A joyful Easter to my readers. He is risen! Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
[Digression: Someday, I'd love to go to a funeral that included a rousing sermon all about Jesus' resurrection and about how our resurrection as Christians is assured by the historical fact of Jesus' resurrection. Wouldn't that be great? When I'm old I should try to convince some preacher to give such a sermon at my funeral, despite the fact that I wouldn't, strictly speaking, be there to hear it. End of digression.]
Herewith, some music. This is the same music that I linked here, but some of the youtube versions have disappeared from where they were three years ago, so these are current links.
"Worthy is the Lamb" and "Amen" by Georg Frederic Handel:
"Christus Dominus Hodie Resurrexit" by Glad. (If you aren't familiar with the Christian a capella group Glad and if you like classy men's a capella music, you have much edifying enjoyment ahead. Look up more of their music.)
A musical Easter post here wouldn't be complete without some Southern Gospel. "Because He Lives" sung by the Gaither Vocal Band:
As readers know, it is my position that Jesus' resurrection is the evidential center, the heartbeat of Christianity. When God the Father raised Our Lord Jesus from the dead with great power, this was a sign. This was not a mystical event that can be seen and believed only by the eyes of faith. It was a miracle. It spoke to the world. When people ask, "Why can't God be more obvious?" it behooves us to remind them: God has been obvious. He raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus showed himself to his disciples by many infallible proofs. They recorded it for us. That's pretty darned obvious.
Jesus' resurrection is thus an indispensable point where metaphysics and epistemology come together in Christianity. We can be saved because Christ arose in both senses of "because." Metaphysically and theologically, Jesus' resurrection was the necessary completion of his saving work. It is because Jesus lives that we shall live also. He had to destroy the work of the Devil by destroying death.
Epistemologically as well, we can be saved because Jesus rose from the dead, for it is by his glorious resurrection that we know that his death was not just another death, not just another act of injustice, not just an emblem of man's cruelty to man, but rather that it was the means of our redemption. Let there be no mistake: Had Jesus remained dead, his death would have redeemed no one. And had he remained dead, we would have no reason to believe that his death redeemed anyone. We would be, as St. Paul says, of "all men most miserable."
Here are some past posts on this subject:
What Not to Tell a Young Enquirer about the Evidences of the Christian Faith
Evidential Ammo for the Christian Soldier
Is "Jesus Rose from the Dead" a Self-Committing Proposition
The Ascension and the "Objective Vision" Theory of the Resurrection
And here is Tim's and my 2008 article, a preprint copy posted by permission of the publisher, on the evidences for the resurrection.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Holy Saturday--Recycling
I've been looking over some of my older posts, searching for the word "Pilate." This occurred to me to do after I listened last evening to my husband reading the Passion of Our Lord according to St. John, with its strangely vivid portrait of that first-century Roman procurator. I'd like to draw new readers' attention to some of these posts, because they may be useful Passiontide meditations here just before the glorious day of Our Lord's resurrection. So I'm taking the risk of seeming egotistical by self-quoting. Please do read the whole posts if you think they could be of spiritual value.
On Pontius Pilate and historicity:
For this very reason, some have feared that they believe Christianity only because they want it to be true, only because it would be so wonderful if it were true. For this very reason, too many Christians have played along, fearful that the prose might cancel the poetry, separating the "Christ of history" from the "Christ of faith" and assuring the faithful that they can have the latter on which to rest their hearts and feed their imaginations even if the former is...a bit lacking.
This is to separate the prose and the passion with a vengeance.
But this is not Christianity. For Christianity affirms, "He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, He descended into hell, and the third day He rose again from the dead." There is no separation between the great truths of the Gospel and the prosaic truths of history, between the massive miracle of Jesus risen and the all-too-human, bureaucratic hand-washing of a harassed Roman official two thousand years ago.On "transgressive" art, the cross, and mankind's rejection of Jesus:
Via Dawn Eden, I learned this week of an "artist" (I use the term with some hesitation) in Australia named Adam Cullen who was at least short-listed for (and it appears may have won) an award known as the Blake Prize for his deliberately mocking and cartoonish painting of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
[snip]
As Dawn Eden says, the real kicker is in the final line of the Telegraph story, when Cullen gives us his response to the brouhaha: "How can he be so offended? It's just a Jew on the cross."
Um, yeah. Huh. And that's supposed to mean what, exactly?
The more you think about that line, the more unintentional resonances it has. It reminds me of what St. John tells us about Caiaphas--that when he said it was expedient that one man should die for the people, he prophesied though he did not know it. And when Jesus died he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." "It's just a Jew on the cross." Pontius Pilate himself couldn't have said it better. Shaking it off. Telling himself it doesn't matter. How could it matter? How could this obscure Jewish teacher, crucified by the Romans in the first century A.D., matter? Just another of the victims of the cruelty of man in history. Lots of Jews were crucified by the Romans. It's just a Jew on the cross. "All they that see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip, saying, 'He trusted in God that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, if he delighteth in him.'" "Come down from the cross, if thou art the son of God."
Cullen is in a long line of the mockers of Jesus on the cross. And all their mockery God Incarnate, the Jew on the cross, took upon himself, and by it they did the will of God against their own will.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Thy rebuke hath broken his heart
The tabernacle is empty, the door standing open. The altar is stripped and bare.
On Good Friday, we remember the Passion of Our Lord, the Messiah.
The genius of Handel was to choose the words of Scripture, and the words of Scripture only, and to set them musically in such a fashion that they come alive.
The two verses used here are Psalm 69:20 and Lamentations 1:12.
And this, from Isaiah 53.
On Good Friday, we remember the Passion of Our Lord, the Messiah.
The genius of Handel was to choose the words of Scripture, and the words of Scripture only, and to set them musically in such a fashion that they come alive.
The two verses used here are Psalm 69:20 and Lamentations 1:12.
And this, from Isaiah 53.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Palm Sunday and Witness
It is Palm Sunday, and I have nothing much new to say. Years ago I poured myself into quite a few liturgical posts, and they still seem good today. The Anglican liturgy is a gift. The Sacrament is a gift, and therefore we cry, "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" The gift that makes all other gifts possible is the Sacrifice of the Cross, the death of Our Lord. One's ability to speak about those gifts sometimes decreases with age rather than otherwise. Here is an old Palm Sunday post, also brief, with a hymn text. Here is a post on the epistle lesson for Palm Sunday on the Holy Name of Jesus. Here is a post on the Passion.
This Lent I have been reading Whittaker Chambers's Witness. Chambers says of himself, "I was a witness." If you have not read the book, read it. This time, I'm going to read it all the way through. To whet your appetite for Witness, please do read Bill Luse's excellent choice of selections.
I also began reading I John through with my younger daughters for the second time recently. St. John, very much like Chambers, thought of himself primarily as a witness: "And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." "That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which our hands have handled of the Word of life." "That which we have heard and seen declare we unto you." "And he who saw it bare record, and his record is true...that ye might believe."
John must have been quite young, in all probability only a teenager, when he lived with Our Lord through His ministry and was the only one of the twelve to witness the crucifixion. It was all burned into his mind in those early years, and then in old age he writes his epistle to "My little children" (a phrase he uses again and again), telling them, as the last living eyewitness, of what he has heard and seen. John was a witness.
This is what Chambers says about the cross, as a witness to his children:
This Lent I have been reading Whittaker Chambers's Witness. Chambers says of himself, "I was a witness." If you have not read the book, read it. This time, I'm going to read it all the way through. To whet your appetite for Witness, please do read Bill Luse's excellent choice of selections.
I also began reading I John through with my younger daughters for the second time recently. St. John, very much like Chambers, thought of himself primarily as a witness: "And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." "That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which our hands have handled of the Word of life." "That which we have heard and seen declare we unto you." "And he who saw it bare record, and his record is true...that ye might believe."
John must have been quite young, in all probability only a teenager, when he lived with Our Lord through His ministry and was the only one of the twelve to witness the crucifixion. It was all burned into his mind in those early years, and then in old age he writes his epistle to "My little children" (a phrase he uses again and again), telling them, as the last living eyewitness, of what he has heard and seen. John was a witness.
This is what Chambers says about the cross, as a witness to his children:
My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods. In the open fields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between the bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha – the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children.I wish all of my readers a blessed Holy Week.
Assist us mercifully with thy help, O Lord God of our salvation; that we may enter with joy upon the meditation of those mighty acts, whereby thou hast given unto us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Immanent teleology and holism
I've been thinking a bit about thinkers who recognize teleology in nature but don't want to attribute this to a superpowerful and intelligent being. Here I have Thomas Nagel in mind, but it may be that Stephen L. Talbott also fits the description. Talbott is particularly interested in organismal holism, and this thought came to me:
If it appears that the parts of an organism do not work without the whole organism and that the whole organism does not work without its parts, or even that "parts" is an overly crude word for the dynamic relationship between, say, enzymes, proteins, or cells and an organism as a whole, this apparent holism argues not for some kind of immanent teleology which (in some unspecified manner) makes gradualist Darwinian explanations more plausible by making Darwinism itself (in some unspecified sense) teleological. Rather, it is evidence for a more radical degree of intervention (that bogey of the theistic evolutionists) even than some Intelligent Design theorists want to hold out for--namely, that an intelligent being made the whole organism at once.
