Anxiety

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.

Page 166 of 501 · 20 per page

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  This has been the prevailing view from the time of Chrysostom to Bleek.1217 The objection that the Epistle quotes the Old Testament uniformly after the Septuagint is not conclusive, since the Septuagint was undoubtedly used in Palestine alongside with the Hebrew original. Other views more or less improbable need only be mentioned: (1) All the Christian Jews as distinct from the Gentiles;1218 (2) the Jews of Jerusalem alone;1219 (3) the Jews of Alexandria;1220 (4) the Jews of Antioch;1221 (5) the Jews of Rome;1222 (6) some community of the dispersion in the East (but not Jerusalem).1223 Occasion and Aim. The Epistle was prompted by the desire to strengthen and comfort the readers in their trials and persecutions (Heb. 10:32–39; Heb. 11 and 12), but especially to warn them against the danger of apostasy to Judaism (2:2, 3; 3:6, 14; 4:1, 14; 6:1–8; 10:23, 26–31). And this could be done best by showing the infinite superiority of Christianity, and the awful guilt of neglecting so great a salvation. Strange that but thirty years after the resurrection and the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, there should have been such a danger of apostasy in the very mother church of Christendom. And yet not strange, if we realize the condition of things, between 60 and 70. The Christians in Jerusalem were the most conservative of all believers, and adhered as closely as possible to the traditions of their fathers. They were contented with the elementary doctrines, and needed to be pressed on "unto perfection" (5:12; 6:1–4). The Epistle of James represents their doctrinal stand-point. The strange advice which he gave to his brother Paul, on his last visit, reflects their timidity and narrowness. Although numbered by "myriads," they made no attempt in that critical moment to rescue the great apostle from the hands of the fanatical Jews; they were "all zealous for the law," and afraid of the radicalism of Paul on hearing that he was teaching the Jews of the Dispersion "to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs" ( Acts 21:20, 21). They hoped against hope for the conversion of their people. When that hope vanished more and more, when some of their teachers had suffered martyrdom (Heb. 13:7), when James, their revered leader, was stoned by the Jews (62), and when the patriotic movement for the deliverance of Palestine from the hated yoke of the heathen Romans rose higher and higher, till it burst out at last in open rebellion (66), it was very natural that those timid Christians should feel strongly tempted to apostatize from the poor, persecuted sect to the national religion, which they at heart still believed to be the best part of Christianity. The solemn services of the Temple, the ritual pomp and splendor of the Aaronic priesthood, the daily sacrifices, and all the sacred associations of the past had still a great charm for them, and allured them to their embrace.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Virgil then addresses this once and future boy directly. In your childhood, there will be no lack of fertility in field or farm and no danger from wild animals or lethal poisons. “Unbidden, the goats will bring home their udders swollen with milk, and the cattle will not fear huge lions. The serpent, too, will perish, and perish will the plant that hides its poison; Assyrian spice will spring up on every soil” (21–25). In your youth, “a few traces of old-time sin will still live on,” so that hard labor and foreign war will again appear. In your adulthood, however, laborless fertility will be total as “every land will bear all fruits…. No more will wool be taught to put on varied hues, but of himself the ram in the meadows will change his fleece, now to sweetly blushing purple, now to a saffron yellow; and scarlet shall clothe the grazing lambs at will” (42–45). This is not just an Italian or Roman vision, but a global and cosmic one: “See how the world bows with its massive dome” as “earth and expanse of sea and heaven’s depth” and “all things rejoice in the age that is at hand” (50–52). But notice the primary emphasis in that rhapsodic prophecy. It is about the earth’s unworked prosperity, the world’s unlabored fertility. Certainly war between humans or strife between animals is fleetingly noted, but it is workless wealth that is underlined. A magnificent vision of divine change, to be sure, but not exactly a social, let alone a political, program for human participation in that new creation. Still, all this is soon to happen here upon this Roman earth. But that is not exactly how Horace saw things at exactly that same time. Virgilian point begot Horatian counterpoint. A UTOPIAN FLIGHT. As the 40s became the 30s B.C.E., the first round of Roman civil war left Pompey defeated and Caesar victorious, the second round left Caesar murdered, and the third round left his assassins, Brutus and Cassius, defeated at Philippi by his avengers, Antony and Octavian, the not yet Augustus. By then, most Romans anticipated round four and could do the math: One warlord equals regal tyranny, two warlords equals civil war, and three warlords equals social anarchy. All equations seemed equally hopeless. In his Epode 7 Horace asked, “Does some blind frenzy drive us on, or some stronger power, or guilt?” (13–14). Does continuing civil war indicate that “a bitter fate pursues the Romans, and the crime of a brother’s murder, ever since blameless Remus’s blood was spilt upon the ground, to be a curse upon posterity”? (17–20). Had the inaugural and fratricidal murder of Remus by Romulus (think of the biblical parallel of Abel by Cain) placed upon Rome a fateful destiny of civil war?

