I have always wondered why Dr. Hart’s positions attract such a fierce criticism from fellow Christians considering that he is, without a shred of doubt, “God-intoxicated” (to borrow Edward Feser’s characterization, which he genuinely meant as a compliment), has vanquished (with his formidable intellect, erudition and writing talents) countless enemies of Christianity, and (as a staunch universalist) believes in the most optimistic apocalyptic horizon. So, what’s not to like?
Surely, some of them disagree with him on purely intellectual grounds, while others are deeply offended by his (sometimes brutal) critiques on the theistic or metaphysic schools (to which they have sworn allegiance) or, in some rare cases, on their mental faculties or education. However, I suspect that most of the attacks (at least those from true believers) come out of fear of divine retribution (which might be exacted on them if they show him even a modicum of tolerance). In that sense, they remind me so much of Job’s friends. And I suspect this because I can recognize that same fear in my own heart. Some of the beliefs Dr. Hart professes (no matter how close to the patristic tradition or how metaphysically sound they are) are simply too frightening to recognize and adopt for Christians taught a much more frightening concept of God. But I really, really hope that his (and Origen’s, Gregory’s and Maximus’s, etc.) theology is the right one, because it is the only one that interprets the Gospel as good news for all of humanity. I can also confidently say that his vision of God is the one that resonates best with my own conscience (which, I would like to believe, is not just a result of operation of cultural forces, but a divine spark). And, lastly, I know that if God were somehow susceptible to flattery, He would find Dr. Hart’s opinion of Him much more complimentary that the one shared by DBH’s critics.
David, I applaud you for being one of the rather few living people to make Christianity palatable, in an age where it has become all too eklig. Modern American Christianity of all persuasions, largely has started (and that is putting it generously) to smell bad. I, personally, found Tradition and Apocalypse compelling, especially as someone who is tired of the narratives of hyper-modernism on one side, and dead as a door nail tradition on the other. Tradition either is a living, organic, thing or it is dead. A tradition that only relies on centuries old texts is ossified and encrusted to the point of no return. Despite the downcast parts of some of your book, I found it strangely hopeful. Keep writing, and keep fighting the good fight.
Now as for First Things (and others like them), I think of the following lines from Blake: "The vision of Christ that thou dost see / Is my vision's greatest enemy." And perhaps you will find this lovely mantra from D. H. Lawrence appropriate to your feelings about First Things: "Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England [America] today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime. I could curse for hours and hours — God help me."
Just German. While I was living in Berlin, I often heard it used to describe particularly stinky cheese. I felt the word appropriate, since Bible-thumping fundamentalist conservatives smell similar, but worse, to my nostrils, compared to some awfully funky cheese.
I am among those who only read FT for your articles. As a former (born and raised) Mormon with a doctorate in philosophy and religious thought from Claremont Graduate University, I am in a minority of fellow grad students who didn't retain their original faith or become conventional atheists, and I largely credit your writings and some treasured theological writers I return to from that time as almost the only things that have kept me connected to theology and in that sense to an understanding of God more rational, expansive, and non-provincial than that of my former tradition. Hailing from a framework for God-talk that was thoroughly "radical" or "heretical" (depending on the blasphemic cudgel you happen to prefer), I have no problem with so-called "heterodox" or "radical" theologies, and I have often, from an extremely outsider position, bemusedly and with no small amount of fascination observed the self-appointed warriors of orthodoxy raving like lunatics about your writings, which to me are nearly alone in re-conceiving and re-presenting the Christian tradition in much the same ways that Nicene and other ancient thinkers sought to preserve their history, i.e., in ways that caused that tradition to actually live in and be relevant to the present (including in ways that go well beyond theology proper), instead of being encased behind museum glass that becomes more and more obscure with the passing years.
I've noticed that people tend to read more agreement with their own views into your works than actually exists, which probably explains why they're so quick to find you on the road out of orthodoxy every time a new book comes out. I'm reminded of your exchange with Peter Leithart, who seemed to assume that you interpreted Scripture by the same rules that he (as a conservative Presbyterian) did. A narrow orthodoxy produces narrow minds (or is it the other way round?) that can't recognize Christianity except in their own image.
