Hopeful Daniel

Andrew Perriman on Easter

2009-04-18T12:09:00.002-05:00

I also appreciate the historical and narrative sensitivity of Andrew Perriman's account of the significance of Jesus' resurrection. I quote:

"In his death at the hands of Rome, betrayed by a nation on the brink of apostasy, Jesus suffered for the sins of his people, anticipating the faithfulness of those who would take up their own cross out of loyalty to him during this protracted eschatological crisis. In his resurrection from the dead through the power of the Spirit, he anticipated the restoration of the people of God and the eventual vindication of the community that would take the risk of following him down a narrow and dangerous path leading to life.
The story would soon clash with the dominant religious conceit of the pagan world. Unlike the lawless, blasphemous, self-aggrandizing type of Caesar, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He embarked on an entirely different trajectory, downwards towards servanthood, humiliation, suffering and death. But God raised him from the defeat of death - he did not abandon his soul to Hades (Acts 2:27) - and gave him a name far above all the governors and kings and emperors of the earth; and because of his faithfulness and obedience, all the ends of the earth would come to see that YHWH alone is God, that he is sovereign over the nations and cultures of the world."

The whole post (as well as the subsequent conversation) is well worth reading (see here).

Peace.

Easter words from Michael Westmoreland-White

2009-04-13T08:58:00.002-05:00

And I quote:

"But Resurrection Sunday isn’t about any of that. I BARELY tolerate “Santa.” I have no tolerance for Easter Bunnie intrusions into the celebration, not of rebirth after winter, but of LIFE AFTER DEATH. Jesus was DEAD (not swooned on the cross) and God RAISED HIM UP.
I believe in the BODILY resurrection of Jesus–more than just a physical resuscitation, but not LESS THAN that–nothing ridiculous like a “spiritual resurrection.” [On advice from a friendly critic, I am removing the judgmental language. But Christianity grew out of Judaism and in that context "spiritual resurrection" was a contradiction in terms. No First Century Jew would have used the term "resurrection" for anything non-somatic. "Spiritual resurrection" is a belief that grows out of Western post-Enlightenment skepticism, building on the Greek body-soul dualism imported into early Christianity from Hellenistic philosophy.] I don’t believe that souls exist apart from bodies (Greek rather than biblical anthropology), nor anything stupid Gnostic like “the immortality of the soul.” ONLY GOD is immortal. The Christian hope is for resurrection. And our hope, as Paul says in I Co. 15, is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus.

Resurrection Sunday means that we worship a Risen, Living Savior. It means that empires of death do not have the last word. It means that God VINDICATES Jesus’ nonviolent way. Rome, the temple elites of 1st C. Judaism, and all the Powers of Death only THOUGHT they were victorious in crucifying Jesus. They failed. The cross reveals the violence of the system, of all of us, but strips it naked of any victory because of the empty tomb and the proclamation, “He is not here; He is risen!”

This is the power behind all Christian movements for justice or liberation. As Gustavo Gutierrez replied to a liberal theologian from the U.S. trying to water down his robust theology, “In Latin America, we need a God who can raise Jesus from the dead.”"

All I can say is, amen!
(Read the whole thing: here)

Misinterpreting Matthew 25

2008-12-19T09:32:00.002-06:00

Matthew 25:31-46 is often quoted to motivate Christian involvement in 'social issues' (such as poverty, homelessness, and so forth).

I believe Christians should work for the common good in the cities we find ourselves in, to be clear (following the example provided in Jeremiah 29:7). But Matthew 25 is about a judgment of the nations in light of their treatment of Jesus' disciples (the 'least of these... my brothers [and presumably sisters]' is what Jesus says). The parables of judgment are primarily about judgment on unrepentant Israel, ultimately centered around the destruction of the Temple (cf. e.g. Mark 13). The trampling of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple of course goes hand in hand with 'fleeing to the hills'--with the scattering of the disciples (who will nevertheless be 'gathered' in God's providential care). The judgment of the nations (NOT the 'final judgment'--notice there's no mention made of resurrection in this passage) in Matthew 25 is thus Jesus' way of comforting his disciples--suggesting that they will still be in God's providential care.

Christians miss this, in my opinion, because they are taught to think 'final judgment' every time they read 'judgment'. But of course the biblical text is far richer (and far vaguer) than that. Many judgments are conceived of historically (read Isaiah, Jeremiah, or even Jesus on the Temple) and are rendered symbolically in prophecy.

Just had to get that out there, after reading the 1,001st misuse of this passage online.
[Further reading: Andrew Perriman's The Coming of the Son of Man]

Peace.

Greed, made in the U.S.A.

2008-11-28T14:07:00.002-06:00

As New York Times reports, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death this morning, as an 'overeager' crowd broke through the doors looking for 'deals'.

"Black Friday" is so-called, as I understand it, because for many retailers, it makes the difference in the financial year between being 'in the red' and being 'in the black'. But every year, people get hurt because everything about the day fuels greed, impatience, and selfishness. Instead of letting the people who genuinely can't afford the necessities of everyday life do their shopping in peace, people who already have too much throttle each other for the chance to pinch a few pennies.

It's greed, it's sin, it's an abomination.

A depressing day to be a citizen of this 'great' country.

God have mercy on us.

Time to say goodbye.

2008-11-21T22:00:00.003-06:00

I thought starting a blog would be a good idea. Turns out the only way to get blog traffic is to be active on lots of others blogs (unless you're a famous theologian, then people just come to you, of course, but that's not my situation). And I have better things to do with my time (grad school comes to mind, as does my marriage, my devotional life, etc...).

So I think I'll call it quits. At least for the time being. I may still post from time to time, but no promises. There's a life to be lived and I spend too much time online as it is.

I'm always available via e-mail: daniel.farmer *at* mu &dot& edu ...

To the occasional reader: peace be with you.

-Daniel-

A very short Christian history of the universe.

2008-11-10T17:10:00.002-06:00

God. Love. Creator.

A world, evolving.

With sentience comes pain, with reason, sin.

A people, called to point back to the beginning, to God, to goodness.

A human, God, killed by the People.
New Creation: Resurrection: a new Israel.

Marks of the Spirit People: conversion, baptism, communion.
Marks of the Spirit People: peace, simplicity, generosity, holiness, love (rebirth).

