On the unity of antonymy

The first pendulum clock, 1656

Upon the bench I will so handle 'em,

That the vibration of this pendulum

Shall make all taylors yards of one

Unanimous opinion.

-- Samuel Butler, Hudibras (c. 1662)

My heart shall be my own

 

By thrift my sinking fortune to repair,

Though late, yet is at last become my care;

My heart shall be my own, my vast expence

Reduc'd to bounds, by timely providence.

-- John Dryden

"Merry Christmas!": The mocking shout of the drunken anti-Puritans

Discussed here:

For most of its history, the Christian church regarded Christmas as a small event on its calendar not requiring much observation. Puritans in England and later the American colonies went one step further, banning the holiday altogether since they could find no biblical support for celebrating the day. As the historian Stephen Nissenbaum has explained, the Puritans imposed fines on anyone caught celebrating and designated Christmas as a working day. These strict rules were necessary since so many men and women engaged in the drunken carousing that accompanied winter solstice festivities, an ancient tradition that the church had failed to stamp out when it appropriated Dec. 25 as a Christian holiday.

In this setting, “Merry Christmas” was born. The greeting was an act of revelry and religious rebellion, something the uncouth masses shouted as they traveled in drunken mobs. Troubled by such behavior, the New Haven Gazette in 1786 decried the “common salutation” of “Merry Christmas.” “So merry at Christmas are some,” the paper lamented, “they destroy their health by disease, and by trouble their joy.”

Another Christmas, and the same old story of the rich suckering the poor

 

 

It is no news for the weak and poor to be a prey to the strong and rich.

-- Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704)

Did you hear the one about the dyslexic Satanist?

He sold his soul to Santa, ha ha!

God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

Merry Christmas!

Maybe Christmas observance is on the wane because we have become the rich it offends

Madonna of the Magnificat by Jean-baptiste Jouvenet

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

-- Luke 1:53

'Hallmark is offering 376 Christmas cards this year. By my count, only five are religious: three featuring Mary and Joseph in the stable and two Madonnas with child. Admittedly, Hallmark’s best-seller is called “little angels”, but they are simpering cherubs in a picture that carries no reference to the Christian story.

'In November, the peak time for buying Advent calendars, I checked the stock on Amazon. Once again, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and wise men had disappeared to the margins. There were more Star Wars than religious calendars – apparently, the Force is more powerful than the Holy Spirit today. If you were prepared to spend hundreds of pounds, you could buy calendars with doors which open to reveal gin miniatures, jewellery, make-up, sex toys … Everything and anything except a nativity scene.'

Read the rest here.

Between two foes

Johann Heinrich Füssli's Odysseus between the two foes Scylla and Charybdis, circa 1795

But as a barque, that, in foul weather,

Toss'd by two adverse winds together,

Is bruis'd and beaten to and fro,

And knows not which to turn him to;

So far'd the knight between two foes,

And knew not which of them t' oppose.

-- Samuel Butler, Hudibras

The mad folks are too many for us

"The Butterfly Dream" by Chinese painter Lu Zhi, circa 1550

A fellow in a madhouse being asked how he came there? Why, says he, the mad folks abroad are too many for us, and so they have mastered all the sober people, and cooped them up here.

-- Roger L'Estrange

Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

-- Chuang tzu, circa 300 BC

People consumed by a passion for something, violating proportion, used to be considered kind of crazy

 

 

He that eagerly pursues any thing, is no better than a madman.

-- Roger L’Estrange (1616-1704)

A Roman Catholic wants you to believe "sinless Mary" is biblical

Here:

Grace is presented (esp. in Paul) as the antithesis of sin.

To be full of such grace (simple logic) is to be without sin.

Mary was proclaimed by an angel as “full of grace” (Lk 1:28); therefore, she is without sin.

You will search in vain for the translation "full of grace" in Luke 1:28 in the King James Version, the New King James Version, the New Living Translation, the New International Version, the English Standard Version, the Christian Standard Bible, the New American Standard Bible, the New English Translation, the Revised Standard Version and the American Standard Version. Most of these say Mary is "highly favored".

Evidently the translators of these editions all must have been either a bunch of dummies, or a pack of anti-Catholic Protestant heretics to a man to get it so wrong, for so long.

