Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: Christ did not marvel at the Centurion’s faith as if it was great with respect to Himself, but because it was great with respect to others. Reply to Objection 3: He could do all things by the Divine power, for with respect to this there was no wonder in Him, but only with respect to His human empiric knowledge, as was said above. Whether there was anger in Christ?Objection 1: It would seem that there was no anger in Christ. For it is written (James 1:20): “The anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” Now whatever was in Christ pertained to the justice of God, since of Him it is written (1 Cor. 1:30): “For He [Vulg.: ‘Who’] of God is made unto us . . . justice.” Therefore it seems that there was no anger in Christ. Objection 2: Further, anger is opposed to meekness, as is plain from Ethic. iv, 5. But Christ was most meek. Therefore there was no anger in Him. Objection 3: Further, Gregory says (Moral. v, 45) that “anger that comes of evil blinds the eye of the mind, but anger that comes of zeal disturbs it.” Now the mind’s eye in Christ was neither blinded nor disturbed. Therefore in Christ there was neither sinful anger nor zealous anger. On the contrary, It is written (Jn. 2:17) that the words of Ps. 58:10, “the zeal of Thy house hath eaten me up,” were fulfilled in Him. I answer that, As was said in the [4037]FS, Q[46], A[3], ad 3, and [4038]SS, Q[158], A[2], ad 3, anger is an effect of sorrow. or when sorrow is inflicted upon someone, there arises within him a desire of the sensitive appetite to repel this injury brought upon himself or others. Hence anger is a passion composed of sorrow and the desire of revenge. Now it was said [4039](A[6]) that sorrow could be in Christ. As to the desire of revenge it is sometimes with sin, i.e. when anyone seeks revenge beyond the order of reason: and in this way anger could not be in Christ, for this kind of anger is sinful. Sometimes, however, this desire is without sin—nay, is praiseworthy, e.g. when anyone seeks revenge according to justice, and this is zealous anger. For Augustine says (on Jn. 2:17) that “he is eaten up by zeal for the house of God, who seeks to better whatever He sees to be evil in it, and if he cannot right it, bears with it and sighs.” Such was the anger that was in Christ.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I see conflict and I run away or prepare for battle. This makes little sense in my current relationships, but without that attitude, my childhood homes would have consumed me. I learned early to spread my money out lest Mom or someone else find it and “borrow” it—some under the mattress, some in the underwear drawer, some at Mamaw’s house. When, later in life, Usha and I consolidated finances, she was shocked to learn that I had multiple bank accounts and small past-due balances on credit cards. Usha still sometimes reminds me that not every perceived slight—from a passing motorist or a neighbor critical of my dogs—is cause for a blood feud. And I always concede, despite my raw emotions, that she’s probably right. A couple of years ago, I was driving in Cincinnati with Usha, when somebody cut me off. I honked, the guy flipped me off, and when we stopped at a red light (with this guy in front of me), I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the car door. I planned to demand an apology (and fight the guy if necessary), but my common sense prevailed and I shut the door before I got out of the car. Usha was delighted that I’d changed my mind before she yelled at me to stop acting like a lunatic (which has happened in the past), and she told me that she was proud of me for resisting my natural instinct. The other driver’s sin was to insult my honor, and it was on that honor that nearly every element of my happiness depended as a child—it kept the school bully from messing with me, connected me to my mother when some man or his children insulted her (even if I agreed with the substance of the insult), and gave me something, however small, over which I exercised complete control. For the first eighteen or so years of my life, standing down would have earned me a verbal lashing as a “pussy” or a “wimp” or a “girl.” The objectively correct course of action was something that the majority of my life had taught me was repulsive to an upstanding young man. For a few hours after I did the right thing, I silently criticized myself. But that’s progress, right? Better that than sitting in a jail cell for teaching that asshole a lesson about defensive driving. Conclusion Shortly before Christmas last year, I stood in the kids’ section of a Washington, D.C., Walmart, shopping list in hand, gazing at toys and talking myself out of each of them. That year, I had volunteered to “adopt” a needy child, which meant that I was given a list by the local branch of the Salvation Army and told to return with a bag of unwrapped Christmas gifts. It sounds pretty simple, but I managed to find fault with nearly every suggestion. Pajamas?

