On Easter Sunday, I was able to sit in prayer for a while at the Shrine run by sweet Italian nuns on top of the Mountain of the Beatitudes, the most famous of Sermons. It was infinitely peaceful, and I needed it.
Later it hit me: What if the mad leader of Iran fulfilled his pledge to wipe Israel from the map with the Iranian nuclear weapon, coming soon? What would we Christians do without the Mount of the Sermon?
Without Capernaum? Without Nazareth? Without Cana?
Without the lovely and mystical city of Jerusalem–without Golgotha, and the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Tomb?
Without Bethlehem?
Without the Sea of Tiberius (the Sea of Galilee), where Jesus after his Resurrection had Peter and the others cast their net on the other side of their boat?
Back in the 1940’s, when Reinhold Niebuhr started Christianity in Crisis to support the war against Nazism, he abandoned his earlier pacifism, and his earlier too-simply pious way of wishing evil away, and called for a new tough-minded Christian realism.
He rooted this realism in the writings of St. Augustine on the observable presence of sin wherever men live and act – even in the courts of law, even in marriage, to name two of the better human institutions.
Augustine voiced the awful conclusion that there will always be wars, despite the pious dreams of many. For wars flow from the inner heart of the City of Man, its egotism, pride, ambition, and other sins–that is, distorted acts of all kinds.
Because he rooted his new political realism in his own theological conversion–his new meditation on the wisdom and trustworthy observations of Augustine–Niebuhr called the new movement he called for by the theological name, Renewed Orthodoxy or Neo-Orthodoxy.
We again need such Christian realism. Such tough-mindedness. The most dreadful war of all time is just ahead of us, is already well begun. Many of us want to save the Christian Holy Places, and Israel, too–our best ally in the world, the creator of the most economically creative and democratic society in its region.
Fulfilling this desire will not be easy in the next twelve months, fateful months, clock-ticking months. If the nuclear capacity of Iran is not destroyed before functioning nuclear weapons are in their silos or other weapons platforms, the whole world will experience blackmail.
To make an object lesson, one nation in particular is on notice that it is listed as first for destruction.
How will we live with ourselves if Israel is annihilated with nuclear bombs? How will we survive? How will our understanding of the Word of God survive, if the fleshly, tangible heart of Jewish and Christian faith is obliterated?
Yes, we need a new, tough Christian Renewal of Orthodoxy, Neo-Orthodoxy, Christian realism. We face tough actions in the next month and the months after. In the next month, because Congress is about to work out a reconciliation of its two strong bills (in the Senate and in the House) setting in place very threatening sanctions against Iran’s capacity to function.
That bill then will go to the desk of President Obama, who may or may not sign it. Great pressure will have to be exerted, life-or-death pressure, to guarantee that that bill is signed. Our future depends on it.
If sanctions do not work, it will not be moral simply to take the easy road of allowing the Iranians to outwit us and outlast us. They intend to go ahead with their mad scheme. They calculate that we lack the moral strength to stop them.
Who is ready to say that as the last of all resorts the Iranian nuclear effort must be destroyed by force before it comes to term? I for one do say it. Maybe some can show that Christian realism, Neo-Orthodoxy, can be satisfied by an easier path. I do not think so, but I am open to argument.
What are the reasons against? What are the reasons for?
We do not have much time to wait before getting that argument going. We must get it done soon, in order to be able to act in time.
What is at stake is whether any future Christians will be able to sit and pray where Our Lord Jesus once preached the unforgettable Sermon. And much else besides.
April 19th, 2010 | 8:25 pm
The so-called “holy” places are nothing special. They’re no more or less holy than the rest of God’s creation.
Jesus lives in heaven, and the Spirit is within us. He is not in the tomb. Not in the Temple. Not on the Mount of Olives. You can’t get closer to him by going to those places. Why would our understanding of the Word be any different?
The tragedy of Israel being annihilated would be the loss of life. Nothing of our salvation would be lost.