The birth narratives of Jesus in Matthew and Luke were most likely composed to counter the calumny (to Christians) that Jesus was born of fornication (John 8:41). This became a bone of contention once Jesus' reputation had risen above mere "prophet" to deity. The solution to the charge of being a product of fornication was a miraculous birth to a virgin involving no human father at all.

But, of course, Mary then becomes the problem. She herself participated in sinful human nature, did she not, and therefore must have communicated it to her son, did she not?

So in Catholic theology a sinless Mary becomes necessary to stop the communication of sinful human nature to Jesus, based on tenous arguments such as above.

But then how did Mary escape the great chain of being? And if she did why was the birth of Jesus even necessary?

The whole thing quickly descends into more absurdity.

Minos, the final arbiter of the two ways in the afterlife

On Minos' right hand Rhadamanthys, and on his left Aeacus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears,

And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears;

Round in his urn the blended balls he rowls,

Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.

-- John Dryden's Aeneid 

 

Then spake Zeus: ... 'Now I, knowing all this before you, have appointed sons of my own to be judges; two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthys, and one from Europe, Aiakos (Aeacus). These, when their life is ended, shall give judgement in the meadow at the dividing of the road, whence are the two ways leading, one to the Isles of the Blest (Nesoi Makaron), and the other to Tartaros. And those who come from Asia shall Rhadamanthys try, and those from Europe, Aiakos; and to Minos I will give the privilege of the final decision, if the other two be in any doubt; that the judgement upon this journey of mankind may be supremely just . . .’

-- Plato, Gorgias 523ff.

 

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

-- Matthew 7:13f.

 

There are two Ways, one of Life and one of Death; but there is a great difference between the two Ways.

-- Didache I.1

 

But if he will not hear [thee, then] take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

-- Matthew 18:16

The fate of the damned: Taken where, Lord? Wherever the corpse is, there the eagles will be gathered together

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

-- Matthew 24:27f.

Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.

-- Luke 17:33ff.

Some seed fell among the cockle

 

 

Good seed degenerates, and oft obeys

The soil's disease, and into cockle strays.

-- John Donne

David Bentley Hart admits that "on the whole, the Gospel is probably not a very good formula for protecting public safety"

Ya think?

Here in Commonweal:

The Sermon on the Mount’s prohibitions of retaliation are absolutely binding on Christians, in both the private and the public spheres, for on the cross Christ at once perfected the refusal of violence and exhausted the Law’s wrath.

This simply begs the question, not only of present injustice, but of final judgment, which Christianity nevertheless teaches. The wrath of God has been hardly exhausted and will be meted out, according to the clear Christian teaching. This makes no sense if the Law's wrath has been "exhausted". The only conclusion to be drawn from that, if it is true, is that there will be no final judgment. This, of course, is where universalism comes from. And the doctrine of purgatory is its halfway house.

The ordinance not to retaliate, like all of the teaching, for example on poverty, is part of the wider message that the world is soon coming to an end. Take that end away, and the teaching becomes utterly obscurantist. It is only intelligible as an explicitly interim ethic in an eschatological time. But even at that, as Schweitzer correctly pointed out, it really represents the negation of ethics and is no ethic at all because all traditional human relationships under it have come to an end ("For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother").

That is why Tacitus correctly called the Christians haters of humanity.

 

It's also why Christians themselves at length gave it up.

People will not persist in an interminable state of poverty and undergo injustice in very large numbers or for a very long period. The history of the church tells us so. It is the history of the compromise and defeat of the original eschatological message. It is a history of degeneration.

Early in the essay Hart deflects the charge of sentimentality saying that he thinks there are very few opponents of capital punishment who do not realize the heinousness of many crimes. But in its place Hart advocates for his own sunny form of unrealism:

[I]f Newman was right—and believing Catholics had better hope he was, for the sake of the intelligibility of their faith—it is not only doctrine but also the church’s understanding of its teachings that is clarified over time by the Spirit. There may be slight missteps, of course, but the general view of development tacitly taken by the magisterium is that there are no violent retreats from clearly stated new discoveries; there is only a relentless narrowing and intensification of focus. This suggests, among other things, that the teachings of the magisterium under the current pontificate are probably more trustworthy than those under the pontificate of, say, Leo X.