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I tried to keep an open mind. If nothing else, I thought, this woman might give Mom and me an opportunity to get everything in the open. But that first session felt like an ambush. Immediately, the woman began asking why I would scream at my mother and storm off, why I didn’t recognize that she was my mother and that I had to live with her by law. The therapist chronicled “outbursts” that I’d allegedly had, some going back to a time I couldn’t remember—the time I threw a tantrum in a department store as a five- year-old, my fight with another child in school (the school bully, whom I didn’t want to punch but did so at Mamaw’s encouragement), the times I’d run from home to my grandparents’ house because of Mom’s “discipline.” Clearly this woman had developed an impression of me based solely on what Mom had told her. If I didn’t have an anger problem before, I did now. “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?” I asked. At fourteen, I knew at least a little about professional ethics. “Aren’t you supposed to ask me what I think about things and not just criticize me?” I launched into an hour-long summary of my life to that point. I didn’t tell the whole story, since I knew I had to choose my words carefully: During Mom’s domestic violence case a couple of years earlier, Lindsay and I had let slip some unsavory details about Mom’s parenting, and because it counted as a new revelation of abuse, the family counselor was required to report it to child services. So I didn’t miss the irony of lying to a therapist (to protect Mom) lest I ignite another intervention by the county children’s services. I explained the situation well enough: After an hour, she said simply, “Perhaps we should meet alone.” I saw this woman as an obstacle to overcome—an obstacle placed by Mom —not as someone who might help. I explained only half of my feelings: that I had no interest in putting a forty-five-minute barrier between me and everyone I had ever depended on so I could replant myself with a man I knew would be sent packing. The therapist obviously understood. What I didn’t tell her is that for the first time in my life, I felt trapped. There was no Papaw, and Mamaw—a longtime smoker with the emphysema to prove it—seemed too frail and exhausted to care for a fourteen-year-old boy. My aunt and uncle had two young kids. Lindsay was newly married and had a child of her own. I had nowhere to go. I’d seen chaos and fighting, violence, drugs, and a great deal of instability. But I’d never felt like I had no way out. When the therapist asked me what I’d do, I replied that I would probably go live with my dad.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Th e law refl ects no more than the Christianization of the state, and that is a considerable limit on what exactly it is capable of saying. Th e expression of Christian values in state action could not be neat, because Roman law was an entire institutional order of relationships be- tween state and society, public and private, harmonizing the circulation of property, status, and honor. Coitus was not principally the object of Roman regulation in the classical period, except insofar as it existed within a net- work of social transfers. Hence, classical Roman law embodied specifi c pa- triarchal sexual values, but it regulated sex principally at the moments when sex manifested itself in social transfers, in matters of property, violence, and honor. Christian sexual prejudices could not be simply projected onto Ro- man law, like an image on a blank screen. But in late antiquity, sex itself, by CHURCH, SOCIETY, AND SEX IN THE AGE OF TRIUMPH  degrees and up to certain limits, becomes the object of public regulation. Th e most profound shift may be that in late antiquity it becomes not totally anachronistic or overreaching to talk of sexual policy.  Th e fi rst object of our attention must be the fate of same- sex eros in late antiquity. Given the considerable diversity that prevailed in the high em- pire, the Christian assault on modes of same- sex contact was sudden, violent, and total. Several developments are notable. Under the infl uence of Paul, the discussion of what is “natural” looms large in the period, and even more pro- foundly the conception of “natural” sex is reor ga nized around the gender of the partner rather than the role of the sexual actor; the traditional bifurca- tion of love between males into pederasty and passivity gives way to a mono- lithic conception of unnatural sexual practice. Th e moral demands of nature displace (or overshadow) the ancient culture of machismo, which is, with a few notable exceptions, strikingly muted in the late antique record as a method of regulating sexual life. Gradually these Christian attitudes had an infl uence in public law. Th e classical law had punished violations of free- born boys and imposed civil disabilities on openly passive men. Th e late antique legislative program became progressively more violent and aggres- sive toward practices deemed sexually deviant. Underlying the legal devel- opments is not only blunt hostility, but more subtly a new sense of the popu- lace itself as the framework of sexual regulation and of homosexual acts as a contamination that was a threat to public order. Th e legal reforms are highly contingent, and incompletely Christian, until the reign of Justinian, who mobilized the state’s energies in a sweeping campaign to eradicate same- sex eros.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Th ere is one strikingly important exception to this universal pattern, the fi rst- century Stoic Musonius Rufus. In his discourse on the aphrodisia, he claimed that sex between “males” was as indulgent as adultery, because it was “a provocation against nature.” His classifi cation of sex according to the gender of the partners would have been at home in Christian moralizing. But the comments of Musonius stand alone in the world of Greco- Roman ethics, and even within his own dia- tribe the thought is fl eeting. His opposition to same- sex love occupies ex- actly one line of text.  In late antiquity the discourse of nature was harnessed by movement with a highly motivated opposition to same- sex love. Th e early stirrings of such a concept of nature should not be allowed to obscure the fact that in the late classical world this change in quantity becomes a change in quality. Setting matters. Musonius spoke to a circle of Young Turks, children of the establishment enchanted for a season by the eccentric phi los o pher’s moral authenticity. In late antiquity we are in the basilica, where men and women of startlingly divergent status gathered to receive moral lectures. And rather than the passing glances of an eccentric phi los o pher, we fi nd same- sex love the object of dedicated pastoral ire. Christian preachers like John Chrysos- tom might dilate on the sinfulness of same- sex desire, indiff erent to any distinctions between pederasty, the exploitation of slaves, or even durable forms of companionship. Rooted in Pauline scripture, Chrysostom’s own preaching on same- sex eros is such a spasm of hatred that its logic is not always recoverable. His caustic fourth homily on the Letter to the Romans, possibly a specimen of extemporaneous moralizing, evokes the atmosphere of intense hostility that prevailed in late antique churches. “Look how viv- idly he [Paul] chooses his words. He did not say they desired or lusted after one another, but burned in their longing for each other. Now, is not all de- sire born of greed which fails to adhere to its own limits? For all desire ex- ceeding the laws set down by God is desire for what is strange, and not what has been allowed.” Th e reach of Chrysostom’s claims are startling. Musonius fi xed on same- sex “intercourse” as an act against nature; so would most Christian moralists. But on occasion a sense of illicit, abnormal desire begins to fi nd expression. Pre- Christian ideologies treated sexual de- CHURCH, SOCIETY, AND SEX IN THE AGE OF TRIUMPH  viance, even deviance involving same- sex attraction, as a matter of excessive desire and insuffi cient manliness; there was no “queer desire,” only desire overfl owing its proper bounds.