What is Christian celibacy?

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Some ideas, as a basis for discussion...

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Not merely not having sex, not merely voluntarily refraining from sex in situations where it is not permitted or where children are not wanted...

(that is chastity - I think: a contingent suspension of sexual activity for a reason, rather than celibacy as a resolved cessation offered as a consecrated act...).

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Nor is celibacy legitimately a means to the end of creating an autonomous and dedicated professional priesthood - but celibacy is (like it or not) a spiritual practice.

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In particular, celibacy is an ascetic practice - a denial, part of the via negativa (negative way) akin to fasting, prayer vigils, endurance of heat, cold and other physical harshness etc.

These designed to develop control of passions, and resistance to temptations (including demonic masquerading as divine visions and experiences); prior to attempted Sainthood.

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And, as such, celibacy is hazardous: spiritually hazardous. Especially, celibacy in isolation is hazardous (for many men) - since this is a partial acesticism.

Celibacy is likely to be much harder and more hazardous to attempt when the body is indulged and fuelled by plenty of food, warmth, comfort, alcohol, tobacco...

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Celibacy should therefore properly be done under monastic supervision, as part of a general and mutually-reinforcing programme of ascetic training. (And when monasteries lack such conditions, celibacy is presumably that much more difficult and hazardous.)

Just as monks are only allowed to become solitary hermits after a period of disciplined training under supervision, with the gradual and incremental development of the powers of self-discipline as discerned by a competent Spiritual Father, the same should apply to lifelong celibacy.

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Because celibacy is spiritually dangerous - it strongly tends (like other advanced spiritual practices) to produce spiritual pride; which is why it ought to be practised only under supervision and discipline until a person is 'ready' to go it alone and resist the temptations of pride - and this takes (apparently) something of the order of ten to twenty years of monastic supervision.

Therefore - since celibacy is so difficult to attain and so prone to go wrong, it is spiritually safer, as a general rule, to have mostly married priests administering the sacraments (since many such priests are needed and it is impractical/ impossible that there are sufficient trained and willing ascetics to perfom them), these being led by an elite of Holy and celibate monk-Bishops (Holiness being - ahem - more important than, for example, managerial abilities, eloquence or scholarship).

This was, I understand, the usual and universal practice until medieval times.

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Rotten organizations

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One of the hardest, and most paradox generating, aspects of modern life for a reactionary Anglican Christian is that all the organizations are rotten; including the institutional church.

I can still remember what it was like to believe that my medical school and university, the Medical Research Council, the National Health Service and other large organizations in which I worked were basically good, I even remember feeling that the British government was basically good.

By basically good I mean well intentioned, good at heart, productive of mostly good decisions and policies...

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And over the years all these comforting feelings have fallen away or been stripped away. When almost every single decision an organization makes, and (especially) every new policy or rule, every initiative is bad - and not just slightly bad - then comes a time when your attitude 'flips'.

So suddenly you are in an essentially hostile world - where power resides in bureaucracies that run everything and are active agents of evil. Of course good people and good impulses remain in these organizations (thank Heavens) - but you can see them being mopped up and eliminated over the years.

What this means is that I find myself in the service of evil - since I live in a world of these organizations. Not the service of pure evil, of course! - but in service of organizations whose hearts are rotten.

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It is like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Voldemort rules from behind the scenes - using and subverting the established institutions to opposite goals - and the situation resembles Mr Weasley at the Ministry of Magic (promoting a pure blood agenda) or Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts (where torture is on the curriculum) - and where the Daily Prophet is propaganda in moral inversion and people believe it. How can a hoping-to-be-good individual operate in a trying-to-be-bad institution? Might they actually be making matters worse, lending support to the evil agenda? such that people might say: "well if Weasley and McGonagall are going along with all this stuff, it must be okay - they're decent people...".

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What to do when a society, an organization, an institutions is set up such that it serves evil?

And such that individuals are neutered - all authority vested in impersonal committees, impersonal rules - where responsibility is displaced up and up until it reaches the purest ideology (just following orders); where the basis of each evaluative decision is bad in principle as well as practice...

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Some reactionary Christians may feel that their Church is a refuge from this - but that is obviously impossible for an Anglican to believe - and I feel that other denominations are deluded on this matter: maybe this is an advantage for Anglicans? The recognition that insofar as a church or part-of-church is powerful, it is corrupt; insofar as a church is true it is beleaguered.

The clarity of knowing that there really is no powerful institutional refuge. The recognition that all which is good in an institution is under threat, feeble, may disappear at any time. Sooner or later Mr Weasley will be sacked and arrested; sooner or later Professor McGonagall will be forced to leave Hogwarts, the good priests will retire and be replaced by undercover Leftists.

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Contraception, patriarchs and monks

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Contraception and the Roman Catholic hierarchy

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/contraception-and-roman-catholic.html

was my most commented post ever, and many of the comments were excellent.

One result has been to clarify my thoughts, as follows...

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I while back I made the statement that from a Christian perspective men were - as a generalization, or 'ideal type' - supposed to be patriarchs or monks:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/04/patriarchs-or-monks.html

From the purely sexual perspective, this implies that most men are called to the sexual life within marriage; and if they are not then they are probably called to a life of monastic (institutional) celibacy.

So that men (in general) either live in their family, or else in the monastery - they do not live alone, therefore they do not practice sex outside marriage - and they do not practice celibacy outside the monastery.

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In traditional societies, before about 1800 in Europe, sex within marriage led to large numbers of conceptions - maybe about ten?- of which an average of eight children died before reproducing (very approximate numbers, but the orders of magnitude are about right).

This was one of the greatest sorrows of life - the deaths of so many children, mostly from disease and starvation.

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So, the usual situation in traditional societies is to have no contraception (because it hasn't been invented), unrestricted sexual activity, large numbers of children, and large rates of child mortality.

After about 1800, child mortality rates dropped a lot, so that more children survived childhood, and the population grew very quickly.

For the first time in history, it was possible - normal - for almost everybody (even the poorest) to have about ten children and probably more than half of them would survive to adulthood. This was possible because of the rising standard of living, and massive transfers of resources to poor families.

(Contra the story of communism/ socialism, the Industrial Revolution was a massively egalitarian phenomenon - the rich keeping-alive the babies of the poor in unprecedented numbers.) 

As modernity continued, contraception was invented in more versions and with greater availability, and first the upper classes, then the lower classes reduced their family size (until eventually it was less than two).

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Anyway, the two basic realities of traditional society - and a society without contraception - are patriarchy with very large families for the majority, and communal celibacy for a minority.

The children of these very large families will nearly all die in traditional societies; but in post-Industrial Revolution societies all children who are born (to anyone) will be kept alive (at first by voluntary charity, nowadays by wholesale confiscation and transfer of resources).