I expect Mary to be declared part of the godhead any day now.

Samuel Johnson channels Aeschylus: Each new felicity is purchased by pain, so it might as well be voluntary

 

Our sense of delight is in a great measure comparative, and arises at once from the sensations which we feel, and those which we remember: thus ease after torment is pleasure for a time, and we are very agreeably recreated when the body, chilled with the weather, is gradually recovering its tepidity; but the joy ceases when we have forgot the cold; we must fall below ease again if we desire to rise above it, and purchase new felicity by voluntary pain.

-- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #80 (December 22, 1750)

Zeus, who sets mortals on the path to understanding, Zeus, who has established as a fixed law that “wisdom comes by suffering.” But even as trouble, bringing memory of pain, drips over the mind in sleep, [180] so wisdom comes to men, whether they want it or not. Harsh, it seems to me, is the grace of gods enthroned upon their awful seats.

-- Aeschylus, Agamemnon 176

 

 

τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ-
σαντα, τὸν πάθει μάθος
θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.
στάζει δ᾽ ἔν θ᾽ ὕπνῳ πρὸ καρδίας
180 μνησιπήμων πόνος: καὶ παρ᾽ ἄ-
κοντας ἦλθε σωφρονεῖν.
δαιμόνων δέ που χάρις βίαιος
σέλμα σεμνὸν ἡμένων.

The Synoptic tradition places the start of Jesus' ministry in Galilee after John's imprisonment, but the Fourth Gospel disagrees

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. ... Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.

-- Matthew 3:1f., 5f.

Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee; ... From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

-- Matthew 4:12, 17

John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. ... Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

-- Mark 1:4f., 14f.

And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. ... And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching. And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits; ... And they went out, and preached that men should repent.

-- Mark 6:1, 6f., 12

After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized. For John was not yet cast into prison. Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purifying. And they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him.

-- John 3:22ff.

When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples,) He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee.

-- John 4:1ff.

Mother and father are both dead and know nothing of my troubles, nor care

And someday I shall be just like them.

The smell of spring, I will miss you

Whistling winds like organs play'd

Until their voluntaries made

The waken'd earth in odours rise,

To be her morning sacrifice.

-- John Cleaveland (1613-1658)

Words to share in every hospital's cardiac care unit

Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

-- Psalm 73:25f.

So, did IME leave off the "t" just to tick everyone off?

Who's Chris?

Methinks seduced women protest too much

Then virtue was no more; her guard away,

She fell to lust a voluntary prey.

-- Alexander Pope, Homer's Odyssey

A Jesuit imagines that he would have been exempt from Jesus' call to discipleship because he has a child to support

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, in "Are Christians really supposed to be communists? A response to David Bentley Hart" in America: The Jesuit Review, here:

Jesus, we are told, did not just speak in parables, he spoke in hyperbole. Quite right: Nobody thinks that Jesus actually wants you to pluck your eye out if it drives you to lust. (Wouldn’t you be just as able to lust after a beautiful person with just one eye?) What is wrong is to stop once we have said this.

Professor Hart is wrong and the church is right. There are vocations, and some Christians are called to total poverty; others are called to live in the world, and therefore to engage in market transactions, to earn wages and to accumulate savings to provide economic security for their families. No church father, catechism, encyclical or council has ever preached the opposite. What is wrong is to stop once we have said this, as his critics would have us.

Here’s the rub: The fact that I can know that God does not want me to give up all worldly goods because I support a child is precisely why I cannot rest easy. The fact that my vocation is perfectly acceptable to God is why Jesus’ thunderous words still apply to me. Jesus’ dramatic, hyperbolic words are a reminder that even while maintaining my vocation as a petit bourgeois, I can always be more radical in how I love and how I give to my fellow man. “Fearful it is to fall in the hands of the living God,” Kierkegaard reminds us in the same passage I quoted above. And how reassuring it would be for petit bourgeois Christians like myself to tell ourselves that the way Jesus preaches is for the others, for those who go into the desert.