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Some had watched their mothers struggle to make it alone while their fathers enjoyed relative wealth and got away scot-free. Others had been abandoned by their fathers but were also locked in conflict with their mothers. Sex is a way to get even with both parents—to get what their moms couldn’t have (a man), to get what they missed growing up (a man), and to vent their anger and disdain (onto that same man). It’s doubtful the women learn much from these experiences since the men, as they describe them, are mostly indistinguishable. Many of these women show poor judgment in terms of protecting their own health and safety. Sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies are common; abortion left them depressed but was preferable to raising a child with a man they did not want. Young women who follow this path are relatively unsupervised during adolescence and have the abiding sense that they are accountable to no one. There’s no harm in doing whatever feels good at the time, they reason. These are also the girls who were privy from childhood to the many details of their parents’ sexual love affairs and escapades plus accusations and counteraccusations of infidelity during the marriage. They may very well have been stimulated by what they witnessed and overheard. One youngster age eleven told me, “Every time I go to my mom’s parties I get so excited I want to swallow my tongue.” Taking the Leap I REMEMBER AWAITING my interview with Paula six years later, when she was twenty-one, with both anticipation and trepidation. I wasn’t disappointed. Now engaged and living with her fiancé in Seattle, she attracted attention when she walked into the restaurant overlooking Puget Sound where we had agreed to meet. Thin to the point of emaciation, dramatically dressed and heavily made up in black lipstick and nail polish, she chain-smoked and barely picked at her salad. She spoke glowingly of her boyfriend, whom she had met a few months earlier during a dance rave while high on Ecstasy. “What attracted you to him?” I asked. “He was the best-looking guy on the dance floor,” she answered proudly. “I was determined to get him for myself. At two A.M. we were both at the bar. I had a few drinks and we started talking. We ended up in bed and that was that.” Knowing Paula over the years as I had, I ventured another question. “I know you’ve had a lot of boyfriends, Paula. What made Brad different? How did you decide he was the one you’d marry?” This was another time when Paula startled me by the frankness of her reply.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Though on a rocky course for several years, the marriage was functioning (in the children’s eyes) and family life seemed pretty stable. The father made a good living as a dermatologist who worked long hours in a private practice with four other physicians. The mother was furious at her husband, complaining that he was never available, spent zero time with the children, was cold and aloof as a husband and incompetent as a lover. He paid almost no attention to what he called her “yammering.” She was a strikingly beautiful woman who worked part-time in an upscale floral shop making elegant, expensive flower arrangements. The job engaged her artistic streak and enabled her to be at home in the afternoons when the children got home from school. She was a strict, demanding mother. He was an emotionally distant father—when he was around. The parents yelled at one another, barking grievances that made no sense to the children, but there was never any talk of divorce. As the three siblings told me, Sturm und Drang were part of normal family life. The real storm began with the sudden traumatic death of Mrs. James’s mother, who was killed in a highway accident. Mrs. James collapsed with grief. She had depended on her mother for advice, affection, and help in maintaining the social façade of a happy marriage. The death precipitated an agitated depression in Mrs. James, who became increasingly angry at the world and critical of everyone around her. She turned to her husband for solace, love, compassion, and sexual intimacy. He became the chief target of her rage because he did not provide the help she needed. Quarrels that were part of the marriage began to magnify and cascade as the anger took on a life of its own. Soon their life was nothing but a series of arguments, each louder than the next. Dr. James was badly frightened by the intensity of his wife’s needs and withdrew further. Reeling from both losses, she attacked him more and more wildly. Stung by her loud accusations of his failings, he countered with accusations of infidelity, long-standing frigidity, and incompetent mothering. As best I could make out, the final trigger was Dr. James’s departure for a two-day dermatology convention. Consumed by her anger, she impulsively sought legal counsel and filed for divorce. As I looked over the record and searched my memory, I was surer than ever that the James’s quarrels had more passion than content. They were not fighting over infidelity—which was apparently old hat—so much as wanting to hurt each other. Each heatedly denied the other’s accusations. Yet, like so many divorcing couples, they fought savagely, as the children looked on helplessly or ran away and hid.