In other words, recognition of the importance of organs as wholes and of the nearly insoluble chicken-and-the-egg problem of an issue like body plan development in the newly conceived embryo constitutes, whether people realize it or not, an argument for special creation of species.
Notice that by itself this says nothing about the age of the earth. Progressive creationism could also involve special creation at widely spaced intervals.
If it appears that the parts of an organism do not work without the whole organism and that the whole organism does not work without its parts, or even that "parts" is an overly crude word for the dynamic relationship between, say, enzymes, proteins, or cells and an organism as a whole, this apparent holism argues not for some kind of immanent teleology which (in some unspecified manner) makes gradualist Darwinian explanations more plausible by making Darwinism itself (in some unspecified sense) teleological. Rather, it is evidence for a more radical degree of intervention (that bogey of the theistic evolutionists) even than some Intelligent Design theorists want to hold out for--namely, that an intelligent being made the whole organism at once.
In other words, recognition of the importance of organs as wholes and of the nearly insoluble chicken-and-the-egg problem of an issue like body plan development in the newly conceived embryo constitutes, whether people realize it or not, an argument for special creation of species.
Notice that by itself this says nothing about the age of the earth. Progressive creationism could also involve special creation at widely spaced intervals.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
Some Gospel music to make you happy
I linked this a few years ago, but it deserves to be posted again. And who knows, maybe I've picked up a reader or two in the meanwhile who hasn't seen it before. Here are the Cathedrals (again) singing a joyful medley. (Don't knock the misspelling of "medley" in the Youtube video. It's probably part of what has kept this one hidden from the takers-down.)
The March weather around here is a bit gloomy for my taste, so here is something else to brighten it up. The Akins doing "I'll Fly Away." The complete song is on Grooveshark. Some great pickin'.
If you'd like to see a generous clip of it that you can watch, here it is. (Dig the curls on the right!)
The March weather around here is a bit gloomy for my taste, so here is something else to brighten it up. The Akins doing "I'll Fly Away." The complete song is on Grooveshark. Some great pickin'.
If you'd like to see a generous clip of it that you can watch, here it is. (Dig the curls on the right!)
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Roger Bennett testimony
As mentioned in a previous post, I've been wanting to draw attention to pianist Roger Bennett's testimony from an old Cathedrals concert. I believe it was recorded in 1997.
and the second part:
In hindsight, it gives one a strange feeling to realize that this is a story of healing, yet Roger later died of the cancer that he is talking about.
But here's the great thing: Roger isn't primarily telling it as a healing story! Roger himself realizes that the most important story he needs to tell isn't about the remission of the cancer. One of the most remarkable moments in the video is the point where he says that he would not give up what he has learned about God and the increased sweetness of his relationship with Christ even if it meant permanent healing. He says, "This has been the best season of my life." He says, "I wouldn't trade it. If they said, 'Roger, we'll take away the cancer, but you've gotta give up your walk with Jesus that you've gained,' I'd keep the cancer."
Thus speak the saints of God who have been refined in the fire.
Yet Roger doesn't speak from a mountaintop. He talks to the people where they are. He knows there are likely to be people in the audience who have cancer and are not in remission. To them he says that he knows what it is like to be paralyzed with fear, and his message is, "God isn't paralyzed with fear."
That testimony is the introduction to Roger's song "Don't Be Afraid." And here's that song once again.
and the second part:
In hindsight, it gives one a strange feeling to realize that this is a story of healing, yet Roger later died of the cancer that he is talking about.
But here's the great thing: Roger isn't primarily telling it as a healing story! Roger himself realizes that the most important story he needs to tell isn't about the remission of the cancer. One of the most remarkable moments in the video is the point where he says that he would not give up what he has learned about God and the increased sweetness of his relationship with Christ even if it meant permanent healing. He says, "This has been the best season of my life." He says, "I wouldn't trade it. If they said, 'Roger, we'll take away the cancer, but you've gotta give up your walk with Jesus that you've gained,' I'd keep the cancer."
Thus speak the saints of God who have been refined in the fire.
Yet Roger doesn't speak from a mountaintop. He talks to the people where they are. He knows there are likely to be people in the audience who have cancer and are not in remission. To them he says that he knows what it is like to be paralyzed with fear, and his message is, "God isn't paralyzed with fear."
That testimony is the introduction to Roger's song "Don't Be Afraid." And here's that song once again.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Be Not Afraid
The cry of the papacy of John Paul II was "Be not afraid!" It's an encouragement that Christians need. We're certainly not immune to fear, and especially not now in such uncertain times. My heart goes out to my brethren in the Catholic communion today as Benedict has resigned and as they await the news of who the new pope is to be.
But whether Protestant or Catholic, all of us as Christians are tempted to worry and fear at times.
In another of my oddball attempts to bring together southern gospel music and liturgical Christianity, I want to match JPII's exhortation "Be not afraid!" with this song by the justly famed late gospel pianist Roger Bennett--"Don't Be Afraid."
(Do click and watch the song soon, because many of these Youtube videos of Gaither-distributed music are being pulled or blocked, and a lot of my old gospel music post are now sadly music-less.)
This song had to grow on me. At first it seemed a little too loud and repetitive, but now it moves me greatly, perhaps because I've seen it in conjunction with Roger's testimony about his cancer, which comes on the same video. I hope to feature that in a later post.
Christian, don't be afraid.
But whether Protestant or Catholic, all of us as Christians are tempted to worry and fear at times.
In another of my oddball attempts to bring together southern gospel music and liturgical Christianity, I want to match JPII's exhortation "Be not afraid!" with this song by the justly famed late gospel pianist Roger Bennett--"Don't Be Afraid."
(Do click and watch the song soon, because many of these Youtube videos of Gaither-distributed music are being pulled or blocked, and a lot of my old gospel music post are now sadly music-less.)
This song had to grow on me. At first it seemed a little too loud and repetitive, but now it moves me greatly, perhaps because I've seen it in conjunction with Roger's testimony about his cancer, which comes on the same video. I hope to feature that in a later post.
Christian, don't be afraid.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Slavery as the alternative to the free market
Inspired by a good post by my W4 colleague Jeffrey S. on the minimum wage, I've been thinking a bit lately about anti-free-market approaches to economics and what makes people tick who advocate such approaches. In this comment (as in other posts on this blog) I said that the central error of such approaches is the idea that we can make something from nothing--that by simple fiat we can create prosperity. An obvious example is thinking that we can increase the real wealth and well-being of workers simply by legislating a rise in the minimum wage. Another example is thinking that we can simply (ta-da!) make things free by declaring that from now on they shall be free.
Yet I've encountered a surprising number of otherwise sensible people who are subject to the delusion that goodwill can create something from nothing. Often the form it takes is saying, "Why can't x just be cheaper?" though sometimes it literally takes the form of saying, "Why can't x just be free?" I must admit that I've never yet convinced anyone who can ask such a question to change his mind. But here are some thoughts on it. Pick a product or service. For the sake of keeping this interesting, let's make it a good and valuable product, even a terribly important product. Make it bread or heart medication. Or medical care. (Hmmm.) Now let's ask the question: Why can't it just be "made free"? And if we apply our common sense for the moment, the answer comes back: Because it actually costs something to grow, produce, and distribute that product or service. Because it isn't, in fact, free. But there's more: Even if bread fell from heaven, someone would have to go out and gather it and provide it to people. When it comes to any service, and a fortiori to highly skilled services like medical care, there is actual labor involved as well as many materials. Medical care can't be free both because all the products used in it, from sterile gloves to expensive equipment, don't make themselves, don't mine the raw materials for themselves out of the earth, and don't deliver themselves to the point of use, and also because the doctors themselves are not slaves. Even if they were slaves, they would have to be fed and housed, and guarded so they wouldn't escape from the slave compound, so the work still wouldn't be free. But they should, of course, not be slaves. They have to charge for their services both to pay their expenses and to support themselves and their families. All of this should be obvious. It shouldn't need to be said.
Ah, but our anti-free-market folks will reply that they needn't charge so much for their services. And the same for all sorts of other things. The greedy CEOs and shareholders of the companies that make and sell bread (or medicines or sterile gloves) shouldn't make so much, and so on and so forth throughout all levels of the economy. And if they made less, then all else would remain equal (right?) and that money could just be redistributed in the form of higher wages for their workers, without any rise in prices, because the company would make less in profits. Right? Someone who dislikes the free market can always find someone who, in his opinion, is making too much money and ought to make less. In fact, lots of someones. Therefore, on his view, there is nothing in principle wrong with forcing all those people to make less, if only we could find a way to enforce such virtuous economic behavior. On this view, profit is a kind of pointless epiphenomenon of an economic system. People can always do without it, and if CEOs, doctors, and everyone else won't voluntarily pare themselves back to the point of doing their work for something close to subsistence level, they might as well be forced to do so, or at least to come closer to that "ideal."
