Civilization, as opposed to culture, which is given up to the contemplation of eternity, tends to be futurist. Machinery and technique are chiefly responsible for the speeding up of life and its exclusive aspiration towards the future. Organic life is slower, less impetuous, and more concerned with essentials, while civilized life is superficial and accidental; for it puts the means and the instruments of life before the ends whose significance is lost. The consciousness of civilized men is concentrated exclusively upon the means and techniques of life considered as the only reality, whiles its aims are regarded as illusory.
As a reaction against the medieval ascetic ideal, man puts aside both resignation and contemplation, and attempts to dominate nature, organize life and increase its productive forces. This, however, does not help to bring into closer communion with the inner life and soul of nature. On the contrary, by mastering it technically and organizing its forces man becomes further removed from it. Organization proves to be the death of the organism. Life becomes increasingly a matter of technique. The machine sets its stamp upon the human spirit and all its manifestations. Thus civilization has neither a natural nor a spiritual, but a mechanical foundation. It represents par excellence the triumph of technique over both the spirit and the organism.
- Nikolia Berdyaev, The Meaning of History
Friday, July 17, 2009
Kierkegaard on personal orientation to God
There is only One who knows what He Himself is and that is God; and He also knows what every man in himself is, for it is precisely by being before God that every man in himself is, for it is precisely by being before God that every man has his Being. The man who is not before God is not himself. A man can be himself only by being before Him who is in and for Himself. If one is oneself by being in Him who is in and for Himself, one can be in others or before others, but one cannot be oneself being merely before others.
- Soren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses
- Soren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Psychology of the Crowd
Although I don't agree with some of Robert Inchausti's ideas (especially his failure to see this historical impact of Pietism on his work), he's had a bunch of decent nuggets in his work Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and other Christians in Disguise. I actually recommend his chapter "The Role of Christian Mysteries in the Life of the Modern Mind." Here's a timely quote I just ran across in his discussion of S. Kierkegaard:
"The biblical narrative can still call individuals back to a primary relationship to their Creator, but this potential is being lost as its message is made to conform more and more to the psychology of the crowd (that mythic, hypothesized abstraction substantiated via demographics, statistics, and social trends.)"
"The biblical narrative can still call individuals back to a primary relationship to their Creator, but this potential is being lost as its message is made to conform more and more to the psychology of the crowd (that mythic, hypothesized abstraction substantiated via demographics, statistics, and social trends.)"
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Sin as God's Judgment
With respect to Romans 1:26 ("For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions..."), I came across this great passage by the Puritan Thomas Watson:
That sin is worse than affliction is evident because the greatest judgment God lays upon man in this life is to let him sin without control. When the Lord's displeasure is most severely kindled against a person, he does not say, I will bring the sword and the plague on this man, but, I will let him sin on: 'So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust' (Ps. 81.12). Now, if the giving up of a man to his sins (in the account of God himself) is the most dreadful evil, then sin is far worse than affliction. And if it be so, then how should it be hated by us!
That sin is worse than affliction is evident because the greatest judgment God lays upon man in this life is to let him sin without control. When the Lord's displeasure is most severely kindled against a person, he does not say, I will bring the sword and the plague on this man, but, I will let him sin on: 'So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust' (Ps. 81.12). Now, if the giving up of a man to his sins (in the account of God himself) is the most dreadful evil, then sin is far worse than affliction. And if it be so, then how should it be hated by us!
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Wearied by God
"Wherein has God wearied us, unless his mercies have wearied us?"
--Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance
--Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Provoking quote on Abortion
Living in an epoch that is selfish as well as matriarchal, our lifeboats are no longer marked "women and children first," only "women first." We invent euphemisms, such as "choice" for killing, and sophomoric dilemmas, such as pretending not to know when life begins, to ensure that nothing hinders Virginia's quest for Santa Claus. No obstacle must interfere with her goal of self-fulfillment -- least of all an issue (as it were) of her healthy sexual appetite.