April 19th, 2010 | 11:06 pm
While the place may be no more holy than anyother place in creation. The place represents the places of special events. Do you not remember with special feelings the places where you had special things happen in your life? I have special feelings for several places of no special import due to the things that happened to me there. Sometimes we need these places to ground us in our walk.
April 19th, 2010 | 11:13 pm
“The tragedy of Israel being annihilated would be the loss of life”, and the fact that the Islamists will be coming for us next–other than that, no big deal. Oh, yeah, the possible loss of our own souls for not helping the Jews resist anihilation.
April 19th, 2010 | 11:22 pm
While asking God for forgiveness for the senseless destruction of Iraq, destroy Goldman Sachs before destroying Iran because Goldman Sachs is a greater threat to the Christian world than Iran. Learn to prioritize before starting a Renewed Crusade or Neo-Crusade.
April 20th, 2010 | 12:03 am
“Israel, too–our best ally in the world, the creator of the most economically creative and democratic society in its region”
Really? Israel is our “best ally in the world?” In point of fact, her refusal to end the occupation and deal justly with what the rest of the world recognizes to be a grave injustice makes her one of our most problematic allys. As for Israel being a “democracy,” not as long as she continues to occupy the Palestinian territories and insist that one particular religious and ethnic group has primacy. A true democracy offers full and complete citizenship to all, regardless of ethnicity or religion.
April 20th, 2010 | 12:35 am
To believe that Israel is “no more or less holy than the rest of God’s creation” seems limited and at odds with the reality that our salvation is contained within both spirit and matter — hence the sacrament of the Eucharist.
God could have chosen any location upon the face of his earth to lead his chosen people and complete the salvation of mankind through Jesus Christ. In fact, he could have made location irrelevant had he so chosen. And yet he chose Israel — the people and the place — time and again. Furthermore, we know from God himself that certain places are indeed holier than others (Moses and the burning bush, to name one).
I do not believe God acts without purpose, therefore because he chose Israel, I do believe that the survival of Israel matters, somehow, to our salvation and to our understanding of the Word.
April 20th, 2010 | 4:04 am
Michael Novak is right about this. Losing the Holy places in Israel would in itself be a great tragedy, second only to the loss of the Israeli people.
The Arabs and Iran have made it perfectly clear that they wish to destroy Israel, just as the radical Islamists are intent on destroying the West. Meanwhile leaders in the West including Pres. Obama are dangerously vacillating with their policy against these serious enemies. The situation is reasonably analogous to that of that of the Thirties with our timidity in dealing with Germany under Hitler.
April 20th, 2010 | 7:28 am
The mullahs in Qom are much too canny to simply nuke Israel. It is they, not their sock puppet Ahmedinejad, who rule Iran. Instead, they will use the constant threat of attack to extort concession after concession.
April 20th, 2010 | 8:09 am
I have been listening to talk about the “Middle East Peace Process” since the Six Day War in 1967. It’s an illusion. There will be one of two outcomes in the Israeli-Arab conflict: Either the State of Israel will cease to exist or America will impose a settlement in the region. Otherwise we will have endless talk, endless “negotiation”, meaningless handshakes, meaningless “spirit of Camp David” drivel — forever.
April 20th, 2010 | 8:43 am
A few stirred up Muslims will not destroy the West no matter what their intentions. May His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia guide the rebuilding of the Holy Empire.
April 20th, 2010 | 9:01 am
Israel is hardly our best ally. Right now, especially. This wistfulness is merely a Potemkin village that is a bad disguise for war-mongering, and it’s interesting how it relies on sentimentality, not real tough-mindedness.
Oh, and don’t take Canada for granted.
April 20th, 2010 | 9:02 am
Yes, let’s have $10 a gallon gasoline so Michael Novak and other privileged people can meditate on the Mount of the Beatitudes.
April 20th, 2010 | 9:22 am
“Neo-Orthodoxy”? Oh that’s rich. Michael Novak seeks to conflate Christianity explicitly and Catholicism implicitly with Neo-Conservatism. And what is the product of that unseemly amalgamation? Why perpetual American Imperialism sustained by Military Exceptionalism of course. Warrior culture spiritually sanctified.