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Older children and adolescents especially want a say in how they spend their vacations—a time they want for pursuing emerging interests and spending summers with friends at home or at camp. Yet we continue to penalize children of divorce by insisting that they spend every summer with one or the other parent so that the calendars of each adult will balance the other and the parents’ legal rights to their children will be protected. There are powerful lessons in these findings. When they reached adulthood, all of the children in this study who had been court ordered or mediated to visit a parent on a schedule that remained rigidly fixed and unmodified were angry at one or both parents. Most were very angry at the parent they had been ordered to visit. All rejected the parent whom they were forced to visit when they got older. They said things like “I don’t care if I ever see him again,” or “We have nothing in common because we never really talked in all those years.” Sometimes they said, “I feel sorry for my father but that’s all I feel.” We have to wonder why the legal system fails to acknowledge the fact that children change or that they should have the right to participate in planning their own lives. Imagine ordering a twelve-year-old to wear the shoes that fit her when she was six. When she complains that the shoes pinch or cries because she limps or whimpers that she can’t walk at all, we ignore her. We turn her objections aside because we must zealously uphold the parents’ right to select their children’s clothes. Unfortunately, returning to court to change such orders is not a real option for most people because it’s emotionally and financially too costly. What’s more, most courts would not hear the child’s voice but instead assume that the parent who speaks on behalf of the child is acting out of anger at the other parent. Essentially there is no place within the court or the mediation system or elsewhere in society for children like Joan or Paula or the thousands of others to make their plea for justice or compassion when they are young. They have no rights. They have no voice. When they reach adulthood, however, the power is all theirs and the parents whom they regarded as bullies when they were minors are rejected in anger and disdain. Is this really what we want? I was presented somewhat unexpectedly with another solution by a father who told me about visiting his eleven-year-old daughter.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Enstice’s conclusion was further discredited by Dr. Werner Spitz, who had authored the medical treatise Enstice had relied on in her forensic pathology training. Dr. Spitz testified for the defense that he would “absolutely not” declare a live birth, let alone a homicide, under the circumstances of this case. With no credible scientific evidence that a crime had occurred, the State introduced inflammatory evidence that Marsha was poor, a prior drug user, and obviously a bad mother for not seeking prenatal care. Police investigators went into her home and took photographs of an unflushed toilet and a beer can on the floor, which were waved in front of the jury as evidence of neglect and bad parenting. Mrs. Colbey consistently maintained during multiple interrogations that the baby was stillborn. She told investigators that her son was born dead and never took a breath, despite her efforts to revive him. Mrs. Colbey rejected the State’s offer of a plea agreement, pursuant to which she would have gone to prison for eighteen years, because she was adamant that she had done nothing wrong. The prosecution of Marsha Colbey eventually caught the attention of the press, which was titillated by another “dangerous mother” story. The crime was sensationalized by the local media, which lauded the police and prosecutor for coming to the aid of a defenseless infant. Demonizing irresponsible mothers had become a media craze by the time Marsha’s trial was scheduled. Tragic narratives of mothers killing their children were national sensations. When Andrea Yates drowned her five children in Texas in 2001, the tragedy became a national story. Susan Smith’s effort to blame random black men for the death of her children in South Carolina before later admitting to murdering them fascinated crime-obsessed Americans. In time, media interest in these kinds of stories grew into a national preoccupation. Time magazine called the prosecution of Casey Anthony, the young Florida mother ultimately acquitted in the death of her two-year-old daughter, the “social media trial of the century” after the story generated nonstop coverage on cable networks. The murder of a child by a parent is horrific and is usually complicated by serious mental illness, as in the Yates and Smith cases. But these cases also tend to create distortions and bias. Police and prosecutors have been influenced by the media coverage, and a presumption of guilt has now fallen on thousands of women—particularly poor women in difficult circumstances—whose children die unexpectedly. Despite America’s preeminent status among developed nations, we have always struggled with high rates of infant mortality—much higher than in most developed countries. The inability of many poor women to get adequate health care, including prenatal and post-partum care, has been a serious problem in this country for decades.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  He paid almost no attention to what he called her “yammering.” She was a strikingly beautiful woman who worked part-time in an upscale floral shop making elegant, expensive flower arrangements. The job engaged her artistic streak and enabled her to be at home in the afternoons when the children got home from school. She was a strict, demanding mother. He was an emotionally distant father—when he was around. The parents yelled at one another, barking grievances that made no sense to the children, but there was never any talk of divorce. As the three siblings told me, Sturm und Drang were part of normal family life. The real storm began with the sudden traumatic death of Mrs. James’s mother, who was killed in a highway accident. Mrs. James collapsed with grief. She had depended on her mother for advice, affection, and help in maintaining the social façade of a happy marriage. The death precipitated an agitated depression in Mrs. James, who became increasingly angry at the world and critical of everyone around her. She turned to her husband for solace, love, compassion, and sexual intimacy. He became the chief target of her rage because he did not provide the help she needed. Quarrels that were part of the marriage began to magnify and cascade as the anger took on a life of its own. Soon their life was nothing but a series of arguments, each louder than the next. Dr. James was badly frightened by the intensity of his wife’s needs and withdrew further. Reeling from both losses, she attacked him more and more wildly. Stung by her loud accusations of his failings, he countered with accusations of infidelity, long-standing frigidity, and incompetent mothering. As best I could make out, the final trigger was Dr. James’s departure for a two-day dermatology convention. Consumed by her anger, she impulsively sought legal counsel and filed for divorce. As I looked over the record and searched my memory, I was surer than ever that the James’s quarrels had more passion than content. They were not fighting over infidelity—which was apparently old hat—so much as wanting to hurt each other. Each heatedly denied the other’s accusations. Yet, like so many divorcing couples, they fought savagely, as the children looked on helplessly or ran away and hid. As happens in many families, there was no disagreement around child custody or visiting. Mrs. James would have done anything to irritate her husband, including making him take the kids—as long as that is what he did not want. Anger Doesn’t End with Divorce THE MARRIAGE WAS dissolved amid rising chaos within the family. The parents’ fury at each other did not subside over the years that followed, although it was never fought out in the courts. This is a familiar situation for those of us who work with divorcing couples. Contrary to what most people think (including attorneys and judges), the vast majority of divorcing parents do not drag their conflicts into the courtroom.