Scattered everywhere--salt for the earth.

[...]

Consummation(?)(!)

Swearing, media, and the common good

2008-11-04T13:23:00.003-06:00

The LA Times reports that the U.S. Supreme Court's is hearing a case on 'broadcast indecency'. Predictably, the case centers around which words can and can't be used at which times on broacast television.

The fixation on words is, of course, deeply problematic, since it bypasses content altogether. The effect is that, under the current FCC regulations which prohibit certain words from being spoken, you get to hear sh*t on TV and the radio with a cherry on top. I mean the metaphorical fecal matter, not the word. A song or show may be free of the taboo words, but nevertheless glorify cheap sex, drugs, alcohol and violence, and still get on the air. By contrast, a fantastically critical song such as Nickelback's "I wanna be a rockstar" gets words like 'drug-dealer' edited out (so it comes at as '------dealer' - and so it's totally obvious what was 'edited' out), even though the whole point of the song is to make fun of wannabes and the 'rockstar' lifestyle.

This fixation on words regardless of context (there is some consideration of context--but that's more the exception than the rule) betrays not a shared societal good which is being supported by broadcast TV or radio, but rather a simple fear of being sued (typical of liberal democractic societies whose only moral language is that of 'rights'). It's reminiscent of the spirit of the question Christian teenagers ask of their spiritual mentors: "how far is too far [sexually]?" By the time the question has been asked, the point has already been missed. It is the wrong question.

Likewise, the question 'what words can't we air?' is already a sign that social uplift is off the agenda and profit is the driving force behind broadcast content. Welcome to the U.S.A.!

Study links TV sex and teen sex

2008-11-03T08:57:00.002-06:00

MSNBC reports on a new study, which links teen pregnancy with watching sex-saturated TV. Apparently, when teens watch hour upon hour upon hour of people sleeping around with each other, that makes them think they should be doing it too!!! Wow! What a discovery! What a novel idea!
It makes me wonder--what does MSNBC recommend doing to reverse the tide?
And I quote:

"So what’s a parent to do under these circumstances? Lock up the television set for good and throw away the key?

On the contrary, the study’s authors advise parents to become familiar with the shows their kids watch — and, whenever possible and practical, to watch TV with them.

'By taking the time to watch together, parents can turn these into teachable moments … and opportunities for frank discussions about sex,' Chandra said.

'Parents [also] might want to limit some exposure. But realistically, this kind of content is everywhere. Our study only looks at TV. There’s also the Internet, music, magazines.'"

You heard it here folks--it's too late, give up. No one can realistically expect you to throw away your TV. So just watch it with your kids (they'll love you for it!), then you can have awkward sex talks about what their favorite characters are doing.

Makes you wonder about the trash that flows on the airwaves, doesn't it? Public edification? Can someone say 'BS'?

Don't get me started on radio...

Visions of Peace - A Peace Sunday Sermon

2008-11-02T19:24:00.002-06:00

(Text: Isaiah 65: 17-25)

Today is ‘Peace Sunday’ in the Mennonite church. And, lucky for us, today’s passage speaks to the depth of the work to be done before that elusive thing, that frightening, dangerous task, ‘peace’, is accomplished.

In today’s passage, the prophet Isaiah envisions a day when ‘the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox’ and the snake’s food shall be dust. Now, I have no trouble imagining ox and lamb chewin’ the cud. No problem whatsoever. Probably because they already do. What’s a little bit harder for me is to imagine snakes, lions and wolves, all of a sudden going vegan. Mufasa having a spinach salad for lunch; Eve and the serpent, co-authoring a ballad. George W. Bush might as well have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over for a tea party. Then they could join hands in a green field, dance in a circle, and sing Kum Ba Yah.

Just to drive home how crazy this picture is, consider what I learned about the dietary habits of wolves from the organization Defenders of Wildlife. Their website explains: “Wolves' digestive systems operate somewhat differently than ours. They are adapted to process huge amounts of food at a time, then eat nothing for three days or more. Biologist David Mech witnessed a pack of 15 wolves kill a 600- pound moose and eat about half of it in an hour and a half, meat, bones, fur and all. This works out to about 20 pounds of food per wolf! Mech estimated that the wolves he witnessed in this encounter were about 85 pounds each, which means they each ate about 23% of their body weight. They don't do much chewing, mostly just tearing chunks off and swallowing them whole. After eating their fill, wolves will either spend a few hours relaxing and digesting, or return to the den to regurgitate food for the pups and other pack members who did not join in the hunt. A wolf's digestive system can handle a large amount of food quickly and efficiently, processing the meat and fat so thoroughly that only bones and fur are excreted in the scat.” In case you were wondering.

The point is: wolves are fine-tuned killing, and chomping, machines. And the same is true of lions and snakes. These animals are intelligently-designed for carnage. And Isaiah has the audacity to imagine some kind of Eden—not as a point of origin, but as a destination—where these very same wolves and other predators are converted, born-again, transformed, saved and sanctified, so much so, that they are harmless as lambs. It is a vision of New Creation, one commensurate with the first Creation, as much ex nihilo (out of nothing) as the first one, one in which peace is law, where God’s shalom is all in all.

Of course, maybe this is a misreading. The prophets are notorious for hyperbole. Maybe this is all just a metaphor, an exercise of the imagination. Aah, yes, but a metaphor is always a metaphor for something, a signpost whose meaning depends on what it points to. And so even if we take seriously the figurative nature of Isaiah’s speech, the question still remains, what on earth does he mean by it? In fact, especially if we take seriously the metaphorical nature of Isaiah’s vision, we must ask—what does he mean by it?