Thoughts from an ex-fetus, by George Jonas
Thoughts from an ex-fetus, by George Jonas
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
John Piper on abortion
A friend actually brought this video to my attention. Then a few days later I came across it as a post on a conservative blog site. It makes me appreciate Piper all the more
Monday, May 18, 2009
James Matthew Wilson on abortion
Here's just a quote from a useful article on abortion from one of my favorite blogs:
Indignant hands with coat-hanger bracelets about their wrists immediately fly up in objection. “This is not about immaturity and pleasure; it is about rights, sovereignty, and vulnerable women.” This is all rubbish, of course. If it were merely about “vulnerability,” one would have to presume some kind of preferential option for the most vulnerable. Look at my son; is anyone more vulnerable than he and others like him?
It may indeed pretend to be about “sovereignty,” as in the ownership of one’s body. But no one is owner of himself, and our bodies are constitutive of ourselves rather than inert property over which we exercise complete control. Look again at my son. He is unimaginable apart from his body, small though it is; and the course of his life will be measurable and intelligible largely in terms of that body’s growth, decay, loss, and resurrection. And his total dependence on his mother does not indicate something unique, temporary, and inhuman. He merely displays more obviously the dependence of all persons on others at all times. If dependency and weakness are child-like, then none of us ever ceases to be a child in this respect, even though we should hope to leave behind childish things in others. The murder of abortion and murder in the streets do not meaningfully differ; in each instance the fragility of human life consequent to its intrinsic dependence on others is on display because of an act of betrayal.
Finally, it cannot be about rights for at least two reasons. Practically speaking, if the legal protection and support of abortion was consequent to the protection of a right, one presumes it must be one of the venerable ones like “liberty,” or one of more recent manufacture like “privacy.” But how would one adjudicate between the claims of these rights and the equally venerable and more evidently foundational “right to life”? One cannot adjudicate between the two, so long as one operates with a meaningful definition of the word “right” as something that intrinsically belongs to a person regardless of his condition or actions, something “inalienable.” When rights are in conflict, there is no rational resolution within the system of rights.
Theoretically speaking, it cannot be about rights, either. For the very concept of rights is a crude modern teratoma, a ghastly fiction, sprung from peculiar misapprehensions of natural law. Human beings have found very little in their history that speaks of a right to life-for life is patently “alienable” from human beings and our cemeteries are everyday reminders of that alienation in spades. We speak of “rights” to make ourselves feel more secure, less fragile, and less dependent on others, than in fact we are. Gravestones inform us that it is not death that we are in a position to condemn or “forbid,” but only those who bring death about in certain ways. They tell us that the execution of the guilty may be just, the slaying of the enemy in battle may be valorous, and that the slaughter of the innocent is always murder. That portrait of my son does not silently speak of rights, but certainly proclaims a primeval innocence. We would have to look elsewhere-to the clinics of Planned Parenthood, to the Supreme Court, to the Oval Office-to see other portraits that embody the evil of legislated, juridically sanctioned, administratively manufactured murder.
And so, the defenses of abortion are not arguments but prevarications. They clothe murder-for-convenience in the knickers and periwigs of American liberal respectability.
The violent arms of the “right to choose” fly up again. Once more, they proclaim, abortion is not about convenience, but about the necessities of the desperate. If that is the case, then let us look at this image of my son and speak, as W.H. Auden once did, of the “necessary murder.” “Necessary” is a common word; do we know how to use it? No such slaughter could be necessary, for that would mean it could not possibly be otherwise. Are there really no alternatives to the killing of children in the womb? What precisely is the evil so grave that such killing is its only counteraction? Early and un-idyllic maternity? A strain on the budget? The burdens of a deformed or retarded child? “Excess population”? The loss of a mother’s life in giving life to her child? These are conditions of various gravity and sorrow, to be sure. Some of them are the kinds of fictions in which those filled with avarice and who crave an ethereal worldly domination routinely trade. Only one of them even approaches a condition of “necessity” and that one confirms in pain what we nearly all profess in comfort: love entails sacrifice.