To put it simply: poverty sine glosa is not the only way for the Christian. But that reminder should always be followed up by the always urgent reminder that we could still do with a lot less glosa and a lot more poverty.

As usual, this confused mess arises precisely because it is divorced from the all important context of the history of early Christian apocalyptic. Divorce Jesus' message from that and all that remains is one form of compromise with the world or another. Anything can then be made of it, and has. The error arises when the existence of early Christian poverty and communism is not seen simply as evidence of this original apocalyptic context, but instead as a prescription. The same error takes Paul's compromises as an entrepreneur for a blessing of capitalism. "Is" does not mean "ought".

It will not do, as Gobry does, to say "virtually all church fathers missed" the early Christian call to poverty and communism. The great value of Hart's essay is to show the fathers' knowledge of it, and to link it to the evidence for it in Scripture. Gobry simply ignores all this.

The imminent end of the world as imagined by Jesus and even Paul has little to offer in the way of life instruction for an interminable future, whether spiritually conceived, for example as the hermetism of the Desert Fathers or the monasticism still thriving on the eve of the Reformation, or materially, as the base conceptions of mercantilism, capitalism, fascism, socialism or communism now and again embraced by Christian thinkers.  Everything Jesus taught is repentance from this life in the face of the impending judgment. There was nothing hyperbolic about this, nor about the requirements necessary for navigating to the new reality of the arriving kingdom of God. The disciples understood this clearly, as did every hearer of Jesus' message, which is why it was at once so compelling to a few and so revolting to the many:

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions. ... And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. -- Mark 10:21f., 29f. 

Evidently Mr. Gobry can't imagine any of The Twelve were deadbeat dads.

Paul himself, the first theologian to compromise the teaching of Jesus and get away with it, didn't even recommend his own capitalist industriousness in the service of the gospel, not to mention class struggle nor freedom from slavery nor any other social value, because he himself retained the apocalyptic outlook where everything is impermanent. Paul's was a halfway house of vocationalism where everyone was to remain in the state in which they were called because of the impending end of the world, whether slave, free, married, unmarried, etc.:

Only, let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was any one at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was any one at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Every one should remain in the state in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. So, brethren, in whatever state each was called, there let him remain with God. Now concerning the unmarried, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is well for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a girl marries she does not sin. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away. -- 1 Cor.7:17ff. 

This so-called hyperbolism of apocalyptic was anything but. It only waned because history ensued and destroyed its very credibility, including Paul's halfway house of the already/not yet. Faced with its basis in the false predictions of the end, the Christians had to adapt their story to reality or die. What had become no longer conceivable they replaced with something less susceptible of contradiction, something at once more durable because it was by definition social but ironically also actually hyperbolic, something which made sense of the failures and transformed them into victory, the doctrine and practice of the Real Presence:

"Take, eat; this is my body. ... Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." 

This actual hyperbole became the center of the holy catholic faith, and remains so to this day for over a billion of the world's Christians. Perhaps that's why Christians such as Gobry read hyperbolism into everything which competes with it, especially when it comes from Catholicism's enemies the Orthodox and the Protestants: "Hart, a tireless basher of Protestant theology (not one of his least virtues), has produced a crypto-Protestant theology out of his exegesis".

They know their own error only too well. 

 

The golden mean of property

About 13 bushels of oats will supply 1 person with 2000 calories/day/year 

Give me, ye gods, the product of one field,

That so I neither may be rich nor poor;

And having just enough, not covet more.

-- John Dryden

The man who kicked the Jews out of England, and the man who let them back in 367 years later

Edward I (1239-1307) kicked the Jews out of England in 1290

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) let them back in in 1657

David Jamieson, a Scottish leftist from Glasgow, provides a needed corrective to the idea that Luther was a radical revolutionary

For Jacobin Magazine here, from which this excerpt:

When Luther finally emerged from Wartburg, he became a force for restraint within the increasingly diverse Reformation movement. He called for a stop to many of the more aggressive changes and introduced a more gradual pace of change. ...

Characterizing Protestantism as the seed of the Enlightenment or of the classical liberal tradition ignores its often dogmatic forms and its relative disinterest in intellectual life outside theology. Indeed, in the Reformation period itself, many Catholic humanist intellectuals, such as Desiderius Erasmus, rejected the movement for its sheer inflexibility. 