FT can do better in selecting it’s contributors and board members.
April 20th, 2010 | 9:38 am
JBrinkmeyer, you seemed to have overlooked a key phrase in Mr. Novaks piece,”in its’ region”. Unless something happened last night while I slept, it is the only credible Democracy in the middle east. The Knesset has Arabs in it. Do you think there is a Jew in any governing position in any of its’ neighboring,explicitly Moslem countries. Look at the map-Israel is about the size of New Jersey 22,000 sq.Km.. the countries that surround it are about 250 times bigger, 5,200,000 sq.Km.. Israels population is 7,200,000 compared to its’ neighbors 190,000,000, 26 times more. Israels GDP is 200.6 billion and their neighbors GDP is 2.4 trillion, 10 times more. Most say or have said they wish to eliminate the Jews of Israel. Israel has been under an existential threat since it’s inception as a result of a U.N. vote in 1948 after which they were immediately attacked by their neighbors and attacked again in 1967. The Palestinians (sic) are a sacrificial lamb to the geo-political purposes of their fellow Moslems and others.
To the main point of the article, Israel is the guiding star, the geographical, historical and emotional center of Christianity and Judaism, it is the bread of our religions. It is the place to which we point and say, he came to us there, there is where he was born, lived, died and rose. All as enfleshed, as we are, man. To miss this is to miss the central drama for a mankind draped in flesh.
April 20th, 2010 | 10:21 am
Even if Israel did not exist, there would be no peace in the Middle-East. The existence of Israel is a convenient straw-man for the corrupt Arab Governments to draw the attention of their gullible, isolated and mostly illiterate populations away from their own problems. The Persians have been attempting to build an Empire for the last 3000 years. The idea that the West can trade tiny strips of land for peace is a ridiculous, naive idea.
April 20th, 2010 | 10:23 am
The US has a clear interest in keeping the Middle East/Holy Lands an open, accessible, and secure place, but even with all of our power, the US cannot change the facts of geography. Hence, Israel has to do a better job in governing its space if it wants to survive as a state – its legitimacy cannot rest only on Jewish identity. Beyond the fact that many Jewish citizens do not appear to share in a consensus on what Jewish identity means and have created a very splintered political scene, a large number of Israeli citizens or inhabitants are not Jewish at all. Palestinians have also proven to lack the capacity for governing a modern state, though the odds have also been against them for most of the past 60 years plus. From a Christian perspective, we need to remember that Christian Palestinians have also suffered greatly. As for the Iranians, I agree with the earlier post that the mullahs are most likely to use their nuclear power as a stick to extract concessions over time, but given the fanaticism that exists in sectors of that government, the risk is still there that they can choose annihilation over life. So, as always, there are no good options here, and absolute positions are unlikely to lead to any improvement of the situation. I don’t particularly like the bowing and scraping stance of President Obama, but let’s watch the experiment play out. Does less outward arrogance on the part of the US lead to better alliances? Or do allies come to us because we assert a leadership role and they think we have power? Given our fiscal situation, we risk losing some power. We will have a better sense of the response of potential new and old allies in the coming months, hopefully by the time of the US mid term elections.
April 20th, 2010 | 11:31 am
Note to Editors: Most websites of publications comparable to FT do not allow comments to be posted indiscriminately. Shouldn’t there at least be a mechanism to ensure that people posting on your website share the magazine’s mission in some minimal but measurable way, for instance by paying for a subscription? How does it further the mission of FT to subject its most distinguished contributors to the ad hominem sniper fire of anyone who happens to have an e-mail address? Perhaps you see this forum as a sort of open-mic alternative to your more formal publications? Or perhaps you don’t even read the comments?
April 20th, 2010 | 12:59 pm
“The most dreadful war of all time is just ahead of us, is already well begun.”
“Great pressure will have to be exerted, life-or-death pressure, to guarantee that that bill is signed. Our future depends on it.”
