A trinity of vices

 How black and base a vice ingratitude is, may be seen in those vices which it is always in combination with, pride and hardheartedness, or want of compassion.

-- Robert South 

So William Lane Craig, who among other things thinks Matthew has completely mucked up Jesus' eschatology, now rejects the eternal generation of the Son from the Father in the Nicene Creed

First the liberal Lutherans ditch the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son from the Nicene Creed, and now a prominent evangelical ditches "begotten of His Father before all worlds", which is actually the language of the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 doubling down on the Nicene Creed of 325.

Good to know! 

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. 

-- John 8:58

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

-- Exodus 3:14

Become what you are . . .!  

-- Nietzsche, Pindar, . . . 

 

She had me and then she lost me

 

No, Sen. Murphy, I Don't Want To Join Your Cult

Jerusalem Demsas, Substack

 

... A liberal order begins with the presumption of freedom — yes, including economic freedom — and then requires public justification when the government chooses to intervene (often for good reason!).

The cult of the common good reverses that presumption. It begins with an Official Version of the Good Life and then treats the law and politics as the way to direct people toward it. 

... there is a world of difference between a government oriented around making it easier for people to live the lives they choose and a government that preordains certain paths and punishes you if you fall out of line.

... Many of my favorite political leaders have been overt about their own morality. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln urged “firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,” while calling for “malice toward none” and “charity for all.”

I want political leaders whose moral convictions constrain their exercise of power, not leaders who use power to impose their moral convictions. ...

 

Well now, Lincoln used the power of the state to impose his moral convictions on the whole nation by force of arms, and punished it with 1.5 million casualties in the process. He most certainly did not constrain himself, and Union and Confederate soldiers didn't go about killing each other crying "Nothing personal! Just business!"

According to the left, the liberal order in America didn't truly begin until 1865 when this stain of slavery was finally removed, but it meant that Southerners were no longer allowed to live the lives they chose. One race of slaves was simply replaced with another.

Is America still that "liberal order"?

Yes! We routinely replace one group of slaves with another group of slaves.

Nearly 50% of teenagers 16-19 years old used to work in this country in the 1950s and the 1970s. Now just 30% do, and today we import low-wage H-2A farm labor in the hundreds of thousands from foreign countries to replace the almost 1 million American teenagers who used to do this kind of work in the 1950s. We don't want the crops to rot in the fields, but it's OK if the kids do in front of a screen.

While most people will conclude that it is a gross exaggeration to say that there are over 1 million living in involuntary servitude in the United States today, the number is not zero. The creepy evidence is probably just the tip of an iceberg.

How did that happen in a supposedly liberal order?

Meanwhile the right to life we all claim as our creed has not applied to 66 million aborted since 1973, because they are all dead! Mail-order abortion is making this easier than it has ever been.

"Freedom for me but not for thee" is not the definition of a true liberal order, but apparently that has always been our definition of it. It is our definition, and we aim to keep it.

The religious name for this is The United States of Total Depravity, the same yesterday, today, and forever, in liberal quantities.

If you liked Christopher Nolan's repentant Odysseus, you'll love Jesuit Thomas Reese's Jesus, who repents of his un-Christian ways

  

We Should Treat Foreigners Like Jesus Did 

Thomas Reese, Religion News Service 

(RNS) — This past Sunday (Aug. 16), in the Gospel read in many churches around the world, Jesus comes across as a real jerk. He sounds like President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. 

The Gospel was Matthew 15: 21-28, the story of the Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus pleading for him to heal her daughter who is tormented by a demon.

Jesus at first ignores her, pretends she is not there. But she keeps following him, calling out to him. She ignores the disciples’ attempts to get rid of her. They finally ask Jesus to send her away.

He replies that he was sent “only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” His mission is to Jews, not Gentiles. But the woman keeps coming and begs him, “Lord, help me.”

Jesus responds in a very un-Christian manner: “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” In other words, he calls her a bitch.

I prefer to believe that this unflattering story was made up by Matthew. But why would Matthew make it up? Perhaps because he had an important message to teach the early Jewish Christians — and us.

This Gospel story reflects the reluctance of early Jewish Christians to accept Gentiles into the Christian community. ... Peter changed his mind when he saw that Gentiles had received the Holy Spirit. ... Jesus at first rejects the Canaanite woman because she is not from the house of Israel. But he changes his mind when he sees how much faith she has. He changes his mind when he sees how much she loves her daughter. The Gospel is telling the early Jewish Christians that, like Jesus, they must change their attitude toward the Gentiles. ...