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This clarifies the argument concerning contraception.

1. Marriage is not the place for celibacy. As a general rule it is unacceptable.

2. Celibacy is not a solo lifestyle. As a general rule it is unacceptable.

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3. Marriage without contraception (and without celibacy) leads to very large families.

What happens to the children?

In modern societies any unrestricted number of children who are born will be kept alive and brought-up at the expense of others - and their children, and so on.

In traditional societies, most or (for the poor) all of the children born will die of starvation, disease and neglect.

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If this natural form of non-celibate marriage is pursued without regard for consequences (that is, by a system of ethics which focuses on the correct decision and ignores the consequences of that decision) then under post-industrial revolution conditions nearly all families will have (say) ten children, and these children will be sustained on welfare at the cost of the taxpayers (whether the tax payers like it or not).



(Because it is is now regarded as ethically non-negotiable in the West that all children who are born must be kept alive - and their children - by coercive extraction of resources from the community with no limit or restriction on the numbers of children and no limit or restriction on the volume of coercive resource extraction.)

Since this is obviously a road to chaos and cultural collapse it seems that the RC Church cannot (or is not) ignoring the consequences of 'natural' marriage, perhaps it finds these consequences unacceptable.

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This means that Roman Catholic married couples who are required both to avoid reliable contraception and to avoid huge families are being asked to do something generally unacceptable - to combine the disparate paths of marriage and celibacy.

(And it means that many Roman Catholic secular Priests/ Parish Priests - who currently live alone and outwith monastic or other orders - are being required to live a life that, in basic human terms, is generally unacceptable.)

In other words, the ethical problems which swirl around contraception, including the arbitrary division between natural and artificial methods, are a result of compromises. 

The compromises are trying to achieve the end result of moderately sized families, when the natural result of no-contraception and a non-celibate marriage is to have very large numbers of children. 

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It trying to be 'as natural as possible' and yet to avoid the consequences of very large families (the consequences either being vast child mortality rates, or - as at present - vast coercive extraction of welfare; the RC Church seems to have reached a compromise between principle and practicality - by advocating 'natural' contraception it is not following strict principles, it is not ignoring consequences. 

Neither is this teaching being strictly honest, in my opinion - because, by pretending to be based on principle,  it is not being clear about the probable consequences of these principles; and yet its teaching does take into account consequences.  

The result is itself a compromise - as is the current Roman Catholic demand for a high degree of celibacy within marriage a compromise - because it is required in order to avoid very large families and to avoid the use of artificial contraception. 

(Which is the only reliable type of contraception) . 

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What will happen? On present trends, those religions who pursue principle without regard for consequences will carry the day - because (under modern conditions) these will have very large numbers of children who will all be kept alive and raised at the expense of everybody else. 

The two basic long term possibilities are unrestricted fertility and huge numbers of births or celibacy. Medium sized families require compromise of principles - and the use of contraception: and contraception is contraception - whether it is called 'natural' or artificial it is still contraception, because there is nothing 'natural' about contraception. 

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What might increase devoutness? Micro-retreats?

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Since I have been advocating that the cure for laxity is devoutness, and since I have been emphasizing the perils of rule following (the perils especially for the modern mind) - what should we do?

The answer should perhaps be re-phrased more like - what should we stop doing: and what we should stop doing is engaging with the mass media, interpersonal communications, socializing, passive forms of diversion (including those that are good for us, supposedly, like art).

We should dis-engage. Be silent. Go on retreat - or, at least, micro-retreats.

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I have been on one proper Christian retreat, and it was certainly worthwhile (staying in a monastery for couple of nights, observing the silences and attending the services - plus devotional reading and informal conversation).

But I was thinking more on a daily basis. Frequent micro-retreats.

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My own most frequent solitary retreats are for periods between half an hour and an hour - and take place in cafes and libraries - and in the walks to and from them (which can be used for prayer, or to fully aware of the surroundings).

Lacking these micro-retreats I feel a very big difference for the worse - a dissipation, a fuzziness, a loss of the sense of reality and contact with it, life just slipping past - they seem to be very important.    

But I notice that people seldom use such periods of unstructured time in the way I do - instead they try to structure the time, or to distract themselves from it.

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The whole point about these times is that they are unstructured, unplanned. It is a question of attitude.

I take a notebook, I always carry a miniature Bible - maybe read a psalm or two; each day I carry a couple of books (mostly 'non-fiction') - these are 'used' (if used) in short intense bursts of reading interspersed with note-taking.

(The notes are seldom or ever looked at again, but sometimes serve as an aide memoire).

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I would go so far as to say that - lacking some analogous times - the lives of many people seem to me to be quite hopelessly engaged and distracted. I can't see how they can get out from under this without time, unstructured time - if not a proper retreat, then developing a habit of micro-retreats.

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Kristor on spiritual maps

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From the comments to yesterday's posting, a mini-essay from Kristor:

The way I have parsed this is to distinguish between map and territory. Scholasticism, and more generally philosophy and theology – including even Eastern mystical theology – are maps. You get into trouble when you begin to be more attached to your map than to the territory.

When it comes to theology, this error arises when the thinking is dissociated in the thinker’s life from his direct devotional/mystical/revelatory experience. My reading of Aquinas indicates to me that his thought life was definitely not dissociated from his devotional life, or, for that matter, from concrete experience in general. On the contrary, Aquinas is one of the most concrete, common-sense philosophers I have read. Many of his refutations – perhaps even most of them – are of doctrines that are radically incompatible with life as we actually experience it, but that have nevertheless grown popular enough to call for their refutation.

If you hike along treating your map as more authoritative than the territory, you are going to get lost, because maps can be properly interpreted only in terms of and by reference to the territory. So, Scholastic philosophy can be terribly useful and enlightening, but it should not ever become the main thing.

Similar caveats apply to scientific life, to politics, to legalism (ecclesial and secular) – to life in general. Scholars are particularly prone to this danger of idolizing the map, but anyone who has tasted the allure of that delicious feeling of systemic intellectual mastery is vulnerable. Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism are all equally susceptible to this error (this is why, despite the overwhelming force and integrity of the mystical experience common to all 3 traditions, the schisms perdure). 

And, these days, the set of people who have been seduced by the temptation to intellectual mastery includes most of the population. Much of your work is about how our culture has got itself all tied up in great messy knots – in falsehood, error, sin, and wickedness – through an over-emphasis on rules, procedures, committees, etc. Viz., any of your stuff on pc, bureaucracy, etc. Much of our current problem as a culture derives from the fact that most of our people are wholly employed in dealing with these map issues; almost all “knowledge workers” are spending their lives on interpreting and reconciling maps, and never ever raise their heads to look out the window. I have referred to this portion of the economy as the “fake” economy.