So, the most dreadful war of all time has already begun, and our future depends on Congress and the Senate passing a sanctions bill. Hmm… Am I the only one who thinks this is ludicrous? Are there any other First Things bloggers who think this is ludicrous?
April 20th, 2010 | 1:39 pm
Absolutely appalling.
An aggressive war against Iran would be a moral and political disaster.
April 20th, 2010 | 1:59 pm
You’ve neglected to consider that Israel already has nuclear weapons, as do three other nations in Iran’s general area. If we go by historical precedents (USA/USSR and Pakistan/India), a nuclear standoff between Israel and Iran is more likely to reduce actual violence. Mutually assured destruction seems to be great for making people think twice about attacking, and I’ve seen no evidence that the wealthy and powerful in Iran are uniquely suicidal.
April 20th, 2010 | 2:09 pm
John, Michael Novak, following Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr, is a clear-headed Christian realist who takes seriously the threat of Ahmadinejad and mullahs in Iran to destroy Israel. I for one share Mr. Novak’s concern and regard those who low-key the threat to Israel as rather naive.
If America were threatened with destruction by a nearby radical regime about to acquire nuclear weapons, we would surely act decisively with tough sanctions and go to war should they not succeed.
Americans who stand idly by watching a crucial ally seriously threatened need to get real.
April 20th, 2010 | 2:49 pm
[...] of my commenters pointed me to this bizarre item* by Michael Novak at one of the blogs at First Things. Novak writes: We again need such Christian [...]
April 20th, 2010 | 3:17 pm
Thank God for the clear-headed Daniel Larison. May whatever tribe he belongs to increase and this tribe of madness wither.
April 20th, 2010 | 3:29 pm
Actually, Daniel Larison is a muddle-headed throwback to the period of heartland isolationism that almost succeeded in keeping America out of World War II. Must be something in that Mid-West air.
April 20th, 2010 | 4:14 pm
“The mullahs in Qom are much too canny to simply nuke Israel.”
People keep saying this, but I do not see it. Have their methods in dealing with the recent protests struck you as the actions of reasonable men?
April 20th, 2010 | 4:35 pm
This post is remarkable. Has the author actually read the Sermon on the Mount?
Did Yeshua the Nazorean not say, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
I fail to see how the author could consider himself a Christian, and yet advocate for pre-emptive war.
April 20th, 2010 | 4:48 pm
From observing folks like the author, it seems you may not be a Christian at all if you actually believe all that He said and died for.
April 20th, 2010 | 5:01 pm
I find it really odd that no one has pointed out that one of Islam’s three holiest sites is located in Jerusalem. You think that Iran would destroy the Dome of the Rock with a nuclear weapon? That’s silly. And is it really likely that they’d attack Bethlahem, in the West Bank?
It’s plausible that Iran would nuke Tel Aviv, which would be horrific for all of the reasons why the use of any nuclear weapon is horrific (and why, in my judgment, just war doctrine doesn’t justify the use of such weapons). But that doesn’t directly implicate the holiest Christian (or Jewish) sites. From which it follows that the “loss of holy places” isn’t really on the table.
April 20th, 2010 | 5:18 pm
I should suggest that those who equate Christ’s Word with pacifism might read Augustine’s “Tranquilitas Ordinis” that remarks about the hard need for just war in a fallen world. An excellent First Things article on this subject is “Just War As It Is and Was” by James Turner Johnson including the following:
“The just war tradition came into being during the Middle Ages as a way of thinking about the right use of force in the context of responsible government of the political community. With deep roots in both ancient Israel and classical Greek and Roman political thought and practice, the origins of a specifically Christian just war concept first appeared in the thought of Augustine. A systematic just war theory came only some time later, beginning with Gratian’s Decretum in the middle of the twelfth century, maturing through the work of two generations of successors, the Decretists and the Decretalists, and taking theological form in the work of Thomas Aquinas and others in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Later in the Middle Ages, and particularly during the era of the Hundred Years War, this canonical and theological conception of just war was further elaborated by incorporation of ideas, customs, and practices from the chivalric code and the experience of war, from renewed attention to Roman law, especially the jus gentium, and from the developing experience of government.”