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Our recent successes had sapped our discipline: at the advance posts I found something of the gross heedlessness evinced in the feasting at Rome. Certain tribunes gave proof of foolish overconfidence in the face of danger: perilously isolated in a region where the only part we knew well was our former frontier, they were depending for continued victories upon our armament, which I beheld daily diminishing from loss and from wear, and upon reinforcements which I had no hope to see, knowing that all our resources would thereafter be concentrated upon Asia. Another danger began to threaten: four years of official requisitioning had ruined the villages to our rear; from the time of the first Dacian campaigns, for each herd of oxen or flock of sheep so ostentatiously captured from the enemy I had seen innumerable droves of cattle seized from the inhabitants. If that state of things continued, the moment was approaching when our peasant populations, tired of supporting our burdensome military machine, would end by preferring the barbarians. Pillage by our soldiery presented a less important problem, perhaps, but one which was far more conspicuous. My popularity was such that I could risk imposition of the most rigorous restrictions upon the troops; I made current an austerity which I practiced myself, inventing the cult of the Imperial Discipline, which later I succeeded in extending throughout the army. The rash and the ambitious, who were complicating my task, were sent back to Rome; in their stead I summoned technicians, of whom we had too few. It was essential to repair the defensive works which inflated pride over our recent victories had left singularly neglected; I abandoned entirely whatever would have been too costly to maintain. Civil administrators, solidly installed in the disorder which follows every war, were rising by degrees to the level of semi-independent chieftains, capable of all kinds of extortion from our subjects and of every possible treachery toward us. On that score, as well, I could see in the more or less immediate future the beginning of revolts and divisions to come. I do not believe that we can avoid these disasters, any more than we can escape death, but it depends upon us to postpone them for a few centuries. I got rid of incompetent officials; I had the worst executed. I was discovering myself to be inexorable. A humid summer gave way to a misty autumn, and then to a cold winter. I had need of my knowledge of medicine, and needed it first of all to treat myself. That life on the frontiers brought me little by little down to the level of the Sarmatian tribesmen: the philosopher's beard changed to that of the barbarian chieftain.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ORIGEN. (tom. xx. 23.) Note however; this word, liar, is applied to man, as well as to the devil, who begat a lie, as we read in the Psalm, All men are liars. (Ps. 111) If a man is not a liar, he is not an ordinary man, but one of those, to whom it is said, I have said, Ye are Gods. (Ps. 81) When a man speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; but the Holy Spirit speaketh the word of truth and wisdom; as he said below, He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you. (c. 16:15) AUGUSTINE. (de Quæst. Nov. et Vet. Test. 2, 90) Or thus: The devil is not a singular, but a common name. In whomsoever the works of the devil are found, he is to be called the devil. It is the name of a work, not of a nature. Here then our Lord means by the father of the Jews, Cain; whom they wished to imitate, by killing the Saviour: for he it was who set the first example of murdering a brother. That he spoke a lie of his own, means that no one sins but by his own will. And inasmuch as Cain imitated the devil, and followed his works, the devil is said to be his father. ALCUIN. Our Lord being the truth, and the Son of the true God, spoke the truth; but the Jews, being the sons of the devil, were averse to the truth; and this is why our Lord says, Because I tell you the truth, ye believe not. ORIGEN. (tom. xx. 24.) But how is this said to the Jews who believed on Him? Consider: a man may believe in one sense, not believe in another; e. g. that our Lord was crucified by Pontius Pilate, but not that He was born of the Virgin Mary. In this same way, those whom He is speaking to, believed in Him as a worker of miracles, which they saw Him to be; but did not believe in His doctrines, which were too deep for them. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. liv. s. 3) Ye wish to kill Me then, because ye are enemies of the truth, not that ye have any fault to find in Me: for, which of you convinceth Me of sin? THEOPHYLACT. As if to say: If ye are the sons of God, ye ought to hold sinners in hatred. If ye hate Me, when ye cannot convince Me of sin, it is evident that ye hate Me because of the truth: i. e. because I said I was the Son of God. ORIGEN. (tom. xx. in Joan. s. 25.) A bold speech this; which none could have had the confidence to utter, but he Who did no sin; even our Lord.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  But it wasn’t quite over. ‘I didn’t say a word, but started the car, and of course just as I did so my bleep went. Then I saw the evening was inevitable in a different way, and the irony was all working overtime in that hideous way it can do. So it was my turn to grope in my breast pocket for my little professional accoutrement. I tried to make something of this with what now seems a fantastic gallantry and said how neither of us was what he seemed. I needn’t have fucking bothered. He changed completely and became all textbook—not actually taken down and used in evidence et cetera, but calling me sir and not giving an inch (as it were) …’ ‘James,’ I had become angry. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything about this for obvious reasons. I have had that man—Colin he’s called, isn’t he?’ He nodded. ‘I picked him up on the Tube, ages ago, just after we’d seen him at the baths. He followed me off the train, almost invited himself back to my place. I fucked him. He fucked me. He’s as queer as—whatever is very, very queer: me, you. He can’t possibly get away with this pretty policeman thing.’ James looked at me very closely. Under no other circumstances could all this have been good news to him. I carried on being angry all day. My tiredness made it harder to resist and as I went into town later I was muttering audibly about people around me, and when they showed signs of offence, deviating abruptly into sarcastic good manners. I was full of outrage at an act in which the brittle shoppers in Liberty’s (where I went to buy socks) and the incurious drifters of Oxford Street (who got in my way) seemed all to be careless conspirators. At the Corry, I did a few ferocious exercises and then flaked out and dropped into the pool with more than usual relief. But even there the slowness and clumsiness of others enraged me, and I was becoming the victim of one of those premature oldsters who bump into one on purpose, just for the muffled charge of contact. I wondered what I would do or say if I saw Colin. Was the whole matter strictly speaking sub judice? Would it have been any service to James to deal angrily, even ironically, with the officer who had charged him?