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Paul is now turning his mission from the east to the west with Rome as the pivot of that shift. The letter, therefore, is not just an abstract discussion of unity, but a practical appeal to the Roman communities to accept Paul’s vision for a world united under the justice and righteousness of God and to support him in working for its accomplishment. But first there is one final duty to the east, and Paul prepares to return there for the first time since the great disagreement and separation at Antioch in Galatians 2. As mentioned in Chapter 4, we are not following Luke’s suggestion of that too-swift visit in Acts 18:22–23. Paul is very much aware of two separate dangers at Jerusalem. One is that the Christian Jewish community will simply refuse the collection. The other is that non-Christian Jews will attack him. Paul was right to worry on both counts, but from this point onward Paul himself is silent and our only information is from Acts. First, James’s community refuses to accept the collection unless Paul shows that “you yourself observe and guard the law” by using (some of?) the money to pay for a purification ritual in the Temple (Acts 21:24; read 21:17–24). Paul apparently agreed to accept this admittedly rather ambiguous test. Second, Paul was in Jerusalem with a group of Christian pagans carrying the collection. Nothing whatsoever prohibited him and those Christian pagan companions from entering the huge outer Court of the Gentiles, but they would have to wait for him there while he and those other Christian Jews passed the warning balustrade and entered the smaller inner courts reserved under penalty of death for Jews alone. Third, once he had entered the Temple he was attacked by “Jews from Asia” for violating that ban by bringing those pagan associates into the inner Court of the Jews (Acts 21:27–28). Paul is then arrested and starts the long journey to Rome. Luke’s Acts never tells us what eventually happened to Paul when he reached Rome. Acts was written long after Paul’s death, so Luke must have known the outcome. And we do not need to presume a missing third volume. But, as we saw in Chapter 1, Acts is not just about Paul, but about the Holy Spirit bringing the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome and establishing Rome for Christianity as Jerusalem was for Judaism. Once Paul is openly preaching in Rome, the story Luke intended to tell is over. So he simply ends by saying that Paul “lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (28:30–31). But what do we think happened to Paul after that ending? The Martyrdom of Paul

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  All of that points to one conclusion. In Romans Paul is struggling hard for a vision that most pagans, many Jews, and some Christians do not share. He is struggling hard for the meaning of his own life and his own vocation as “a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” (1:1; read 1:1–6), a gospel about “salvation for everyone who has faith…in the righteousness of God” (1:15–16). But salvation, righteousness, and faith are words whose backs are bent if not broken by the weight of post-Reformation theological controversy. They will need very delicate and very accurate handling. Finally, we cannot forget that Paul is also locked in controversy for “my gospel” (2:16; 16:25). That means we can never ignore or forget the rhetoric of religious polemics by Paul against direct or indirect Christian, Jewish, and pagan opponents. We emphasize this not from political correctness, ecumenical courtesy, or post-Holocaust sensitivity, but from simple historical actuality. Nothing is ever easier, in either political or religious polemics, than that accusation of “works” against “faith,” of externalism against intern, of action against intention. If I do not like your external action, I will attack your internal motivation as evil (“You just want money”) or even as totally absent (“You just want publicity”). Paul’s accusation works well as long as it is read only by Christians and as long as no Jews get to respond. If they did, their answer would be obvious. Of course we Jews are justified only by God’s grace, God’s free gift of covenant, and we both receive it initially and maintain it continually; we both accept it internally and live it externally through faith. Works are simply faith’s external face. It is by the grace of faith that we receive the law, and it is by the grace of faith that we live the law. You, Paul, are making a separation of faith and works that we would never make. Any Jew and every Jew would have agreed with Paul’s own injunction in Philippians to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:12–13). To will and to work, or faith and works, are two gifts or, better, a single gift of God’s grace. Paul, however, is struggling with his native Judaism to convert its sympathetic pagan God-worshipers to Christ. In that struggle he gives no quarter, takes no prisoners, and considers the strongest external attack the best internal defense. The Unity of Pagans and Jews: Romans 1–8

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  . a good conscience has no motive for inventing quibbles about a matter which does not concern it. It is therefore to crime, stubborn crime, that this opinion owes its existence.’ Many Anglicans held this view; but they were confronted with the problem of divines who rejected it, at least in private; and the effort to maintain a double standard gradually foundered. By mid century there was wide agreement that belief in Hell was less firm than hitherto, and that the damping down of Hell-fire was attended with perceptible social consequences. Preaching to Oxford University in 1741, William Dodwell lamented: ‘It is but all too visible that since men have learned to wear off the Apprehension of Eternal Punishment, the Progress of Impiety and Immorality among us has been very considerable.’ The authorities considered Hell to be the most effective deterrent against crime; as fear of it declined, therefore, judges and Parliament agreed that the statutory penalties must be increased. During the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth, a series of Acts, extending capital punishment to cover over 300 offences, tried to repair the yawning gaps in Locke’s system of ethical enforcement. However, the chief defect of rational Christianity was that it made no appeal to the emotions. It offered no incentive other than enlightened self-interest. The element of sacrifice and abnegation was eliminated. Morality was presented simply as a shrewd bargain. As Tillotson put it, ‘Now these two things must make our duty very easy: a considerable reward in hand, and not only the hopes but the assurance of a far greater recompense hereafter.’ The whole thing could be worked out and calculated. Conscience had no role to play, since it was merely subjective opinion. Thus the element of personal responsibility was scrapped, and all a man needed to be saved was to stick to the rules. Now this was to sacrifice the whole point of the Reformation and to return, in effect, to the mechanical Christianity of canon law. And mechanical Christianity necessarily produced a corrupt Church, led by a secular-minded clergy. This is precisely what happened in the eighteenth century. In their anxiety to avoid fanaticism of any kind, the rational Christians tended to depersonalize religion, and to emphasize its forms and institutions at the expense of its spirit. In these circumstances, a state Church is bound to become corrupt. As in the Middle Ages, its bishops tended to be seen, and to see themselves, as government servants rather than sacramental ministers, and as financially, rather than spiritually, privileged. The process went furthest in Lutheran Germany, above all in Prussia, where the Church possessed virtually no independent rights, and the ruler had absolute powers over all forms of religious activity. The system evolved in the reigns of Frederick William I and Frederick the Great, and was finally codified in a law of the Prussian Landrecht of 1794.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  In 1846, Manning indicted Anglicanism: ‘There seems about the Church of England a want of antiquity, system, fullness, intelligence, order, strength, unity; we have dogmas on paper; a ritual almost universally abandoned; no discipline, a divided episcopate, priesthood and laity.’ The Roman Church was the opposite to this sorry picture – a triumphalist monolith, unchanged, unchangeable and, granted its assumptions, impervious to challenge. It alone, in practice, was prepared to accept wholeheartedly Newman’s premise that inquiry into such assumptions was illegitimate, and exert ecclesiastical power to render it impossible. Thus on the darkening plain of nineteenth-century agnosticism and fading belief, the Church of Rome stood out like a fortress: once within, the drawbridge could be raised, and the solid walls would separate absolutely the true Christians from the rest. By comparison the walls of the Protestant citadel were crumbling, were, in fact, being rapidly demolished, since the enemy was already within. The images of safety, refuge and the flight to security abound in the writings of the converts. It gives us the essential clue to the reinvigoration of the nineteenth-century Roman Church, and the reassertion of papal power. Of course, the presence within the Church of those who fled there for security and authority necessarily reinforced those burgeoning tendencies. A case in point was W. G. Ward, who, even before he left the Anglicans for Rome in 1845, had been working on his Ideal of a Christian Church, with its stress on the abdication of personal responsibility. ‘Within the magic circle which it protects, we are saved from the pain of doubt, from the necessity of disputation, and are called upon but to learn and to believe.’ What he called ‘conscience’ was the act of obeying Church authority; there was no role in it for the reason or the intellect. As a refugee from liberalism, he naturally fought fiercely against any attempt to establish it within the fortress. He strongly approved, in 1857, of the Vatican’s condemnation of works by Anton Gunther, who held that there was no real cleavage between natural and supernatural truth, a position fundamental to the whole scientific argument. In 1863 Ward became editor of the influential Dublin Review and used it to urge that Rome should direct and control all scientific and historical research conducted by Catholics. This was the return to the medieval assumption of a total society, in which it was impossible to mark a point where the authority of the Church ended since spiritual considerations pervaded all material affairs. Ward argued that a separation between theology and other aspects of human knowledge was in practice impossible because the overlay was too great: ‘We therefore see over how large a field of secular science the church’s authority extends. She has the power. . . of infallibly pronouncing propositions to be erroneous if they tend by legitimate consequence to a denial of any religious doctrine which she teaches.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Christianity, as we have noted before, is essentially a historical religion; and in giving absolutely priority to the historical documents – the scriptures – the Protestants had appeared to be on infinitely stronger ground than the Catholics, who relied for their dogmatic justification on the unscriptural authority or magisterium of the Church – that is, the mere opinions of uninspired men – and who could justly be accused of trying to keep the text of the inspired Revelation from the hands of the multitude. The Evangelicals, in particular, relied on the traditional strength of the Bible. Everything was to be found there; and nothing that was not found there was of consequence. Their standard textbook, the Elements of Christian Theology by Bishop George Pretyman Tomline, had a totally uncritical approach to scripture. Thus, the thirteenth edition (1820) noted: ‘The great length to which human life was extended in the patriarchal ages rendered it very practicable for the Jews, in the time of Moses, to trace their lineal descents as far as the Flood, nay even to Adam’; Methuselah ‘was 243 years contemporary with Adam, and 600 with Noah’; and so forth. Both the Old and the New Testaments were treated as historical records, and to question their literacy accuracy was to deny their inspirational status. By the end of the eighteenth century, this position was beginning to be highly vulnerable. Science itself was not necessarily a threat to Christianity. Christianity could rationalize within its own assumptions changes in cosmology and the discovery of new operative laws. Indeed, up to a point at least, the very existence of scientifically demonstrable laws was welcome to Christian apologists who could instance them to prove the workings of an all-powerful divine intelligence. But could religion withstand the invariable application