The article is at:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/just-waras-it-was-and-is-2
Those well intentioned folk who wish to avoid war in the long run cause terrible wars, such as WW II that Winston Churchill regarded as the “unnecessary war”, due to those well meaning pacifists and isolationists who couldn’t resolve to stand up to Germany.
April 20th, 2010 | 7:04 pm
Peter Leavitt, you presented an ad hominem defense of Michael Novak, praising him as a thinker in the line of Augustine and Niebuhr, but failing to address the quotations I specifically objected to in my comment. I don’t think you can call Michael Novak a clear-headed realist as long as he claims that the most dreadful war of all time has already begun, and that our future now hangs on the passage of a new round of sanctions. These statements are not just false, they are preposterous.
You don’t have to be a naive pacifist who low-keys threats to Israel’s security to object to that kind of nonsense.
April 20th, 2010 | 7:37 pm
“What if the mad leader of Iran fulfilled his pledge to wipe Israel from the map with the Iranian nuclear weapon, coming soon? What would we Christians do without the Mount of the Sermon?
“Without Capernaum? Without Nazareth? Without Cana?
“Without the lovely and mystical city of Jerusalem–without Golgotha, and the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Tomb?
“Without Bethlehem?”
BE NOT AFRAID!
“In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”
April 20th, 2010 | 8:08 pm
Well, John, if one is a devout Judeo- Christian, viewing the Holy Land as a sacred place, the annihilation of this land would indeed be the most dreadful war of all time.
April 20th, 2010 | 8:24 pm
“devout Judeo- Christian”
is that a new religion?
April 20th, 2010 | 9:35 pm
Yes, John Cummins, it is a new religion; and First Things is becoming its newsletter, it seems. Interfaith relationships are great, but here they seem increasing predicated on mutual war-drumming. That is the new religion.
Oh for the days when someone like Stanley Hauerwas was at least borderline acceptable within the First Things circle.
April 21st, 2010 | 9:00 am
The snipers and anti-Semites are a menace to our righteous Judeo-Christian religion. Death to all Muslim Third World men. “Our Struggle” is an interreligious and nonpartisan result of an aversion to conversion. Peace with Arabs proposals are preposterous. Those who use words to threaten our sacred lands must be killed before they kill us. Memories of WWII are fresh in our minds and that is proof enough that preemptive war is just. The use propaganda is a tried and proven method of instilling fear in civil society. Exploiting those fears in the voting public of a proxy super power under the cover of free speech was inventive. No doubt we are cleaver. The Iraq war was a “Clean Break” miscalculation but let’s not revisit that old war because they only lost tens of thousands of people in that war. The next one has already begun and it will be the mother of all wars.
April 21st, 2010 | 9:31 am
>>“The mullahs in Qom are much too canny to simply nuke Israel.”
People keep saying this, but I do not see it. Have their methods in dealing with the recent protests struck you as the actions of reasonable men?<<
Yes, I think they are. Their citizens, whom they are oppressing, are not armed with nuclear weapons. They can push them around and throw them in jail all day long without risking war. They will not, I repeat, nuke Israel. They will threaten to do it, and they will threaten other targets.
April 21st, 2010 | 10:01 am
This is all speculative lunacy based on incalculable contingencies. Thinking realistically, and not putting all Muslims into a monolithic category, does anyone really believe that a bunch of Shi’ites in Iran want to nuke the Holy Land? For what gain? For what rational reason might Persian Shi’ites want a nuclear weapon? If they get a nuclear weapon, we won’t invade and destroy their country. Our naval presence in the Gulf would be counter-balanced. That would be a realistic answer. Not some hyperbolic hysteria.
