If the fact that First Things is produced here weren’t reason enough to love New York, New York Magazine suggests some others, including this one: Pregnant women in New York know how to tough it out in the city, even to the point of giving birth at the subway.
Thanks to Michael Linton for passing along this interesting piece on seven antiphons of Advent in music:
They’re sung one per day, at the Magnificat during vespers. They are very ancient, and extraordinarily rich in references to the prophecies of the Messiah. Their initials form an acrostic. Here they are in transcription, with a guide to interpretation.
Today on our homepage you’ll find a lovely essay by Michael Novak on science and religion. This is the first of three pieces he’s written featuring pair of complementarities; the others are Man and Woman, and Truth and Freedom—both of which will be published here on the First Things homepage over the next few weeks. Stay tuned . . .
Only the infinite God can compass Man’s infinite idiocy. “Diogenes” presents us with this choice cut of scholarly nonsense:
The head of the history department at Virginia Military Institute suggests that the Apostle Paul may have been spying for the Romans.
Rose Mary Sheldon, the coauthor of Operation Messiah: St. Paul, Roman Intelligence and the Birth of Christianity, presented her thesis last week at the International Spy Museum in Washington.
She suggests that Paul may have faked his conversion on the road to Damascus so he could infiltrate Christian congregations and report to Rome on suspicious elements in synagogues across the empire.
Sheldon says Paul’s interaction with Roman officials seems to have been remarkably friendly, and she notes that in his letter to the Romans, he urges Christians to obey them.
This theory (I assume it is not just an elaborate joke) exceeds ordinary foolishness. It has the bold, exuberant independence from reality of creative madness, which makes it almost attractive. Prof. Sheldon’s high-flying imagination could be a blessing if she’d content herself with writing explicit fiction, leaving history to poor earth-bound drudges.
Thanks to Nathaniel Peters for calling our attention to Christianity Today’s response to the Newsweek gay-marriage debacle. CT’s response is brilliant and truly devastating. I do have one quibble, though.
They say,
All this would be infuriating and insulting if it weren’t finally laughable and sad. It suggests one of three things. It could mean that Meacham and Miller are simply ignorant of the nuanced and careful biblical arguments that religious conservatives have made. But this is doubtful, since as journalists of the topic, they have surely been immersed in the literature.
The folks at CT are, no doubt, erring on the side of Christian charity (or, hermeneutical charity, as they say). But I’m afraid they have radically underestimated the ignorance of journalists on the topic of religion generally, and on questions related to elementary Biblical hermeneutics in particular. The assumption that these journalists are “immersed in the literature” is far too generous. I’m tempted to say that their knowledge of these matters is about at the elementary Sunday School level, but that would be an insult to elementary Sunday School teachers everywhere.
The rank incoherence of Meacham’s and Miller’s argument is nicely exposed in a co-authored piece “No Case for Homosexuality in the Bible” by FT’s Joseph Bottum, Biola University philosophy professor John Mark Reynolds, and Mormon elder Bruce D. Porter.
In the latest issue of Newsweek, editor Jon Meacham explains: “To argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt–it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition.” Indeed, he continues, “this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism.” Curiously, he intends this as a defense of Lisa Miller’s cover story, which announces that we should approve homosexual marriage because the Bible tells that Jesus would want us to.
If Meacham and Miller were philosophers they would immediately be embarrassed by the contradiction or as modern philosophers put it nowadays by the “self-referential incoherence.” But they aren’t, of course. In fact, as Bottum, Reynolds, and Porter observe, neither Meacham nor Miller are really engaged in argument at all.
They’re speaking, instead, in familiar tropes and fused-phrases and easy clichés. They’re trying to convey a feeling, really, rather than an argument: Jesus loves us, love is good, homosexuals love one another, marriage is love, love is loving–a sort of warm bath of words, their meanings dissolved into a gentle goo. In their eyes, all nice things must be nice together, and Jesus comes to seem (as J.D. Salinger once mocked) something like St. Francis of Assisi and “Heidi’s grandfather” all in one.
The only relevant question after these criticisms is to determine whether the philosophical and theological ignorance of Meacham and Miller is, as the old moral theologians used to say, vincible or invincible. Now that would make for a truly interesting argument in Newsweek or over at the website On Faith: A Conversation with Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn. But then, one suspects that they just may not be up to it.
In another fine essay of remembrance for Avery Cardinal Dulles, George Weigel writes:
Avery Dulles was a self-consciously ecclesial theologian, who made a deliberate decision to “think with the church.” Some imagined this a form of conservatism; if it was (and such labels really don’t work with theology), it was an evangelical conservatism, an intellectual approach inspired by Christ’s instruction, after the multiplication of loaves ands fishes, to “pick up the fragments, that nothing may be lost.” Dulles explicated ancient truths; he stretched our understanding of them a bit; he probed their implications. But he never sought cheap originality or sound-bite fame.