On the other hand, if you try to get through the wilderness without a map, you are going to have a much, much harder time of it – and the chance of getting lost in such a situation is far, far greater than it would be if you had even the most sketchy and inaccurate map. I know this from experience! Having a lousy map is infinitely better than having no map at all, especially when lives are at stake (NB: lives are always at stake). It can be done – that’s how maps get charted in the first place – but it’s a lot harder, and more error-prone.

One may of course hire a guide, who knows the territory directly. One may apprentice oneself to a master; sooner or later, advancement in the spiritual life depends upon this step. There aren’t many masters, these days, or ever, I suppose. So, most people must fall back on maps.

As to where we go from here, I think you are right that simply substituting the old maps for the current maps is not going to work. Because they interpret things in such radically whacked categories, that would seem to our modernist interlocutors as if we were speaking Latin at them. From the modern perspective, the Traditionalist maps are simply incomprehensible; indeed, they seem like wicked deluded nonsense. 

No; we need to confront the territory directly. One must first experience the truth in order to know it, or to know that one has known it, or then – last of all – to try to formalize it in a statement or map that others can use, can follow, back to that experience of truth. Experience of truth is the main thing, the first thing, always.

Where we must start then is to keep pointing out to moderns that their map is deeply whacked; that it is leading us directly over the precipice. We must point to the precipices that now surround us on every side but one (the one that leads back over the way we traversed in order to get to this tiny point of cornice, high above the abyss); as in, “Hallo! Look at the demographic death that is already upon us!” Once they see themselves teetering at the very lip of that great maw, they will throw their wicked old maps away as fast as they can, and scamper on tip-toes back over the narrow road that leads back to the highway. Then and only then might we be able to rummage about in our rucksacks for the old maps that we once used, with some interest in actually using them again.

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The fallacies of legalism and precision from a position of low spirituality

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Most Western Churches are highly prone to fall into legalism and precision; but these are signs of a lack of spiritual depth, and are themselves false paths.

The true path is of course a middle way - not laxity, not legalistic precision; but not a compromise.

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The early Church (according to Charles Williams) began to shape itself by discovering what it believed.

It was rather like Tolkien writing the Lord of the Rings - he gradually discovered what it was about. It was not invention, it was not extrapolation nor interpolation - it was a discovery of what was already there but not clearly seen.

When a council - designed to discover what the Church believed - was later found to be wrong, then it was regarded as not-a-council.

This is how things work when the Church is filled with the Holy Ghost.

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However, when laxity increases because sanctity declines, there is a strong tendency to respond with legalism and precision - with sharp definitions, with increased discipline, with assertions of authority.

This is an error - when sanctity declines, the answer is an increase in sanctity and nothing else will work.

That was the error of the Reformation - to oppose laxity with Legalism. But, insofar as the Reformation really was an increase in sanctity (and it really was to a significant extent) - then that was to the Good.

And perhaps has often been the case with heresy - the benefits of heresy come from the increase in sanctity - and there often are such benefits even when the heresy is overall harmful or even evil in its ultimate tendency.

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So the 18th century Evangelical/ Nonconformist 'revival' (Wesley, Methodism etc) did Good insofar as it was linked with devoutness and spirituality.

So did the almost-oppositely-inclined 19th century Anglo-Catholic revival do Good insofar it revived devoutness and zeal in the Established church.

By contrast, 20th century Anglican liberalism is an almost-unmixed evil since it was not only heretical, but associated with reduced sanctity, zeal, and spirituality.

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From where we are now there is - I would think - zero-probability of making people more spiritual by more and more-precise legalism and more strict enforcement.

It must come (if it can come) from increased sanctity, probably from a revival of ascetic monasticism - that is, from example, from intercession and other spiritual means.

Insofar as this leads to greater sanctity, then those who achieve it will know just exactly what to do, but at present we do not know what to do, therefore we cannot make people do it.

But if we are trying to be more precise and strict about what to do from our current position of low spiritual development, then we will probably do more harm than Good.

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What happens when corruption comes from leaders - even Church leaders?

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It seems likely that our society has been, is being, led into corruption.

This is not to absolve those-who-are-led from responsibility - clearly they should not follow evil leaders.

And these evil leaders are almost everywhere - found in all large and powerful organizations. Not necessarily dominant, not always in a majority, but having a very significant effect.

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This, of course, applies to the institutional church (to all the institutional churches - when they are large and powerful).

Again and again we perceive that the fish is rotting from the head down.

Again and again we perceive that the best people are almost-never at the top of institutions, but can rise no higher than the middle.

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This does mean that teachings based on obedience require at least modification. If our primary ethic is obedience then we will be led into the abyss.

Is obedience a sufficient excuse for a Christian to follow church leaders wherever they may take you? Probably not.

At least, I do not detect that obedience should be the primary virtue - a virtue to which Love, Courage and all the other virtues ought to be sacrificed.

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It is an apparent paradox of traditionalists living in an age of change that they assert the necessity of hierarchy yet are themselves insubordinate.

But (although insubordination may be due to pride or other sins) it is not necessarily a paradox - merely recognition that there are more important things than obedience, and that disobedience is sometimes necessary.

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Indeed, surely disobedience is more-and-more necessary to Christian reactionaries all the time?

Surely obedience is, nowadays, more often an excuse, than a virtue?

To develop a habit of disobedience to the leadership but without becoming consumed by spiritual pride - that is where the habitual nature of the thing may be helpful - that seems to be something like the task before us.

To assume that the leadership is wrong about most things most of the time and should therefore habitually be disobeyed; but that sometimes they may be right about some things and sometimes we should go along with what they want...

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Contraception and the Roman Catholic hierarchy

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It is understandable that opposition to contraception has become, in the popular mind, the main defining feature of Roman Catholicism, or at least its senior hierarchy.

And it is notable that the RC Church hierarchy has utterly failed to convince its flock to follow this teaching - since the most RC dominated countries of Europe are among those with the lowest fertility (Ireland, Spain, Italy).

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To have failed does not, of course, mean that the RC hierarchy were wrong. Indeed, they may have had little choice in the matter since sex-without-conception was the main (ahem) thrust of the culture war when Leftism clashed with institutional religion from the mid-1960s onwards.

But the deep problem of the RC emphasis on no-contraception is that it strikes so many people as senseless - specifically, I mean in breach of common sense.

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This is probably because the RC opposition to contraception is not common sense, nor is it core Christian teaching; rather it is a distal, logico-philosophical consequence of some core Christian teachings.