David Jamieson is on Twitter, here.

David Bentley Hart finally grasps that the New Testament's apocalyptic communism makes "no sense even in the context of antiquity"

Here in The New York Times in "Are Christians Supposed to Be Communists?":

The books of the New Testament, I came to see, constitute a historical conundrum — not because they come from the remote world of late antiquity, but rather because they often appear to make no sense even in the context of antiquity. ... While there are always clergy members and theologians swift to assure us that the New Testament condemns not wealth but its abuse, not a single verse (unless subjected to absurdly forced readings) confirms the claim. ... It was all much easier, no doubt — this nonchalance toward private possessions — for those first generations of Christians. They tended to see themselves as transient tenants of a rapidly vanishing world, refugees passing lightly through a history not their own. ...

[T]he transition was not quite as abrupt as one might imagine. Well into the second century, the pagan satirist Lucian of Samosata reported that Christians viewed possessions with contempt and owned all property communally. And the Christian writers of Lucian’s day largely confirm that picture: Justin Martyr, Tertullian and the anonymous treatise known as the Didache all claim that Christians must own everything in common, renounce private property and give their wealth to the poor. Even Clement of Alexandria, the first significant theologian to argue that the wealthy could be saved if they cultivated “spiritual poverty,” still insisted that ideally all goods should be held in common.

As late as the fourth and fifth centuries, bishops and theologians as eminent as Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria felt free to denounce private wealth as a form of theft and stored riches as plunder seized from the poor. The great John Chrysostom frequently issued pronouncements on wealth and poverty that make Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin sound like timid conservatives. According to him, there is but one human estate, belonging to all, and those who keep any more of it for themselves than barest necessity dictates are brigands and apostates from the true Christian enterprise of charity. And he said much of this while installed as Archbishop of Constantinople.

The whole thing is a splendid summation of the ideas discussed here at this blog, and I wholeheartedly recommend that you read it. 

"One pays for confession, for mass, for the sacrament . . . the very last penny will not be saved"

Jan Hus, burned at the stake for heresy in 1415

 

 

 

Mitres or fagots have been the rewards of different persons, according as they pronounced these consecrated syllables, or not.

-- Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Ann Coulter wishes everyone a Happy Reformation Day on this its 500th anniversary

'Tis better if religion come to reform us, than ruin come to do it

Hohlbein, Totentanz

 

 

 

May no such storm

Fall on our times,

where ruin must reform.

-- John Denham (1615-1669)

Locke on transubstantiation

 

 

How is a Romanist prepared easily to swallow, not only against all probability, but even the clear evidence of his senses, the doctrine of transubstantiation?

-- John Locke (1632-1704)

Swift on Catholicism

Popery, for corruptions in doctrine and discipline,

I look upon to be the most absurd system of Christianity.

-- Jonathan Swift

An Ohio campus pastor considers the Lutheran Reformation a conservative restoration of catholic Christianity

Peter Burfeind, here:

Luther’s goal was not a radical departure from tradition, but a conservative restoration of catholic Christianity.

The 32-year old Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia promises liberalization of Islam

Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

Quoted here:

"We want to go back to what we were, the moderate Islam that is open to the world, open to all the religions.

"We will not waste 30 years of our lives dealing with extremist ideas, we will destroy them today". 

There's a lot of liberalizing to do, based on the death penalty being allowed at least theoretically for apostasy, atheism, blasphemy, sorcery, witchcraft, etc.

A social Darwinist dangles a preposition in defense of materialism against feminism, with a dash of Freudianism thrown in

Some choice! Would you like the bullet in your head, madam, or in your heart?

Here:

[M]ediocrities never lack admirers among the Second Sex, who, having very little judgment, are naturally taken with the vulgar world’s appearances. Women are by nature very willing and eager status whores, although certainly this ugly truth is not something that any man wants to believe, least of all the conservative Christian, who is happy to make “a victim” out of a shameless whore-on-the-payroll like Holly Madison. In women the ordinary man is looking for a mother figure whom, however, he shall also sleep with. From a moral point of view, man has throughout his savage history been an essentially evil being. Shaped in response, woman finds that the proverbial “nice guy” is the last thing she craves. In the face of evil, woman thinks, “He is worthy.” “Nice guy,” in her subtle vocabulary, is code for wealth, and, God willing, a way to philistinism.