The problem with this view is that, to the extent that it is acted upon, it creates economic stagnation, shortages, and loss of jobs, and everyone is worse off. If a potential entrepreneur knows that he can't make a decent profit by starting a company, he won't start a company. If doctors are paid less and less, there is less and less reason for them to go through the long, grueling, and debt-encumbered training required to become a doctor, to work the long hours and put up with the stress of being a doctor, and to subject themselves to the constant possibility of malpractice suits. So we have a doctor shortage. Companies go out of business or are absorbed by other companies that don't need to employ as many workers. Productivity and effort are not rewarded, so the motivation for them wanes. As more and more people lose their jobs, more and more people come to be supported by the government, which is getting less and less tax revenue while paying out more and more in entitlements. The government thus operates more and more on the fiscal equivalent of gas fumes--deficit spending. The whole system creaks on until it is no longer sustainable, and then we have...a problem.
Now, really, that's the end of the story. There isn't really any "on the other hand." But I'll just point this out: How are we supposed to stop people from saying, "The heck with it" and ceasing to produce goods and services, once we have taken that evil profit motive off the table? Isn't, ultimately, the only fallback (and it isn't much of a fallback) to make them keep going? Which takes us right back to enslavement.
Now, that isn't going to happen directly. Nobody is actually going to go to a CEO and say, "You will work for less or we will throw you in prison." But our government is pretty clever at harassing the goose that laid the golden egg. We enact punitive measures via labor law to force companies to pay their workers more, for example. The anti-free-trade folks would like to punish them for outsourcing. The idea is to find that perfect balance where they'll keep on operating, keep on putting out the effort, keep on supplying the jobs, on the terms that are dictated to them. But the very phenomenon of outsourcing shows that eventually, they get tired of hanging around and being dictated to to that extent, so they go elsewhere. We have no record of the number of people who have had an idea or thought of starting a company and said "the heck with it" when brought face-to-face with the regulations and taxation that would be involved in actually starting or running a business. The anti-free-market folks really have no answer to this, but their minds always run in punitive directions. How can we punish "excessive" profits? How can we punish "union busting"? How can we punish outsourcing? How can we punish those who don't pay their employees enough? How can we forcibly cap medical payments? What all of this is essentially saying is, "How far can we go towards making productive members of society slaves without doing so outright? How far can we force them to carry out their productive activities on unprofitable or notably less profitable terms while not immediately causing our economy to collapse?"
Those who pontificate to the effect that "morals should be part of economics" and mean by that not merely that bad products (such as pornography) should not be sold and not merely that fraudulent practices should be punished but something more like, "There is a moral amount that you should make for your goods and services and a moral amount that you are in duty bound to pay your laborers, and it is just to stop you from making more than you should or paying less than you should" simply never confront the cold, hard facts about shortages and economic stagnation. Nor do they confront the tendency towards the enslavement of the productive inherent in their views. They don't confront all of that because it is in conflict with their intuition (or perhaps with their understanding of some religious teaching) that really it should be possible and is right to force people not to pay "too little" and not to make "too much." And that we know what "too little" and "too much" are and can create a healthy economy that promotes human flourishing on that basis. They're so sure that this is possible that you cannot argue them out of it.
And that's a shame. Because you can't make something from nothing, and enslaving people is wrong.
Yet I've encountered a surprising number of otherwise sensible people who are subject to the delusion that goodwill can create something from nothing. Often the form it takes is saying, "Why can't x just be cheaper?" though sometimes it literally takes the form of saying, "Why can't x just be free?" I must admit that I've never yet convinced anyone who can ask such a question to change his mind. But here are some thoughts on it. Pick a product or service. For the sake of keeping this interesting, let's make it a good and valuable product, even a terribly important product. Make it bread or heart medication. Or medical care. (Hmmm.) Now let's ask the question: Why can't it just be "made free"? And if we apply our common sense for the moment, the answer comes back: Because it actually costs something to grow, produce, and distribute that product or service. Because it isn't, in fact, free. But there's more: Even if bread fell from heaven, someone would have to go out and gather it and provide it to people. When it comes to any service, and a fortiori to highly skilled services like medical care, there is actual labor involved as well as many materials. Medical care can't be free both because all the products used in it, from sterile gloves to expensive equipment, don't make themselves, don't mine the raw materials for themselves out of the earth, and don't deliver themselves to the point of use, and also because the doctors themselves are not slaves. Even if they were slaves, they would have to be fed and housed, and guarded so they wouldn't escape from the slave compound, so the work still wouldn't be free. But they should, of course, not be slaves. They have to charge for their services both to pay their expenses and to support themselves and their families. All of this should be obvious. It shouldn't need to be said.
Ah, but our anti-free-market folks will reply that they needn't charge so much for their services. And the same for all sorts of other things. The greedy CEOs and shareholders of the companies that make and sell bread (or medicines or sterile gloves) shouldn't make so much, and so on and so forth throughout all levels of the economy. And if they made less, then all else would remain equal (right?) and that money could just be redistributed in the form of higher wages for their workers, without any rise in prices, because the company would make less in profits. Right? Someone who dislikes the free market can always find someone who, in his opinion, is making too much money and ought to make less. In fact, lots of someones. Therefore, on his view, there is nothing in principle wrong with forcing all those people to make less, if only we could find a way to enforce such virtuous economic behavior. On this view, profit is a kind of pointless epiphenomenon of an economic system. People can always do without it, and if CEOs, doctors, and everyone else won't voluntarily pare themselves back to the point of doing their work for something close to subsistence level, they might as well be forced to do so, or at least to come closer to that "ideal."
The problem with this view is that, to the extent that it is acted upon, it creates economic stagnation, shortages, and loss of jobs, and everyone is worse off. If a potential entrepreneur knows that he can't make a decent profit by starting a company, he won't start a company. If doctors are paid less and less, there is less and less reason for them to go through the long, grueling, and debt-encumbered training required to become a doctor, to work the long hours and put up with the stress of being a doctor, and to subject themselves to the constant possibility of malpractice suits. So we have a doctor shortage. Companies go out of business or are absorbed by other companies that don't need to employ as many workers. Productivity and effort are not rewarded, so the motivation for them wanes. As more and more people lose their jobs, more and more people come to be supported by the government, which is getting less and less tax revenue while paying out more and more in entitlements. The government thus operates more and more on the fiscal equivalent of gas fumes--deficit spending. The whole system creaks on until it is no longer sustainable, and then we have...a problem.
Now, really, that's the end of the story. There isn't really any "on the other hand." But I'll just point this out: How are we supposed to stop people from saying, "The heck with it" and ceasing to produce goods and services, once we have taken that evil profit motive off the table? Isn't, ultimately, the only fallback (and it isn't much of a fallback) to make them keep going? Which takes us right back to enslavement.
Now, that isn't going to happen directly. Nobody is actually going to go to a CEO and say, "You will work for less or we will throw you in prison." But our government is pretty clever at harassing the goose that laid the golden egg. We enact punitive measures via labor law to force companies to pay their workers more, for example. The anti-free-trade folks would like to punish them for outsourcing. The idea is to find that perfect balance where they'll keep on operating, keep on putting out the effort, keep on supplying the jobs, on the terms that are dictated to them. But the very phenomenon of outsourcing shows that eventually, they get tired of hanging around and being dictated to to that extent, so they go elsewhere. We have no record of the number of people who have had an idea or thought of starting a company and said "the heck with it" when brought face-to-face with the regulations and taxation that would be involved in actually starting or running a business. The anti-free-market folks really have no answer to this, but their minds always run in punitive directions. How can we punish "excessive" profits? How can we punish "union busting"? How can we punish outsourcing? How can we punish those who don't pay their employees enough? How can we forcibly cap medical payments? What all of this is essentially saying is, "How far can we go towards making productive members of society slaves without doing so outright? How far can we force them to carry out their productive activities on unprofitable or notably less profitable terms while not immediately causing our economy to collapse?"
Those who pontificate to the effect that "morals should be part of economics" and mean by that not merely that bad products (such as pornography) should not be sold and not merely that fraudulent practices should be punished but something more like, "There is a moral amount that you should make for your goods and services and a moral amount that you are in duty bound to pay your laborers, and it is just to stop you from making more than you should or paying less than you should" simply never confront the cold, hard facts about shortages and economic stagnation. Nor do they confront the tendency towards the enslavement of the productive inherent in their views. They don't confront all of that because it is in conflict with their intuition (or perhaps with their understanding of some religious teaching) that really it should be possible and is right to force people not to pay "too little" and not to make "too much." And that we know what "too little" and "too much" are and can create a healthy economy that promotes human flourishing on that basis. They're so sure that this is possible that you cannot argue them out of it.
And that's a shame. Because you can't make something from nothing, and enslaving people is wrong.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Suicide: "You've got to go back"
God has laid it on my heart today to blog a story that I believed I had blogged years ago. After a long time searching the Internet, this site, and W4 and not finding the story, I searched my computer, found the links in a document, and used the Wayback Machine (hurray for the Wayback Machine) to find the story.
Via the WM, here is the story from 2005. David Preuitt, a former lumberjack in Oregon, tried to commit suicide using prescribed drugs. He slept for several days, woke up, and told the people around him that while he was out of it he heard a voice saying, "David, I don't want you to do it this way. You've got to go back." Information in this story (also via the WBM) indicates that David Preuitt was not a particularly good candidate for religious suggestions. He was a hard-living logger with a rape conviction and prison term behind him.