Who are the lions and wolves of the world? Who are the predators? Who are the ravenous beasts, formed for destruction? There can be no single answer. Satan? Jezebel? Hitler? Pol Pot? Saddam Hussein? George Bush? (John McCain? Barack Obama?) We all have our favorite personifications of what’s wrong with the world. But consider this. Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, but rejected their creator at the first opportunity. Sarah was the mother of Isaac and thus of all Israel, though she had openly scoffed at God. Rahab of Jericho saved two Israelite spies, and was a prostitute. David was a man after God’s own heart, but had an innocent man murdered to cover up his adultery with, or an a different interpretation his rape of, that man’s wife. Elisha, the spirit-filled peacemaking prophet, had 42 young boys ripped to pieces by bears. I could go on. The spirit of the predator, of the destroyer, the spirit of selfishness, pride and greed, the spirit of profit, self-justification and vindictiveness, it turns out, occupies every human heart. We have evolved for violence, been fine-tuned for sin—each and every one of us (they call it ‘the Fall’). So even if we do take the ‘metaphorical line’ on Isaiah’s vision of peace, it’s still as outlandish. It’s ridiculous. Crazy. Unnatural. It would take a miracle for a lion to digest straw like an ox. It would take a miracle for Bush and Ahmadinejad to sing Kum Ba Yah, for oppressors to seek forgiveness from the oppressed, for the rich to redistribute their wealth to the poor. It would take a miracle for anyone to turn the other cheek, to pray for those who persecute them, and to overcome evil with good.

Jesus said “what is impossible for mortals is possible for God.” (Luke 18:26)

So we have an impossible picture of transformation, no matter how we look at it. Taken literally, carnivores going vegetarian, it’s ludicrous. Taken figuratively, rapists, terrorists and thieves gettin’ ‘saved’, it’s preposterous. But the God who creates from nothing, and who melts the hearts of the stubborn, promises a new work of Creation, a renewed microcosm in a fallen macrocosm, a mustard-seed revolution that turns everything upside-down.
“Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating,” says the One who crafted the cosmos, “for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.” They shall not hurt, or destroy, or kill, or plunder, or lie, or oppress, or sin, on all the earth. Or, as Isaiah puts it in chapter 11, “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain”—why? Because “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse” (the father of king David), “and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” And through this shoot, through this branch, because of this vine, “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

Or to put it perhaps a little more succinctly, Isaiah’s prophetic vision of God’s New Creation, of Israel’s hope for the future, is inseparable from the one who ushers it in. A Davidic Messiah will come, and in faithfulness to YHWH will lead the people of God into a new age. Already in Isaiah’s visions we see hope for the things that make for peace, and for the one who makes for peace.

Sometimes, Christians get the idea that an emphasis on the Reign of God, or on God’s New Creation, overlooks ‘personal responsibility’ or personal transformation, because it takes seriously the social and economic parts of the gospel. But Jesus is the inbreaking of God’s Reign, and the firstborn of God’s New Creation. And just as Jesus did not separate the so-called ‘private’ transformation of personal holiness from its social manifestations, so also as followers of Jesus, we cannot compartmentalize our conversion and baptism to just one part of our lives. New Creation is new Creation—it is all-encompassing. As we saw this past summer in our series on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blesses the poor, the pure in heart, those who hunger for justice, the peacemakers. He forbids insults, adultery, divorce, deceit, retaliation, and urges the love of enemies—personal enemies and political enemies—he teaches prayer and almsgiving, simplicity and trust in divine sovereignty, Jubilee generosity and Jubilee economics. Do you see a distinction here between ‘public’ and ‘private’? Between ‘personal’ and ‘social’? Between my ‘personal relationship with God’ and liberation theology?

This is what it means to be ‘salt and light’. To follow Jesus, everything must change.

Consider these verses from Colossians 3. Try to follow the movement from the personal, to the social, to the universal. Paul says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. [...] These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Col. 3:2-3, 7-11, NRSV)

The world is not as it should be. But God has undertaken, is undertaking, to rescue this world from the inside out. The only relevant question then, it seems to me, is how faithful we are being to our calling, to our identity as first fruits of New Creation. How faithful am I being? How faithful is Milwaukee Mennonite being? And are we being as drastic in our following as God is being in God’s leading?

I end with a prayer written by German peace activist and author Dorothee Soelle, which is based on the ninetieth psalm. It was written 15 years ago, but still seems quite relevant.

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations!
Before the mountains were brought forth and the oceans,
before our little blue planet,
on which life multiplies through love and union,
was born from you after a long pregnancy,
you were there waiting for us.
You allow cultures to perish
when they separate from you,
and call others into being.
What seemed to us a thousand years and unchanging,
the bloody violence,
is to you a short watch in the night.
Even tyrants break down exhausted,
economic conglomerates dissolve,
and the knowledge of infallible parties
becomes last year’s snow.
Slavery was profitable and flourished,
but in the evening of your day it withered.
The fruits of armament climbed to the sky,
but your anger consumed them,
and your wrath will destroy the stolen prosperity.
You make known our plundering of the poor;
you bring to light our veiled crimes.
Our days pass away quickly in fear of the truth;
we spend our years as if on a drug trip
that turns into horror.
Our life here is seventy years;
in other lands many will not live even four years.
Here we push eighty and more,
but joy has become stale;
technology drags us along.
Who has faith in you, poor God,
without nuclear bombs and without banks,
and who is afraid when your fish die?
Remind us that we are small,
dwelling here briefly on borrowed earth.
Teach us that we must die
and have no time for all the hatred
that makes our low-flying planes howl.
Teach us to number the days
in which we think of you
and call upon you.

Turn your countenance to us, O God;
come to those who watch for you.
Satisfy us in the morning with your light,
so that we make music, and no day is without joy.
Make us glad again after all the years of emptiness
in the land of looters,
where blood cleaves to our bank-palaces.
Bring us bread and roses, O God;
your splendor is in the hair of children.
Let your light be upon us, making it easy for us
to come and go.
Help us preserve your world
and establish the work of our hands,
the good work of liberation.”

The good work, allow me to add, of participating in New Creation.

A recommendation to Christians in the U.S.

2008-10-16T11:58:00.002-05:00

Some of us who are baptized citizens of Christ's upside-down enemy-loving Kingdom also happen to be citizens of that violent superpower known as the United States of America. This citizenship involves us both in the sins of oppression which are the necessary correlate of power and in the internal possibilities of reform characteristic of contemporary 'democracies' (the quotation marks are there because the U.S. is not ruled by 'the people' in any direct way). That is, U.S. citizens can (among other things) vote to elect a president. And there's a presidential election coming up.