In particular, the opposition is expressed in Thomistic terms of the intrinsic function of sex, as inferred from the complementarity of sexes, that they fit together - plus some scriptural back-up, and therefore the permissible occasions and types of sex.

All this is way too fine-spun and drawn-out for people to comprehend - especially modern people with their short attention span and impatience.

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The obvious core basis of RC opposition to contraception is pro-natalism - that marriage should aim to be fertile, that having children is good, that larger families are better (so long as they are self-supporting, at any rate).

Yet, the attempt to yoke contraception to pro-natalism fails - there is no necessary nor observable reason why contraception cannot be linked with pro-natalism - as among the Mormons.

(Mormons are not exactly pro-, but in practice not-against-contraception, and nearly all Mormons use contraception. Yet Mormons, unlike Roman Catholics, have been successful in their pro-natalism, with significantly above-replacement family sizes (greater than 2.1 children per family) and much larger families than RCs especially among the wealthiest and most educated.)

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And, indeed, there is something terrifying in the modern world about pro-natalism without contraception - fertility can get terrifyingly out of control.

For tribal hunter-gatherers, living on a hunter gatherer diet, the maximium number of babies a woman can have is probably around  six - because menarche is late and pregnancies are spaced-out by lactation acting as a natural contraceptive (and if this fails the newborn baby will nearly always die, be abandoned or killed - since there is not enough milk for two and the older child is usually privileged).

(Of these six, an average of two survive to reproduce, in the steady population state.)

On a more modern, agriculture based diet, with high levels of fat and protein, menarche is earlier and lactation is no longer a natural contraceptive and women can have a lot more pregnancies going to term - ten births is not unusual, and even more is not uncommon.

Such fertility rates either leads to massive death rates among children (e.g. about eight deaths per family), or else requires rapid economic growth or massive support from outside the family.

This was the norm for pre-industrial revolution societies: the average peasant had near-zero surviving children - regardless of fertility.

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Of course, there is an alternative - celibate marriage. That is possible among the most devout of certain populations with high intelligence and conscientiousness; but is not possible for most of the people in the world most of the time. Celibacy must be enforced on them, or it won't happen. And the sanctions must be extreme, encompassing the death of surplus children - otherwise the celibate devout will merely be amplifying the numbers of incontinent apostates, generation upon generation...

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So, this is the reality of the Roman Catholic combination of pro-natalism and anti-contraception under modern conditions.

I am not saying that this is an unacceptable reality, because it was the state of affairs for some thousands of years; but I have never seen it honestly set out.

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Now, of course, people don't exactly and explicitly realize that this is the reality of Roman Catholic teaching on contraception - but they do sense intuitively, by common sense, that combining pro-natalism with anti-contraception under modern conditions leads to unacceptable outcomes: either ten kids leading to impoverishment plus/ minus life on welfare - or else a life of reluctant monkish celibacy.

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So, which is more important? Pro-natalism or anti-contraception?

We can see that modern Roman Catholics have voted with their feet, or rather loins, to abandon both.

My first point is pragmatic (merely) and is that pro-natalism is vastly more important than anti-contraception; and given the perceived conflict between the two, pro-natalism should have been what the RC hierarchy pushed hard, while saying little or nothing about contraception.

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My second point is theological/ religious - which is that the Church should take care to be definite about core teaching, and indefinite about derived teachings - since the derived teachings are vulnerable both to logical errors and - more importantly - to the errors of logic.

In my opinion, it is an intrinsic flaw of Western Christendom (including the Roman Catholic Church, and also the Protestant denominations) that they feel compelled to give a philosophical opinion, indeed lay down the law, on all conceivable matters - to create a coherent, internally-non-contradictory and fully-comprehensive intellectual structure.

Yet Christianity is a religion of mystery and incomprehension - right at its core. Philosophy and Law are an optional extra - and should not be allowed to usurp the core mystery. When the specific and the explicit usurp the mystery we have the tail wagging the dog.

Christianity cannot win battles of law and logic on worldly matters like the precise details of sexual practice - rather the 'answers' to these must emerge (for each person) from the primary recognition of the core mystery.

The core mystery, in this instance, being to do with the mystical unity of Mankind (at the level of souls, a web of salvation) and the special (sacramental) importance of marriage and birth - this was one of the distinctive teachings that set Christianity apart from paganism.

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In a wider sense, the modern Christian Church needs desperately to recover its mystical focus, even at the cost of setting aside its focus on specific moral conflicts.

People break the Christian Laws because they cannot understand, cannot feel, the reason for these precise Laws - and without this feeling the Laws seem merely arbitrary.

And sometimes the Laws are - if not arbitrary - then not tightly consequential. Some Christian Laws are the result of a chain of logical reasoning, and only as secure as the process of logic - which is to say not necessarily secure. Natural Law and Revelation trump logic.

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I do not, of course, mean that Christianity should go-along with modernity and accept its 'reforms' and constraints - but these should be reacted to simply by getting on with things, and refusing to budge on core issues - without argument and 'rational' discourse, preferably; just a stubborn holding to tradition and ancient wisdom in the face of insatiable desire for change and progress fueled by shallow nihilism.

In other words, we ought to live by the built-in assumption that under modern conditions any proposed change is almost certain to be wrong and harmful and must therefore be resisted for at least a few generations - after which it may cautiously be tried-out. 

In sum, my discomfort and indeed irritation with the Roman Catholic focus on contraception and other issues of precise sexual conduct is part of a conviction that the Christian Church must at this point in history eschew worldliness as much as possible, to develop and emphasize instead the Heavenly, mystical and prayerful, salvific core.

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Christ followed the spirit of The Law, even as he broke the letter of specific laws.

Justice is not the outcome of applying specific explicit laws; but the use of specific and explicit laws to attain Justice.

The same applies to specific ethical rules, such as those pertaining to sex within marriage.

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Legalistic hyper-correctness is not a solution to laxity; it is indeed merely to substitute one form of sin for another.

The only solution to laxity is sanctity.


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We must now throw the baby out with the bathwater - there is no alternative...

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We are inculcated into modernity. Through childhood the unity of our experience is broken up and in teens we emerge into consciousness with already fragmented thinking.

We become adults already pre-alienated - and with no concept of how to heal this alienation - because using modern thought it cannot be healed (but only by retrieving ancient thought).

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It has been the great illusion of the past couple of hundred years that there is some way, some *trick*, by which we can retain the advantages of fragmentation (i.e. retain the advantages of specialization in science, law, art, public administration etc) while glue-ing all these fragments back into unity.

There is thus a vast tradition, going back to The Romantics and up to New Age, of people who diagnose the problem brilliantly but utterly fail to solve it, because they seek a new solution (e.g a 'new' religion, or spirituality).