Of course the text doesn't say that Jesus actually "changed his mind" about accepting the foreign woman, which is what repentance would have to be to be repentance.

Only that Jesus makes an exception in the case of the foreign woman's request, while not repudiating his Jewish chauvinism.

It bothers us that Matthew is a co-conspirator in this offensive bigotry that the Gentiles aren't even an afterthought in the mind of someone who is supposed to be their Saviour.

It evidently bothers Reese because it's his job to worship Jesus, so he prefers to state that Matthew must have put the bad words in Jesus' mouth in order to convey a deeper meaning.  

Unfortunately that deeper meaning is foreign to this text, and the bad idea turns out to be part and parcel of  Jesus' very parochial eschatological message in Matthew. A lot more is at stake than just this one pericope from Matthew 15.

To wit: that the Son of Man was imminently coming on the clouds with the angels to bring God's kingdom to Israel, who would save the few Jews who had repented, but who would also condemn the many Jews, who were guilty, he said ominously, of the blood of all the prophets who had come before him, going all the way back in time to Abel. 

The Gentiles might have been happy to learn that they were completely peripheral to all this.

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. ... Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. 

-- Matthew 10:5f., 23 

It is interesting that Homer's Odyssey bothers us for a similar reason.

We don't like Homer's Odysseus because he doesn't feel the slightest bit of remorse over what he did to the Trojans, to the Cyclops, or to the suitors. The hero is not humane in punishing the malefactors.

Instead film-maker Christopher Nolan now offers us a Pauline Odysseus, plagued by an introspective conscience like Paul had in Romans 7, admitting the fact of the evil that he had done at Troy but wishing now that he had not done it. The law of Zeus has become the law of Odysseus' mind, the sacking of Troy evidence of the principle of the evil inclination operating in his flesh.

This is more pathetic than funny if you have actually read the sources. Aristotle after all epitomized in his Politics the old Greek understanding that men who behave like Odysseus aren't normal, aren't part of the polis. They must be either gods or wild beasts. Nolan gives us neither a god nor a beast, just another ordinary man.   

What will never not be funny, however, is a Jesuit who offers us a Jesus who is also neither a god nor a beast, just a convert to the Pharisaism of a Paul who compasseth sea and land to make one proselyte.

Some of the finest casuistry in the business.  

Donald Trump is so libertarian he's free of compassion

 

Hardheartedness, is an essential in the character of a libertine.

-- Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), Clarissa [according to Samuel Johnson]

Paul is a pickle

 Jesus is a cucumber.

 

 

The Two Ways of Vice and Virtue

Paolo Veronese - The Choice Between Virtue and Vice, ca. 1565

 

 When Heracles was passing from boyhood to youth's estate, wherein the young, now becoming their own masters, show whether they will approach life by the path of virtue or the path of vice, he went out into a quiet place, and sat pondering which road to take.

And there appeared two women of great stature making towards him.

The one was fair to see and of high bearing; and her limbs were adorned with purity, her eyes with modesty; sober was her figure, and her robe was white.

The other was plump and soft, with high feeding. Her face was made up to heighten its natural white and pink, her figure to exaggerate her height. Open-eyed was she; and dressed so as to disclose all her charms. Now she eyed herself; anon looked whether any noticed her; and often stole a glance at her own shadow. 

When they drew nigh to Heracles, the first pursued the even tenor of her way: but the other, all eager to outdo her, ran to meet him, crying:

'Heracles, I see that you are in doubt which path to take towards life. Make me your friend; follow me, and I will lead you along the pleasantest and easiest road. You shall taste all the sweets of life; and hardship you shall never know. First, of wars and worries you shall not think, but shall ever be considering what choice food or drink you can find, what sight or sound will delight you, what touch or perfume; what tender love can give you most joy, what bed the softest slumbers; and how to come by all these pleasures with least trouble. And should there arise misgiving that lack of means may stint your enjoyments, never fear that I may lead you into winning them by toil and anguish of body and soul. Nay; you shall have the fruits of others' toil, and refrain from nothing that can bring you gain. For to my companions I give authority to pluck advantage where they will.'