If you choose to vote (you certainly don't have to), make an informed decision. Ask yourself what would be best for the Church and for your neighbors both at home and around the world. If you think you have an answer that's clear enough to justify voting for one person rather than another, then great!
Once you've made your informed choice, stop obsessing about it. Why do I say this? Because the media, your friends and even (sadly) your fellow sisters and brothers in the Lord will encourage you to continue thinking about it. Everything about 'election season' in the U.S. says "dwell on me, think on me, meditate on me day and night, for I will shape the course of history." This is, of course, borderline idolatry. There are some aspects of this year's U.S. election which are of historical importance (e.g. the prospect of an African-American president) which shouldn't be minimized. But as much good (or bad) as a U.S. president can accomplish, the heart of humankind requires conversion--something best accomplished from the bottom-up, and by the movement of God's Spirit.

Pray for the elections. Think about the elections. Then stop. Pray about something else. Think about something else. Go be the Church. Don't worry. Don't be anxious.

"And which of you by worrying can add even one hour to your life? But above all pursue God's kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So then, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:27,33-34)

"Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things." (Philippians 4:6-8, NET)

Peace.

Wendell Berry on economics and the environment

2008-10-08T21:31:00.003-05:00

I ran across a thought-provoking article by Wendell Berry (full text here) on local and global economies, which I hope you'll make time to read. It's all the more relevant given the current economic crisis.

Some excerpts:

The "environmental crisis" has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of "raw materials," and that we may safely possess those materials merely by taking them. This taking, as our technical means have increased, has involved always less reverence or respect, less gratitude, less local knowledge, and less skill. Our methodologies of land use have strayed from our old sympathetic attempts to imitate natural processes, and have come more and more to resemble the methodology of mining, even as mining itself has become more technologically powerful and more brutal.

[...]

What has happened is that most people in our country, and apparently most people in the "developed" world, have given proxies to the corporations to produce and provide all of their food, clothing, and shelter. Moreover, they are rapidly giving proxies to corporations or governments to provide entertainment, education, child care, care of the sick and the elderly, and many other kinds of "service" that once were carried on informally and inexpensively by individuals or households or communities. Our major economic practice, in short, is to delegate the practice to others.

[...]

The trouble with this is that a proper concern for nature and our use of nature must be practiced not by our proxy-holders, but by ourselves. A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life. The "environmental crisis," in fact, can be solved only if people, individually and in their communities, recover responsibility for their thoughtlessly given proxies. If people begin the effort to take back into their own power a significant portion of their economic responsibility, then their inevitable first discovery is that the "environmental crisis" is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an "environmental crisis" because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, the God-given world.

Call and response

2008-10-03T10:40:00.002-05:00

Hat tip to Rob Karch for drawing my attention to this.

Leroy Barber on simple living

2008-10-02T16:05:00.002-05:00

Leroy Barber offers some clear thoughts on surviving economic crises here (at Sojourners' "God's Politics" blog). Some excepts:

"The present financial crisis facing our nation is sure to touch most of our lives in one way or another over the next few days, months, and even years. [...]
There are, however, two groups of people that are better suited to survive the storm, and they are the very wealthy and those who live simply. The very wealthy will take a hit, but on account of being very wealthy they are better prepared than most for storms and massive losses. Those who live simply are in many ways prepared because the simple lifestyle keeps you from over-indulging in this consumer driven economy of ours. Living simply is wealth for the middle class and the poor.

[...]

Simplicity says to use very little credit. Buy the older model car that you can own. Shop at reasonably priced venues. Use public transportation sometimes instead of driving. The smaller house is okay. My friends that live this way can survive the coming storms a bit better. They have, in fact, created stability in their lives that allows them to live, as they are wealthy through this crisis."

Good words to take to heart, particularly for those of us who claim to be Christian.

Propositional knowledge and omniscience

2008-09-28T14:13:00.003-05:00

Some theologians define divine omniscience as God's knowing all and only those propositions which are true. I call this the 'propositional' conception of omniscience. I think it's crap. Why?

Think of the widely different kinds of knowledge human beings have. I know that there was a French revolution. I know my wife. I know how to play guitar. I know where my school is. So, though I certainly do have 'propositional knowledge' (knowledge that something is or isn't the case), that is only a tiny piece of my knowledge. Much of my knowledge is in fact skill at navigating the world, or a certain relational one-ness with the object of my knowledge.
I can form propositions about my wife if I have to, but my knowledge of her is primarily a function of my having lived with her day to day for the past 3+ years.

So what happens when traditional epistemologists privilege propositional knowledge? Well, they take it to be the only form of 'true' knowledge, and therefore attribute IT and only IT to God (since God is, after all, a perfect being--wouldn't want to attribute improper forms of knowledge to the deity, right?). And what we end up with then, is a picture of God 'knowing' the world, and 'knowing' us at arm's length. God knows us propositionally.
But think about how omniscience could better be described relationally. Instead of my relationship with God being mediated by those pesky propositions, God could know me immediately, like I know my friends and my world. Propositions are a byproduct of the world and of thought, not the primary instance of knowledge. Therefore God's omniscience isn't primarily a doctrine about God's relationship to the set of all true propositions, but is rather a doctrine about God's relationship to the world.

God is all-loving, therefore God knows all, and this kind of knowledge is also presence with--God knows us because God lives in our midst, so to speak. God's omniscience is not the knowledge of a distant sovereign, but is rather the deep knowledge of love. God loves us and the whole Creation. Therefore God's omniscience cannot be divorced from God's omnipresence (both are aspects of God's love for the world). Propositional renderings of omniscience however, assume that God's knowledge of the world and presence in it and with it can be separated.

The truth is much more beautiful.

Peace,
-Daniel-

Death and the Tree of Life

2008-09-19T12:34:00.002-05:00

(1) The central theological assumption of the second Creation story (Genesis chap. 2ff) is that death is bad.
(2) The Tree of Life thus guarantees the man and the woman's immortality, so long as they can eat it.
(3) Procreation, that is, multiplication, is in principle pre-Fall.

I take (1), (2) and (3) to be uncontroversially part of the narrative declarations or assumptions of the second Creation story. A problem appears when these three points are combined with the observation that the Earth is finite. That is, (1) (death's badness) stands in tension with the combination of (2) and (3). The solution requires (in the narrative sense of necessity) a change in either (2) or (3). That is, either procreation must come to an end, thereby preventing overpopulation, or immortality must come to an end, again thereby preventing overpopulation.