After he came back, David insisted to his wife Lynda that she needed to be a voice and to get out the message to other people not to commit suicide, that suicide was not the way to heaven. She attempted to do so, but unfortunately, the story seems to have dropped off the current links on the Internet. Most current stories about David Preuitt just talk about the scandal of David's not having died--the drugs were not effective in the way that they were supposed to have been. The possibility that God really did, you know, send a message back with David against suicide doesn't get much press.
Readers know that I'm more the rationalist type, but evidence is evidence, and this story needs to be heard. The fact that Dave Preuitt's story accords with Christian tradition as well as with the biblical teaching against murder (in this case, the killing of oneself) is confirmatory. The Apostle John said to test the spirits, and in this case there is no biblical reason to believe that David Preuitt's message is not veridical. I preserve the story and the links through the WBM here in case anyone should be looking for them later. Hopefully they will find them this way.
Via the WM, here is the story from 2005. David Preuitt, a former lumberjack in Oregon, tried to commit suicide using prescribed drugs. He slept for several days, woke up, and told the people around him that while he was out of it he heard a voice saying, "David, I don't want you to do it this way. You've got to go back." Information in this story (also via the WBM) indicates that David Preuitt was not a particularly good candidate for religious suggestions. He was a hard-living logger with a rape conviction and prison term behind him.
After he came back, David insisted to his wife Lynda that she needed to be a voice and to get out the message to other people not to commit suicide, that suicide was not the way to heaven. She attempted to do so, but unfortunately, the story seems to have dropped off the current links on the Internet. Most current stories about David Preuitt just talk about the scandal of David's not having died--the drugs were not effective in the way that they were supposed to have been. The possibility that God really did, you know, send a message back with David against suicide doesn't get much press.
Readers know that I'm more the rationalist type, but evidence is evidence, and this story needs to be heard. The fact that Dave Preuitt's story accords with Christian tradition as well as with the biblical teaching against murder (in this case, the killing of oneself) is confirmatory. The Apostle John said to test the spirits, and in this case there is no biblical reason to believe that David Preuitt's message is not veridical. I preserve the story and the links through the WBM here in case anyone should be looking for them later. Hopefully they will find them this way.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Conservatism and caring for the little guy
Hunter Baker makes a good point here, describing a woman he saw at Hardee's:
And there is more: The actual economic policies advocated by the left mean fewer jobs, higher prices, and small businesses pushed out by high regulatory costs, all of which is very bad for the people who need jobs the most. We're seeing this right now with the economic burden of Obamacare, but that's only one example. The actual environmental policies advocated by the left are radically anti-human and will result in grave economic harm both to our own country and, even more, to developing countries. I have just been reading a book I hope to write more about later, Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin. In it he chronicles case after case after case of leftist policies that have harmed the poorest of the poor in Third-World countries, from coercive population control to crackdowns forcing Third-World countries to eschew the advantages of more nutritious modified grains.
When our young people are growing up we Christians and conservatives often teach them biblical principles, and that is very good. But we also need to teach them economic principles. We need to teach them that there is no free lunch. We need to have them read books like Zubrin's and like Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed. We need to talk through with them the ways that policies that sound oh-so-kind to "make things free" or "force employers to pay more" or "give health insurance to everyone" actually harm the people they are meant to help. We need to expose to them the viciously anti-human underside of the environmental movement, as well as its empirical fecklessness.
We also need to show them how the undermining of marriage and fatherhood have been disastrous for the poor in our own country and how further promotion of sexual promiscuity and anti-family perversion will only do more harm, how a recovery of conservative values is the only hope for the poor themselves.
It is these kinds of conversations and teachings that will inoculate them against muddle-headed thinking that pits "care for the poor" and "care for the earth," allegedly embodied by the policies of the left, against social conservative issues like abortion and homosexuality which are the concern of the right. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to realize that too many youth pastors and other pastors even in relatively conservative evangelical theological circles are promoting such thinking, no doubt in all sincerity, but to the great detriment of the church itself. For if our young people get their consciences all tied up in knots feeling that they must choose between caring for the born poor and caring for the unborn and for marriage, I'm very much afraid that they will choose the former and functionally abandon the latter, eventually abandoning it altogether and simply becoming social liberals as well. After all, the born poor can be made so very picturesque.
But it's all a completely false dichotomy, and the poor will be the ones most harmed of all by the policies of the left. I'm not sure how young you have to get hold of 'em to prevent them from falling for these confusions, but start as young as you can and teach all of this explicitly.
Update: I just saw this linked from Drudge. In Louisiana, state regulators force retail stores to mark up the price of milk to 6% above the store's invoice costs. Let that sink in a minute. The state regulators came down on a store that was selling milk on a special every week for $2.99 per gallon. Note that this is even above and beyond state price supports to farmers, which are already economically problematic. But this is a further regulation on the price charged to the customer. Retail stores aren't allowed to sell at cost or to take a loss. The regulators give a convoluted reason to the effect that perhaps if one retailer sold at or below cost he could undersell his competitors, drive them out of business, and then raise his own prices. So really, folks, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this requirement that the retailer make a 6% profit is a way of keeping down profits. By this reasoning, state regulators should do this with all goods as a competition-promotion move. To keep down prices we have to keep up prices. Rrrright. I was saying something about not helping the poor...Sure, this is just one small thing. But it's just one of a million boneheaded things where "government knows best," and the little guy is the one who gets hurt. It was such a perfect illustration that I had to include it.
With great concentration and methodical effort, she scratched away the silver coating on the numbers. Occasionally, she punctuated her practice with long, ragged ugly coughing noises.
Those lottery tickets she must have spent at least $20 dollars on (more than for the flip flops on her feet) came from the state of Tennessee. I thought about how she is addicted to gambling thanks to the active assistance of her government. I also thought about how addicted the rest of us have become to the revenue.
If you want to understand social conservatives, thinking about the woman in Hardee’s scratching away at lottery tickets is a good way to start. We want to encourage the things in life that help a person grow strong: faith, work, education, character, duty, and family. We want to work against the things that seem to shrivel up a soul such as perpetual dependence, reliance on games of chance rather than personal industry, an inability to connect consequences to choices, and the loss of the kind of strong family ties that prepare a person for life in a hard world.
At a minimum, we don’t want to support a government which invites the poor to sacrifice what little they have for a mirage. We have lost that argument everywhere. And more’s the pity.As we Protestant conservatives view with great dismay what seems to us the hair-tearing foolishness of a new generation of young, "emergent" evangelicals spouting the platitudes of the left and getting their priorities all messed up, either abandoning or downplaying the pro-life movement, voting Democrat, and embracing left-wing economics, we need to think of something that cannot be said too often: What the left wants is not what is best for the poor, the weak, the little guy. In fact, we can sometimes even go farther: The left does not want what is best for the poor and the weak. Viz. the Obama administration's willingness to shut down Catholic hospitals, Catholic charities, and anyone else who won't toe the line on his HHS mandate. Viz. the Obama administration's cutting off the Catholic bishops' funding for anti-trafficking, because they wouldn't refer for abortions. Viz. the left's shut-down of adoption agencies that won't place children with homosexual couples. The list goes on and on.
And there is more: The actual economic policies advocated by the left mean fewer jobs, higher prices, and small businesses pushed out by high regulatory costs, all of which is very bad for the people who need jobs the most. We're seeing this right now with the economic burden of Obamacare, but that's only one example. The actual environmental policies advocated by the left are radically anti-human and will result in grave economic harm both to our own country and, even more, to developing countries. I have just been reading a book I hope to write more about later, Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin. In it he chronicles case after case after case of leftist policies that have harmed the poorest of the poor in Third-World countries, from coercive population control to crackdowns forcing Third-World countries to eschew the advantages of more nutritious modified grains.
When our young people are growing up we Christians and conservatives often teach them biblical principles, and that is very good. But we also need to teach them economic principles. We need to teach them that there is no free lunch. We need to have them read books like Zubrin's and like Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed. We need to talk through with them the ways that policies that sound oh-so-kind to "make things free" or "force employers to pay more" or "give health insurance to everyone" actually harm the people they are meant to help. We need to expose to them the viciously anti-human underside of the environmental movement, as well as its empirical fecklessness.
We also need to show them how the undermining of marriage and fatherhood have been disastrous for the poor in our own country and how further promotion of sexual promiscuity and anti-family perversion will only do more harm, how a recovery of conservative values is the only hope for the poor themselves.
It is these kinds of conversations and teachings that will inoculate them against muddle-headed thinking that pits "care for the poor" and "care for the earth," allegedly embodied by the policies of the left, against social conservative issues like abortion and homosexuality which are the concern of the right. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to realize that too many youth pastors and other pastors even in relatively conservative evangelical theological circles are promoting such thinking, no doubt in all sincerity, but to the great detriment of the church itself. For if our young people get their consciences all tied up in knots feeling that they must choose between caring for the born poor and caring for the unborn and for marriage, I'm very much afraid that they will choose the former and functionally abandon the latter, eventually abandoning it altogether and simply becoming social liberals as well. After all, the born poor can be made so very picturesque.