of scientific methodology, that is the pursuit of truth for its own sake regardless of the consequences? Chritianity being a faith which identified itself with truth, it was essential that it should do so. Locke’s presentation was based on this assumption. But then Locke had lived at a time when it had seemed more likely that scientific demonstration of truth would confirm rather than discredit Christian claims. A hundred years later the situation was changing radically. It then emerged that what Christianity had to fear was not so much science itself as scientific method applied historically. This worked in two ways. Geologists and astronomers on the one hand, and biologists and anthropologists on the other, combined to present a historical picture of the earth’s origin, and of man’s habitation of it, which was wholly incompatible with the historical account in the Old Testament. Secondly, study of the scriptural texts using the new methods of historical analysis, and with the assistance of philology and archaeology, revealed the scriptures as a much more complicated collection of documents than anyone had hitherto imagined, a bewildering compound of allegory and fact, to be sifted like any other ancient literature.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  This, in turn, led to the methodical practice of good works (thus developing in economic terms habits of industry and capitalism). Good works were useless as a means of attaining salvation, since that was already determined, but they were indispensible as a sign of election, to get rid of the fear of damnation, and induce what Luther called ‘the feeling of blessed assurance’ – an inner conviction that you were saved. Weber thought that Calvinism was an anxiety-inducing ideology that drove its victims to seek self-control and confidence in methodical work and worldly success. But there is no evidence that Calvinism, or other powerful forms of Protestantism, induced anxiety. The anxiety was already there. It always had been. Origen, with his theory of universal salvation, had always represented a minority trend in Christianity. Vast numbers of Christians had feared Hell and its fires at all periods. These anxieties naturally tended to generate work. Anxious men assuaged their worries, in medieval society, by paying for masses to be said for them, or by buying indulgences. They had to work to get this salvation money. But profit thus generated was creamed off by the Church, and used in display buildings, masses and charitable foundations. It was not available for entrepreneurial investment. To this extent medieval society was not a saving society; or, rather, it banked its treasure in Heaven. It had a wealthy Church, rather than capitalist enterprises, to show for its industry. Again, medieval merchants were less inclined to bequeath large sums in cash to their heirs than their successors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Huge bequests went to purposes which Protestantism later ruled to be futile or anti-Christian. A comparatively small percentage change in such habits could effect, over a period, a major transformation in economic life. This does not mean that passionate Protestants, especially Calvinists, were more likely to be successful in business. It has not been, and probably cannot be, demonstrated that, for instance, Englishmen who actually became Puritans and lived through the ‘salvation panic’ then became entrepreneurial businessmen or significantly changed their commercial habits as a result. The evidence from individual diaries, letters and memoirs suggests that the most significant expression of their new faith was in the cultural and political field rather than the economic. It is true that the Puritan spirit did tend to make good organizers; but, as such, it operated on both sides of the religious divide – Loyola and Borromeo were both brilliant organizers, as indeed had been the early Benedictines and Cistercians, quite independent of any particular Salvationist theology. Thus, though it is true that the commercial instinct tended to turn men against the Catholic Church, with its excessive clericalism, it did not necessarily turn them to Protestantism. There was nothing in Luther’s teaching specifically favourable to commerce or industry. He condemned usury, as did most Catholic evangelists; both Lutheran and Catholic writers continued to attack usury in any form until well into the seventeenth century.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “No, I can handle it,” I said. “But thank you. I think I only need two items anyway: one bra, one pair of underpants. Oh, and garters!” Claire laughed. “What are you going to, a bachelorette party?” “I don’t know, he asked for garters specifically,” I said. “What a wanker. Does he think you’re some kind of doll?” I actually liked being a doll. I wished Garrett would just pick out the bra and underwear too. It made it easier than having to decide on my own. My decisions had never led anywhere good. But Bridget, hopped up on a potential commission, was thrilled to sell me garters. She tsked Claire and told her that garters were chic for a modern woman. They were a nod to the classic, but you could do them in a modern way. I settled on the black lace thong, the black lace bra with the pink underneath, a plain pair of black velvet and satin garters, and some sheer black thigh-high stockings. The total was $395. I didn’t know what I was doing or who I was being, but I knew that I liked it better than me. 19.The following morning I packed an overnight bag with everything in it. Then I took it all out, thinking I should probably just wear it all to the hotel. I didn’t know if I’d be staying over or if it would just be an afternoon thing. Staying over scared me. The thought of it made me feel trapped, like the way I felt once I begged myself into Jamie’s house and then was like “Now what?” I was already having “now what” and I wasn’t even in the bed with this guy. What if I sweat in my sleep or farted? I hadn’t slept with a new person in years. Farting in my sleep with Jamie was an entirely different situation than farting on a handsome stranger. Also, I didn’t know what to do about Dominic and his food and medication. If I left him at home could he wait to use the bathroom all night? I didn’t think so. Annika sometimes used a dog sitter named Moira who would sleep over. She had left me Moira’s number in case of emergencies. But I didn’t want Moira to tell Annika I’d been out all night. I decided I would just walk Dominic and feed him right before I left, maybe leave him some extra food. If I slept over I would make sure to come home first thing at dawn. And if he peed and pooped on the floor, so what? It could be cleaned up.