That said, I also can't help but wonder if First Thing's editorial staff has become emotionally invested in the "Decline and Fall of David Bentley Hart" narrative they've been pushing for the last few years. I'm sure it makes scintillating reading for a certain kind of Protestant or Catholic fundamentalist.
More to the point, it explains away the defection of a writer on whom the chief editor used to pin certain claims for the journal's prestige. Not to boast, but it just happens to be the case. If the choice of narratives is either that I left because of the journal's precipitous intellectual and moral decline or that I left because of my own death-spiral into insane heresy and political radicalism, it's obvious which makes their rag look better.
As for the mistaken views people might have had of me in the past, this is probably true. I've actually had people tell me they felt betrayed when it turned out that I was not actually on the side of whatever version of "mere Christianity" they believe in.
I read McDermitt's article before reading your response. He represents a type of thinker who abhors ambiguity, is threatened by it, and therefore cannot embrace it. However, I believe that it is within the ambiguity of things that one finds what is not so ambiguous. Good response to the article.
He struck me as someone who can't follow an argument of any complexity. Again, if it weren't for so many readers of no specialist training who seem to get the point, I would (at least pretend to) blame myself.
I am a failed seminary student who still has a passion for theology. I have a thing about reading systematic theologies. Don't judge me. With your work, I think a careful reader is going to follow you to your point. It does not always mean that we are always going to agree with your point, but you seem to welcome constructive discussion when it is honest and someone has actually read your book.
A recent example was "You Are Gods." One of the points you advanced was a monist approach to theology that preserved the Creator-creation distinction, and did not collapse into process or one of the pans (pantheism or panentheism). Oddly enough, someone just speed reading the text would easily misunderstand what you are trying to say, or allow their own expectations to color what they are reading.
This is probably what bothers me the most about aggressively narrow-minded believers: they're not really interested in truth, but in feeling safe. Krishna the mischievous child ought to steal their butter.
Ah, First Things. Where Jesus came to stamp out the gays, where the principal threat to Christendom is "trans ideology," where heaven is the set of The Young Pope.
As well as the Fundamentalist Rag. What a rag indeed. I have never heard of McDermott before, and that was quite a mercy, I must say. Now I have heard of him, but cannot tell whether he is a liar who simply had not bothered to read the book, or if he is a functional illiterate. I lean to the latter. But I have to believe that the Rag's editors knew his "review" was full of fertilizer, and were willing to publish it anyway. They must really resent your mentor Roland, and to a lesser extent (but fervent nonetheless) you, for the same reason that FOX "News" probably resents Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith.
Believe me, they resent everything. They live in a little echo chamber filled with endlessly reverberating lamentations and denunciations, generally about nothing other than the monsters their own fevered imaginations have conjured. They are genuinely unwholesome souls.
I got a subscription to First Things in order to read your articles. I did not renew it after you left. Since then I have become so disgusted with the political bent of the American Church that I stopped attending mass. There were quite a few Trump supporters in my congregation but I never heard anything political from them until the Orange Antichrist was elected. It’s depressing…
The ascendancy of Agent Orange I think awakened many of us to realities we had never suspected. I still prefer to think it's all a dream and I may yet awake to find it's 2015 and no one in his right mind would even imagine that that dropsical troll could run for office.
"Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?" Perhaps this all is a dream orchestrated by an orange-headed, gnostic demiurge. And Kenogaia was your roadmap out: revolutionary manifesto disguised as a fairy-tale.
Edward, where do you live? You know there is a huge inclusive Catholic movement out there. We are doing our best to reclaim the church from those white nationalists.
I live in central Massachusetts. I live in Worcester diocese. My bishop, Robert McManus, recently told Nativity School of Worcester that they couldn't call themselves a Catholic School because the Jesuit faculty had been flying Black Lives Matter and gay pride flags outside the school. I support BLM and gay rights so I guess that means I'm not Catholic either.