But it's all a completely false dichotomy, and the poor will be the ones most harmed of all by the policies of the left. I'm not sure how young you have to get hold of 'em to prevent them from falling for these confusions, but start as young as you can and teach all of this explicitly.
Update: I just saw this linked from Drudge. In Louisiana, state regulators force retail stores to mark up the price of milk to 6% above the store's invoice costs. Let that sink in a minute. The state regulators came down on a store that was selling milk on a special every week for $2.99 per gallon. Note that this is even above and beyond state price supports to farmers, which are already economically problematic. But this is a further regulation on the price charged to the customer. Retail stores aren't allowed to sell at cost or to take a loss. The regulators give a convoluted reason to the effect that perhaps if one retailer sold at or below cost he could undersell his competitors, drive them out of business, and then raise his own prices. So really, folks, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this requirement that the retailer make a 6% profit is a way of keeping down profits. By this reasoning, state regulators should do this with all goods as a competition-promotion move. To keep down prices we have to keep up prices. Rrrright. I was saying something about not helping the poor...Sure, this is just one small thing. But it's just one of a million boneheaded things where "government knows best," and the little guy is the one who gets hurt. It was such a perfect illustration that I had to include it.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
When he's right, he's Wright
I have posted my thoughts apropos of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday at What's Wrong With the World.
By way of posting something different and independent here, I'm falling back, as once before, on stealing quotations from one of the most eminently quotable bloggers currently writing (that I know of)--lawyer and science fiction author John C. Wright. (I've never read any of his science fiction and am not generally interested in sci-fi, so don't take this as an endorsement of his fiction.) Wright is quirky as all git-out, but when he's right, he's Wright. He is working singlehandedly to revive the art of invective in American discourse, and since the people against whom he's inveighing so often deserve it, and since he does it so well, one can only cheer.
I don't always read Wright, but when I do, I'm usually glad to have done so. He got a little too...focused during election season, but now that that's over he can get back to a broader range of topics. In this treatise he does mention abortion, which he rightly loathes, but only by way of illustration. Speaking of our leftist opponents, he says,
Wright starts off discussing the hysterical reactions to some compliments a sports announcer paid to a beauty queen, and from there he manages to work in everything else in the world and the kitchen sink. He contrasts the silly, PC objections to the compliments with a truly chivalrous and old-fashioned objection, thus:
(Did you manage to finish that passage without laughing? I didn't. I laugh every time I read it.) He continues,
[snip]
Wright goes on to say, in all seriousness, that the reason PC-ists write such gaseous and illogical gibberish is that they are, in fact, engaging in a kind of liturgical worship of the Nothing. And he postulates a shrewd conjecture, noting the piece of leftist song liturgy "Imagine," that they hope that by eliminating all distinctions between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, they can bring about Utopia. They believe, he says, that the absence of conviction means the presence of harmony.
He relates this nihilism to the utterly upside-down values and priorities of modern leftists, of which he offers us examples, including this one,
It sure would be fun to be able to write like that. But it's also fun to quote it. If you don't have time to read the whole Wright post, enjoy the plums above.
By way of posting something different and independent here, I'm falling back, as once before, on stealing quotations from one of the most eminently quotable bloggers currently writing (that I know of)--lawyer and science fiction author John C. Wright. (I've never read any of his science fiction and am not generally interested in sci-fi, so don't take this as an endorsement of his fiction.) Wright is quirky as all git-out, but when he's right, he's Wright. He is working singlehandedly to revive the art of invective in American discourse, and since the people against whom he's inveighing so often deserve it, and since he does it so well, one can only cheer.
I don't always read Wright, but when I do, I'm usually glad to have done so. He got a little too...focused during election season, but now that that's over he can get back to a broader range of topics. In this treatise he does mention abortion, which he rightly loathes, but only by way of illustration. Speaking of our leftist opponents, he says,
Hating motherhood, they hate children. Go to an abortion mill and see. Listen to their absurd overpopulation fears, now in a day when we suffer underpopulation. Hear how they talk as if childbirth is punishment. Look at how they try to sexualize children as quickly as possible and keep grown men infants as long as possible.But I give that particular quotation only because of the connection with Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Wright's lengthy essay, which you almost certainly won't have time to read all at one go, is full of things that are much more biting than that, as well as being extremely funny.
Wright starts off discussing the hysterical reactions to some compliments a sports announcer paid to a beauty queen, and from there he manages to work in everything else in the world and the kitchen sink. He contrasts the silly, PC objections to the compliments with a truly chivalrous and old-fashioned objection, thus:
The point being made here is not that Mr Musburger overstepped the bounds of gentlemanly propriety, and exposed a young woman to embarrassment by too fulsome a compliment broadcast too publicly.
I would respect, and even salute, any man man enough to have uttered that criticism in public. Gentleman do not express lust over the wives and sweethearts of other gentlemen, but may only express respectful admiration. This is because a true man, a man of nobility expressing the best of masculine character, is a paragon of self control, and a wary guardian of the virtue and the sensitive character of the weaker sex.
No doubt my last sentence sounds like a parody to you, does it not, dear reader? If so, you can understand why the objection to Mr Musburger’s comments were not criticized in these terms. My sentence comes from a chivalrous and indeed a Catholic worldview, which affirms both the greater strength and dominion and therefore the greater humility and duty placed on the male sex. For Christian gentlemen, men lead and rule, and leaders are servants who give all they have, body and soul, even unto death, like a shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. (We Christians are also much sexier in every way than the wimpy agnostics and their sad barbarian machismo, and our women are fertile, nubile, feminine, and cute, and make better mates and mothers and human beings than the neurotic unisex tramps from your world, heathen losers. Deal with it.)
(Did you manage to finish that passage without laughing? I didn't. I laugh every time I read it.) He continues,
In this case, I will forgo my usual polite habits, so I will not be referring to Mr Waldron by the name Mr Waldron, because he did not call Miss Webb by the name Miss Webb. He merely called her ‘Webb.’ I merely call him ‘creature.’
Let us now turn to what the creature Waldron’s comment is. What it is, is illogical.
The logical error involved is irrelevance. The words here are strung together to form an emotion impressionistic mood, like a blurry cloud of passion, without sharp edges, definition, or necessity.
For example, the first sentence asserts that Mr Musburger’s comment that quarterbacks often attract an attractive girlfriend is said to be “not puzzling” in something identified as the “beer-wings-and-women culture” of college football.
What is the point of this particular string of terms?
Why, for example, are fans of football (some of whom, or so I am told, are indeed women) not described as a culture of “athletics, statistics, and team spirit” or something else related to the sport?
Why mention beer and wings, as opposed to, say, hot peanuts and hotdogs and crackerjacks and Coca Cola, which fans (or so I am told) also consume at games?
[snip]
No, the rhetorical point here is merely to sneer at the crude and loutish tastes of the hoi polloi.
[snip]
Now, I have as much respect for teetotalers, vegetarians, and celibates as can be, and indeed, I have considerably more respect for asceticism and self-discipline than does the culture, if it may be called that, surrounding me. So one would think me to be in sympathy with the creature Walloon or whatever his name is.
But no, for the thought, if it can be called that, the creature continues with is that Mr Musburger’s comment that a stalwart quarterback will often attract an attractive girlfriend is “troubling” on the grounds that “there is a culture of domestic violence and sexual assault in football.”
As an attorney, I am always delighted when the prosecution makes a vague rather than a specific claim, because it can be summarily dismissed by the defense. The claim is this case is not that Mr Musburger was aiding and abetting any acts of wifebeating and sexual assault, but merely that the average for such crimes is higher among someone or something associated with the National Football League than the national average.
The creature Waldron does not say specifically that NFL players or fans or sportsannouncers or owners have higher rates of conviction for wifebeating and rape than the national average: he merely makes a windy assertion that there is a nebulous something he calls a “culture” which, it is implied without being said, somehow applauds or enables such violent crimes.
The statement is a lie, and an outrageous lie, and, in a civilized nation or age, a football fan would challenge the creature to a duel with sword or pistol, as a warning to others to mind their words before they slander gentlemen of good character.
Now, I do not know if the statement is literally false. It may indeed be that, taken as a group, any random selection of healthy young men will have a higher incidence of violent crimes, including rape, than the national average, on the grounds that the national average includes old ladies who rarely beat their wives and never commit rape.You see why I like this guy?
But please note that no cause and effect chain is posited by the creature, not even alleged, between the idea that jocks win the hearts of maidens fair and the idea that various horrid crimes mentioned here are permissible. The lack of logic is beyond astonishing, and well in the area of being transcendental and unearthly: it is almost like a Zen koan.
This is the accusation: If you compliment a women, you are a rapist. If you think girls find athletes attractive, you are a rapist. If you wish to attract the eye of the opposite sex with your virility at sports or your self discipline to excel at a sport, you are a rapist. If you drink beer, you are a rapist. If you eat fried chicken wings, you are a rapist. If you are a man, you are a rapist.
Obviously, no one in his right mind believes this accusation nor utters it expecting to be believed. That is why it is not uttered, only implied.