The best part of the George Bush Shoe Incident is definitely the President’s priceless one-liner: “I saw into his sole.”
That’s about as funny as puns get. If sense of humor is a good rough guide to intelligence, then either Bush is really pretty smart or has a pretty smart aide.
Here’s a warm appreciation of the neglected philanthropists who bankrolled the American conservative movement.
Last year around this time I wrote about a Christmas carol called “Adam Lay Ybounden.” Thanks to our friend Sally Thomas, here’s a video of the carol as performed by the King’s College Choir:
Last Friday evening, Wasilla Bible Church was set fire while several people and two children were inside. The church, which gained national media attention during the presidential campaign as having once been attended by Gov. Sarah Palin, has suffered at least one million dollars in damage due to the attack, which police suspect was an act of arson.
After hearing of the news the next day, Gov. Palin’s office issued this statement:
Gov. Palin stopped by the church this morning, and she told an assistant pastor that she apologizes if the incident is in any way connected to the undeserved negative attention the church has received since she became a vice-presidential candidate on August 29. Whatever the motives of the arsonist, the governor has faith in the scriptural passage that what was intended for evil will in some way be used for good.
Palin’s apology is compassionate but, of course, quite unnecessary. Congregating with her community in worship is no cause for apology.
In the latest issue of Intelligent Life, Anthony Gottlieb offers an interesting commentary on the correlation of faith and fertility in populations today:
Earlier this year a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly three quarters of American adults professed the religion in which they were raised. But instead of finding this glass to be three quarters full, newspapers preferred to notice that it was one quarter empty. It was the minority of Americans who either switched religions, or abandoned religion altogether, who were highlighted in reports of the survey (“Poll Finds a Fluid Religious Life in U.S.” ran a headline in the New York Times). Plainly it does not count as news that religion remains largely a family affair. Yet it should do, because of its largely unnoticed consequences. Some religious groups are dramatically outbreeding others, in ways that have an impact on America, Europe and elsewhere. . . .
If they want to spread their gospel, then, one might half-seriously conclude that atheists and agnostics ought to focus on having more children, to help overcome their demographic disadvantage. Unfortunately for secularists, this may not work even as a joke. Nobody knows exactly why religion and fertility tend to go together. Conventional wisdom says that female education, urbanization, falling infant mortality, and the switch from agriculture to industry and services all tend to cause declines in both religiosity and birth rates. In other words, secularization and smaller families are caused by the same things. Also, many religions enjoin believers to marry early, abjure abortion and sometimes even contraception, all of which leads to larger families. But there may be a quite different factor at work as well. Having a large family might itself sometimes make people more religious, or make them less likely to lose their religion. Perhaps religion and fertility are linked in several ways at the same time.
Mary Eberstadt, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, has suggested several ways in which the experience of forming a family might stimulate religious feelings among parents, at least some of the time. She notes that pregnancy and birth, the business of caring for children, and the horror of contemplating their death, can stimulate an intensity of purpose that might make parents more open to religious sentiments. Many common family events, she reasons, might encourage a broadly spiritual turn of mind, from selfless care for a sick relation to sacrifices for the sake of a child’s adulthood that one might never see.
Thanks to all who’ve written or called about my daughter Faith. She’s in the intensive-care wing of the pediatrics ward at NYU hospital, but the doctors are fairly confident they have the situation under control. Your prayers are more than welcome.
Those seeking more information about Avery Cardinal Dulles might look at an obituary by Joseph Bottum, which ran today in the Times (London).
You may have read on our homepage: Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., died this morning at age ninety.
I was not privileged to know him well, but I will not forget visiting him with Nathaniel this fall at Fordham. He could not talk, but his eyes were as bright as ever, especially as we told him stories of friends and the magazine, and asked him for his prayers. He never gave up his vocation as a theologian: On the shelf over his desk, there in the Jesuit nursing home, was the Greek New Testament, and Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Essential Documents of Vatican II, and a handful of other books indispensable to a scholar and servant of the Church.
In the Public Square this summer (June/July 2008), Father Neuhaus sums up the essence of Cardinal Dulles’ life and work. It is certainly fitting that the column that month leads with the title “Lives Lived Greatly”:
Of the many theologians I have known, very few are Dulles’ equal in the mastery of the entire Christian theological tradition. And always, he demonstrates that he is mastered by that tradition. He is unabashedly the servant of a truth not of his own devising. This is, I am sure, not unrelated to his having entered the Church in his maturity. For him, the Catholic Church is a gift discovered, embraced, and willingly served, not an inherited burden. He senses no need to establish an identity apart from the gift given. The author and anchor of the tradition he would serve is Jesus Christ. Dulles writes: “The true content of Christian tradition is nothing other than Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Although few will achieve the ecclesiastical honor or intellectual renown of Cardinal Dulles, the core of his identity was fidelity and service to Christ. To be mastered by that tradition, mastered by Christ. The words of another Jesuit aptly describe the end of Dulles’ life: . . . The just man justices; / Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; / Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is— / Christ . . .