And if we’re going to speak of Christian realism, the Israeli state as it is currently constituted is not the Davidic Kingdom. One just needs to look to the pride parades in Jerusalem to see the moral quality of that state: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1095654.html
Further, the Israeli state along with a number of Palestinian muslims are the greatest continuing threat to Palestinian Christians and Christian Holy sites in the region, not a bunch of Persians surrounded by the US military. American Catholics, particularly those influenced by the Evangelical right, have turned a blind eye to the plight of Palestinian Christians who have suffered tremendously at the hands of the Leviathan state. Just look at the scars our tax dollars have helped impose on Bethlehem with the apartheid wall (yes b/c it keeps out ethnic Palestinian Christians too). Just look at what the Israeli government just did this Easter to Christians trying to Worship at the Holy Sepulcher by denying all Jerusalem Christians access to the Church:
http://www.eappi.org/en/news/eappi-news/se/article/4834/holy-land-christians-resp.html
I wonder what price we Americans will pay for ignoring, and even financing the assault on the Church by the Israeli state. So yes, there is a current threat to the Christian Holy Sites. To horse, a Crusade is needed to counteract the imminent threat to the Church, if we are to look at the situation as Christian realists and not with a bunch of hyperbolic nonsense meant to stir up the war machine.
April 21st, 2010 | 4:19 pm
I can understand that a religion that rejects idolatry would cherish physical objects, e.g. places, that serve as reminders. But to claim these places to be indispensable in their forms…where is the line between that and idolatry???
April 21st, 2010 | 6:14 pm
jrm, true religion rejects idolatry, though it, also, tends not to be ethereally gnostic. Anyone who has visited the Holy Land and understands its religious and earthly value is appalled at the very real prospect that it could be annihilated.
Those who cringe at the prospect of a hard war against Iran are in the same camp as those who after the horror of WW I lacked the backbone to fight Nazi Germany, though thanks to the hard-headed realists, Churchill and Roosevelt, eventually Germany was defeated. Make no mistake about the fact that Iran at present is very much similar to Germany in the Thirties.
April 21st, 2010 | 7:08 pm
This is sheer lunacy, as pointed out by numerous other commentators here. Seriously? You actually BELIEVE that those physical locations are important to our faith? You don’t read the New Testament much, do you? I’m not even going to bother pointing out all the theological and doctrinal problems with this idea- but I will say this: How far down that rabbit-hole have you gone?
My guess is that like a typical red-blooded patriotic American, you place an inordinate amount of importance on historical locations: Plymouth Rock, Gettysburg, Boston Harbour, Omaha Beach, New York City. Those places helped define your nation, yes. But if they were wiped out by some man-made or natural catastrophe, America would not cease to exist; it’s the same with Christianity. Any number of historically-significant places in Christian theology no longer exist: how many of the places St. Paul preached at still stand? For that matter, how about the temple where Jesus taught? Do we know conclusively where Christ was buried? Do we know the location of the stable He was born in? Do we know what countries sent their Wise Men (aka astrologers) to find Him? Yet, for all the importance those places have in our faith, it matters not what condition they are in, does it? Do you really think that the Dome of the Rock, Gesthemane, and all those places you mentioned are vital to our faith? To our salvation?
That, my friend, is idolatry. Pure and simple.
April 21st, 2010 | 9:22 pm
Yeah, let’s not reenact the crusades. Preemptive invasion is high on the list of cures that are worse than the disease.
April 21st, 2010 | 9:58 pm
The Gospel according to St Richard Cheney is ersatz, magical realism.
April 22nd, 2010 | 5:44 am
“A time is coming when people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”
–Jesus (John 4:21)
Considering that the vast majority of Christians have never been to Israel, I’d say that if those holy places are lost, most Christians would get on with their lives. The Bible isn’t about the *places*–it’s about what happened there. Without Jesus, Bethlehem would be just another tiny town to us, with no significance whatsoever. The Mount of Olives would be just another lump of rock. That tomb just outside Jerusalem would belong to just another ordinary guy. It’s not the town itself that’s important, it’s the events and the people that made the town special for that one moment in history. To forget this is to commit idolatry.
