David Bentley Hart manages to find the only airport in America where he's not forced to listen to CNN

Can We Please Relax About ‘Socialism’?:

To be trapped in the boarding area of a smallish airport in the upper Midwest is, as often as not, to be subjected to that bestial din of fricatives, gutturals, plosives and shrieks of hysterical alarm that constitutes political discussion on Fox News . . .. The experience is especially nasty if one’s wait coincides with the prime-time shows hosted by those two almost indistinguishable fellows with the suety faces . . .. [O]nly in America, as they say. Only here is the word “socialism” freighted with so much perceived menace. I take this to be a symptom of our unique national genius for stupidity.

The disdain for what's left of the backbone of this country has grown strong and palpable in this blind snob, who, fittingly, has gained a lot of weight over the years as he dines out on his Christian, cultural criticism. Talk about a suety face.

I say blind because while Mr. Hart thinks he's proving the "everyday" merits of European "democratic socialism" in this New York Times op-ed he never once confronts the phony arithmetic which never subtracts the costs of European defense from their Treasuries but from ours. Remove their largely freely provided military umbrella and see how long healthcare remains "affordable" in those places, or those places remain politically free.

This pompous gasbag gets one thing nearly right, however: "Democratic socialism is, briefly put, . . . grounded in deep Christian convictions." Yes, in the deep Christian convictions of Americans who decade in and decade out keep thinking for some strange reason that defending the European civilization from which we sprang has been a worthwhile, indeed, Christian obligation. America, briefly put, makes the "success" of European "socialism" possible.

Maybe it's time we abandoned this sense of obligation and spent the money on ourselves instead. Mr. Hart can move over there and stay over there since he likes it so much and thinks it so superior, until he needs a cow or pig valve procedure like Mick Jagger.

Pig valve, I think, for Mr. David Pudding Head. We'll keep one ready. It's the Christian thing to do.

Like many in his time, Martin Luther thought nature full of devils

Many devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly places, ready to hurt and prejudice people; some are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightnings, and thunderings, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds. When these things happen then the philosophers and physicians say, it is natural, ascribing it to the planets, and showing I know not what reasons for such misfortunes and plagues as ensue.

-- Martin Luther, Table Talk, tr. William Hazlitt (London: 1856), Number 247, line 574 

The righteous sleep undisturbed . . . by elves

Where's Pede?--go you, and where you find a maid,

That, ere she sleep, hath thrice her prayers said,

Rein up the organs of her fantasy;

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;

But those that sleep, and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.

-- William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V Scene V

Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees is pro-Pauline propaganda, not history

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

-- Matthew 22:32

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.

-- Mark 12:27

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

-- Luke 20:38

The idea that Jesus got into a dust-up with the Sadducees over the intermediate state and resurrection and basically ended up taking the position of the Pharisees for himself is absurd. This is evidence of the later Pauline consensus contaminating the tradition, at the expense of the eschatology of the historical Jesus.

Talk of an intermediate state, for example, between death and final judgment where the dead go to be with the Lord interjects a fatal pause to the present time, which for Jesus is pregnant with eschatological expectation. That pause necessarily would have undercut the present sense of urgency which informed the call to repent and escape what is surely coming.

With an intermediate state awaiting at death instead of judgment imminently confronting, one rationalizes away the extraordinary current moment in favor of the continuation of human history as it has always continued.

 

The need to leave all and follow Jesus evaporates (Matthew 4; Mark 10; Luke 5; Luke 18), replaced by less consequential belief.

 

The establishment of a settled life and therefore a church is made possible, which accomodates itself to time instead of revolting against it.

 

A Gentile mission, specifically ruled out by Jesus (Matthew 10), becomes possible in Athens where "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) has more currency than "the kingdom of God is at hand" in Jerusalem (Mark 1:15). The kingdom focused on Jerusalem recedes from view, as does the God who is coming there soon to judge this generation's guilt for the blood of all the prophets!