Working through these failures - learning, testing and discarding them - took me more than thirty years.

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We are now in the situation where the baby will (indeed must) be thrown-out with the bathwater.

Because trying to preserve the baby will lead to drowning by the bathwater...


(The baby is the good things of modernity, the bathwater is the tide of total destruction of all things Western that is overwhelming modernity - from within and from without.)

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We are in the situation where destroying the One Ring will also and inevitably destroy the power of the High Elves (because this depends on the Elven Rings hence comes, ultimately, from the same source of the One Ring). And where the High Elves have nobody to blame but themselves, since they tried to use evil to promote Good, with the inevitable result.

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Psalm 8 - which 'version' is best?

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EITHER:

The King James or (Authorized) version:



O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

*

OR

New International Version of the Bible (one of the most popular translations in recent use):


LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,

the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

*


This is a  fair comparison for me, since the NIV was the first version of the Bible I read extensively (and aesthetically it is far-from-the-worst translation), and it is used at two of the three Churches where I most often worship.

But - Good Heavens! Why would any sane person reject the first in favour of the second?

The first as great a piece of poetry as anything in English, and as profound a devotion as anything I have come across; the second... is... inferior.

Little wonder why the Psalms have lost their properly central place in worship...

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/08/psalms-and-cs-lewis-lewis-nods.html

*


Note: The Book of Common Prayer, containing the daily liturgy for Anglicans, uses a different and translation of the Psalms, done earlier than the King James Bible and by Miles Coverdale.


The BCP Psalter is very good indeed; but not as good as the KJB Psalter - to go from the BCP to the KJB is like the difference between  somebody like Spenser, or Sidney and then Shakespeare.




Psalm 8 - BCP/ Coverdale:



O  Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world; thou that hast set thy glory above the heavens!


Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies,


that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.


For I will consider thy heavens, even the works of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained.


What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?


Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship.


Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of thy hands; and thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet


all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field,


the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the seas.


O Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world!


*

The patriarchal beard versus the anti-patriarchal beard

*

I have always been clean shaven (and short-haired - even before it started to recede and thin) - a typical Roundhead Puritan in fact - and this description probably fits fairly well with my natural disposition.

But it has always seemed surprising that to be clean shaven has been the norm for the past several generations.

*

Surprising, too, that beards fall into two main categories: the patriarchal and the anti-patriarchal (or Leftist) beard: these seem to be perennials.

(I leave aside temporary fashions for sculpted facial hair - moustaches, goatees, long sideburns etc - I focus on the full beard in its natural more-or-less natural form.)

*

It is notable that the full beard is worn by patriarchs such as Orthodox Jews, Muslim clerics, Eastern Orthodox Priests, Amish (well, this shaggy rim-beard is a bit more of a tribal symbol) - the beard apparently signifies maleness and authority.

But a similar beard may be sported by beatnicks, hippies, feminist men, communistically-inclined scientists, health food shop owners and the like - where it signifies something near the opposite: gentleness, pacifism, abstraction?...

There are patriarchal religious exceptions. Roman Catholic priests, who are of course not strictly patriarchs, seem never to be bearded (maybe they are forbidden?) and nearly all Mormons seem clean shaven (Orson Scott Card has a goatee).

*

Conclusions?  

I accept that men are supposed to be bearded, and there is something a bit warped about the norm of being clean-shaven - it probably signifies some kind of narrow fanaticism (certainly it does in my case...).

But then why the anti-patriarchal beard?

Best guess is subversion. Look like a patriarch, behave like... something very different - hence destroying the power of the beard as masculine symbol.

Any better ideas?

*

A letter from Kristor on Free Will and Determinism

*

This is excerpted from a letter by penfriend and commenter Kristor, in relation to:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/free-will-versus-left-brain-fusion-of.html

and

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/explaining-zenos-paradoxes.html

*

The first thing I would say is that while the left and right brains may process their data using different sorts of algorithms, so that one half treats of things in terms of linear causal chains while the other treats of them in terms of holistic field superpositions [how different, really, is a vector sum from a field superposition, when push comes to shove?], nevertheless they must both be subject to ontological causal inputs from their pasts. I.e., however things might seem to be different to the two sides of the brain, the world as it impinges upon them causally must impinge upon both to the same ontological extent and via the same ontological mechanisms. The two halves of the brain do not, after all, inhabit different metaphysical causal orders.

 

So, any resolution of the seeming contradiction between freedom and causal order – for that is what we are talking about – must be made available to both of them, must cover both of them, equally. The resolution cannot be derived from the differences in the way that they treat data. The resolution must rescue all sorts of creatures from the contradiction.

 

Some related items that are of interest:

 

1.       The problem of the resolution of freedom with causal order is a department of the problem of the resolution of creaturely freedom with Divine foreknowledge/Providence. This is a clue that should point us in the direction of searching for an ultimate resolution in the reconciliation of the reality of time and temporality – which is to say, simply, causation and a causal order, things happening, and happening to each other, and affecting each other, and all coordinated – with the superordinate reality of eternity – which is to say, not Eleatic immobility, not the impossibility of motion, but rather the subsumption of all subsidiary, creaturely motions in the immense and singular Divine motion, or act.

2.       If there is causation, if there is happening, then reality cannot be continuous. If one thing is to cause another, then the causer and the caused must be different from each other, and disparate. If they are not truly disparate, they are then but one thing, and there is not properly speaking any causal relation between them, but rather a relation of unity. So this means that if there is a past that is going to have causal effect upon this present moment, that is going to influence this present moment, then that past and its events must all be different entities than this present moment. So that, if things do really happen, then they must happen quantally. Reality must be discontinuous if there are really events.

3.       Given a certain configuration of past events, given a cosmic history, It is possible for a current eventuating event that arises from them as its data to turn out a number of different ways that are lawfully related to them. There are a number of different ways that the probabilities implicit in the [wholly determined] Schrodinger equation may turn out, without escaping the constraints of that equation. What evolves deterministically, then, is the range of possible orderly outcomes of a given past set of events. The predetermination of a given event that is imposed upon it by its past, then, does not constrain it to only one possible outcome. If it did, there would be no sense in talking about “probabilities” or “outcomes.” For, if an event were wholly determined by its past, down to the last jot and tittle, why then it would be nothing but a feature of that past. It would not in that case be a real entity, a real event. The complete and utter predetermination of events is the elimination of events as an ontological category – and, thus, also an elimination of entities.

4.       Items 2 and 3 obtain with equal force whether we construe causation in a left-brained, linear fashion, as of the vector sum of particular interactions, or in a right-brained holistic fashion, as a superposition of fields. Again, what is the difference that makes a difference between a vector sum and a superposition of fields? Are these not merely different mathematical formalizations of the same basic notion: of causal inputs delivered to a locus in the extensive continuum from its past?     