When there is no God to inform reality, your only choice is servitude to the distortions of full-throated ideologies.

When God is dead to others, the good in you which comes from God is dead to them too

As an atheist himself says, here:

Social life is a theater. Behind the curtains, beasts reign. Fear is the primary check on the underlying self-assertion. Just as justice, at bottom, is usually no more than a desire to inflict pain, so the law and the state itself are possible only at gunpoint. The main reason people pay taxes, resist from harming one another (when they do), and obey the law is not that they are good moral agents, but that they are deterred by the prospect of painful consequences. ...

To a significant extent, civilization is nothing but a rationalist illusion. Conflict is the natural state of all animals, and man is the only cruel animal only because other animals are not thus advanced. Intrinsically competitive, the world is forever torn by incompatible interests. If we had knowledge of our collective motives and intentions, we’d see that human life is not meant to be peaceful and orderly. No wonder we all live in and by conflict, with ourselves, with family, with friends, with colleagues and co-workers, and on and on.

Just a reminder that Pope Francis is the chief cuck of Islam to whom 1.1 billion Christians defer

Il papa, quoted here in 2013 at Vatican Radio:

I greet and thank cordially all of you, dear friends belonging to other religious traditions; firstly the Muslims, who worship the one living and merciful God, and call upon Him in prayer. I really appreciate your presence, and in it I see a tangible sign of the wish to grow in recipricol trust and in cooperation for the common good of humanity.

A literate man is a sweeter man

 

 

 

A martial man, not sweetened by a lettered education, is apt to have a tincture of sourness.

-- Jeremy Collier (1650-1726)

A Calvinist narcissist at Takimag demonizes Michelangelo, Milton and Wagner but dares to speak of "my art"

My fart is more like it.

Here:

And yet, without this inner monstrousness, this will to affirm the self at any cost, art and science and civilization itself would not be the splendors that they are. Many great artists—Michelangelo, Milton, Wagner—have been very disagreeable personalities; it is a good question whether their achievements would exist as they do without the demonic will to glory those men exemplified.

Calvinism explained in three words

To which the Calvinist replies:

"Technically that's four words".

God has no delight in animal sacrifice

For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

-- Psalm 51:16f.

May you also be brokenhearted

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.

-- Psalm 34:18

No Gates of Vienna for these guys: The Christians wear the cuck label with pride at First Things

And no tea in Boston Harbor nor American victory at Yorktown, either. Catholicism means the death of America from within as surely as Islam means it from without.

Matthew Schmitz, here in "Christianity is for Cucks":

As it happens, I think those alt-right accusations had some truth to them. Christianity really is for cucks . . .. Christianity is not a matter of blood, or of race, or of victory in this world. It requires us to accept defeat in this life so we might enjoy triumph in the next. A Catholic cannot be certain that his line will continue or his country thrive. He only knows that the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church.

A Roman Catholic demonstrates his indifference to his Bible and his god, preferring the wiggle room of the Aristotelian lukewarm middle

You might almost call it hatred.

The top commenter here:

As we all know, the opposite of love is not hate but indifference and Boris is, as in so many things, extremely indifferent to the race-thingy and a lot of other cause-célèbre-thingies which seem to motivate the congenitally hateful left or the Compassion Inc. crowd or the old school Slob.

And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. -- Genesis 37:4

Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone. -- 2 Samuel 13:15

And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD. -- 2 Chronicles 19:2

Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked. -- Psalm 97:10

SAMECH. I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love. ... I hate and abhor lying: but thy law do I love. -- Psalm 119:113, 163

How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? -- Proverbs 1:22

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. -- Proverbs 8:36

Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. -- Proverbs 9:8

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. -- Ecclesiastes 3:8

For I the LORD love judgment, I hate robbery for burnt offering; and I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. -- Isaiah 61:8 

Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness. -- Ezekiel 16:37

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. -- Amos 5:15

And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment? Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones; -- Micah 3:1f.