All of this is a way of saying that, so long as procreation is possible, death must enter the world. The narrative logic requires it.

Or to put it more negatively, the woman and the man were screwed from the get-go.

The 'goodness' of Creation held within it the seed of its own undoing.

There was, as it were, a shrewd serpent in the Garden.

Boyd on foreknowledge in the philosophical tradition

2008-09-12T08:45:00.002-05:00

Greg Boyd shares some helpful reflections on the question of divine foreknowledge over at his blog (see here). More specifically, he highlights the historical background to contemporary formulations of this idea. In brief, visual metaphors for knowledge (which we still have many of in English) encouraged a misconception of foreknowledge on the basis of (largely incorrect) views about how vision works.

"[S]everal Neoplatonistic philosophers (Iamblichus, Proclus and Ammonius) used this theory of eyesight and knowing to explain how the gods can foreknow future free actions. They argued that the nature of divine knowledge is determined not by what is known but by the nature of the knower. Since they assumed the gods were absolutely unchanging, they concluded that the gods knew things in an absolutely unchanging manner, despite the fact that the reality the gods know is in fact perpetually changing. This allowed them to affirm that the future partly consisted of indefinite [...] truths (viz. open possibilities) while nevertheless insisting that the gods knew the future in an exhaustively definite, unchanging way." (emphases his)

I should note that this is precisely how Thomas Aquinas thought about foreknowledge (something he inherited partially through the Islamic Aristotelians--al-Kindi, Avicenna, Averroes, et al.--and partially through Boethius, who got it from the Neoplatonists). That is, roughly speaking, Aquinas construes knowledge as occurring according to a mode of being appropriate to the knower. It's easy to see how a doctrine of divine timelessness and impassibility (which goes back, generally speaking, to Aristotle) would thus lead to the traditional conception of foreknowledge, in spite of the future's open-endedness (typically affirmed in Arminian or Arminian-friendly circles).
Boyd's assessment is, in this case, spot on:

"The view is, I’m convinced, completely incoherent.
[...]
Once we abandon the ancient view of seeing and knowing as active processes, it becomes clear that God’s knowledge is perfect if, and only if , it perfectly conforms to the nature of what is known. So if possibilities are real, then God’s knowledge is perfect if, and only if, God knows them as possibilities." (emphases his--I would qualify his bit about seeing and knowing as encouraging us to abandon viewing them as purely active processes; they're partially passive and partially active processes I would argue)

Read the whole thing. I've come to reject some aspects of Boyd's libertarianism concerning free will, but I do believe indeterminacy and open-endedness are woven into the fabric of Creation, and so his conclusions concerning divine foreknowledge seem to me quite correct.

Peace,
-Daniel-

Wright on sex and wealth

2008-09-04T16:59:00.004-05:00

I recommend to my readers the unofficial NT Wright page. Bishop Wright is one of the foremost orthodox Jesus and Paul scholars of the world, and many of his writings have been very helpful for me. On said page, you can find a link to his 'Communion and Koinonia' sermon, which includes the following incisive remark:

"A footnote on sexual behaviour in Paul’s world. If one looks at the ancient world there is of course evidence of same-sex behaviour in many contexts and settings. But it is noticeable that the best-known evidence comes from the high imperial days of Athens on the one hand and the high imperial days of Rome on the other (think of Nero, and indeed Paul may have been thinking of Nero). I have argued elsewhere, against the view that Paul was quiescent politically, that he held a strong implicit and sometimes explicit critique of pagan empire in general and of Rome in particularly; and clearly denunciation of pagan sexual behaviour was part of that (e.g. Philippians 3.19-21). I just wonder if there is any mileage in cultural analysis of homosexual behaviour as a feature of cultures which themselves multiply and degenerate in the way that great empires are multiply degenerate, with money flowing in, arrogance and power flowing out, systemic violence on the borders and systematic luxury at the centre. Part of that imperial arrogance in our own day, I believe, is the insistence that we, the empire, the West, America, or wherever, are in a position to tell the societies that we are already exploiting in a thousand different ways that they should alter their deep-rooted moralities to accommodate our newly invented ones. There is something worryingly imperial about the practice itself and about the insistence on everybody else endorsing it. It is often said that the poor want justice while the rich want peace. We now have a situation where two-thirds of the world wants debt relief and one-third wants sex. That is, I think, a tell-tale sign that something is wrong at a deep structural level."

(Zing!) Read the whole thing.

Peace,
-Daniel-

Richard Beck on Calvin and Hobbes

2008-08-29T16:50:00.002-05:00

My favorite e-psychologist, Richard Beck, is starting a series on "The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes." Since both Dr. Beck AND Calvin and Hobbes are awesome, I thought I'd point you, dear reader, to the first post in his series. See here ---> [click].

Boyd on Obama

2008-08-29T16:29:00.002-05:00

Greg Boyd reflects on Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention last night on his blog (see here).
An excerpt:

"Would Obama help unify our country on this and other issues if he was elected? He has such exception personal and political qualities it almost seems possible. Even a [Kingdom] foreigner like myself is tempted to hope.

But its precisely at this point that I have to remind myself that I am a citizen of a different empire and am not to get overly invested in civilian affairs. I have to therefore regard Obama’s call to embrace the audacity of this political hope as a temptation. [...] Whatever good Obama, McCain or any other politician may or may not be able to accomplish, the ultimate hope and allegiance of all Kingdom citizens must remain in Jesus Christ and in the mustard seed Kingdom he established. Our call as ambassadors of Christ is to individually and corporately look like Jesus in how we love and serve people, including the poor, the marginalized, the judged — and women with unwanted pregnancies. And our call is to trust that God will use the foolishness of this humble, servant activity to advance his Kingdom and ultimately transform the world.

This is the audacious hope we foreigners are to embrace and passionately work for.

I just wish I could articulate it as eloquently and as powerfully as Obama." [emphasis mine]

Good thoughts Greg, good thoughts.

Peace.

On voting

2008-08-26T08:20:00.002-05:00

As a Christian who also happens to be a U.S. citizen, I'm very frustrated by both McCain and Obama. More so, I'm frustrated by Christians who think McCain or Obama will solve all the world's problems. Of course, they'd never put it that way, but the stories they tell about each candidate betray no deviation from the plain old boring party line--whichever party it happens to be.