5.       NB also that a vector sum or integral can be just as finally, teleologically oriented toward and ordered toward a strange attractor as a field.

 

So, whether we treat of causation using fields or vectors, we still face the problem of freedom versus predetermination. What then is the resolution? Put in terms of the Schrodinger equation, what is it that does the determination of what precisely will be the outcome of a given quantum situation? What is it that might prevent that outcome from being always and everywhere the one that is under the equation the most probable? I.e., how can there be more than one lawful outcome of a given step in the evolution of the equation?

 

The resolution, then, it seems to me, is provided by a distinction between the past of an event and the event itself. The past as past is fixed, determined, changeless (tace for the moment on backward causation mediated by prayer, that takes place in the supratemporal causal order). The past has to be just exactly, changelessly, what it is, in order to function as a completed set of data for the processes of the present moment of eventuation. If you are going to have inputs to the present, as yet unfinished moment of eventuation, then those inputs must be themselves finished. If they are not finished, then they just don’t yet fully exist to function for any subsequent events as causal inputs. It is, then, the past that is fixed, determined. The Schrodinger equation arising from a given past is determined because that past is determined.

 

And, therefore, it is the present moment that is free and – despite the constraints derived from its past, and formalized in the Schrodinger equation – not yet wholly determined.

 

What then feels to us like a unity of experience, a unification of disparate feelings in the integrity of the present moment – this unification being the matter of the binding “problem” – is just our present feeling of the feelings of past moments. A present moment is an integration and concrescence of impressions, feelings, of past events. And this is so whether we formalize the unification using vectors of particular interactions, or superpositions of fields.

 

[I got everything I have so far said from Whitehead. He doesn’t say it all explicitly, but it is all implicit in his metaphysics. Everything from here forward I got from Boethius, and Aquinas.]

 

Now notice that this is not the ultimate resolution of the problem. For, while we may so far have dealt with the problem of determinism versus free will by ascribing the former to the past and the latter to the present (and, a fortiori, to the future), we have not yet dealt with the problem of creaturely freedom versus Divine Providence.

 

To resolve that contradiction, we must transcend time altogether, and remember that temporal relations are characteristics of an eternal state of affairs that comprehends all events, whatever their spatiotemporal loci. That that state of affairs is eternal does not mean that the events that constitute it – i.e., the set of events that includes all events whatsoever, of whatever spatio-temporal locus in all actual causal orders, all worlds (in secula seculorum) – are not free. God’s eternal act is free, even though (being eternal) it is also necessary. So likewise with everything he knows, including all creaturely events. Everything that happens happens freely, even though it is eternally known, and thus necessary.

 

Thus the causal inputs of a temporal event are present to it only via the medium of the Divine Providence. It is God who forms the Receptacle for creaturely eventuation. He is the causal order, He the nexus. The past is real to the present, is “thingish” to the present, by virtue of its reality to God. We access the past via God; He is the medium of the causal influence of the past upon the present.

 

So Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all right in ascribing to God in their various ways the ultimate function of relating and coordinating all events that, absent his provision of an ontological milieu for causal relations, would not – nay, could not – be related to each other at all. Things are orderly insofar as they are ordered in the Divine comprehension. And a thing that is not ordered in the Divine comprehension is not ordered at all.

 

Kristor

 

PS: what Zeno disproved was the impossibility of motion and causation in a continuous state of affairs. Motion is not, however, paradoxical in a state of affairs that is discontinuous. In such a state of affairs, things can be really disparate, so that there can be a relation of motion between them. It is obvious that if events are continuous with each other then there cannot be motion between them, for there is in that case no disparity between them; and where there is no disparity there is only unity.

 

Newton and Planck both in different ways ratified Zeno. Planck’s quantum of action is the physical implementation of the Newtonian infinitesimal.

 *

The quantitative concept of sin - a deadly error

*

Moderns tend to regard sin in a quantitative manner - as if the question of whether someone is 'a sinner' could be decided by weighing his good against his bad qualities and seeing where the preponderance lay; or taking an average of his behaviour and seeing whether it was on the side of sin or not.

This metaphor is wrong because the calculus is atheist - the quantitative calculus assumes the non-existence of God; indeed it is an attempt to retain morality after God has been subtracted from the worldview.

*

Sin is not about good and bad acts but about being turned towards or away-from God.

A man who does not sin is not a man that does only good acts, he is a man turned always towards God.

A sinner is a man who turns away from God, sometimes. In other words everyone.

*

Yet it may take just one single sin to keep a man turned-away from God, permanently.

It could be something 'trivial' - some clinging to something worldly, some mere distraction. But if it keeps a man turned away from God it will suffice: it does suffice.

*

In the end damnation is refusal of the offer of salvation. The offer is made to all, perhaps. Anything which leads a man to refuse salvation when offered is a deadly sin, deadly to his soul.

The more trivial-seeming, the more effective the sin may be - since it arouses no revulsion, no reaction; we do not guard against it....

And we may feel that we can compensate for trivial-seeming sins, by heroic good works (or something) on the quantitative concept. But so long as we stay turned-away from God nothing will work.

*

This is the particular hazard of modernity. It is asif the whole of modern life is set up to keep us turned away from God all the time yet by such trivial worldly matters that we feel that - surely - we cannot be sinners, surely the balance must be in our favour - surely we we not be damned for merely wasting our lives in frenetic busyness?

No we won't be damned, we will refuse salvation - indeed, we may not even recognise or understand the offer.

*

A consequence is that Christianity ought to be - in these modern conditions - a turning-towards God; I mean the main goal should be to help people to glimpse God (and know that this is God they glimpse) and thereby reveal their habitual state of being turned away. Moderns cannot be terrified out of their sin, because they see no place to escape from the world - they need to be shown a glimpse of the exit.

*

Understanding Charles Williams Co-inherence

*

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2012/01/understanding-charles-williams-co.html

*

Explaining Zeno's paradoxes

*

I was aware from mid-teens of Zeno's paradox about Achilles and the Tortoise* (for example as a Tortoise and Rabbit in Tom Stoppard's play Jumpers) - but I never properly got around to understanding just precisely what led to the paradox, why the mode of reasoning was wrong.

I see now this was an oversight and an error. 

*

The penny dropped when reading pages 137-9 of The Master and his Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist:

Zeno's paradoxes ... rest on the adoption of the left hemisphere's view that every flowing motion in space or time can be resolved into a series of static moments or points that can then be summed to give back the living whole. The 'seamless' fluidity of motion in space or time is 'reduced' to a series, akin to the series of still frames in a cine film.