That is why the language used by the creature is both so gassy and vague and yet so pointed and accusatory. Someone, it is not clear who, is being accused of a crime beyond misdemeanor, beyond felony, beyond enormity, beyond abomination, and yet it is not clear what this crime is.
Is the crime the fact that Mr Musburger taught and encouraged AJ McCarron that quarterbacking gives one the right to rape beauty queens? That possessing a beauty queen as an unwilling harem slave was part of the wages offered by the Illuminati to successful quarterbacks?
But, on the one hand, Mr Musburger did not say anything remotely like that, and, on the other hand, the Illuminati do not exist, having been destroyed by the UFO people who live in energy pyramids beneath the Bermuda Triangle.Okay, so sometimes he gets a little carried away, but still...It's great stuff.
Wright goes on to say, in all seriousness, that the reason PC-ists write such gaseous and illogical gibberish is that they are, in fact, engaging in a kind of liturgical worship of the Nothing. And he postulates a shrewd conjecture, noting the piece of leftist song liturgy "Imagine," that they hope that by eliminating all distinctions between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, they can bring about Utopia. They believe, he says, that the absence of conviction means the presence of harmony.
He relates this nihilism to the utterly upside-down values and priorities of modern leftists, of which he offers us examples, including this one,
I have been in a conversation with a man who objected to my using the word “Chinaman” to refer to the people ruled by Mao, but was nonchalant, even innocently puzzled like a wide-eyed kitten, that I or anyone would think there was anything wrong with Mao’s genocide of countless Chinamen. (For the record, his numbers far exceed Stalin’s.) The first was a matter worth shrieking like a steam whistle about, whereas the second was a meaningless historical oddity having nothing in particular to do with the advantages or disadvantages of totalitarian socialism.There is much more, and he winds up with this peroration:
They hate reason. They hate, hate, hate the truth and regard claims to know to truth to be violent lies. Talk to them and see.
Why hate such delightful and salutary things, things man cannot live without? It is because God is the source and summit of reason, truth, virtue, and beauty. And they would rather die than think, would rather go to hell.
They hate masculinity. This is because God is masculine. They hate superiority and inferiority. This is because God is superior and we are inferior. They hate fatherhood because they hate the Father.
Hating fatherhood, they hate femininity. What else can the sweet and nurturing nature of the female be for them, aside from a Yellow Star of oppression?
Hating motherhood, they hate children. Go to an abortion mill and see. Listen to their absurd overpopulation fears, now in a day when we suffer underpopulation. Hear how they talk as if childbirth is punishment. Look at how they try to sexualize children as quickly as possible and keep grown men infants as long as possible.
They hate man, the idea of man. Look at how they rally to the rights of animals, all the while proclaiming man is nothing but an animal.
Do not be deceived, dear readers. The Leftist hate us with a deep and abiding hatred. They hate everything about us, from sunshine to pretty girls to brave boys to solid gold to warm firearms to truth, beauty, and virtue. Everything good, they call evil, and everything evil they call good.
They even hate calling a beautiful woman a beauty.
But it is not because they are evil, or illogical, or insane, or unwise. It is because they have lost their way. They have gouged out their eyes, and complain the noon is dark. They have locked themselves in a cage and thrown away the only key. They are lonely for divine love, and homesick for heavenly wonders.
The shepherd of heaven is seeking to for them with more craft and stealth and subtlety than you or I can imagine. Choirs of angels more numberless than the stars themselves, and older, will peal songs to shake the orbs of heaven when even the least of these lost is found.
[snip]
Let us praise God that He placed such sublime examples of beauty and virtue in our midst as the Daughters of Eve, knowing we have done nothing to merit such an inexpressible gift.
When the lost fret over beauty queens, let us rejoice. Even to look at such loveliness is a reason for gratitude and a cause for devout reflection on the goodness of the world we Sons of Adam have marred.
It sure would be fun to be able to write like that. But it's also fun to quote it. If you don't have time to read the whole Wright post, enjoy the plums above.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Steven Curtis Chapman "I Will Be Here"
In this post last year I embedded a 4Shared link to "I Will Be Here" by Steven Curtis Chapman. Unfortunately, 4Shared has now become subscription only, so you can't listen to that link unless you have a 4Shared account. You can find the song all over Youtube, but usually in a newer arrangement. I have a preference for the older musical arrangement, so here it is:
Chapman has said that he wrote the song in response to the shock of his own parents' divorce (which occurred after Steven was married), as a reaffirmation to his wife of the promise he had made to her at their wedding. Christian music buffs also know that Chapman's wife Mary Beth lives with clinical depression, a biographical fact that gives the lyrics even more poignancy, as does the tragedy they suffered later in the accidental death of their adopted daughter.
Chapman's expression of absolute commitment and love is the answer both to the unnatural distortions being currently foisted upon us as "love" by liberalism and also to marital cynicism, whether of the left or of the right. Anyone who has grown or has made himself, through ideology, so hard-hearted, so opposed to chivalry and to true, manly commitment and love for one's wife, that he can listen to that song and think and feel only that the speaker is setting himself up to be a "beta," a "white knight," a sucker to be hurt by some woman, has lost something deeply important. And any ideology that encourages and fosters such a loss is a deeply wicked ideology to which we should give no quarter, regardless of whether its proponents, like a stopped clock, occasionally make a true statement. This is as true for allegedly "conservative" misogyny as it is for man-hating feminism. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (And if you are a modern misogynist or wish to tell me that I need to take such people and their ideas more seriously, don't bother trying to comment.)
Meanwhile, for all you normal and happily oblivious readers who have no idea what that last paragraph was about, just enjoy the song. It's a wonderful song. It's always been a popular wedding song, of course. May many more brides and grooms shed the tears of joy and awe at the gift God has given them that the song rightly inspires.
Chapman has said that he wrote the song in response to the shock of his own parents' divorce (which occurred after Steven was married), as a reaffirmation to his wife of the promise he had made to her at their wedding. Christian music buffs also know that Chapman's wife Mary Beth lives with clinical depression, a biographical fact that gives the lyrics even more poignancy, as does the tragedy they suffered later in the accidental death of their adopted daughter.
Chapman's expression of absolute commitment and love is the answer both to the unnatural distortions being currently foisted upon us as "love" by liberalism and also to marital cynicism, whether of the left or of the right. Anyone who has grown or has made himself, through ideology, so hard-hearted, so opposed to chivalry and to true, manly commitment and love for one's wife, that he can listen to that song and think and feel only that the speaker is setting himself up to be a "beta," a "white knight," a sucker to be hurt by some woman, has lost something deeply important. And any ideology that encourages and fosters such a loss is a deeply wicked ideology to which we should give no quarter, regardless of whether its proponents, like a stopped clock, occasionally make a true statement. This is as true for allegedly "conservative" misogyny as it is for man-hating feminism. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (And if you are a modern misogynist or wish to tell me that I need to take such people and their ideas more seriously, don't bother trying to comment.)
Meanwhile, for all you normal and happily oblivious readers who have no idea what that last paragraph was about, just enjoy the song. It's a wonderful song. It's always been a popular wedding song, of course. May many more brides and grooms shed the tears of joy and awe at the gift God has given them that the song rightly inspires.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Blessed Epiphany!
O God, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead: through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Thou hast made us for thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.
Holy Jesus! every day
keep us in the narrow way;
and, when earthly things are past,
bring our ransomed souls at last
where they need no star to guide,
where no clouds thy glory hide.
I have, by the way, very little idea how the Magi knew what the star meant. In the novel Ben-Hur they receive extensive additional revelation, but we are in fact not told how they knew that the king of the Jews was born merely from the fact of seeing a new star in the heavens. Nor do we know exactly what the star was nor what it meant for them to follow it or for it to "rest over the place where the young child was." (Paul Maier has some interesting discussion of possible heavenly phenomena here.)
Certainly the Magi fit beautifully into the pattern of Hebrews 11. They believed in what was unseen based on the little that was actually seen. And because of that more was manifested to them.
A blessed feast of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.
(See also here and here.)
Saturday, January 05, 2013
Love God with your will
Jesus said,
The first and great commandment, we are reliably told, is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
But what does it mean to love God? There are, no doubt, some saintly souls to whom the love of God comes naturally, who find themselves spontaneously filled with love for God in their private and public worship, and who never suffer from the sneaking worry that they are just ginning up their own emotions. I am not among those. To me, God is not vivid. He is a spirit, and I have little idea of what it will be like to have the beatific vision, to "see him as he is" to "know even as also I am known." The solution to that, in Christian theology, is supposed to be the Incarnation: "No man hath seen God at any time," but "the only begotten Son...he hath declared him."
Very well, then, what does it mean to love Jesus? I recently heard a song, new to me, called "The Stranger of Galilee." I have to admit, it didn't resonate. It says, "And I felt I could love him forever,/So gracious and tender was He." Hmmm, really? Read the Gospels. Go ahead; read them. Is your first response to Jesus there to "feel that you could love him forever"? Would that have been your initial reaction had you known him in person? If so, you're a better man than I am, so to speak. I might have been curious about him, fascinated, disturbed, but also, I suspect, annoyed. Just who does this man think he is? Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels is incredibly compelling but not a fuzzy bunny you want to stroke. You take him or leave him as he is, with eternal consequences. Your opinion of his graciousness and tenderness is neither asked nor required.