As an Anabaptist by conviction, I've mentioned to several folks that I've thought about not voting in the fall. I didn't vote in the primaries, why would I vote in the presidentials? Needless to say, the outcry has been overwhelming. Civic duty bla bla bla, abortion bla bla bla, war bla bla bla. Right-o, not only is it my 'civic duty' to vote, it's also obvious which way I should vote. For McCain. For Obama. Of course, of course.

So here are my thoughts as they stand.

I am a Christian. I don't really care about my U.S. citizenship (or my French citizenship for that matter)--though of course in many ways I profit from it. As a Christian, I do not have a 'duty' to vote. I do not believe in the nation-state, whatever that nation-state happens to be--I believe in Christ's Reign. (Or to put it in biblical language: "Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one in military service gets entangled in matters of everyday life; otherwise he will not please the one who recruited him."--I Tim. 2:3-4, NET. Voting, I would suggest, may well count as getting 'entangled in civilian affairs'...)

Nevertheless, I don't believe in principled nonvoting either. Paul, for example, though he says "Do not become partners with those who do not believe, for what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship does light have with darkness?" (II Cor. 6:14, NET) is also unafraid to use his Roman citizenship to his advantage, as in Acts 22:25, when, being whipped, he asks: "Is it legal for you to lash a man who is a Roman citizen without a proper trial?" (notice how gentle this question is however--this is hardly the patriotism it is sometimes made out to be).
Christians cannot be 'pure' by opting out. Though we are as good as 'saved', we are not yet 'sanctified', and so we aren't 'pure' in the first place. It would thus be inconsistent to pretend to be more pure than we are. Besides, the kind of purity God has given to those in Christ is not a fragile purity, one that would be easily 'contaminated'. No, rather we are freed from contamination logic to be contagiously pure. Jesus touched corpses, menstruating women, and lepers. He embraced them. Christians, to the extent that they actually are pure, have this kind of purity. It is a purity which transforms the world, not one which shies away from it.

At the same time, the Christian logic of contagious purity cannot be used to baptize party platforms (e.g. Donald Miller's unfortunate prayer at the DNC--cf. here, HT: JT). So where does that leave us? As it stands, I think Christians can allow themselves a form of ad hoc voting, where this is justified by one candidate's being far superior to another. This presupposes two things.
(1) First, it presupposes that there is a legitimate distinction between casting a vote and endorsing. A Christian cannot endorse any kingdom of the world. But I do agree with those who suggest that voting need not signify endorsing. If I could be shown that this distinction is a false one (as Mark of Jesus Manifesto believes), I would be unable to vote.
(2) Second, and perhaps more dramatically, it presupposes that there is a reasonably easy way to tell that one candidate is better than another. And that, my friends, is one very optimistic presupposition.

So let me part with the following. I am neither 'pro-life' nor 'pro-choice', as the parties define these terms, because I am not an essentialist concerning human nature (having a certain genetic code does not unilaterally make us 'special'). And so the abortion issue is not enough for me to tell which of McCain or Obama is better. I am a pacifist. But the war issue is not enough for me to tell which of McCain or Obama is better, because both men want to beef up the military, and even Obama, who is against the Iraq war, wants to continue on in Afghanistan, and in the so-called 'war on terror' in general (sigh). Both men are unwilling to raise critical questions about the U.S.'s 'support' of (read: giving loads of weapons to) the state of Israel.
Energy: both men are roughly on the same page here.
Social policies: I don't have a PhD in economics, so I have no idea what's good for the poor. Nevertheless, as a Christian who believes that the Fall is deep, I'm incredibly wary of the naive idealism required for so-called 'free markets' to work. So I naturally lean to the left here. The trouble, of course, is that governments are made up of people too--so corruption can happen there just as easily as it can in big corporations. Perhaps this is something I need to think more about.

Finally, and here there IS a big difference between McCain and Obama: so far as I can tell, only McCain seems to have an uncritical, quasi-Bushian view of evil (see the Civil Forum transcript here, or specifically this file). And I quote: "Of course evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century: radical Islamic extremists."
Yes, it's those damned 'Islamic extremists' who are evil. They, them. Over there. Not us. Never.
Right, McCain... right.

Compare with Obama's answer (see this file): "... one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task. But we can be soldiers in that process, and we can confront it when we see it [...] but you know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil."
For all the rest of Obama's mushy liberal theology, here he reveals himself to have a solidly Christian understanding of evil (which means, in passing, that I would rather attend Obama's church--even given his former pastor, that scary black man Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright--than McCain's church).

This post is dragging on, so I apologize. My main point is this. Things being what they are, I'm considering voting for Obama in the fall. Or rather, I'm considering voting against John McCain in the fall, because he scares me. A man with that kind of power and that kind of worldview can do a whole lot o' damage. God have mercy on my soul--and on the world.

As an aside, I have good friends who are voting Green, for Cynthia McKinney. And while I appreciate their (and her) perspective, given the fact that she won't be elected (just trying to be realistic here), voting for her really does seem to me to embody some kind of trust in (or endorsement of) the system--the kind of trust that sits oddly with Christian commitments in the Anabaptist tradition.

That's all for today folks. I'd love to hear some of my readers' reasons for voting, or not voting, or voting for candidate X, Y or Z.

God's peace.
-Daniel-

On Dualism in Politics

2008-08-05T14:27:00.002-05:00

Thom Stark helpfully reminds us that:

"[The Church] claims to be the reality of which Caesar’s empire is the parody; it claims to be modeling the genuine humanness, not least the justice and peace, and the unity across traditional racial and cultural barriers, of which Caesar’s empire boasted. If this claim is not to collapse once more into dualism, into a rejection of every human aspiration and value, it will be apparent that there will be a large degree of overlap. 'Shun what is evil; cling to what is good.' There will be affirmation as well as critique, collaboration as well as critique. To collaborate without compromise, to criticize without dualism—this is the delicate path that Jesus’ counter-empire had to learn to tread." And which we at present must learn to tread. (Read the full post here.)

Something to think about in an election year, as little as it pleases me to say so...

Peace.