And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the LORD. -- Zechariah 8:17

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; -- Matthew 5:43f.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. -- Matthew 6:24

But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, -- Luke 6:27

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. -- Luke 16:13

As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. -- Romans 9:13

Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. -- Hebrews 1:9

Islam's Protestants: The old rebellious faith of the Bedawin of El-Hejaz

We pray not, because we must drink the water of ablution.

We give no alms, because we ask them.

We fast not the Ramazan month, because we starve throughout the year.

And we do no pilgrimage, because the world is the house of Allah.

-- Sir Richard Francis Burton, Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Meccah and Medinah (London: William Mullan and sons, 1879), p. 370.

The-world-ends-this-week Laugh of the Day: Sorry, can't take the interview until next week

I thought the intensity of the pain was all I had left of his fire

Mary Katharine Ham, here:

The fire is more remote than it used to be. My distance from it feels disconcerting even as it relieves the pain. I remember someone saying to me, right after he died, that they’d like to fast-forward to a time five years later when it didn’t hurt so much to remember him, and we could talk about him with smiles and laughter. I remember feeling panicky at the thought. I thought the intensity of the pain was all I had left of the fire. It was my tether to a time when he still existed on this Earth. And I knew every moment of every day, I was moving inexorably further from that time, and there was a part of me that hated it.

The Muslim call to prayer startles a kafir in Brooklyn

Video here.

The residuum of the introspective conscience of the West shows up in narcissism study

Once the religion is stripped away, the self-absorption lives on in another form.  

From the story here:

"Narcissists aren't afraid to tell you they're narcissists," said study co-author Brad Bushman, a communications and psychology professor at The Ohio State University. "They're not embarrassed about it at all."

People with a classic narcissistic personality tend to have an overinflated sense of self, an exhibitionist streak, a sense of entitlement and little empathy for others. People in Western countries rate higher on narcissistic traits than do those in Eastern nations, and millennials— people born between the early 1980s and early 2000s — are more likely to be self-centered than previous generations, at least in the United States, Bushman said.

"The self-esteem movement, I think, is a big part of that," Bushman said. "Also, I think social media provides a venue for people to project themselves to very large audiences."

Hillary's sacrament of abortion

Pattern development: Nineteen year old black rapper releases video depicting lynching of a white child

"The Florida rapper, born Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy, can then be seen slipping the noose over the white boy's head." He then pulls a rope and the boy is raised into the air as his legs can be seen twitching as he his lynched.

Changing diapers is such a drag: Employee gives birth at work, tries to flush the boy down the toilet

From the story here:

Police arrived later to find the baby in Lockner’s arms, San Mateo County Dist. Atty. Steve Wagstaffe told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

The baby had no pulse and was not breathing, so officers performed CPR and rushed the infant to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, he said.

The infant is alive and in stable condition, but the extent of the baby’s brain injuries was not known, Wagstaffe said.

Catholic moral hierarchy on display: Raymond Arroyo evidently thinks some stealing is forgivable

Sixty-four percent of abortions in the US are performed on minorities

36% on blacks

21% on Hispanics

7% on other minorities

Story here.

That means whites are killing their own future at a rate of 36%, equal to blacks, proving once again that equality isn't everything it's cracked up to be.

Today's strange new respect award goes to Steve Bannon

Here:

The bishops have been terrible about this. By the way, you know why? You know why? Because unable to ... come to grips with the problems in the church, they need illegal aliens, they need illegal aliens to fill the churches. ... [I]t's obvious on the face of it. That's what – the entire Catholic bishops condemn [Trump]. ... They have ... an economic interest. They have an economic interest in unlimited immigration, unlimited illegal immigration.