Considering the typical American perspective toward terrorism abroad, it would also be safe to assume that within a week of such an attack, most American Christians would have completely forgotten that millions of people–Christian, Jewish, and Muslim–had just DIED in that attack, that millions more (again, of all three faiths) were in danger of death from radioactive fallout, or that the holy places in question (especially Jerusalem) are ALSO sacred to Muslims (naturally, for different reasons).
For some Americans, “love thy neighbor” means “ignore everything happening around the world unless it hurts YOU.” We can’t afford to do that anymore. We are our brothers’ keepers–and ALL of mankind, regardless of race, gender, nationality, or religion, is brother and sister to us. We forget this at our peril.
April 22nd, 2010 | 11:58 am
Invoking Niebuhr’s name to justify war with Iran shows profound ignorance of Niebuhr.
“A democracy…cannot of course engage in an explicit preventive war.” – R. Niebuhr
April 22nd, 2010 | 12:05 pm
I find it interesting that the overriding concern for this argument is the preservation of places. The human toll of what Novak suggests is as horrific as it is ill-informed. The premise is that Ahmadinijad has some sort of power with regard to any nukes in Iran (real or fictional). In reality this guy has no authority in international matters.
Novak wrenches the just war tradition beyond all recognition with this post.
April 22nd, 2010 | 10:49 pm
What, are you channeling Urban II? Didn’t Christendom already learn the last time it went on a Crusade to liberate the Levant from the ‘Infidels?’ It’s 2010, not 1095….
April 22nd, 2010 | 11:13 pm
…and First Things is no longer a recognizably Christian publication. The Ochlophobist is correct; the era of First Things is over (but then perhaps it ended in 2003).
April 23rd, 2010 | 10:35 am
My first reaction was to check the calendar—nope it’s not April 1st…
my second reaction is to ask what Mr. Novak has been smoking…
my third reaction: Fr. Neuhaus must be spinning in his grave about now…that “First Things would ever give platform to someone advocating a “First Strike”…and can’t be bothered to justify in in anyway other than nostalgia and the fear that somehow the Power that holds Faith and the World together magically lies in some historical tourist sites…this is more bizarre than anything Dan Brown could have thought up.
I think this officially ends the “First Things” era of being…”an inter-religious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”
I think this officially ends the “First Things” era of being…”an inter-religious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”
This article makes a mockery of everything First Things stood for and still claims it stand for on it’s Masthead…. no inter-religious dialogue here, no research or education, nonpartisan or otherwise…and when someone invokes Niebuhr (!) in the same breath he advocates an unjustified aggressive war in the name of nostalgia(?) for Holy Places, I am pretty sure the state of religion in informing public philosophy and ordering society is dead in the water.
April 23rd, 2010 | 10:52 am
Krakow said “death to all Muslim Third World men.”
I just have to assume you’re not a Christian. What’s your stake in this?
April 24th, 2010 | 6:13 am
Given America’s invasion of Iraq, isn’t it actually pretty rational of Iran to want to develop nuclear weapons? How else can they effectively defend themselves from American invasion, which, judging from this article, is a very real possibility?
April 26th, 2010 | 12:41 am
Wow, fifty responses, that’s a lot. But Michael, it’s a really problematic piece you wrote and the fuss is justified.
Sure, I understand the emotional impact of scenery, but golly. You write: “How will our understanding of the Word of God survive, if the fleshly, tangible heart of the Jewish and Christian faith is obliterated?” Well, the Romans obliterated it, remember? And they apparently did a pretty good job of it, leaving “not a stone on stone.” And before them the Babylonians took a swipe at Jerusalem too, even destroying—in all probability—the Ark of the Covenant. So all those holy places have already been destroyed, twice, right?