Oh lordy, I heard about that. Well, you're halfway between Agape in Hardwick and and Spirit of Life in Weston. Those are both inclusive, active, Vatican II inspired places and if I lived in your area I'd go to Agape for a retreat in a heartbeat. I have a renewed love for being Catholic now that I know that there is a "free range" option. (eg not connected to the diocesan/parish structure)
Thanks, I’ll check it out. I’m actually in northern Worcester County, Athol. It’s up near the NH border. We’ve got a couple Catholic monasteries in the area, Benedictine and Maronite. I love them for their traditions and beauty. If I could just close my eyes to the politics I’d use them. But I’m a political person. I’m a convert as it is, and that process involved handling a lot of cognitive dissonance. Staying Catholic requires a constant spiritual regluing. I’ve been away from mass since the beginning of Covid and the glue is giving way in all the seams… so to speak.
First of all, I absolutely loved Tradition and Apocalypse. Whenever rad trads attack me by asking how on earth I can call myself "Roman Catholic," I think about certain lines from your book, about how tradition only exists as "sustained apocalypse, a moment of pure awakening preserved as at once an ever dissolving recollection and an ever renewed surprise."
Second, why do people always insult Rod McKuen? I mean, your analogy there is fair, because of the word "magisterial," but he was much more of a towering American cultural figure than McClymond could ever be.
I can say with no small authority that Rod McKuen was the nadir of a certain strain of popular verse in English whose zenith was probably Robert Service. Today Instagram poets occupy the niche once occupied by McKuen, & they are no worse.
Robert Service was a good man, and popular verse was a perfectly honorable genre in the days when reading verse was something people did for entertainment. I can't imagine what pleasure anyone ever got from Rod McKuen (well, apart from Rock Hudson).
I can’t believe you just cited Robert Service! The Brotherhood of the Briar met around a fire pit starting at 9:00 on Thursday nights, smoked pipes, drank single malt scotch, recited poetry and discussed philosophy. We began each gathering by reciting:
I have some friends, some honest friends,
And honest friends are few;
My pipe of briar, my open fire,
A book that’s not too new.
And on what we deemed to be the coldest night of the year we recited The Cremation of Sam McGee.
My father had a habit of reciting The Cremation of Sam McGee when in a ridiculous mood. Consequently, since his passing, I’m perhaps the only person on earth capable of being moved to tears by it. It’s an absurd condition to be in.
Well, I think popular music has taken its place. Instead of reciting “Sam McGee” around the fire, you sing a song by the Stones or Taylor Swift. Popular verse retreats to inspirational bromides.
And yet somehow the clowns over at the Contra Gentiles YouTube channel have managed to give an even more hopelessly confused review of Tradition and Apocalypse, to which they devoted an episode. Seemingly they asked you to be on the show, David? I can’t imagine how they thought that would go. I hope you manage to have a good laugh about the whole thing, whereas I could only manage to be physically upset by their ravings.
Perhaps you're just too smart for McDermott and his ilk, if they continuously misconstrue your theology to be on par with someone like John Shelby Spong. (Which I'am sure you don't)
Reading Tradition & Apocalypse brings back happy memories of sitting in the doctoral seminars as an MDiv student at HDS in the 80s.
I remember Amos Niven Wilder saying with a puckish smile, “My teachers said to stay away from eschatological & apocalyptic studies. It would be career suicide!” He was in his 90s and had an amazing mind.
And, of Wilfred Cantwell Smith talking about Islams and Chistianities.
And, your build on those discussions moves my thoughts forward.
It is not theologically coherent to say that God “created” evil. Indeed it is rather explicitly denied in several places. Just to cite my own recent reading: "Ontologically, evil does not exist, but is a phantom of nonbeing" (Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb).
Yes, in the KJV he says "I create evil," but the New KJV & the ESV have "I create calamity." Herbert Marks suggests "woe." Even then, it is not quite theologically correct from a Christian perspective, but that is a whole different can of leviathans.
It's also a controverted point in the prophets. Ezekiel 12:23; 18:3. And it is explicitly denied as a moral claim in the New Testament. in about 91 places.
I like the way Stephen RL Clark interprets that pericope. For him, the knowledge of good and evil that we partook of meant that was when we started discriminating between the good things that God made and putting some in the good camp and some in the evil camp (snakes, wasps, mosquitos, people we don't like or that seem foreign to us, etc.) Thus we began not granting them the respect and compassion they deserve as beings created by God with thoughts, desires, and purposes of their own that have nothing to do with us. Which means we have no right, especially, heaven forbid, a divine right to do with them as we will and utterly dominate and subjugate them, generally for our convenience and pleasure.
Based on the above, it seems that you strongly object against the concept of theosis, which probably means that you are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox. Which of the Christian denominations or theologists is closest to you heart then?
Although I don’t subscribe to your view, I recognize that you can probably find a textual basis for it in the Old Testament. However, don’t you think that this interpretation contradicts one of the central messages of Christianity, that is to take a clear stand of the side of Good, for which the epistemic knowledge of good and evil might not be nearly enough? Or perhaps you interpret this message as a call to simply surrender ourselves to the will of God and thus to return to the bliss of restored innocence? But do we even know how to surrender without a capacity to follow some clear moral principles based on a higher understanding of good and evil (some transcendental directives)? It is not that we can simply say “yes” or “no”. We also need to follow through.
I have always wondered why Dr. Hart’s positions attract such a fierce criticism from fellow Christians considering that he is, without a shred of doubt, “God-intoxicated” (to borrow Edward Feser’s characterization, which he genuinely meant as a compliment), has vanquished (with his formidable intellect, erudition and writing talents) countless enemies of Christianity, and (as a staunch universalist) believes in the most optimistic apocalyptic horizon. So, what’s not to like?
Surely, some of them disagree with him on purely intellectual grounds, while others are deeply offended by his (sometimes brutal) critiques on the theistic or metaphysic schools (to which they have sworn allegiance) or, in some rare cases, on their mental faculties or education. However, I suspect that most of the attacks (at least those from true believers) come out of fear of divine retribution (which might be exacted on them if they show him even a modicum of tolerance). In that sense, they remind me so much of Job’s friends. And I suspect this because I can recognize that same fear in my own heart. Some of the beliefs Dr. Hart professes (no matter how close to the patristic tradition or how metaphysically sound they are) are simply too frightening to recognize and adopt for Christians taught a much more frightening concept of God. But I really, really hope that his (and Origen’s, Gregory’s and Maximus’s, etc.) theology is the right one, because it is the only one that interprets the Gospel as good news for all of humanity. I can also confidently say that his vision of God is the one that resonates best with my own conscience (which, I would like to believe, is not just a result of operation of cultural forces, but a divine spark). And, lastly, I know that if God were somehow susceptible to flattery, He would find Dr. Hart’s opinion of Him much more complimentary that the one shared by DBH’s critics.
Well, putting the rest aside (with a blush of modesty), I have to say that your final sentence makes a deeper point than just a jest.
David, I applaud you for being one of the rather few living people to make Christianity palatable, in an age where it has become all too eklig. Modern American Christianity of all persuasions, largely has started (and that is putting it generously) to smell bad. I, personally, found Tradition and Apocalypse compelling, especially as someone who is tired of the narratives of hyper-modernism on one side, and dead as a door nail tradition on the other. Tradition either is a living, organic, thing or it is dead. A tradition that only relies on centuries old texts is ossified and encrusted to the point of no return. Despite the downcast parts of some of your book, I found it strangely hopeful. Keep writing, and keep fighting the good fight.
Now as for First Things (and others like them), I think of the following lines from Blake: "The vision of Christ that thou dost see / Is my vision's greatest enemy." And perhaps you will find this lovely mantra from D. H. Lawrence appropriate to your feelings about First Things: "Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England [America] today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime. I could curse for hours and hours — God help me."
Um, ahem...you may overestimate my generosity of spirit.
My real response to FT is just, "Oh, shut up, for God's sake. You sound like lunatics."
Is eklig a loanword or is it just German? First time I've ever seen that word!
Just German. While I was living in Berlin, I often heard it used to describe particularly stinky cheese. I felt the word appropriate, since Bible-thumping fundamentalist conservatives smell similar, but worse, to my nostrils, compared to some awfully funky cheese.
Now, now—anger is the response they're looking for! Don't let them win!
Thanks for that Blake line. So perfect. Where is it from?
The Everlasting Gospel
It is from The Everlasting Gospel. https://www.bartleby.com/236/58.html
I had completely forgotten about this poem. I used to love it when I was in college. Thank you so much.
I am among those who only read FT for your articles. As a former (born and raised) Mormon with a doctorate in philosophy and religious thought from Claremont Graduate University, I am in a minority of fellow grad students who didn't retain their original faith or become conventional atheists, and I largely credit your writings and some treasured theological writers I return to from that time as almost the only things that have kept me connected to theology and in that sense to an understanding of God more rational, expansive, and non-provincial than that of my former tradition. Hailing from a framework for God-talk that was thoroughly "radical" or "heretical" (depending on the blasphemic cudgel you happen to prefer), I have no problem with so-called "heterodox" or "radical" theologies, and I have often, from an extremely outsider position, bemusedly and with no small amount of fascination observed the self-appointed warriors of orthodoxy raving like lunatics about your writings, which to me are nearly alone in re-conceiving and re-presenting the Christian tradition in much the same ways that Nicene and other ancient thinkers sought to preserve their history, i.e., in ways that caused that tradition to actually live in and be relevant to the present (including in ways that go well beyond theology proper), instead of being encased behind museum glass that becomes more and more obscure with the passing years.
I think you've made my day. Thanks.
I've noticed that people tend to read more agreement with their own views into your works than actually exists, which probably explains why they're so quick to find you on the road out of orthodoxy every time a new book comes out. I'm reminded of your exchange with Peter Leithart, who seemed to assume that you interpreted Scripture by the same rules that he (as a conservative Presbyterian) did. A narrow orthodoxy produces narrow minds (or is it the other way round?) that can't recognize Christianity except in their own image.
That said, I also can't help but wonder if First Thing's editorial staff has become emotionally invested in the "Decline and Fall of David Bentley Hart" narrative they've been pushing for the last few years. I'm sure it makes scintillating reading for a certain kind of Protestant or Catholic fundamentalist.
More to the point, it explains away the defection of a writer on whom the chief editor used to pin certain claims for the journal's prestige. Not to boast, but it just happens to be the case. If the choice of narratives is either that I left because of the journal's precipitous intellectual and moral decline or that I left because of my own death-spiral into insane heresy and political radicalism, it's obvious which makes their rag look better.
As for the mistaken views people might have had of me in the past, this is probably true. I've actually had people tell me they felt betrayed when it turned out that I was not actually on the side of whatever version of "mere Christianity" they believe in.
I read McDermitt's article before reading your response. He represents a type of thinker who abhors ambiguity, is threatened by it, and therefore cannot embrace it. However, I believe that it is within the ambiguity of things that one finds what is not so ambiguous. Good response to the article.
He struck me as someone who can't follow an argument of any complexity. Again, if it weren't for so many readers of no specialist training who seem to get the point, I would (at least pretend to) blame myself.
I am a failed seminary student who still has a passion for theology. I have a thing about reading systematic theologies. Don't judge me. With your work, I think a careful reader is going to follow you to your point. It does not always mean that we are always going to agree with your point, but you seem to welcome constructive discussion when it is honest and someone has actually read your book.
A recent example was "You Are Gods." One of the points you advanced was a monist approach to theology that preserved the Creator-creation distinction, and did not collapse into process or one of the pans (pantheism or panentheism). Oddly enough, someone just speed reading the text would easily misunderstand what you are trying to say, or allow their own expectations to color what they are reading.
Well, no doubt. But it would be odd to pick up such a book only to speed read it. And a reviewer who does so is doing something deplorable.
This is probably what bothers me the most about aggressively narrow-minded believers: they're not really interested in truth, but in feeling safe. Krishna the mischievous child ought to steal their butter.
He already has. That’s why they pout and rant and wail.
Ah, First Things. Where Jesus came to stamp out the gays, where the principal threat to Christendom is "trans ideology," where heaven is the set of The Young Pope.
FIRST THINGS is "gettin' dramatic an'
Doin' the Vatican Rag." - Tom Lehrer
As well as the Fundamentalist Rag. What a rag indeed. I have never heard of McDermott before, and that was quite a mercy, I must say. Now I have heard of him, but cannot tell whether he is a liar who simply had not bothered to read the book, or if he is a functional illiterate. I lean to the latter. But I have to believe that the Rag's editors knew his "review" was full of fertilizer, and were willing to publish it anyway. They must really resent your mentor Roland, and to a lesser extent (but fervent nonetheless) you, for the same reason that FOX "News" probably resents Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith.