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  It’s clear I haven’t done a very good job establishing this, but you can’t just come and go as you please.” “What would you prefer I do, Addie? Live as the bastard daughter with no life? No friends, and no future? Counting down the days until I get pushed out of here once the checks stop coming in? I’d rather take control now.” She clenches her fists, fuming, and her chin begins to quiver. “Either you live here, or you don’t; and if you leave, you don’t. Is that clear? And I’d prefer if you don’t challenge me again.” In a total of twenty seconds, Addie Peterman has just reinforced the way I’ve felt since I first set foot on her perfect carpet five years ago—or actually, since I first understood what foster care was. I’m just a Rent-a-Kid. I’m suddenly suspicious that the reason she and any foster parent has given me shelter was to keep the checks coming. Anger boils in me and my words sear my tongue as I tell her what I’ve feared since I met her. “You’ve always been in this for the money!” I yell. “It’s not for the kids, or because you’re some saint! Now that I’m going away, I will get the government’s subsidy—not you. And you can’t stand that, can you? If you were in this for me, if you were really concerned about supporting me, then you would want me back at holidays and breaks. This whole stupid act—you’re not my family! You’re just the people who get paid to act like it. And you know what? I’ve already gotten rid of one mother. Don’t you dare think I won’t do it again.” “Regina, you’re jumping to conclusions,” she says steadily. “We could always discuss some kind of rent arrangement so that you can come back.” In my seasoned insistence to get the last word, I scream in her face, “Don’t worry! This is the last place I’d ever come back to!” During this last half-decade in Addie’s home, I’ve been grateful that she’s provided every necessity a young woman needs and some sense of family so I could feel like a normal kid. At moments I was even distracted from my guilt for failing Rosie and Norm. Addie and Pete have filled that emptiness by being the family who greet me when I walk in the door; for being involved in my life for more than the length of a beating or a heated phone call like the negligent fools who are my biological parents. Addie and Pete have been there so much that sometimes my teachers and my friends and their parents have asked why they never adopted me. Deep down I’ve always been aware that I’m just like the forty thousand other foster kids in America who age out of care every year to end up homeless, incarcerated, addicted, or dead.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I’ll describe the stepmother’s role at length in Chapter 20, but for now I just want to note that generally the man is eager to please the new woman. He has sustained one failure already and is likely to yield to his new wife in setting rules for the children’s visits. In many homes, she calls the shots that determine whether visiting is a happy or dreaded occasion. Another factor in visiting patterns is the father’s overall sense of well-being. When a man changes his life and increases his self- confidence, his desire to visit his children can skyrocket. This is what happened with Paula’s father, who reentered her life after a four-year absence. Like so many other men who are physically ill or psychologically depressed during and immediately after divorce, he was uncomfortable about visiting. “I felt I had nothing to offer them,” he said a year after the breakup. But when he felt better, he wanted to initiate contact. Such factors also explain the tremendous instability and fluctuations in how many fathers visit their children in the years after divorce. In short, as the man goes up and down, the visiting goes up and down. When Paula’s father reappeared, both the children and their mother were surprised. Their lives had been based on his absence, and now, like Lazarus, he was back. The children missed him but they had given up expecting him to be an important part of their daily lives ever again. In some families, the father returns after the mother has remarried—and this poses a threat to the emerging role of the stepfather. Whatever the circumstances, the father’s reentry opens a new chapter in family life, which is plagued by an unhappy question in the children’s minds: since he disappeared once, will he disappear again? Paula’s father was now managing a large variety store and living in one of his family’s apartment buildings in Santa Rosa, a city about an hour to the north. Almost immediately the two parents resumed fighting. They could not agree on a visiting schedule, and years of unpaid or poorly paid child support remained a bitter, unresolved issue. Anger arose with new vigor. When Paula’s mom threatened to block their visits Paula’s dad took her to court, whereupon a judge set child support and a visitation schedule. Paula’s dad was to have the children for two weekends each month, from Friday after school until Sunday night at six o’clock. Holidays would be rotated every other year. The children would reside with the father during the full month of July. For the next three years Paula and Joan, despite their many protests, were held to this schedule as if they were factory workers punching a time clock.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  James came to lunch with me, and I had taken special care to stuff some aubergines and make a bitter and original little salad. I felt something of that homely, maternal impulse which would occasionally surface in me at times of strain. One could potter pathetically with one’s chicory and watercress and enjoy an almost creative feeling. James, of course, had been hard at work for hours, and I thought what a great narcotic a job could be; and then one earned one’s own money. ‘How are you getting on?’ he asked. ‘I feel pretty helpless. I thought it was a good thing there had been no sordid row or anything, but one would like some kind of contact. It’s so stupid. I don’t know what’s going on. Why doesn’t the little fucker ring me? I feel furious for a while, and then—well, I love him so much. I want to be with him again. And then at other times I feel like a sort of Pantaloon figure, who’s been hoodwinked. Actually I don’t see how any of us can do anything without a certain loss of dignity.’ ‘You could just go round to the hotel.’ ‘What, and find them frigging away again? I’m not into that.’ ‘I thought you thought it couldn’t possibly still be going on.’ I opened the oven door and shoved my hands into the linked asbestos pockets of the oven-gloves, slapping them together a few times as if I were a lunatic in some restraining garment. A good garlicky smell blossomed. ‘I don’t honestly believe they can be having an affair,’ I said carefully. ‘On the other hand, I do believe that the heart, and more particularly the willy, have some very strange ways. It’s just possible,’ I allowed as I squatted down, ‘that a handsome eighteen-year-old could prefer a waddling fifty-year-old to someone as beautiful and well-endowed as me.’ James embarrassedly ruffled the top of my head, but I shouted ‘Out of the way!’ as I made for the table. The oven-gloves were never as efficient as they should have been. After lunch we popped into James’s Mini and made the two-minute journey over the avenue to Staines’s house. These were the very streets where little Rupert had seen Arthur and Harold at their miserable business: I looked out for them, in a fairly ridiculous and superstitious way. I wanted to save Arthur. At least, I think that’s what I wanted to do to him. It was a strange conviction I had, that I could somehow make these boys’ lives better, as by a kind of patronage—especially as it never worked out that way. Staines was on his very best behaviour, though it didn’t fool me.

• From Sin: The Early History of an Idea (2012)

  Other binary pairs also shaped Paul’s letters: contrasts between gospel and law, between grace and the “works of the law,” between Greek and Jew, between the uncircumcised and the circumcised. Gentile forms of Christianity as they developed in the course of the second century polarized these pairs: gospel, grace, uncircumcised, and Greek were “good”; law, works of the law, circumcision, and Jew were “bad.” A very surprising turn in military events and imperial politics, further exerted a tremendous influence on such polarized readings, validating and reinforcing them. In 70 CE, after a long and bloody Jewish uprising, Rome smashed Judea and utterly destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. Some six decades later, in 132, Judea again erupted in revolt. By 135, Jerusalem itself was erased; and over its ruins Hadrian built a new, pagan city, Aelia Capitolina. Altars to Roman deities now smoked on the blasted plain where once the temple had stood. The gods of Rome had defeated the god of the Jews.8 What effect did all of these factors—cosmological, anthropological, rhetorical, political—have on evolving Christian ideas of sin? [image file=image_rsrc4UW.jpg] Before we can explore the second century of Christianity, we must glance ahead to events in the fourth. In 312 CE, toward the end of a brief, brutal struggle between military strongmen in the Western Roman Empire, a victorious Constantine began Christianity’s conversion to a form of late Roman imperial culture. He threw his prestige, his authority, and a good deal of publicly funded largesse behind one sect of the church, in effect empowering its bishops to suppress their rivals. Thus began a new stage in the empire’s persecution of Christians, this time pursued by Christians themselves. By the end of the fourth century, the bishops’ battle against Christian diversity had resulted in a practical victory for the “orthodox” church (that is, for the church now supported by the state). Their victory affected not only the future but also the past. By banning the texts of “deviant” Christians, burning their books or simply impeding their being copied, the bishops got to remake the Christian past in their own image: the only documents to survive were the ones that they approved. This ancient triage consigned countless gospels, apocryphal acts, sermons, prayers, letters, liturgies, commentaries, and theological treatises to the ash heap of history. The record of the Christian past, in short, was effaced by the church itself. The victors’ muscular retrojection of fourth-century definitions of orthodoxy compromises our view of developments in the second century, a period of particularly rich Christian diversity. To map only a small area of this very varied terrain, I propose to triangulate using the work of three major second-century theologians. Two of these three were so important and influential in their own lifetimes, and established such vital, widespread and long-lived communities then and thereafter, that their writings, vigorously repudiated by other Christian contemporaries, were eventually suppressed by their fourth-century orthodox opponents—in the case of one of these theologians, with complete success.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  My whole wish was to throw things around, make a storm to dispel the stagnant heat, assert myself. Yet I found myself fastidiously tidying up, tight-lipped, not looking at him. He followed me helplessly around, at first retailing jokes from the television, dialogue from Star Trek , but then falling silent. He was confused, wanted to be ready to do what I wanted, but found he could only annoy me further. Then I hurled the stack of newspapers I was collecting across the floor and went for him—pulled the trousers down over his narrow hips without undoing them, somehow tackled him onto the carpet, and after a few seconds’ brutal fumbling fucked him cruelly. He let out little compacted shouts of pain, but I snarled at him to shut up and with fine submission he bit them back. Afterwards I left him groaning on the floor and went into the bathroom. I remember looking at myself, pink, excited, horrified, in the mirror. I took all my clothes off and after a few minutes went back into the sitting-room. I don’t know if it was just his confused readiness to take what I gave him, or if he really understood the absolute tenderness that I now felt for him as I picked him up and dumped him on the sofa; but he held me very tight as I lay down beside him. I was the only person he had; the very melodrama of the case had repelled me before, but for a while I allowed myself to accept it. I had been disgusted by his need for me, but now it moved me, and I burbled into his ear about how I loved him. ‘I love you too—darling,’ he said. It was a word that he could never have used before, and the tears poured down my face and smudged all over his, as we lay there and hugged, rocking from side to side. There were several occasions of this kind, when I was exposed by my own mindless randiness and helpless sentimentality. I made a point of going out to the baths each day, and while I was there, talking to friends, exercising, looking at other men, I could see with more detachment how these scenes weakened my authority. I was eight years older than Arthur, and our affair had started as a crazy fling with all the beauty for me of his youngness and blackness.