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Now I knew this was true of pussy eating too. Theo lay with his head in my lap and I gently tickled his face. Then I heard Dominic barking from the other room. “Do you want to meet the dog?” “I don’t,” he said. “Also, I should probably be getting back soon.” “What do you have to get back for? What if you just stay here with me a little longer,” I said, tousling his hair. “How about you come into the ocean and stay with me forever?” he said, smiling. “I would get too cold,” I said. “But I’m coming to see you as much as I can. I want to come see you all the time. When can I see you again?” Now it wasn’t enough just to be with him. I felt that he was already gone even though he was right there. I could see past his body to his absence, feel him slipping away, as though he flashed back and forth between here and gone like a strobe. I was already worried for that moment when he would be gone. What would it take for him to be enough? Even if I were to cook him up and eat him, fry his deliciousness with butter and a bib, swallow him up and digest him inside me, it still wouldn’t be enough. “Soon,” he said. Dominic was barking wildly. “I should probably walk him first and then I will take you back to the ocean,” I said. “I won’t bring him over to you. I’ll keep him over on the other side.” But as soon as I opened the door to the pantry, Dominic came darting out and jumped onto the sofa. He lunged at Theo. “Oh my God, Dominic, no!” I yelled, yanking him sideways. I was terrified. For a moment, I couldn’t see Theo clearly. It was as though he were vanishing, or I couldn’t hold my fear and vision at the same time. He flashed in and out of focus, then I saw him again, first his dark head and torso, then his tail, all the way to the translucent fin at the bottom. He looked fragile. “Damn,” said Theo. “This is what happens. It’s exactly what I was trying to tell you, why it’s unsafe for me to be out here.” “I’m so sorry!” “Could you please walk him later and just take me back now?” I still had Dominic by the collar and I shoved him back in the other room again. “I’m sorry he scared you.” Theo looked ashamed. “Just please take me back.” We loaded him into the wagon and covered him in the blanket. The beach was cold and the sand was freezing on my feet, moist from the tide. It was just after sunset, the sky darkening, and we were both silent as I led him to the rocks.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  It entered an acute phase after Judea was directly annexed by the Roman state and thus made liable to Roman fiscal procedures. These proved to be much less popular than the pro-Roman party had anticipated; it has been calculated that in first century Palestine, Roman and Jewish taxes together may have reached as much as 25 per cent (non-progressive) of incomes, in an economy which in some respects and in some areas was not far above the subsistence level. Palestine was thus soaked in politico-religious apocalypticism. Irredentist politics and religious extremism were inextricably mixed. All Palestinian Jews to some extent believed in a Messianic solution. There were, it is true, many different doctrines of the Messiah but the variations were matters of detail and all rested on the unitary belief that foreign oppressors would be driven out and God alone would rule Israel. Thus a man who criticized the Romans was making a religious statement and a man who insisted on the highest degree of ritual purity was playing politics. In the opening decades of the first century AD the example of the Essenes led to the appearance of a number of baptist movements in the Jordan Valley. The whole area, from the Lake of Genasseret down to the Dead Sea itself was alive with holy eccentrics. Many had been to Qumran, and there imbibed the prevailing obsession with ritual purity and the use of holy water as a therapy and cleansing process. It is, in fact, significant that Philo calls the Essene therapeutae : to ordinary observers it was the most obvious and striking aspect of their teaching. We can be almost certain that John the Baptist was, or had been, an Essene monk. He was recruiting not so much for the monastery but for the broader movement of the élite within the élite, carrying the cleansing and purifying process into the world outside, and thus hastening the apocalyptic moment when the war against the Sons of Darkness would begin. The Baptist is thus the link between the general reformist and nonconformist movement in Judaism and Jesus himself. Unfortunately, in terms of actual historical knowledge, he is a very weak link. In some ways he is a completely mysterious figure. His function, in the history of Christianity, was to attach elements of the Essene teaching to a consistent view of Jewish eschatology. John was an impatient man, as well as a wild-looking one: the Messiah was not merely coming – he was here! The apocalypse was rolling fast towards the people, so now was the time to repent and prepare. And then, in due course, Jesus appeared and was identified. This is the first glimpse, admittedly a vivid one, we get of John. There is one other glimpse, equally vivid, some years later, when he fell foul of Herod Antipas and lost his head. The rest is darkness. The second most important person in the history of Christianity remains enigmatic.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wanted to pretend it was just irritation, maybe the dawning of a mild yeast infection, which could be snuffed out with a bit of Monistat. But this was no yeast infection. It was a goddamn urinary tract infection. I hadn’t had one in years, but the feeling was not one you forget. The dull ache in the pelvis, the urgent need to pee, the burning. After my first three UTIs I had learned the secret at my college infirmary: always pee after sex. Pee immediately, within ten minutes, if possible. But I wasn’t about to pee in front of Garrett. I thought about how I was taught to wipe, as a little girl, after I’d gotten my first UTI. “From now on you’re going to wipe from front to back,” said the pediatrician. “Do you understand?” When Garrett tried to stick his dick into my asshole, and then abandoned the mission for my vagina, I did, for a split second, think, This can’t be good. Back to front. I tried to sleep but it was no use. I knew exactly what I needed: Pyridium to take the pain away and Cipro to kill the bug. I started moaning little things out loud in a deeply self-pitying way, like “Noooooo” and “Why meeeeeeee?” Part of me was reacting to the pain. But another part of me liked being melodramatic, babying myself. I managed to walk Dominic and then summon a car. The closest hospital was in Marina del Rey, not far. “Be good,” I said. “Mommy is very, very sick.” I heard myself talking to the dog, and it reminded me that I existed. Existence always looked like something other than I thought it would. 