Believe me, they resent everything. They live in a little echo chamber filled with endlessly reverberating lamentations and denunciations, generally about nothing other than the monsters their own fevered imaginations have conjured. They are genuinely unwholesome souls.
For what it's worth, McDermott's review is what made me buy the book--if it inspires such vitriol in First Things...!
It’s true that, every time another screed against my work appears in its pages, it does make me feel I’ve done something of which God may approve.
I got a subscription to First Things in order to read your articles. I did not renew it after you left. Since then I have become so disgusted with the political bent of the American Church that I stopped attending mass. There were quite a few Trump supporters in my congregation but I never heard anything political from them until the Orange Antichrist was elected. It’s depressing…
The ascendancy of Agent Orange I think awakened many of us to realities we had never suspected. I still prefer to think it's all a dream and I may yet awake to find it's 2015 and no one in his right mind would even imagine that that dropsical troll could run for office.
"Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?" Perhaps this all is a dream orchestrated by an orange-headed, gnostic demiurge. And Kenogaia was your roadmap out: revolutionary manifesto disguised as a fairy-tale.
Shhh. We say these things only at the secret meetings.
Edward, where do you live? You know there is a huge inclusive Catholic movement out there. We are doing our best to reclaim the church from those white nationalists.
I live in central Massachusetts. I live in Worcester diocese. My bishop, Robert McManus, recently told Nativity School of Worcester that they couldn't call themselves a Catholic School because the Jesuit faculty had been flying Black Lives Matter and gay pride flags outside the school. I support BLM and gay rights so I guess that means I'm not Catholic either.
Oh lordy, I heard about that. Well, you're halfway between Agape in Hardwick and and Spirit of Life in Weston. Those are both inclusive, active, Vatican II inspired places and if I lived in your area I'd go to Agape for a retreat in a heartbeat. I have a renewed love for being Catholic now that I know that there is a "free range" option. (eg not connected to the diocesan/parish structure)
Thanks, I’ll check it out. I’m actually in northern Worcester County, Athol. It’s up near the NH border. We’ve got a couple Catholic monasteries in the area, Benedictine and Maronite. I love them for their traditions and beauty. If I could just close my eyes to the politics I’d use them. But I’m a political person. I’m a convert as it is, and that process involved handling a lot of cognitive dissonance. Staying Catholic requires a constant spiritual regluing. I’ve been away from mass since the beginning of Covid and the glue is giving way in all the seams… so to speak.
First of all, I absolutely loved Tradition and Apocalypse. Whenever rad trads attack me by asking how on earth I can call myself "Roman Catholic," I think about certain lines from your book, about how tradition only exists as "sustained apocalypse, a moment of pure awakening preserved as at once an ever dissolving recollection and an ever renewed surprise."
Second, why do people always insult Rod McKuen? I mean, your analogy there is fair, because of the word "magisterial," but he was much more of a towering American cultural figure than McClymond could ever be.
Third, (this is only very tangientially related, ok, maybe not related at all) have you heard of a scholar named Elizabeth Schrader? I was getting ready for my Mary Magdalene homily and came across her work about all the redation criticism in John 11, and apparently at this point many scholars think Martha should just be taken out of that story. Pleae let me know if you have come across this (her first article is here https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/abs/was-martha-of-bethany-added-to-the-fourth-gospel-in-the-second-century/6CBD2C9576A583DD02987FE836C427B7
I don't have access.
I sent you the link to the substack article about her just now.
I can say with no small authority that Rod McKuen was the nadir of a certain strain of popular verse in English whose zenith was probably Robert Service. Today Instagram poets occupy the niche once occupied by McKuen, & they are no worse.
Robert Service was a good man, and popular verse was a perfectly honorable genre in the days when reading verse was something people did for entertainment. I can't imagine what pleasure anyone ever got from Rod McKuen (well, apart from Rock Hudson).
I can’t believe you just cited Robert Service! The Brotherhood of the Briar met around a fire pit starting at 9:00 on Thursday nights, smoked pipes, drank single malt scotch, recited poetry and discussed philosophy. We began each gathering by reciting:
I have some friends, some honest friends,
And honest friends are few;
My pipe of briar, my open fire,
A book that’s not too new.