The much-anticipated Vatican instruction Dignitas Personae was released today on the USCCB website. Here’s an excerpt from the clear and forceful document’s conclusion:
In virtue of the Church’s doctrinal and pastoral mission, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has felt obliged to reiterate both the dignity and the fundamental and inalienable rights of every human being, including those in the initial stages of their existence, and to state explicitly the need for protection and respect which this dignity requires of everyone.
The fulfillment of this duty implies courageous opposition to all those practices which result in grave and unjust discrimination against unborn human beings, who have the dignity of a person, created like others in the image of God. Behind every “no” in the difficult task of discerning between good and evil, there shines a great “yes” to the recognition of the dignity and unalienable value of every singe and unique human being called into existence.
The Christian faithful will commit themselves to the energetic promotion of a new culture of life by receiving the contents of this Instruction with the religious assent of their spirit, knowing that God always gives the grace necessary to observe his commandments and that, in every human being, above all in the least among us, one meets Christ himself (cf. Mt 25:40). In addition, all persons of good will, in particular physicians and researchers open to dialogue and desirous of knowing what is true, will understand and agree with these principles and judgments, which seek to safeguard the vulnerable condition of human beings in the first stages of life and to promote a more human civilization.
Also receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal was Chuck Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship and a co-founder of Evangelicals and Catholics Together. We send our hearty congratulations to him along with Prof. George.
If you haven’t read it already, be sure to check out George Weigel’s short reflection titled “Giving Thanks for America.” Here’s an excerpt:
The vagaries of scheduling put me in Europe for the week before the November 4 election. In conversations in both Rome and Cracow, I was struck by the frequency with which friends and colleagues said that Americans would be electing the leader of the world, not just the leader of the United States. Why did they say this? It’s not because such sentiments reflect a realist appraisal of the facts of American power, although the people with whom I spoke were well enough aware of that–and grateful for it. Rather, the idea that Americans would be electing the world’s leader bespoke their convictions that, unlike Europe, America is not morally exhausted, and that America can still embody a nobler, more humane idea of freedom.
The exchange “Is Mormonism Christian?” between Bruce D. Porter and Gerald R. McDermott from our October issue generated, needless to say, quite a bit of discussion.
And First Things features editor R.R. Reno piqued interest even more when he interviewed Porter and McDermott about their essays and placed both talks online.
But we’re not done yet. Over the past several days, we’ve been compiling all the letters our faithful subscribers sent in in response to the exchange, as well as Porter’s and McDermott’s own replies to those letters. You’ll be able to read them all when our February 2009 issue hits newsstands, so don’t miss out on this fascinating discussion—subscribe today.
The winter 2008 issue of the Review of Faith and International Affairs focuses on perspectives on “Islam and Pluralism.” The journal includes a roundtable of responses to A Common Word Between Us and You, the October 2007 letter from Muslim leaders to the Vatican and other Christian leaders and to the controversial Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to “A Common Word Between Us and You,” drafted by several professors at Yale Divinity School and published with dozens of endorsing signatures, including many prominent evangelicals, in the New York Times.
Evangelical theologian John G. Stackhouse tells us Why I Signed the Yale Response to “A Common Word” after noting some hesitation and despite several reservations. I contributed Why I Would Not Have Signed the Yale Response to “A Common Word.”
As I say in my response, I’m inclined to think that the theological issues alone are sufficient to reject the document, or at least to cause Christians to think a lot harder about what might be included in a formal response. But my central concern is the Yale statement’s inexcusable failure to tackle head on the dismal lack of religious liberty in the Islamic world and to challenge the Muslim leader’s disingenuous statement that “justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part of love of the neighbor.” My conclusion:
Evangelicals missed a golden opportunity to call attention to the contradiction between rhetoric designed for Western public consumption and statements made within, and for, the Islamic community. Rather than again pursuing “interreligious dialogue”, they could have taken the opportunity to publicly confront the theologically sanctioned violations of religious liberty in Muslim-majority societies. Evangelicals could have contributed to the public debate had they offered up something like the following: “If you believe that freedom of religion is rooted in love of neighbor (assuming that Christians who affirm the Trinity and deny that Mohammed was a true Prophet can still be considered neighbors in an Islamic state), then please join us in a public endorsement—a “common word”—asserting the right of individual human beings to choose, proclaim, and change their religion without fear of legal sanctions. Won’t you join us in a “common word” calling upon Saudi Arabia, Iran, and all Muslim-majority countries to allow the public free exercise of religion, including the right to convert without legal sanction? Won’t you publicly join us in denouncing all those who have issued fatwas calling for penal sanctions for ‘apostasy’? Will you publicly join us in a “common word” to repudiate by name any past fatwas calling for the discrimination and persecution of ‘apostates’?” Such a statement might well have been “scandalous,” but that would have been a scandal worth embracing.