Eschatology and confusion

2008-07-29T13:47:00.002-05:00

One of the most significant recent evolutions in my personal understanding of Christianity has been in the field of eschatology (or 'end-times-ology', you might call it). The traditional conservative evangelical eschatology I inherited from my upbringing ran essentially as follows:
Jesus, Paul, and all the New Testament writers prophesied about the end of the world. Everyone expected more or less the same thing. There'll be a rapture. Lots of doom. Truckloads of doom. Satan will run rampant. Believers will lose their faith left and right. And then at some point, Jesus is going to come riding back to Earth on a supercloud, crush the opposition, and take us all to heaven/renew Creation (don't ask me how those last two points fit together--they don't).

You run into problems very quickly on this scheme. First of all, there's all that stuff Jesus says (e.g., in Mark 13 and parallels) about things happening within a generation. Now, I know all the pseudo-explanations about how a generation isn't a generation, but is rather a long stretch of time or has to do with the non-extinction of the human race. But re-read the texts. And honestly, that's just bad exegesis. If bad stuff will happen at some point, but not right away--only before the species goes extinct... what's with all the urgency? "Be vigilant"? No thanks! I'd rather chill and sleep.

Thankfully, NT Wright and Andrew Perriman have done their historical homework and have offered credible historical hypotheses to explain the nature of apocalyptic language within Second Temple Judaism and thus to help us understand what on Earth Jesus and Paul (and the others) were talking about. All of Jesus' talk of judgment, vindication, 'coming on the clouds', Gehenna, narrow roads and wide roads, thieves coming in the night, angry landowners trouncing bad renters, and so on... ALL of that should be understood as historically grounded apocalyptic metaphor. Or as Wright puts it, as language which invests historical events with their full theological meaning.
And with hindsight, Jesus' predictions of the end point of Jewish nationalistic trajectories are seen to be fulfilled (in the Jewish-Roman War of 66-70AD, culminating in the destruction of the Temple).

Perriman builds on Wright's work and suggests that the apostle Paul extended Jesus' eschatological vision to include the Roman Empire. And so the Jew-Greek salvation process is matched by a Jew-Greek judgment process. Jesus' salvation is for the Jew first, but also for the Greek. But there is also a judgment (historically conceived) reserved for the Jew, and another for the Greek. Rephrased, Babylon will be judged for her wrath against Israel.
The idea here is to tap into the Old Testament pattern of judgment where Israel bears "God's wrath" either through war or exile, but where God's anger then turns to the instrument of wrath and judges the invading nation as well.
There are loose ends galore, of course, but the overall shape of the narrative works quite well as far as I can tell.

Another contribution Perriman offers is to see Paul's talk of 'first' and 'second' resurrections as referring to a transitional period's privilege and to the destiny of all humankind. Paul believes, on this view, that there is a general resurrection at the end of history, but also that those who are faithful to Jesus in the transition from Israel's age to the Church's age may well attain a more glorious resurrection--one which immediately follows their death. A resurrection directly to 'heaven' to be with Jesus. Read Paul's eschatology with these lenses on, and I think you'll find them preferable to Wright's 'intermediate state' theology.

A final point. It's quite clear to me now that the New Testament has no one teaching on afterlife theology or ultimate eschatology (I say 'ultimate' to distinguish what will happen after the general resurrection from what happened within a generation of Jesus). The New Testament writers are confused, hopeful, and anxious. I couldn't admit this earlier on, because I thought I would have to say Jesus was confused or wrong about eschatology. And that's hard to do with any kind of interesting Christology. In retrospect however, it seems quite clear to me that Jesus knew what he was doing, had a clear vision of what was shortly to come and that he was vindicated in the proper historical sense. It's also clear to me that the early Church was unsure what to do with their new situation, their continuity and discontinuity with old ethnic Israel, the stories of God's judgment, and the doctrines of resurrection. Thus we get a variety of more or less believable stories about God's future acts in history.

Of course, the apocalyptic language helps to muddy the waters even more.

In the meantime however, just because we're not sure how the story exactly ends doesn't mean we don't know what God is like, how God has called a people for Godself, and how we are to subsume our stories under the story of Israel's god and the world's Creator.

Any questions? Me too.

Peace.

On eating less meat

2008-07-17T15:51:00.004-05:00

The New York Times has a delightful piece on reducing meat consumption by Mark Bittman here (HT: Tim Yenter). It's not written from a vegetarian perspective, but has some helpful reminders and tips for folks who recognize that U.S. citizens on the whole eat waaay too much meat. Here are the first and last of Bittman's seven suggestions.

"1. Forget the protein thing. Roughly simultaneously with your declaration that you’re cutting back on meat, someone will ask 'How are you going to get enough protein?' The answer is 'by being omnivorous.' Plants have protein, too; in fact, per calorie, many plants have more protein than meat. (For example, a cheeseburger contains 14.57 grams of protein in 286 calories, or about .05 grams of protein per calorie; a serving of spinach has 2.97 grams of protein in 23 calories, or .12 grams of protein per calorie; lentils have .07 grams per calorie.) By eating a variety, you can get all essential amino acids.
You also don’t have to eat the national average of a half-pound of meat a day to get enough protein. On average, Americans eat about twice as much as the 56 grams of daily protein recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture (a guideline that some nutritionists think is too high). For anyone eating a well-balanced diet, protein is probably not an issue.
[...]
7. Look at restaurant menus differently. If you’re cutting back on meat, there are three restaurant strategies. Two are easy, and one is hard, but probably the most important.
The first: go to restaurants that don’t feature meat-heavy dishes. It’s harder to go overboard eating at most Asian restaurants, and traditional Italian is fairly safe also.
The second: Once in a while, forget the rules and pledges, and eat like a real American; obviously you can’t do this every time, but it’s an option.
The third is the tricky one: Remember you’re doing this voluntarily, for whatever reasons seem important to you (or at least seemed, until you were confronted with the lamb shanks on the menu). Then order from the parts of the menu that contain little or no meat: salads, sides, soups and (often, anyway) appetizers. If all else fails, offer to share a meat course among two or even three or four people; many restaurant entrees are too big anyway.
I distinctly remember (no great feat; it was just over a year ago), the first time I was in a restaurant and ordered two salads and a bowl of soup.
My companion, who had long known me as a meat-first kind of guy, asked, 'Really?'
The waiter asked, 'How would you like that served?' And then life went on as usual. Wasn’t bad at all."

Interview with Nancey Murphy

2008-07-09T17:26:00.002-05:00

Nancey Murphy is my hero. Perhaps that's too strong. I'm very grateful for her work. I don't know if it's because her arguments are good or because I agree with all her conclusions (e.g. she's roughly Anabaptist, loves Hauerwas and MacIntyre, argues for a physicalist anthropology, enthusiastically supports Christian engagement with the best of contemporary science [i.e. she, among other things, encourages Christians to embrace evolution]). Maybe both.
Imagine my delight then, at finding this interview she did with www.religion-online.org (the article originally appeared in The Christian Century, December 27, 2005, pp. 20-26)!
Some excerpts:

On dualistic anthropologies:
"Separating religion and science into two noninteracting spheres has been a common strategy since the 18th century to avoid conflict between religion and science. While religion (or theology) and science do have different aims and employ different sorts of language, this strategy ultimately fails.
Consider, for example, the issue of human nature. Throughout much of their history Christians have understood humans dualistically -- as a combination of two parts, body and soul. Developments in the cognitive neurosciences are increasingly making it clear that the brain performs all the functions once attributed to the soul, so the division breaks down."

On Christians and evolution:
"When I first discovered that there are still Christians who reject evolutionary theory (having grown up in the Catholic school system, I did not encounter this as a child), I thought of it as a harmless expression of ignorance. More recently, though, I’ve come to see it as tragic. Vast numbers of young people are taught that evolution and Christianity can’t both be true. They get a good science education in college, recognize the truth of the evolutionary picture, and then believe that they have to reject their faith."

On so-called 'natural evil':
"After the tsunami last year I read accounts reflecting on the likely responses to the event by adherents of different faiths. I was startled to see that all of the responses were anthropomorphic -- that is, they asked, 'Why would God do this to us?' None reflected an appreciation of the fact that plain old natural processes were the cause.
A current project for me is the problem of suffering -- both animal pain and human suffering at the hands of nature. The issue of cosmological fine-tuning is quite relevant to this problem. The laws of nature had to be almost exactly as they are for us to exist, which means that for us to exist nature also had to have the capacity to inflict damage on our bodies."

On the suffering of animals:
"Opponents of Christianity sometimes use the violence of predation to argue either that there is no God or else that God has created an unnecessarily cruel world. Science can tell us, though, that predation is necessary in order for us to be here. Then we can join with the 16th-century Anabaptists in seeing the suffering of beasts of burden and animals of prey as a participation in the drama of God’s creation and redemption. This was called 'the gospel of all creatures'." [Am I wrong to imagine a friendliness to vegetarianism here?]

Aaah, if only there were more like her...
Peace,
-Daniel-

An ode to war and peace

2008-07-08T11:59:00.001-05:00

My brother in Christ Ray Gingerich passed this on to our little Mennonite congregation. Thought I'd share it. (The emphasis at the end is Ray's.)

Ode to War and Peace

Joe Franks

So here's to the snappy salute, to spit and polish, the clicking of booted heels, the singing of martial odes. Here's to the officers' club and the swaggering commandant, to the loving but abusive drill sergeant, to the constant flow of insult that is the philosopher's stone of survival. Here's to the young lieutenant fresh from the academy, to the troop ship, soldiers with their duffel bags slung over their shoulders, their cloth caps slouched and angled on their brows. And here's to weeping parents, sweethearts and children clutching at the skirts of their mothers, to final tearful embraces and brass bands playing.

Here's to the night before the battle, to the assault, the coursing landing craft, to going over the top, to the airborne troopers plunging from their droning seed pods, to the rubber dinghy landing at night. Here's to where the farm boy and the city dweller meet and are made equal. Here's to the arcing shell and magnesium dawn, to the clanking treads of armored personnel carriers, to bullets and howitzers, carbines and recoilless rifles, to mortars and anti-personnel bombs, to fragmentation grenades and tear gas canisters, to machine-gun emplacements and flamethrowers, to fasgene(ph) and mustard gas, to the serrated bayonet and the deadly rain of shrapnel.

Here's to minefields fraught with sudden fragmentation, to screaming sergeant death, commanding the rag-tag remnants of his courageous platoon. And here's to raising the flag on the shattered field of victory, to the prisoner of war camp, to the medevac chopper, the hospital ship, sacrosanct, yet sunk, to chaplains, to burial detail and body bags, to "Taps" and other songs. And here's to the brave pilots who in their cavalier ready rooms prepare to become the airborne messengers of death, to the dog-faced infantry who dedicate themselves to the earth as much as their own cause. Here's to words like courage, sacrifice, discipline, glory, maimed, dead.

Here's to war. I raise my glass to you and gaze into the roiling liquid of death's own intoxication. O, war, you have made the low elevated. You have created heroes, and history will be written by your winner. Peace is pallid next to you. Peace can skulk and shrink, a weakling, a coward's paradise. Peace, you lukewarm bowl of grandmother's mush, you washed-out stand-in for manly behavior. Peace walks through the marketplace offering second-hand bargains, peace, the shaver of points, the cut-rate merchant. Peace, you miserable converter of men into swine, you destroyer of valor, quicksand in which nations founder, the bleeding wound in the side of the great avenging angel. Peace, the apologist, the compromiser, the appeaser, the rust upon the edge of courage's great sword.

What is peace but an excuse, a reason for cowardice, a refusal to accept one's responsibilities? I spit on peace. I lift my leg on peace. I have my dog despoil the miserable garden of peace. There are no medals to peace, no honors, no marching bands, no great monuments to peace, no hymns sung, no great odes, no martial melodies, no parades to peace. There are no gigantic fireworks displays, no champagne corks popped to peace, no last cigarette smoked in its honor. There is no night before peace, no declaration of peace. The very absurdity of a nation declaring peace on another shocks the imagination. And who among us can say that he has heard of the spoils of peace? Is there such a thing as a peace hero? Who among us have gathered with his old cronies late at night, hoisted a glass and told peace stories? What valiant young man has been welcomed back from peace? What young boy has gazed longingly at his father, saying that he would willingly go to peace to save his country?