Now when Heracles heard this, he asked, 'Lady, pray what is your name?'

'My friends call me Happiness [Εὐδαιμονίαν],' she said, 'but among those that hate me I am nicknamed Vice [Κακίαν].'

Meantime the other had drawn near, and she said:

'I, too, am come to you, Heracles: I know your parents and I have taken note of your character during the time of your education. Therefore I hope that, if you take the road that leads to me, you will turn out a right good doer of high and noble deeds, and I shall be yet more highly honoured and more illustrious for the blessings I bestow. But I will not deceive you by a pleasant prelude: I will rather tell you truly the things that are, as the gods have ordained them. For of all things good and fair, the gods give nothing to man without toil and effort. If you want the favour of the gods, you must worship the gods: if you desire the love of friends, you must do good to your friends: if you covet honour from a city, you must aid that city: if you are fain to win the admiration of all Hellas for virtue [ἀρετῇ], you must strive to do good [εὖ] to Hellas: if you want land to yield you fruits in abundance, you must cultivate that land: if you are resolved to get wealth from flocks, you must care for those flocks: if you essay to grow great through war and want power to liberate your friends and subdue your foes, you must learn the arts of war from those who know them and must practise their right use: and if you want your body to be strong, you must accustom your body to be the servant of your mind, and train it with toil and sweat.' 

And Vice, as Prodicus tells, answered and said:

'Heracles, mark you how hard and long is that road to joy, of which this woman tells? but I will lead you by a short and easy road to happiness.'

And Virtue said: 

'What good thing is thine, poor wretch, or what pleasant thing dost thou know, if thou wilt do nought to win them? Thou dost not even tarry for the desire of pleasant things, but fillest thyself with all things before thou desirest them, eating before thou art hungry, drinking before thou art thirsty, getting thee cooks, to give zest to eating, buying thee costly wines and running to and fro in search of snow in summer, to give zest to drinking; to soothe thy slumbers it is not enough for thee to buy soft coverlets, but thou must have frames for thy beds. For not toil, but the tedium of having nothing to do, makes thee long for sleep. Thou dost rouse lust by many a trick, when there is no need, using men as women: thus thou trainest thy friends, waxing wanton by night, consuming in sleep the best hours of day. Immortal art thou, yet the outcast of the gods, the scorn of good men. Praise, sweetest of all things to hear, thou hearest not: the sweetest of all sights thou beholdest not, for never yet hast thou beheld a good work wrought by thyself. Who will believe what thou dost say? who will grant what thou dost ask? Or what sane man will dare join thy throng? While thy votaries are young their bodies are weak, when they wax old, their souls are without sense; idle and sleek they thrive in youth, withered and weary they journey through old age, and their past deeds bring them shame, their present deeds distress. Pleasure they ran through in their youth: hardship they laid up for their old age.

But I company with gods and good men, and no fair deed of god or man is done without my aid. I am first in honour among the gods and among men that are akin to me: to craftsmen a beloved fellow-worker, to masters a faithful guardian of the house, to servants a kindly protector: good helpmate in the toils of peace, staunch ally in the deeds of war, best partner in friendship.

To my friends meat and drink bring sweet and simple enjoyment: for they wait till they crave them. And a sweeter sleep falls on them than on idle folk: they are not vexed at awaking from it, nor for its sake do they neglect to do their duties. The young rejoice to win the praise of the old; the elders are glad to be honoured by the young; with joy they recall their deeds past, and their present well-doing is joy to them, for through me they are dear to the gods, lovely to friends, precious to their native land. And when comes the appointed end, they lie not forgotten and dishonoured, but live on, sung and remembered for all time. O Heracles, thou son of goodly parents, if thou wilt labour earnestly on this wise, thou mayest have for thine own the most blessed happiness.'

Such, in outline, is Prodicus' story of the training of Heracles by Virtue . . ..

 

-- Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.21-34, tr. Otis Johnson Todd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923)

An anti-semite will be the Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate from Michigan and groundhogs have invaded my shed

 

 Few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils.

-- Plato, Republic IX.379c 

Who hopes for what is already here?

The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

-- Matthew 3:2

-- Matthew 4:17

-- Matthew 10:7

-- Mark 1:15 (kingdom of God)

 

The kingdom of God is in your midst.

 

-- Luke 17:21 

 

We ourselves groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?

 

-- Romans 8:23f.