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  They especially don’t want to play Santa Claus. Handled rigidly and without help for parents and children, this kind of visiting is a lost opportunity for all. In good intact families, children are not ordered to spend major blocks of time with one parent or another on a rigid schedule about which they have no say. Why treat children of divorce with less consideration? The outcome for Joan was more serious. I talked with her shortly after she graduated from college. “Tell me about your dad,” I said. “I haven’t seen much of him since I graduated from high school,” she replied with a shrug. “Did he help with your college tuition?” “Well, not much. He sent me money from time to time. But he never really helped with tuition.” Joan was bitter. “My mom had to mortgage our house.” I was not surprised at her anger but I wondered if other feelings lay buried under the surface, especially feelings of love, disappointment, or regret. “Did you ever make any attempt to get closer to him?” She answered angrily. “I remember forever those dreary weekends and those lonely Julys without my friends when I cried my eyes out. I have no reason in the world to be in contact with him and so why should I bother? ” There was no mistaking Joan’s anger and sense of having been treated unjustly by powerful forces over which she had no control. As we talked, I had a sad sense that both father and daughter had missed a unique opportunity to get to know and cherish each other. Their spontaneous interest in one another had been blocked by a system that could only antagonize an adolescent and discourage a father from having to make the effort to find points of mutual interest with his daughter. By relying on his “rights,” he lost her. What a pity. How foolish we are to think that we can legislate or direct the human heart. When Joan was twenty-eight years old I asked her about her social life. “Oh, I go out a lot,” she said. “And I get hurt a lot. Maybe it has to do with my being dominated all those years by my dad and the court. But it’s hard for me to stand up for what I want. I never learned to fight for myself.” Joan clearly made a connection between the powerlessness she felt as a child and her current relationships with men. If she is right—and I believe she is—then our interventions are not only misguided but may have harmed an entire generation of young people who grew up under similar circumstances. How many are still reacting to their feelings of having been bullied and made to feel powerless?

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I had all sorts of plans, not necessarily the wiser for their violent neatness. James’s experience, like mine with the skinheads, made me abruptly selfconscious, gave me an urge to solidarity with my kind that I wasn’t used to in our liberal times. In the busy one o’clock changing-room, cross though I was, I looked at the others, the bankers, the teachers, the journos, the advertising johnnies, the managers of hamburger outlets, the actors, the consultants, the dancers from West End musicals, the scaffolders, the rack-renters, queuing for the hair dryer and clouding the air with Trouble for Men, with a kind of foreboding, as an exotic species menaced by brutal predators. It was outrageous that Colin should have joined the brutes. I could see him clearly in memory, his tan and his weird eyes—hungry and yet chilly—and his habit of hanging about, the feeling he gave that something might happen. Afterwards I went to have my hair cut. A while ago I had affected an old-fashioned barber in Neal Street, who would keep me trimmed and tidy for £1.05—a guinea, as he always insisted. In the window were black-and-white photographs of men tipping their heads forward, and inside, where one waited, a colour poster of the Prince and Princess of Wales simpered above the boxes of Durex. The shop was an outpost of neighbourly simplicity amid the chic revamping of Covent Garden, and Mr Bandini, who ran it with his middle-aged bachelor son Lenny, would talk with motiveless fluency about boxing and about life during the war, and the hard time he had had then. Unlike modern studios, where each haircut has the pretensions of a work of art, Mr Bandini’s shop, with its floral linoleum, its clippers and ivory-handled razors, gave me the reassuring feeling that exactly the same thing had been happening in it for half a century. There was something melancholy but entrancing in imagining the hundreds of thousands of identical, routine haircuts that Mr Bandini had given as the decades slipped by. Though, like other Soho Italians, he had been interned in the war, he had been at work on this spot for almost forty years. I could easily imagine Charles, in handsome middle age, popping in for his fortnightly short back and sides and a friction of eau de quinine. Wartime London, which I had always imagined half bombed to bits, the rest of it keeping going on five-shilling dinners and a lot of selflessness and doing without, emerged quite differently in Charles’s journal. It appeared (and I suppose this was the other side of my apprehension about war) as an era of extraordinary opportunity, when all kinds of fantasy became suddenly possible, and when the fellow-feeling of allies and soldiers could be creamed off in sex and romance. September 26, 1943: My birthday … It’s so dull being as old as the century, it makes one’s progress seem so leaden & inevitable, with no scope for romantic doubts about one’s age.