22.Somehow, at five in the morning, there were three families ahead of me in the ER. Did children only get injured at dawn? One of them was a boy with a soccer uniform on and one sneaker off, crying. I didn’t understand why he was playing soccer at four in the morning. Was he playing in his sleep? His mother and father seemed so concerned about him, comforting him and stroking his hair. I wanted someone to stroke my hair. I thought about texting Annika, who would definitely be awake in Europe, but didn’t want to worry her. I didn’t want her to ask how I got the UTI. Instead I texted Jamie. Hi just seeing what you are doing and how you are? He was an early riser. I saw the dot dot dot of him responding. Then the dots stopped. Nothing. I bet Megan the scientist was in bed with him. Immediately I regretted it. Then I texted Adam the wolf-monkey. I sent him a picture of my hospital bracelet. Look where I am…hospitalized!

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Clement of Alexandria complained: ‘There are those that do nothing but make the churches resound with a kiss, not having love itself within. This practice, the shameless use of the kiss, which ought to be mystic, has occasioned foul suspicions and evil reports.’ There was a reference to incest. The wilder Christians sects – later branded as heretics – naturally attracted more attention from critics and Roman officials. Writing from Bythinia in Asia Minor, a worried local governor, Pliny the Younger, asked for detailed instruction from the Emperor Trajan (98–117). Christianity, he reported, was spreading from the towns to the countryside. The temples were empty and it was becoming difficult to sell the meat from sacrificed animals. He was under local pressure to execute Christians. What was their crime? Should they be charged with incest and cannibalism, their reputed offences? If they remained contumacious then it was clear they had to be executed, but what if they recanted? Some admitted they had been Christians but denied their faith and cursed Christ. They made offerings to the emperor and the gods. But they also denied that Christians practised enormities. They did not eat murdered children: just food. And they had suspended their secret rites following an edict against religious societies. He had tortured two deaconesses, but found nothing but ‘squalid superstition’. Severity undoubtedly brought people back to the temples. What should he do now? Trajan advised moderation. There should be no general inquisition. Anonymous informers should be ignored. Accusations from responsible folk should be properly investigated. No Christian should be punished if he made sacrifices. This was the line usually followed by Roman governments. If they were strong and secure they were less inclined to yield to prejudice. Undisavowed Christianity remained a capital offence, but government did not, as a rule, force Christians into the choice between avowal and apostasy. It left them alone. One reason why the Church strove for uniformity, and so against heresy, was that non-orthodox practices tended to attract more attention and therefore hostility. ‘Prophesying’, the great offence of the Montanists, was strongly disapproved of by the State. It caused sudden and unpredictable crowd movements, panic and disruption of the economy. We hear of early bishops in the Balkans leading their flocks out of the towns, or away from the fields, in response to spirit instructions. Rome could be severe with such people. Marcus Aurelius, a reasonable man, justified persecuting Christians by arguing that it was dangerous to upset ‘the unstable mind of man by superstitious fear of the divine’. And then he disliked the ‘sheer spirit of opposition’ of Christians. The more obdurate were, of course, members of Christian revivalist groups, ‘speaking with tongues’. The great majority of the early martyrs were Christians of a type which the Church would later classify as heretic. The first stories of martyrs reflect not only Jewish martyrologies, as one might expect, but a form of literature echoing the defiant opposition of Greek rebels against Roman domination.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Paul noted that the scriptures adumbrated a system of predestination, and he quoted the case from Ezra: ‘And thou didst set apart Jacob for thyself, but Esau thou didst hate.’ The concept was made far more terrifying in the Qumran texts. But there is no mandate in Paul for the Calvinist insistence on the eternal predestination of the individual to salvation or damnation. Paul saw damnation as the shadow that was cast by election from grace; it ensures the purity of the gospel message; he did not put forward a theory about God’s system of selection, but an explanation of what happens to a man when he hears the gospel – he chooses, and so he is chosen. This tremendous attack on the whole Judaic concept of man’s relationship with God, and its replacement by a new salvationist system, was summarized in Paul’s great essay in determinist theology, the epistle to the Romans. What an extraordinary document to be received by a young congregation who had never met the apostle! No one has ever fully understood Romans. No one can remain undisturbed by it, either. It is the most thought-provoking of all the Christian documents. It has a habit of forcing men to reconsider their whole understanding of religion even when they have spent many years in theological inquiry. Thus Romans profoundly changed Augustine’s thinking in the last years of his life. It was the detonator to Luther’s explosion. It has been used again and again to demolish and reconstruct systems of theology, most recently by Schweitzer, Bultmann and Barth. Most theological revolutions begin with Romans, as indeed did Paul’s own. Romans is an imperfect document, the work of a man not wholly satisfied with his case: that is its merit as a key. The circular form of the argument, its return again and again to the same starting points and conclusions, betray the anxiety of a man who still saw, and knew he saw, through a glass darkly. The imperfection of his vision was, indeed, implicit in the majesty of his conception of God, the distancing he achieves between God and man, and time and eternity. Paul was the beneficiary of a vision. We must accept his sincerity on this: it was clearly the most important event in his whole life. But, as a man who demanded the whole truth, he recognized that his vision had been incomplete. The difference between the theology of Jesus and Paul is not merely that one is implicit, the other explicit; it is that Jesus saw as a God, Paul thought as a man. But the process of trying to think through the theological problem made Paul into a very formidable figure. On the one hand he presents an insuperable obstacle to any humanist rescue-operation on Jesus – any presentation of him as the greatest and noblest of all human beings, stripped of his divine attributes.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The front was in a condition of flux and the Postes de Secours were continually shifting. An Allied ambulance driver had been fired on by the Germans, after having arrived at the spot where his Poste had been only the previous evening. There was very close fighting on every sector; it seemed truly amazing that no grave casualties had so far occurred in the Unit. For now the Allies had begun to creep forward, yard by yard, mile by mile, very slowly but surely; refreshed by a splendid transfusion of blood from the youthful veins of a great child-nation. Of all the anxieties on Mary’s account that now beset Stephen, Thurloe was the gravest; for Thurloe was one of those irritating drivers who stake all on their own inadequate judgment. She was brave to a fault, but inclined to show off when it came to a matter of actual danger. For long hours Stephen would not know what had happened, and must often leave the base before Mary had returned, still in doubt regarding her safety. Grimly, yet with unfailing courage and devotion, Stephen now went about her duties. Every day the risks that they all took grew graver, for the enemy, nearing the verge of defeat, was less than ever a respecter of persons. Stephen’s only moments of comparative peace would be when she herself drove Mary. And as though the girl missed some vitalizing force, some strength that had hitherto been hers to draw on, she flagged, and Stephen would watch her flagging during their brief spells together off duty, and would know that nothing but her Celtic pluck kept Mary Llewellyn from a breakdown. And now, because they were so often parted, even chance meetings became of importance. They might meet while preparing their cars in the morning, and if this should happen they would draw close together for a moment, as though finding comfort in nearness. Letters from home would arrive for Stephen, and these she would want to read to Mary. In addition to writing, Puddle sent food, even luxuries sometimes, of a pre-war nature. To obtain them she must have used bribery and corruption, for food of all kinds had grown scarce in England. Puddle, it seemed, had a mammoth war map into which she stuck pins with gay little pennants. Every time the lines moved by so much as a yard, out would come Puddle’s pins to go in at fresh places; for since Stephen had left her to go to the front, the war had become very personal to Puddle. Anna also wrote, and from her Stephen learnt of the death of Roger Antrim. He had been shot down while winning his V.C. through saving the life of a wounded captain.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  . . . But our system earnestly inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible; it allows it to do what it is allowed to do in no other system, to speak for itself .’ Hence, in the American system, the school supplied Christian ‘character-building’ and the parents, at home, topped up with sectarian trimmings. Naturally there were objections. The Reverend F. A. Newton, on behalf of some episcopalians, argued that ‘a book upon politics, morals or religion, containing no party or sectarian views, will be apt to contain no distinctive views of any kind, and will be likely to leave the mind in a state of doubt and scepticism, much more to be deplored than any party or sectarian bias.’ This kind of point could be brushed aside. More serious, however, as America increasingly took on the characteristics of a secular state, which she was, ab initio, by definition, and as she accepted millions of non-Protestants, especially Catholics and Jews, was the association of moral character-building in the schools with specifically Protestant labels. Gradually, and especially in the big cities, religion as such was eased out of the schools. As the Presbyterian Samuel T. Spear wrote (1870): ‘The state, being democratic in its constitution, and consequently having no religion to which it does or can give any legal sanction, should not and cannot, except by manifest inconsistency, introduce either religious or irreligious teaching into a system of popular education which it authorizes, enforces and for the support of which it taxes all the people in common.’ But something had to supply the cultural machinery by which the immigrant millions were turned into Americans; and, Spears added, the schools had to have some spiritual foundation. Therefore, since the State was not Christian but republican, republicanism should constitute it. The solution was neat, since in effect republicanism was based on the Protestant ethical and moral consensus, which was what the schools already taught – the two concepts stood or fell together. So in this way the American way of life began to function as the operative creed of the public schools, and it was gradually accepted as the official philosophy of American state education, which it remains. Horace Mann Kallen, writing in the Saturday Review (July 1951) under the title ‘Democracy’s True Religion’, summarized the theory: ‘For the communicants of the democratic faith, it is the religion of and for religion. For being the religion of religions, all may freely come together in it.’ The case was pushed a little further by J. Paul Williams in What Americans Believe and How they Worship (1952): ‘Americans must come to look upon the democratic ideal. . . as the Will of God, or, if they please, of Nature . . . Americans must be brought to the conviction that democracy is the very Law of Life . . . government agencies must teach the democratic idea as religion. . . .