Indignant hands with coat-hanger bracelets about their wrists immediately fly up in objection. “This is not about immaturity and pleasure; it is about rights, sovereignty, and vulnerable women.” This is all rubbish, of course. If it were merely about “vulnerability,” one would have to presume some kind of preferential option for the most vulnerable. Look at my son; is anyone more vulnerable than he and others like him?
It may indeed pretend to be about “sovereignty,” as in the ownership of one’s body. But no one is owner of himself, and our bodies are constitutive of ourselves rather than inert property over which we exercise complete control. Look again at my son. He is unimaginable apart from his body, small though it is; and the course of his life will be measurable and intelligible largely in terms of that body’s growth, decay, loss, and resurrection. And his total dependence on his mother does not indicate something unique, temporary, and inhuman. He merely displays more obviously the dependence of all persons on others at all times. If dependency and weakness are child-like, then none of us ever ceases to be a child in this respect, even though we should hope to leave behind childish things in others. The murder of abortion and murder in the streets do not meaningfully differ; in each instance the fragility of human life consequent to its intrinsic dependence on others is on display because of an act of betrayal.
Finally, it cannot be about rights for at least two reasons. Practically speaking, if the legal protection and support of abortion was consequent to the protection of a right, one presumes it must be one of the venerable ones like “liberty,” or one of more recent manufacture like “privacy.” But how would one adjudicate between the claims of these rights and the equally venerable and more evidently foundational “right to life”? One cannot adjudicate between the two, so long as one operates with a meaningful definition of the word “right” as something that intrinsically belongs to a person regardless of his condition or actions, something “inalienable.” When rights are in conflict, there is no rational resolution within the system of rights.
Theoretically speaking, it cannot be about rights, either. For the very concept of rights is a crude modern teratoma, a ghastly fiction, sprung from peculiar misapprehensions of natural law. Human beings have found very little in their history that speaks of a right to life-for life is patently “alienable” from human beings and our cemeteries are everyday reminders of that alienation in spades. We speak of “rights” to make ourselves feel more secure, less fragile, and less dependent on others, than in fact we are. Gravestones inform us that it is not death that we are in a position to condemn or “forbid,” but only those who bring death about in certain ways. They tell us that the execution of the guilty may be just, the slaying of the enemy in battle may be valorous, and that the slaughter of the innocent is always murder. That portrait of my son does not silently speak of rights, but certainly proclaims a primeval innocence. We would have to look elsewhere-to the clinics of Planned Parenthood, to the Supreme Court, to the Oval Office-to see other portraits that embody the evil of legislated, juridically sanctioned, administratively manufactured murder.
And so, the defenses of abortion are not arguments but prevarications. They clothe murder-for-convenience in the knickers and periwigs of American liberal respectability.
The violent arms of the “right to choose” fly up again. Once more, they proclaim, abortion is not about convenience, but about the necessities of the desperate. If that is the case, then let us look at this image of my son and speak, as W.H. Auden once did, of the “necessary murder.” “Necessary” is a common word; do we know how to use it? No such slaughter could be necessary, for that would mean it could not possibly be otherwise. Are there really no alternatives to the killing of children in the womb? What precisely is the evil so grave that such killing is its only counteraction? Early and un-idyllic maternity? A strain on the budget? The burdens of a deformed or retarded child? “Excess population”? The loss of a mother’s life in giving life to her child? These are conditions of various gravity and sorrow, to be sure. Some of them are the kinds of fictions in which those filled with avarice and who crave an ethereal worldly domination routinely trade. Only one of them even approaches a condition of “necessity” and that one confirms in pain what we nearly all profess in comfort: love entails sacrifice.
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