But as far as I know, both Christianity and Judaism survived. I mean I’ve met them, Christians and Jews. There’re around. Doing things like writing blogs. Me? I’ve never been to Jerusalem. It would be nice to go sometime but not having walked through the city hasn’t had any impact upon my faith. I’m a Protestant so it’s basically a given that folks like me think the Lord can be found pretty much everywhere in his creation (Psalm 139 and all that): Jerusalem, Kansas City, Cape Town, Mars, it’s a long list. And anyway the Jerusalem where Jesus walked is several feet below the streets of the modern city and I don’t think the Israelis would be very keen on me digging up their pavement to walk where Jesus walked. So, Jerusalem being destroyed by the Iranians—or anybody else (the Danes, Egyptians, the Jamaican Bobsled team), it would be horrible, but would it threaten the core of Christians’ faith? Not mine. And I don’t think yours either. And no Christian I know. And Jews? Would observant Jews suddenly become Scientologists if Jerusalem were destroyed? Yeah, right. Not the ones I know. They don’t quit so easily. Four Thousand Years of not quitting.
The war-drumming for the sake of preserving buildings is, well I think it’s pretty bad. Sorry to have to say that. Preserving life, protecting the innocent, defending your country from invasion, yes–that’s different, but buildings are just buildings. Eventually they all fall down (Ok, the pyramids, you got me on that one).
Oh, and about beating those drums of war: does anybody on this blog speak Farsi? I certainly don’t. But I have a number of Iranian friends who detest the current Iranian leadership but who tell me the translations we’re getting through our news sources are frequently highly problematic. And we’ve had this business before. Remember when in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev said about the West, “We will bury you” and how it was talked about here? I certainly do. My parents’ and grandparents’ generations took that as a threat to invade and kill us (yep, duck and cover, I did a lot of that). But Khrushchev was making a statement about the dialectic of history, communism would flourish while capitalism would wither and die. Russians knew this, and Russian speakers in the West knew this, but putting Khrushchev’s comment in its appropriate context wasn’t to the advantage of particular folks in the United States (and certainly not to the stock holders of that industrial-military complex Eisenhower was getting nervous about)—so Khrushchev’s rhetoric was often repeated but its bloodthirsty character never corrected. Is something similar going on here with what we’re hearing from Iran, all of it translated? The Farsi speakers I know say so.
April 26th, 2010 | 12:29 pm
There is a vast blackened radioactive plain of obsidian glass.
Two pilgrims are walking on it – one Muslim and the other Jewish.
They are each, alone, here to die on their last scared rite of visitation here to this shared Holy Ground.
Zero, there is, Ground, black and hard and lifeless.
A blue sky above and far distant shores with nothing else but molten nuclear ruin.
The pilgrims see each other.
“You!” Yells the Muslim and his face contorts in hate as he runs towards him fists raised.
“You!” Screams the Jew and he sprints towards the other enraged.
They meet and stop, just arms length apart.
They stare in each others faces, each other’s tears and the abominable desolation all around them.
It was once Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa, the Temple Mount, the Golden Mosque… The Holy Land.
Transformed into a nuclear desert fatal, lifeless uninhabitable and now known as the Million Year Burn.
Because that’s how long it’ll be before anyone can live there again.
“We .. Us, .. we *both* caused this!”
They embrace in a sudden epiphany of shared humanity, shared loss.
“Too late my brother, if we’d only know God gave this to both our peoples and meant us to
*Share* ..”
Then they die in each others arms.
***
… &, yes, the pilgrims could be a Muslim and a Christian or even Christian and Jewish as well..
Jesus famously said “blessed be the peacemakers” & “love thy neighbour” – “thy neighbour” being Iranians and Palestinians and Israelis and Americans and Jews throughout the world and Muslims throughout the world and Christians throughout the world.
Everyone. Is. One. Before. God.
Peace is in our hearts not any one place.
That’s my feeling on this anyhow.
April 29th, 2010 | 1:26 am
Most of those Christian holy sites are within close range of Islamic holy sites, so of course they’re not going to drop bombs. Besides, Muslims venerate Jesus (admittedly as a particularly great prophet, not as the Messiah), so many Christian holy places are quite holy in Islam as well. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for example, gets a lot of Muslim visitors.
(Incidentally, the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are held by two Muslim families – a tradition that goes back centuries, as a way of preventing CHRISTIANS from doing damage to the Church, because there were so many fights between different Christian sects over who should control it!)
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact