath; and, as they depart, the saints will say, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us." No one can take to himself the prerogative of Christ, no one before the day of judgment can pass judgment upon men. If the Church is already cleansed, what shall we reserve for the Lord? "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." When our judgment is so prone to error, upon whose opinion can we rely?