*

In essence, the paradox arises from the inbuilt assumption that every dynamic phenomenon can be resolved into a series of static units that can then be summed to recreate the dynamic whole.

There is absolutely no grounds for this assumption - this metaphysical assumption concerning the nature of reality, this basic assumption which frames all further analysis - indeed the assumption is obviously refuted by experience as demonstrated by the paradox.

*

(A further assumption is that metaphysics ought not be contradicted by plain, commonsense experience - since the best Ancient Greek philosophy was meant to enrich normal life and plain commonsense experience - not usurp and replace it. This is a major constraint on philosophizing, and if it is abandoned - as modern culture has abandoned it - then philosophy becomes an open-ended and unbounded activity with no grounds for choice between philosophical ideas, only subjective preferences or varieties of instrumental expediency.)

*

But with the paradox we (somehow) fail to notice we have made this metaphysical assumption and built it into the analysis - hence the paradox.

And it is suddenly obvious how deep an insight it was to understand this paradox, and what trap it is for humans to fail to recognise it.

*

All my life in science, medicine and education I have observed the progressive destruction of these professions by the failure to recognise Zeno's paradox; the failure to recognise that dynamic skills cannot be broken down into static units then rebuilt. They cannot. They cannot.

It does not matter how long you make the forms to be completed, how elaborate the checklists, how comprehensive the managerial oversight.

The problem remains: in making movement static you have frozen the movement - movement is not movement any longer if it has been frozen.

*

Achilles never catches-up with the tortoise. 

Because both have been killed.

(To freeze a living entity is to kill it.) 

*

What complexity of static summaries does is to make things worse not better - because few, crude and simple static pictures of a complex activity cannot be mistaken for the real thing, whereas humans are bewildered by complexity into assuming it is completeness.



***

*Achilles races the tortoise. He allows that tortoise a 'start' at point A, a little ahead of Achilles. They both begin to run. Achilles runs to the tortoises starting point A; but by this time the tortoise has moved a little ahead from A to point B. Then Achilles runs to point B - but by this time the tortoise has reached point C. So Achilles runs to point C, but by now the tortoise is at point D. And so on. Achilles never catches-up with the tortoise.

I sometimes think the Ancient Greeks did all the philosophy that was worth doing, that needed doing (especially metaphysics); and everything else since has been worse than nothing at all, since it made us lose sight of their insights. All we need to do is retain and re-express.



* 

Yes of course - Not a problem

*

Somebody has decided that assistants serving behind the counters of fast food outlets, coffee chains and big stores - will all from now be trained to respond to my request for a bacon sandwich or cappuccino with either: "Yes - of course" - or - "Not a problem!"

*

Well, since I am English and middle class, I am used to adopting a stance of servility towards all retail assistants; but really - I did not expect my polite requests to be taken seriously and for me to be treated as if I was craving a favour when I am ordering something off a retail menu.

*

To be honest, I cannot remember what assistants used to say before they had been inculcated with these catch phrases - perhaps they used to say "Yes Sir"?If so, then clearly that was insufficiently democratic, and had to be replaced. Ahem.

And of course the assistants are only saying what they have been trained to say: but why have they been trained to say it? For whose benefit?

*

I suppose I should be grateful that I am not yet required to enter shops shuffling on my bended knees.

*

Free will versus the Left brain - a 'fusion' of McGilchrist and Sheldrake?

*

Reading Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary and mixing in some ideas from Rupert Sheldrake, provides me with what seems a very promising way of thinking about that long-standing philosophical chestnut - free will versus determinism.

*

McG makes it clear that the Left hemisphere perceives reality in a deterministic way - as linear sequential chains of discrete causes and effects.

Yet the Left brain also has a problem, an intractable problem, of truly linking cause with effect, since reality is seen as static units resembling a 'snapshot' and it is difficult/ impossible to see how a cause statically-conceived can actually 'cause' anything.

But although the Left hemisphere can perceive that its own perspective is inadequate, it is intrinsically incapable of conceptualising anything else!

It has its precise and partial way of representing reality, and that is all that it can do.

*

Determinism is like that.

If we conceptualise the world in terms of causes and effects, then of course then can be no free will since we have already decided that everything is caused by something else.

On the other hand, this assumption opens up an infinite regress (as Aristotle realised) which can only be terminated by a first cause or unmoved mover. For some reason, modern thinking never acknowledges this infinite regress of causality - just too impatient I guess...

*

To assume that reality is conceptualised in terms of causal chains is and unfounded - it is not something that humanity has discovered.

Rather it is something that modern man cannot help doing.

We know it cannot be the whole truth - yet (we moderns, at least) cannot conceive of any other way of imagining things.

*

Well, McGilchrist points to another way - the Right hemisphere way.

Whereas the Left sees reality as a sequence of snapshots, the Right sees reality as a dynamic whole.

A dynamic whole cannot be expressed in terms of a sequence of snapshots; but how can it be expressed?

*

My notion is to conceive of Right brain function in terms of three-dimensional and dynamic morphic fields to complement the Left brain conceptualised in linear cause and effect sequences of static units.

(In reality, there are both linear sequences and morphic fields on both sides of the brain, considerable overlap - but McG is completely convincing that there is also a qualitative functional distinction, and this can be summarised - the point can be made - by treating the Left as if it were purely linear sequential and the Right as if it were a morphic field.)

This seems helpful to me; the idea of Right brain as a field of activity exerting its effects in a manner analogous to magnetic fields or gravitational fields.

*

Note: by Sheldrake's account a morphic field imposes form, pattern, structure onto the system in it influence - organising disparate events and processes; furthermore the field is teleological, containing 'attractors' which dynamically shape the system towards goals.

*

The Right brain (by this view) is in contact with the environment by being affected by other morphic fields - the gives it the distinctive 'holistic' grasp that the Left brain lacks.

McG conceives the optimal cognitive situation as being when the Right hemisphere dominates, using the Left for specific detailed processing tasks, then the Right taking up the results of Left processing and integrating them into the larger whole.

This could be imagined as the Right brain taking detached linear sequences of the Left brain (like strings of beads) and embedding them into dynamic three dimensional patterns of organisation - so that each causal sequence is put into its proper place and related to other sequences and to the much larger and dominant aspects of form that are not encoded as causal sequences...

*

So, this picture of the brain would have free will as fundamentally a Right brain phenomenon; with free will operating as a field; this picture standing in contrast to free will being more usually (but incoherently) considered in a Left brain fashion, as the first, (somehow) uncaused and initiating step of a chain of causes and effects leading to obervable behaviour.

*

I am suggesting that morphic fields, conceptualised in terms of McG's Right hemisphere functionality, could be considered a mechanism for the operation of free will, an explanation for 'how' it works.