So if one's ability truly to love God and truly to desire God, to want God above all things, in the sense of experiencing a psychologically and emotionally sensible desire for ultimate union with God the Father or with Jesus Christ, is the measure of a soul's health, I'm in trouble. Of course, that's hardly a reductio of the position that desiring God is the ultimate measure of spiritual health. Probably most of us are, to one extent or another, at most times in our lives, spiritually "in trouble." But the concern here is that there is little one can do about it and that God would not demand something and then sit back and not give us the capacity to fulfill those demands. If the wise writings of C.S. Lewis have taught me one thing (and they have taught me many) it is that it is spiritual folly to try to make oneself feel certain things because one thinks that is what one ought to feel.
This is where the will comes in. Can we not say that to try to unite one's will with God's will is to love God? To ask, sincerely, that "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," and to commit oneself to doing, to the best of one's ability, what is required of oneself to that end, is to respond to Jesus' words: "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock." It may be beyond my scope to desire God in the abstract, but I can desire in the concrete that nothing in myself should stand in the way of God's glory and the fulfillment of God's will on earth, that I should, rather, be a tool used to that end.
And it seems to me, though I speak under correction, that at that point "he'll take care of the rest."
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven....Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.... (Matt. 7:21,24)Here Jesus enters into a rabbinic dispute of the day: Which is more important--to hear the Torah, the Law, or to do it? Remarkably, Jesus applies this question to his own words. He puts his own sayings on a par with the will of the Father and, tacitly, with the Torah itself. That estimate of oneself and of the status of one's words and commands was not standard rabbinic practice! This is just one of those passages that utterly blows away the many pseudo-historical pictures of Jesus foisted upon us by faddish "scholarship"--Jesus the (merely) great teacher, Jesus the (mere) man, Jesus whose omniscience was so radically emptied that he was gradually discovering himself and his nature and mission throughout his ministry on earth. That is not Jesus as the Scriptures show him to us. Rather, Jesus knows quite well who he is and what he is here for, and Jesus speaks with a quiet authority that drops like a bombshell into the lives of his hearers. Hence "the people were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."
The first and great commandment, we are reliably told, is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
But what does it mean to love God? There are, no doubt, some saintly souls to whom the love of God comes naturally, who find themselves spontaneously filled with love for God in their private and public worship, and who never suffer from the sneaking worry that they are just ginning up their own emotions. I am not among those. To me, God is not vivid. He is a spirit, and I have little idea of what it will be like to have the beatific vision, to "see him as he is" to "know even as also I am known." The solution to that, in Christian theology, is supposed to be the Incarnation: "No man hath seen God at any time," but "the only begotten Son...he hath declared him."
Very well, then, what does it mean to love Jesus? I recently heard a song, new to me, called "The Stranger of Galilee." I have to admit, it didn't resonate. It says, "And I felt I could love him forever,/So gracious and tender was He." Hmmm, really? Read the Gospels. Go ahead; read them. Is your first response to Jesus there to "feel that you could love him forever"? Would that have been your initial reaction had you known him in person? If so, you're a better man than I am, so to speak. I might have been curious about him, fascinated, disturbed, but also, I suspect, annoyed. Just who does this man think he is? Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels is incredibly compelling but not a fuzzy bunny you want to stroke. You take him or leave him as he is, with eternal consequences. Your opinion of his graciousness and tenderness is neither asked nor required.
So if one's ability truly to love God and truly to desire God, to want God above all things, in the sense of experiencing a psychologically and emotionally sensible desire for ultimate union with God the Father or with Jesus Christ, is the measure of a soul's health, I'm in trouble. Of course, that's hardly a reductio of the position that desiring God is the ultimate measure of spiritual health. Probably most of us are, to one extent or another, at most times in our lives, spiritually "in trouble." But the concern here is that there is little one can do about it and that God would not demand something and then sit back and not give us the capacity to fulfill those demands. If the wise writings of C.S. Lewis have taught me one thing (and they have taught me many) it is that it is spiritual folly to try to make oneself feel certain things because one thinks that is what one ought to feel.
This is where the will comes in. Can we not say that to try to unite one's will with God's will is to love God? To ask, sincerely, that "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," and to commit oneself to doing, to the best of one's ability, what is required of oneself to that end, is to respond to Jesus' words: "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock." It may be beyond my scope to desire God in the abstract, but I can desire in the concrete that nothing in myself should stand in the way of God's glory and the fulfillment of God's will on earth, that I should, rather, be a tool used to that end.
And it seems to me, though I speak under correction, that at that point "he'll take care of the rest."
Blog housekeeping--Backing up
It's only taken me about 5 1/2 years, but I finally found out how to back up this blog. An on-line friend, Michael Bauman, had the URL for one of his blogs nabbed (somehow) by cybersquatters and was looking for a way to get his content back. The fact that this could happen to him spooked me to a salutary degree, and I did some googling and found that it is possible to back up a Blogger blog such as this one fairly easily using some space on one's own hard drive and the "export" function. Settings ---> Other ---> Export blog. The content is saved in .xml format for easy import into a new blog. Fortunately, despite the cyber-bandits, Dr. Bauman was able to grab his content in this way and move it over to his other, untouched blog, "The Right Word."
I'm sure anyone who reads this has known for a long time how to back up a Blogger blog. (Wordpress has a similarly easy function, I hear, though it doesn't grab uploaded images.) Just in case you haven't done this for a free personal blog: Take my word for it; it's extremely easy, takes about a minute, can be repeated as needed, and will provide extra security against various mishaps.
I'm sure anyone who reads this has known for a long time how to back up a Blogger blog. (Wordpress has a similarly easy function, I hear, though it doesn't grab uploaded images.) Just in case you haven't done this for a free personal blog: Take my word for it; it's extremely easy, takes about a minute, can be repeated as needed, and will provide extra security against various mishaps.
Monday, December 24, 2012
The birth of Jesus the Messiah
If you haven't read the book of Acts recently, it would be a great New Testament book to re-read. There are so many things to enjoy in it and to notice. Here's one of them: The Apostle Paul is a driven man. One might almost say obsessed. Part of what he is obsessed by is the fact that Jesus is the Christ. As I don't need to tell Extra Thoughts readers, "Christ" isn't Jesus' last name. Paul keeps talking and talking and talking to the Jews about the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. He keeps reasoning with them about it, arguing from "the Scriptures," meaning what we would call the Old Testament. Here's just one such passage.
Here is the Apostle Peter on the same topic:
Paul refers in Galatians to the idea that Jesus is the hinge of history and the fulfillment of all that had gone before:
One can say that Paul was convinced that Jesus was the Christ because of his experience on the road to Damascus, and that is indeed true. But Paul also obviously believed that he could convince other Jews of the same conclusion even though they had not had his experience, and convince them not merely by reference to that experience but from their own Scriptures.
What all of this means is that the argument from prophecy was a big part of the apostolic and especially the Pauline apologetics. Yet it has gone very much out of fashion now, perhaps because we are seldom doing apologetics to an audience who already grants that there has been genuine prophecy in the past of a Messiah and that we should be attempting to find out who that Messiah might be. Or maybe, even more, the higher criticism and other -isms of the 19th century and early 20th century have made the argument go out of style without conspicuously good reason.
I have an article accepted for this special issue of Philosophia Christi on the argument from a small number of prophecies of the Messiah's death--specifically, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. The above references show the importance of Isaiah 53 in the apostles' thought, going back to Jesus' teaching on the road to Emmaus--that the Christ must suffer. (Luke 24:25-26)
But since it is now not Passiontide but Christmas time (even though I'm not going to wait to hit "publish" until after sundown), I will instead leave you with this: Professor Hugh Gauch, in a paper presented to the Evangelical Theological Society in 2010 (not available on-line) estimates the Bayes factor--that is, the evidential force--of the fact that Jesus, a first-century Jew, was born in Bethlehem for the conclusion that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah to be about 1/12,000. He bases this on estimates of the population of Jews around the time of Jesus and of the much smaller population of Jews in Bethlehem.
That's just one messianic prophecy. And it is a prophecy only mentioned in Matthew and not even stressed in the extant writings of the Apostle Paul. But I have little doubt he was aware of it and that it formed part of the cumulative case that he made to the Jews when he reasoned with them in the synagogues. Paul's message? This is indeed the Christ!
Alleluia! O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
Merry Christmas!
And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. (Acts 17:2-3)Jesus said it Himself: "Search the Scriptures. For in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me." (John 5:39)
Here is the Apostle Peter on the same topic:
Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you. Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. (1 Peter 1:11-12)Again, the epistle to the Hebrews says that the Old Testament saints, all those great-greats celebrated in the chapter of faith, Hebrews 11, were "made complete" by the believers who have been given the fuller knowledge of Jesus Christ:
And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise. God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40)There is no getting around the fact that when most of us read the Old Testament, we don't spontaneously "see Jesus on every page," and when some expository preachers try to do it, they sometimes sound a bit strained. But the apostles themselves were constantly talking about the fact that the Old Testament Scriptures spoke of Jesus, and Peter even says that the prophets themselves, at least some of them, realized that the Christ would come later and that they were ministering to a later generation who would actually know him.