And on what we deemed to be the coldest night of the year we recited The Cremation of Sam McGee.
My father had a habit of reciting The Cremation of Sam McGee when in a ridiculous mood. Consequently, since his passing, I’m perhaps the only person on earth capable of being moved to tears by it. It’s an absurd condition to be in.
I memorized that poem when I was in 5th grade. I loved it then and I love it now.
It's not to the credit of our culture that entertaining popular verse, competently executed, is no longer a living genre.
Well, I think popular music has taken its place. Instead of reciting “Sam McGee” around the fire, you sing a song by the Stones or Taylor Swift. Popular verse retreats to inspirational bromides.
What about the song lyrics he wrote? "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun..."
One of the most annoying songs in the history of noises issuing from primate mouths.
After I wrote this comment, I went outside to do some gardening and it was stuck in my head the entire time. Bad idea even to mention it.
We make our own hells.
And yet somehow the clowns over at the Contra Gentiles YouTube channel have managed to give an even more hopelessly confused review of Tradition and Apocalypse, to which they devoted an episode. Seemingly they asked you to be on the show, David? I can’t imagine how they thought that would go. I hope you manage to have a good laugh about the whole thing, whereas I could only manage to be physically upset by their ravings.
No, they never asked me. I’ve never heard of them.
Perhaps you're just too smart for McDermott and his ilk, if they continuously misconstrue your theology to be on par with someone like John Shelby Spong. (Which I'am sure you don't)
A cocker spaniel might be too smart for McDermott.
(That was Roland speaking.)
Reading Tradition & Apocalypse brings back happy memories of sitting in the doctoral seminars as an MDiv student at HDS in the 80s.
I remember Amos Niven Wilder saying with a puckish smile, “My teachers said to stay away from eschatological & apocalyptic studies. It would be career suicide!” He was in his 90s and had an amazing mind.
And, of Wilfred Cantwell Smith talking about Islams and Chistianities.
And, your build on those discussions moves my thoughts forward.
Thanks for writing this!
Kind of you to say.
silence is contempt
An enigmatic remark.
I just came across my box of old copies of First Things. It made me nostalgic and bitter at once.
It is not theologically coherent to say that God “created” evil. Indeed it is rather explicitly denied in several places. Just to cite my own recent reading: "Ontologically, evil does not exist, but is a phantom of nonbeing" (Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb).
A problematic translation from Isaiah. It should be something like God makes both good and bad fortune happen.
Yes, in the KJV he says "I create evil," but the New KJV & the ESV have "I create calamity." Herbert Marks suggests "woe." Even then, it is not quite theologically correct from a Christian perspective, but that is a whole different can of leviathans.
It's also a controverted point in the prophets. Ezekiel 12:23; 18:3. And it is explicitly denied as a moral claim in the New Testament. in about 91 places.
I like the way Stephen RL Clark interprets that pericope. For him, the knowledge of good and evil that we partook of meant that was when we started discriminating between the good things that God made and putting some in the good camp and some in the evil camp (snakes, wasps, mosquitos, people we don't like or that seem foreign to us, etc.) Thus we began not granting them the respect and compassion they deserve as beings created by God with thoughts, desires, and purposes of their own that have nothing to do with us. Which means we have no right, especially, heaven forbid, a divine right to do with them as we will and utterly dominate and subjugate them, generally for our convenience and pleasure.
Based on the above, it seems that you strongly object against the concept of theosis, which probably means that you are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox. Which of the Christian denominations or theologists is closest to you heart then?
Although I don’t subscribe to your view, I recognize that you can probably find a textual basis for it in the Old Testament. However, don’t you think that this interpretation contradicts one of the central messages of Christianity, that is to take a clear stand of the side of Good, for which the epistemic knowledge of good and evil might not be nearly enough? Or perhaps you interpret this message as a call to simply surrender ourselves to the will of God and thus to return to the bliss of restored innocence? But do we even know how to surrender without a capacity to follow some clear moral principles based on a higher understanding of good and evil (some transcendental directives)? It is not that we can simply say “yes” or “no”. We also need to follow through.