This is, of course, merely a manner of thinking about free will: a new analogy which breaks the tyrannical power of free will conceptualised in terms of Left brain causal chains.

To see free will as a field does not describe what free will actually is, or what makes it free. In a sense the shift from linear to field thinking has only pushed back the explanation by another step - but this pushing back does create the space necessary as a preliminary to recognizing that the exclusion of free will is a metaphysical property of a form of representation, and that the exclusion of free will is not a property of the observed world.

*

Because free will is a metaphysical concept, not a physical concept - free will cannot be discovered by science, but nor can its absence be discovered by science.

There is a very widespread notion that 'science' has discovered that free will is an illusion, never existed, was merely a religious dogma.

This is a mistake - the actual situation is that the assumptions and methods of science have made free will incomprehensible.

Modern people cannot even imagine what is meant by free will - and assume that this means that science has discovered the absence of free will, or discovered that free will is an unnecessary hypothesis.

*

Free will is not a thing which is, or is not, out there in the natural world waiting to be detected - or found absent.

Free will is a metaphysical assumption - just as determinism is a metaphysical assumption.

But determinism is carrying the day in practise, because people cannot understand what kind of a thing free will might be. Public thought can only see reality as chains of cause and effect, and can only assume that every human act of will, every choice, must have had a cause or causes (whether we know them or not) - and therefore every act of will or choice can be explained-away.

People are simply locked into this way of thinking and can see no escape from it.

Perhaps understanding Left and Right brain differences, and thinking of causation in terms of organising fields instead of linear sequences, might open up the recognition that there is no 'must' about determinism.

*

When we feel that reality 'must' be deterministic, we are simply reading-off the distal consequences of our proximate assumptions.

Change the assumptions, and determinism melts.

*

How to corrupt a whole civilization - the ratchet of corruption

*

Simple, but not easy (or not easy at first...).

*

Get people to perform acts they know in their guts to be evil - then make sure they do not repent them.

(To make them sin is not at all difficult, they will all do this anyway, sooner or later - they are, after-all, sinners by nature. It is preventing repentance that is the difficult thing - by nature many will repent, so you must prevent what is natural.)

That is all you have to do - once this simple system is in place, then it will become self-corrupting.

*

To corrupt the world, just ensure that repentance is prevented. Ensure that repentance is portrayed as strictly meaningless, hypocritical, weak, lame, lacking in self-esteem. Just ensure that repentance is seen as blaming, repressive, inegalitarian, racist, sexist.

(Because if you repent an evil then you acknowledge an evil, you implicitly accuse others of an evil - and that is to be judgmental. Thus the ethic transforms, inverts: the only evil is now to repent evil...)

*

Unrepentant sin is a ratchet-process, because once corrupted people stay corrupted.

Instead of repenting acts which they know in their guts to be evil, they boast of them - they encourage others to do the same. Why not?

*

So Screwtape says: Sin - go ahead - do it, if you feel like it - if it makes you happy...

(The precise sin doesn't matter, so long as you disgust yourself.)

Repentance? Nothing to repent. Be proud of your decisions (they are yours - they define you).

(It is those who believe in repentance who are the real sinners.)

Thus spake Screwtape.

*

What is an unrepented sin, after all? - well, the answer is that unrepented sin is fixing one's face away from God. The sin is to turn from God, repentance is a turning back to God. So when there is no repentance you are stuck - living with your back to God.

*

Once a sinner (and it could be just once! - that's the beauty of it) you stay a sinner, and the corrupter can leave you alone to wreck others by your example and teaching, and can apply his attentions elsewhere.

Not tempted by the same old sins? Don't worry, be patient, fashion will provide a supply of novelties to tempt every soul.

*

It's so easy for Screwtape now!

In the old days people were washed clean of their sins and able to make a fresh start, again and again! - the tempter was never sure of his prey until the very end.

But now, you do one measly unrepented sin and the tempter has you!

The sin cannot be repented, cannot be forgiven (who is there to forgive it? Only a god can forgive sin, and we know that they don't exist...) and the only recourse is to deny the sin; and if you deny the sin then you promote the sin.

*

The ratchet of corruption is exponential - just a few proud souls at first.

But each unrepentant sinner permanently joins the ranks of the death eaters, and by example or argument brings another one or two out of the fold.

The growth is exponential.

And pretty soon there is a democratic majority to enforce sin - which cannot be repented.

Such a simple system - so very effective...

*

The Archbish of C speaks to the nation: spot the Christian Reference

*

This person is the leader of my church giving his annual address to the nation.

It is essentially a stagnant heap of Leftist, evasive, multi-culti, politically correct propaganda - but don't miss the Christian reference...

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2312/archbishops-bbc-new-year-message

..it comes, briefly, about three and a half minutes into a four and a half minute video.

*

Otherwise, what can one say about this?

What words describe it?

Banal, trite, obscure, wrong whenever it is not platitudinous, missing the point - but then what is the point supposed to be?

I can only guess he is setting up a straw man of Britain's supposed hostility to 'young people' and then proposing some vague and ineffectual secular ways this can be tackled. 

But why? Why did he do this? What does he think he is doing? Has he any conception of how clownish and unprincipled he appears - how c & u he actually is?

*

The Church of England evangelical protestant church I support has a tremendous range of exciting and amusing activities for children (including my kids); these activities also have an obvious and unashamed evangelical and Christian educational element to them. It 'works', and consequently this is one of the ten biggest Anglican Churches in England (measured by the size of the regular congregation). Yet of course, this church is at the opposite pole from the Archbish of C and seriously at loggerheads with the liberal Anglican hierarchy.

*

Hitler and Smoking

*

I just stumbled across this article I wrote in the days when I was a highly prolific writer, and writing for major newspapers. I had completely forgotten its existence or that I had written it. Now it seems to be featured on a pro-tobacco collection of articles. 

Written from a libertarian stance. Still, it makes a good point, I think...

http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2050154078-4116.html?zoom=750

*

Oh no - not another New Year!

*

It's that disconcerting time of year when we are assailed by bright and friendly faces delightedly wishing us a Happy New Year - an orgy of public celebration over unwrapping the latest wall calendar.

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It is not a new year in any meaningful sense, nothing new actually starts on January 1; it is not astronomically significant, it is not part of the Christian Year nor any other religion, it is not the tax year, it is not the academic year...

The New Year is the perfect celebration for a modern world which believes in nothing - literally. In the sense that nothing is precisely what it believes in and celebrates most uninhibitedly.

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Marvelous. Great excitement, all night 'partying' and extreme drunkenness in honour of utter vacuousness: who could possibly be offended by that!

Happy New Nihilism!

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