Paul refers in Galatians to the idea that Jesus is the hinge of history and the fulfillment of all that had gone before:
But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. (Galatians 4:4-5)When Paul discusses the fact that the Old Testament Scriptures were written "for our admonition," he uses this striking phrase to describe the believers of his own generation: They, and by extension, we, are the ones "upon whom the ends of the ages have come." (I Cor. 10:11) It's the same idea as Galatians. Time and again Paul is saying, "To think that we are the generation to know the Christ, to know who he is! To think that the Christ has been born and lived and died in our time, and that we know the fulfillment of God's plan, which was known in times past only by prophecy!"
One can say that Paul was convinced that Jesus was the Christ because of his experience on the road to Damascus, and that is indeed true. But Paul also obviously believed that he could convince other Jews of the same conclusion even though they had not had his experience, and convince them not merely by reference to that experience but from their own Scriptures.
What all of this means is that the argument from prophecy was a big part of the apostolic and especially the Pauline apologetics. Yet it has gone very much out of fashion now, perhaps because we are seldom doing apologetics to an audience who already grants that there has been genuine prophecy in the past of a Messiah and that we should be attempting to find out who that Messiah might be. Or maybe, even more, the higher criticism and other -isms of the 19th century and early 20th century have made the argument go out of style without conspicuously good reason.
I have an article accepted for this special issue of Philosophia Christi on the argument from a small number of prophecies of the Messiah's death--specifically, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. The above references show the importance of Isaiah 53 in the apostles' thought, going back to Jesus' teaching on the road to Emmaus--that the Christ must suffer. (Luke 24:25-26)
But since it is now not Passiontide but Christmas time (even though I'm not going to wait to hit "publish" until after sundown), I will instead leave you with this: Professor Hugh Gauch, in a paper presented to the Evangelical Theological Society in 2010 (not available on-line) estimates the Bayes factor--that is, the evidential force--of the fact that Jesus, a first-century Jew, was born in Bethlehem for the conclusion that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah to be about 1/12,000. He bases this on estimates of the population of Jews around the time of Jesus and of the much smaller population of Jews in Bethlehem.
That's just one messianic prophecy. And it is a prophecy only mentioned in Matthew and not even stressed in the extant writings of the Apostle Paul. But I have little doubt he was aware of it and that it formed part of the cumulative case that he made to the Jews when he reasoned with them in the synagogues. Paul's message? This is indeed the Christ!
Alleluia! O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
Merry Christmas!
Sunday, December 23, 2012
"Jesus, Joy of the Highest Heaven"
I hope to have a more substantive Christmas post up here soon, but for now:
A very pretty original carol by Keith and Kristyn Getty.
A very pretty original carol by Keith and Kristyn Getty.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Link roundup
I can't keep up with all the stuff I want to link lately. Been wrapping Christmas presents, y'know. And just occasionally I want to write some pure philosophy.
Since this is my "extra thoughts" blog, here I feel free to do a link roundup of extremely heterogenous elements. I hope to do a brief but in some sense more real or respectable post at W4 praising Robert Bork, who just passed away. RIP, Judge Bork. You have taught me so much.
The Canadian Supreme Court is apparently going to rule on whether Canadian docs have unilateral authority to withdraw wanted "life support" from patients, with a Muslim patient's life on the line. I thought they already had that authority, but maybe they just want multiple precedents or a clearer precedent to shut up the families. Make no mistake: Even though Hassan Rasouli is on a ventilator, if he should be able to breathe on his own after it's withdrawn, a ruling in favor of the docs in this case would give them the unilateral power to dehydrate him to death.
Belgium is about to start "allowing" minors and people with Alzheimer's disease to "commit suicide." Scare quotes intentional. Um, yeah, how do you say "informed, rational consent"? So much for choice.
And if you always suspected that the theory of anthropogenic global warming was bunk...you were right. More evidence to that effect.
Phew! Now I feel a little caught up, even though I didn't have time to say anything much about any of these. Maybe I'll have time to write about them a little bit more at W4 during Christmas break!
Speaking of which: If any friend wants to comment here or write me at my e-mail address with brilliant ideas about a Christmas post, feel free.
Since this is my "extra thoughts" blog, here I feel free to do a link roundup of extremely heterogenous elements. I hope to do a brief but in some sense more real or respectable post at W4 praising Robert Bork, who just passed away. RIP, Judge Bork. You have taught me so much.
The Canadian Supreme Court is apparently going to rule on whether Canadian docs have unilateral authority to withdraw wanted "life support" from patients, with a Muslim patient's life on the line. I thought they already had that authority, but maybe they just want multiple precedents or a clearer precedent to shut up the families. Make no mistake: Even though Hassan Rasouli is on a ventilator, if he should be able to breathe on his own after it's withdrawn, a ruling in favor of the docs in this case would give them the unilateral power to dehydrate him to death.
Belgium is about to start "allowing" minors and people with Alzheimer's disease to "commit suicide." Scare quotes intentional. Um, yeah, how do you say "informed, rational consent"? So much for choice.
And if you always suspected that the theory of anthropogenic global warming was bunk...you were right. More evidence to that effect.
Phew! Now I feel a little caught up, even though I didn't have time to say anything much about any of these. Maybe I'll have time to write about them a little bit more at W4 during Christmas break!
Speaking of which: If any friend wants to comment here or write me at my e-mail address with brilliant ideas about a Christmas post, feel free.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Sleepers, Wake
Today was Bible Sunday in Advent, but I'm all skejipsed on my Advent schedule anyway, so I don't have a real Bible Sunday post. An older one was better than anything I could write now anyway, so if you're interested in Bible Sunday, read about it here. And by the way: I cannot understand why "O Word of God Incarnate" is not sung in more Baptist churches. It's their kind of hymn!
We sang Philip Nicolai's "Wake, Awake" or "Sleepers, Wake" this morning. I can't seem to find a good choral recording of it with the right words and all the usual verses, but there are many instrumental versions, especially organ. Here are the verses as found in the 1940 hymnal:
We sang Philip Nicolai's "Wake, Awake" or "Sleepers, Wake" this morning. I can't seem to find a good choral recording of it with the right words and all the usual verses, but there are many instrumental versions, especially organ. Here are the verses as found in the 1940 hymnal:
1. Wake, awake, for night is flying:
The watchmen on the heights are crying,
Awake, Jerusalem, arise!
Midnight's solemn hour is tolling,
His chariot wheels are nearer rolling,
He comes; prepare, ye virgins wise.
Rise up, with willing feet,
Go forth, the Bridegroom meet:
Alleluia!
Bear through the night your well-trimmed light,
Speed forth to join the marriage rite.
The watchmen on the heights are crying,
Awake, Jerusalem, arise!
Midnight's solemn hour is tolling,
His chariot wheels are nearer rolling,
He comes; prepare, ye virgins wise.
Rise up, with willing feet,
Go forth, the Bridegroom meet:
Alleluia!
Bear through the night your well-trimmed light,
Speed forth to join the marriage rite.
2. Sion hears the watchman singing,
Her heart with deep delight is springing,
She wakes, she rises from her gloom:
Forth her Bridegroom comes, all glorious,
In grace arrayed, by truth victorious;
Her Star is risen, her Light is come!
All hail, Incarnate Lord,
Our crown, and our reward!
Alleluia!
We haste along, in pomp of song,
And gladsome join the marriage throng.
Her heart with deep delight is springing,
She wakes, she rises from her gloom:
Forth her Bridegroom comes, all glorious,
In grace arrayed, by truth victorious;
Her Star is risen, her Light is come!
All hail, Incarnate Lord,
Our crown, and our reward!
Alleluia!
We haste along, in pomp of song,
And gladsome join the marriage throng.
3. Lamb of God, the heavens adore thee,
And men and angels sing before thee,
With harp and cymbal's clearest tone.
By the pearly gates in wonder
We stand, and swell the voice of thunder,
That echoes round thy dazzling throne.
No vision ever brought,
No ear hath ever caught,
Such rejoicing.
We raise the song, we swell the throng,
To praise thee ages all along.
Amen.
And men and angels sing before thee,
With harp and cymbal's clearest tone.
By the pearly gates in wonder
We stand, and swell the voice of thunder,
That echoes round thy dazzling throne.
No vision ever brought,
No ear hath ever caught,
Such rejoicing.
We raise the song, we swell the throng,
To praise thee ages all along.
Amen.
By the way, these lyrics use the English epithalamion tradition, which was in turn based on the Latin epithalamion tradition. (I was sure I'd written about this before but can't now seem to find the post.) An epithalamion always began with the call for the bride to awake and arise, because the bridegroom was coming. The bride is supposed to waken from her gloom and dress herself beautifully, usually at dawn rather than at midnight. The combination of calling on the bride to awaken and the reference to midnight is just one oddity that results from melding the English epithalamion tradition with Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish virgins, which was of course based on Jewish marriage traditions. Notice, too, the emphasis on the glory of the groom and what the groom is wearing, which is more Jewish, rather than on the beauty of the bride or what she is wearing.
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