The problem for historians is that there was never a sound proponent of Jesus' eschatology who followed him who could match the thoroughgoing Pauline theology. And why should have such a person arisen if his followers "after the flesh" had truly understood Jesus as they must have? Their expectation also would have continued to be for an imminent end, even despite the death and resurrection of their master: "Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). There was no impetus to document anything for posterity, since posterity would never come to exist. This means that the gospels must be viewed with great suspicion everywhere, for they are the products of the subsequent, already compromised, period. They are not of the Urzeit. Only out of respect for Jesus do they preserve any of the conflicting evidence from his teaching.

Consider that if an intermediate state is put forward in the mouth of Jesus, all sense of urgency about the imminent coming judgment he predicted would necessarily melt away with authority. Belief in the restyled message of atonement could more easily become the message, relieving everyone of the onerous original obligations of discipleship. The obvious failure of the kingdom's coming meant Paul's rationalizations were ready made for the occasion, and came as a relief. In he stepped and supplied the solution to the ongoing disappointment caused by the delay of the parousia, and the death of the disciples' generation simply made all this a fait accompli.

Jesus did not view himself as Paul viewed him. "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (2 Corinthians 5:16). Jesus viewed himself as the people viewed him, as a prophet. Thinking himself destined for death as so many of the prophets before him were, Jesus is unique because he thought of himself as the final prophet. Even as he's about to die he can say that history as we know it is about to end, too:

"[Y]e shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

-- Mark 14:62

"From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation."

-- Luke 11:51

This is where Muhammad got his idea to style himself as the final prophet, but armed with a sword, centuries later! More than most New Testament critics of modern times, Muhammad long before sensed the inadequacy of the gospels' handling of Jesus' eschatological message. And if Paul of Tarsus could receive direct revelations from God and refound a movement, so much more the better. So could he!

There is no dying and rising as a sacrifice for sins in Jesus' mind, only prophets perishing unjustly in Jerusalem. The rising is added under the influence of hysterical women, and an unstable Pharisee, Paul.

The fanatical Benjaminite had recourse to the resurrected Jesus to make sense of his own personal conversion experience, which was really a mental breakdown if one is to be perfectly frank about it. After all, after a surprising, brief period of activity as a Jesus advocate instead of as the well known and feared Jesus persecutor he had recently been, Paul disappears for a period of ten years, if the chronology and the account are to be believed. This is hardly the behavior of a settled individual convinced by his experiences one way or another, but of a still-troubled person. It was during this time that Paul must have developed his ideas of Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection under the influence of the direct, supernatural visions and revelations he claimed were the sole basis of his gospel: "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). What these really were is anyone's guess, but in his own time people already were calling him crazy. To be sure they are at the same time productive of ingenious solutions, as his letters testify. These solutions eventually supplied Paul with a ready escape from the offense of his own Jewish particularity, which he experienced as a Roman citizen in his Asian backwater, and at the same time validated the Pharisaic impulse, which he imbibed as a youth and to which he remained committed, to democratize Temple holiness by making proselytes and founding synagogues. His possession of the Roman franchise reinforced his ideas of human equality under God and their legitimacy.

The body of Jesus temporarily and hastily buried was missing on Easter morn because it was moved. The disciples to a man did not believe Jesus rose from the dead, only the women in their hysteria at discovering this did. (If one is looking for the incipient enthusiasm later displayed by early Christianity described in Acts, it is here). The gospels' portrayal of the general dim pall of ignorance of a predicted rising on the third day which hung over the movement despite all the supposed evidence to the contrary makes no sense if Jesus were in fact a resurrection preacher and intermediate state believer first and foremost. That "evidence" became part of the narrative ex post facto. The idea otherwise should not have been rejected so out of hand by his very own disciples as it was. The plainest explanation for their unbelief on the third day is that they had no prior knowledge of the idea of resurrection on the third day, and that because Jesus had never preached it.

Paul the Apostle is the true founder of Christianity. He co-opted the sectarian Jewish eschatological religion preached by Jesus. An enthusiast for Pharisaism to the end, Paul's personal ambition was to make Judaism safe as a universal religion, relegating present Jerusalem to the discarded past: "She is in slavery with her children" (Galatians 4:25). By turning Jesus into a Pharisee, he succeeded.

Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

-- Luke 13:33f.

According to the supplied ending of Mark, every one of the eleven remaining disciples of Jesus did not believe he was risen

Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.

