American Academe has a really bad case of truth decay

 

 

 

 

 They think, that whatever is called old must have the decay of time upon it, and truth too were liable to mould and rottenness.

 

-- John Locke

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump is the decay of a whole age teeming with zeroes

 

 He that plots to be the only figure among cyphers, is the decay of a whole age. 

 

-- Francis Bacon 

Decadence 101

 Taught, half by reason, half by mere decay,

To welcome death, and calmly pass away.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

Catholic biblical scholar just coincidentally concludes that the history of hell pretty much confirms the Roman Catholic dogma of purgatory

 Candida Moss, here for the Jesuits, thinks that the biblical hell begins as a relatively late product of Greek influence from the time of Alexander the Great, and that in keeping with later Catholic reflection is a temporary place of punishment and purgation, not of eternal damnation.

Evidently Hitler does go to heaven, but he will be the very last one out of hell, on that you may rely.

Her essay does a better job of explaining how the later Catholic idea of purgatory reflects the actual awful material conditions of Roman penal and slave experience in late antiquity than it does of explaining the gospels' language. In the end the pope's hope that hell one day will be empty is "surely right", according to Moss.

In the middle of those Greek and Roman historical bookends, however, lies the New Testament language about hell. And it is just weird how Moss is so perfunctorily dismissive of that language. She hardly treats of it at all. For her it is simply "obscure" because it is usually parabolic or "evasively symbolic", a point of view which is oddly reminiscent of long-standing Protestant dismissiveness of "the hard sayings of Jesus". The Protestants find the hard sayings problematic in the main because they contradict the universal gospel to the Gentiles. In this case, a Catholic finds them problematic because they contradict the universalism implied by purgatory. For neither could it be possible that those sayings reflect an actual historical message, being so stern and radical as to be unthinkable. They must be an anomaly: "eschatology straight up, without the diluting effects of divine mercy and forgiveness."

Just so.

Candida Moss stumbles over the Albert Schweitzer hard truth. The ameliorating of the hard sayings was the anomaly. The hard sayings did not arise from Lake Placid. Lectio difficilior potior, interpretatio item.

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.  

-- Matthew 7:14

For Moss the gospels are contradictory and run "hot and cold" on hell. The gospels give us only a "faint sense" of hell at best. After all there was a time when hell was not in the Bible, before the Greeks, and it shouldn't surprise us that the parables of Jesus really don't describe any "actual eternal punishment" dontcha know. It's a foreign idea, whose time came and went.

Oh dear.

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

-- Mark 9:43ff. 

Moss would like us to think, simply ignoring this passage, not only that there is no eternal fire according to Jesus, but that all such worm talk actually came from a later period, from the horrible fact of the parasites in human shit found everywhere and on everything in ancient prison cells, the literal analogues of an imaginary storied hell as in Dante, rather than from the actual message of Jesus about the eternal decay of death in the grave. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, they do a dance upon your snout. This is . . . completely unconvincing.

That last point needs to be emphasized. The eternal decay of death in the grave flies in the face of Jesus' supposed belief in and preaching of resurrection of the body. The eternal grave which confronts us here is an offense to that.

But there it is. Eternal fire. Eternal worm. Straight up.

I asked a poor man how he did

 I asked a poor man how he did; he said he was like a washball, always in decay.

-- Jonathan Swift

The winners' game

 

Yet Reason frowns on war's unequal game,

Where wasted nations raise a single name,

And mortgaged states their grandsires' wreaths regret,

From age to age in everlasting debt;

Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey

To rust on medals, or on stones decay.

 

-- Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)

The Jesus who instructs at minimum to invest with usury obviously isn't the same Jesus who instructs to lend expecting nothing in return

The idea that Jesus would countenance usury at all is preposterous, whether as a law-loving Jew or as an eschatological prophet of impending final judgment.

The sayings of Matthew 25 and Luke 19, the Parable of the Ten Talents, blessing usury clearly stem from the period of later church reflection on the delay of the parousia. They stress being adequately prepared for the future coming, which has been unaccountably delayed. Time is dragging on interminably. The sayings fail miserably even to imagine how such preparation is in conflict with the law. They give no thought to it. They cannot be "historical".

The same is true of Matthew 5 and Luke 6, though to a lesser extent. The sayings of the Sermon on the Mount have been colored by the delay, too, but are closer in spirit to the thought of the historical Jesus, for whom giving instruction about lending at all would have made no sense but who might have countenanced such a discussion because it was a burning topic in the law and the prophets. Lending at interest of any kind to a "brother" was simply forbidden, though obviously much abused.

Like the Sermon generally, instruction about lending is instruction about and for an interim which Jesus never imagined would come. What we observe here is community reflection, by a community which has already stopped liquidating all possessions in obedience to the call to discipleship and which still has worldly goods to lend. The community is reflecting on what Jesus might have said on the subject, given his high view of the law. Clearly the solution given in Matthew 5 and especially in Luke 6 to lend expecting no return, not even of the principal, is in conflict with the Parable of the Ten Talents (again, Luke has the keener take on Jesus' eschatology and its implications). But the solution does reflect the spirit of the call to discipleship, if not the practice: Sell that thou hast, give to the poor, come follow me. To this extent it is closer to the historical Jesus.

It is remarkable how incoherent is the tradition and its redaction on this point.

 

Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury ... from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

-- Matthew 25:27,29

Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? ... from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.  

-- Luke 19:23,26

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 

-- Matthew 5:42

Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. ... But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

-- Luke 6:30,35

If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.

-- Exodus 22:25

And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. 

-- Leviticus 25:35ff. 

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

-- Deuteronomy 23:19f.

LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? ... He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent.

-- Psalm 15:1, 5

He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between man and man, Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord GOD.

-- Ezekiel 18:8f.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

-- Luke 14:33

Folly most in quickest sense is found

If we had nought but sense, then only they

Should have sound minds which have their senses sound;

But wisdom grows when senses do decay,

And folly most in quickest sense is found.

-- John Davies (1569-1626)

Sorrow finally ends when it becomes tiresome

Pity only on fresh objects stays,

But with the tedious sight of woes decays.

-- John Dryden

Oh the times they are decayin'

 

 

Time sensibly all things impairs;

Our fathers have been worse than theirs,

And we than ours; next age will see

A race more profligate than we,

With all the pains we take,

have skill enough to be.

-- Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon

Kingship in Israel represented the decay of the post-Mosaic order

Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

-- 1 Samuel 8:4ff.

Trump "supporter" Peter Thiel has it exactly backwards: Our economic decline is a symptom of our cultural decline

Peter Thiel tonight at the Republican National Convention, already being quoted here at the libertarian-friendly Real Clear Politics:

 "[F]ake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline."

Back in 2010 Phyliss Schlafly clearly expressed in the wake of the battle against Obamacare how it is precisely cultural degradation leading to the decay of the family which results in the enormous costs destroying the American economy. The truth is that limited government cannot exist without social conservatism. People who won't limit themselves cannot produce it, just as gay people cannot produce the next generation.

While Thiel's sincerity is questioned on psychological grounds, real conservatives recognize that the project of making America great again is futile apart from moral renewal.