"Bacon-chasing" Muslim attorney files lawsuits against restaurants

From the story here:

On Tuesday, Dearborn attorney Majed Moughni filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Jewish woman in Sterling Heights, Angela Montgomery, 30, who says she found bacon in a vegetarian omelet she ordered at a Denny's restaurant in Sterling Heights. ... In a separate lawsuit, filed Aug. 22, a Yemeni-American Muslim couple from Dearborn, Askar Abubaker, and his wife, Hasinah Saeed, who wears an Islamic face veil, ordered chicken sandwiches at a KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) restaurant in Lincoln Park on Dix Road on the afternoon of July 1. ... After taking bites, and finding out there was bacon, he told the cashier: "What is this? Why did you guys put this in my food?" ... The attorney handling the cases, Moughni, said there needs to be changes in how restaurants are handling food. ... Moughni filed a similar lawsuit in May against a Little Caesars Pizza in Dearborn that advertised halal pepperoni pizza, which Moughni said wasn't halal and contained pork. An attorney for Little Caesars has said the lawsuit should be dismissed and is without merit.

Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment, but also of the revolutionary

Gustave Le Bon, here:

A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions. Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They are inevitably displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of the secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind. The Jacobins of the Reign of Terror were at bottom as religious as the Catholics of the Inquisition, and their cruel ardour proceeded from the same source.

Nietzsche's anti-intellectual response to his own gaslighting: Become what you are

"Werde, der Du bist", but tellingly minus the learning:

γένοι' οἷος ἐσσὶ μαθών -- Pindar, Pythian 2.72.

Gaslighting your own son

From The New York Times, January 24, 1999, here:

The bare-bones account of Nietzsche's life begins not so much with his birth in 1844 as with the death of his father five years later. Carl Nietzsche was a Lutheran pastor who died of ''softening of the brain,'' which sounds very like a dementia caused by the syphilitic infection that killed his son. Responding to his mother's urgings, Nietzsche became a child prodigy, and he also began to suffer from the nightmares and headaches that plagued him all his life.

What brought him to the state of ardent discipleship in which he met Wagner in 1868 is obscure. He had known about Wagner from his teens, but had disliked the music even while he admired the mythic themes of operas like ''Tristan und Isolde'' and tried himself to write an opera based on Nordic legends. It is clearer what he admired once he had become intoxicated: Wagner promised to re-create for the Germans the cultural climate in which the classical Greek world had created the tragedies of Aeschylus. It was this that ''The Birth of Tragedy'' spelled out in 1872 to its astonished readers.

The origin of "The Greatest Gaslighting Story Ever Told"

The priests the Levites, and all the tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel: they shall eat the offerings of the LORD made by fire, and his inheritance. Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their brethren: the LORD is their inheritance, as he hath said unto them. And this shall be the priest's due from the people, from them that offer a sacrifice, whether it be ox or sheep; and they shall give unto the priest the shoulder, and the two cheeks, and the maw. The firstfruit also of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the first of the fleece of thy sheep, shalt thou give him. For the LORD thy God hath chosen him out of all thy tribes, to stand to minister in the name of the LORD, him and his sons for ever.

-- Deuteronomy 18:1ff.

And the priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the LORD thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the LORD; and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried:

-- Deuteronomy 21:5

Neither a ram, a lamb, or a man: If there is no sacrifice, there will be nothing for the parasites to eat at dinner

And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering before the LORD for his sin which he hath done: and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him. -- Leviticus 19:22

And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD for his sin which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats, for a sin offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his sin. And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass, which he hath committed, two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, unto the LORD; one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering. -- Leviticus 5:6f.

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. -- John 1:29

But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; -- Hebrews 10:12

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. -- Psalm 51:14ff.

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. -- Hosea 6:6

But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. -- Matthew 9:13

But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. -- Matthew 12:7

News reports about allegorical interpretation notwithstanding, the importance of Fortunatianus of Aquileia's commentary lies elsewhere

Fortunatianus' formerly lost commentary on the Gospels, discussed here by a translator in the project, will be important not primarily for its contributions to allegorical interpretation, but more for its witness to the so-called Western text of the Gospels.

The allegorical stuff is just all headline BS, designed to raise the profile for an audience no longer educated enough to appreciate the real significance.

The so-called "Vetus Latina" represents the Latin of the New Testament before Jerome got a hold of it, and Fortunatianus' commentary's "Old Latin" readings, as distinct from other text types which have been associated with Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria, should do much to improve our understanding of the Western text heretofore typically associated with the Greek and Latin Codex Bezae.