 

-- Mark 16:14

 

And Luke agrees with this:

 

And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest. ... And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

 

-- Luke 24:9,11

 

Even in Matthew at least some of the eleven doubt, even after seeing him alive:

 

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.

 

-- Matthew 28:16f.

 

 

 

 

There are miracles, and then there are wonders

It was near a miracle to see an old man silent,

since talking is the disease of age;

but, amongst cups, makes fully a wonder.

-- Ben Jonson

The fav'rite of the sky

The best, the dearest fav'rite of the sky

Must taste that cup, for man is born to die.

-- Alexander Pope

The ancient "forest" in the roof of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is gone, consumed by the fire

Here aged trees cathedral walks compose,

And mount the hill in venerable rows;

There the green infants in their beds are laid,

The garden's hope, and its expected shade.

-- Alexander Pope

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burns to the ground, an horrific loss

Update:

24 hours later, we can say this grandest of churches did not in fact burn to the ground.

All the wood in the roof above the stone vault was consumed, extremely old oak which was already hundreds of years old in 1160 when construction first began. And had not the heavy spire burned and broken through this stone vault, more of the interior had escaped the flames. As it was, some firefighters doused the interior at level as others attacked the roof fire from above and much was saved in the end, under very difficult circumstances.

Hundreds of millions of Euros have already been pledged for the full restoration of this cathedral, which is literally the center of France.

 

I despise your feast days

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

-- Amos 5:21ff.

What is more comical, Michel Houellebecq's misplaced faith in the competence of theologians or his ignorance of Catholicism's responsibility for schism?

Restoration: An Exchange of Views on Religion Between Michel Houellebecq and Geoffroy Lejeune

"Can the Catholic Church regain her former splendor? Yes, perhaps, I don’t know. It would be good if she moved away definitively from Protestantism and drew closer to Orthodoxy. Unity would be the best solution, but it would not be easy. The question of the Filioque could easily be resolved by competent theologians. ... Basically, it amounts to this: The Catholic Church, in the course of its history, has granted much too much importance to reason (aggravated over the centuries, probably, under the influence of Protestantism). Man is a being of reason: That’s true, from time to time. But he is above all a being of flesh, and of emotion. It would be good not to forget that."

The pope gets Julian Assange arrested after exposing Vatican pedophiles

To love God completely and neighbor as oneself is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices

And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.

-- Mark 12:32ff.

Scott Redd simply assumes that Jesus loved the immigrant, refusing to mine the uncomfortable evidence to the contrary

Immigration and the Kingdom of God:

[W]e do best when we remember how Jesus loved the poor, the needy, the immigrant, while never forgetting that His work always pointed us further to another goal: a world without borders, where every tear is wiped away (Revelation 21:5). That’s where we are going too, but we are not there yet.

Matthew 2:6 knows no such world without borders, only a Christ who shall rule over Israel:
And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

^{Matthew 10:5ff. has Jesus explicitly telling his disciples not to evangelize the Gentiles but to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel:}

^{These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.}

^{Matthew 15:24ff. tells us Jesus called the Gentiles dogs, to whom he was not sent and who should not be preferred over the children of Israel:}

^{But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she [a woman of Canaan] and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.}

^{Matthew 19:28 conceives of the kingdom to come as the kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel, not as some new, all-inclusive redefined Israel with the Gentiles grafted in:}

^{And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.}    

The sadness of heaven

Laura: Why do they call it Heaven's tears?

  

Jonathan: Because that's what rain is. See, when the people in Heaven get sad about the things going on here on Earth, they cry.

The suffering gods

The gods from heav'n survey the fatal strife,

And mourn the miseries of human life.

-- John Dryden

And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart.

-- Genesis 6:6

Shakespearean schadenfreude

When we our betters see bearing our woes,

We scarcely think our miseries our foes.

Who alone suffers, suffers most i' th' mind,

Leaving free things and happy shows behind.

But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip

When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship.

How light and portable my pain seems now

When that which makes me bend makes the king bow.

-- William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 6

The man that is once hated . . .

 

 

The man that is once hated,

both his good and his evil deeds oppress him;

he is not easily emergent.

-- Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

I can remember when it meant something completely different

ONE WAY.