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She would hear herself covertly, cleverly gibing, with such skill that the girl would look up at her bewildered; with such skill that even Sir Philip himself could not well take exception to what she was saying; then, as like as not, she would laugh if off lightly, as though all the time she had only been jesting, and Stephen would laugh too, a big, friendly laugh. But Sir Philip would not laugh, and his eyes would seek Anna’s, questioning, amazed, incredulous and angry. That was why she now went so seldom to the study when Sir Philip and his daughter were together. But sometimes, when she was alone with her husband, Anna would suddenly cling to him in silence. She would hide her face against his hard shoulder clinging closer and closer, as though she were frightened, as though she were afraid for this great love of theirs. He would stand very still, forbearing to move, forbearing to question, for why should he question? He knew already, and she knew that he knew. Yet neither of them spoke it, this most unhappy thing, and their silence spread round them like a poisonous miasma. The spectre that was Stephen would seem to be watching, and Sir Philip would gently release himself from Anna, while she, looking up, would see his tired eyes, not angry any more, only very unhappy. She would think that those eyes were pleading, beseeching; she would think: ‘He’s pleading with me for Stephen.’ Then her own eyes would fill with tears of contrition, and that night she would kneel long in prayer to her Maker: ‘Give me peace,’ she would entreat, ‘and enlighten my spirit, so that I may learn how to love my own child.’ 2 Sir Philip looked older now than his age, and seeing this, Anna could scarcely endure it. Everything in her cried out in rebellion so that she wanted to thrust back the years, to hold them at bay with her own weak body. Had the years been an army of naked swords she would gladly have held them at bay with her body. He would constantly now remain in his study right into the early hours of the morning. This habit of his had been growing on him lately, and Anna, waking to find herself alone, and feeling uneasy would steal down to listen. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards! She would hear his desolate sounding footsteps. Why was he pacing backwards and forwards, and why was she always afraid to ask him? Why was the hand she stretched out to the door always fearful when it came to turning the handle?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She began to pace restlessly up and down the room, as had ever been her wont in moments of emotion. Her face grew ominous, heavy and brooding; the fine line of her mouth was a little marred; her eyes were less clear, less the servants of her spirit than the slaves of her anxious and passionate body; the red scar on her cheek stood out like a wound. Then quite suddenly she had opened the door, and was staring at the dimly lighted staircase. She took a step forward and then stopped; appalled, dumbfounded at herself, at this thing she was doing. And as she stood there as though turned to stone, she remembered another and spacious study, she remembered a lanky colt of a girl whose glance had kept straying towards the windows; she remembered a man who had held out his hand: ‘Stephen, come here. . . . What is honour, my daughter?’ Honour, good God! Was this her honour? Mary, whose nerves had been strained to breaking! A dastardly thing it would be to drag her through the maze of passion, with no word of warning. Was she to know nothing of what lay before her, of the price she would have to pay for such love? She was young and completely ignorant of life; she knew only that she loved, and the young were ardent. She would give all that Stephen might ask of her and more, for the young were not only ardent but generous. And through giving all she would be left defenceless, neither forewarned nor forearmed against a world that would turn like a merciless beast and rend her. It was horrible. No, Mary must not give until she had counted the cost of that gift, until she was restored in body and mind, and was able to form a considered judgment.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She hadn’t any symptoms. Pierre exaggerated. She ate quite enough—she had never been a very large eater. Stephen had better get on with her work and stop upsetting herself over nothing. But try as she might, Stephen could not get on—all the rest of the day her work went badly . After this she would often leave her desk and go wandering off in search of Mary. ‘Darling, where are you?’ ‘Upstairs in my bedroom!’ ‘Well, come down; I want you here in the study.’ And when Mary had settled herself by the fire: ‘Now tell me exactly how you feel—all right?’ And Mary would answer, smiling: ‘Yes, I’m quite all right; I swear I am, Stephen!’ It was not an ideal atmosphere for work, but the book was by now so well advanced that nothing short of a disaster could have stopped it—it was one of those books that intend to get born, and that go on maturing in spite of their authors. Nor was there anything really alarming about the condition of Mary’s health. She did not look very well, that was all; and at times she seemed a little downhearted, so that Stephen must snatch a few hours from her work in order that they might go out together. Perhaps they would lunch at a restaurant; or drive into the country, to the rapture of David; or just wander about the streets arm in arm as they had done when first they had returned to Paris. And Mary, because she would be feeling happy, would revive for these few hours as though by magic. Yet when she must once more find herself lonely, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to, because Stephen was back again at her desk, why then she would wilt, which was not unnatural considering her youth and her situation. 5 On Christmas Eve Brockett arrived, bringing flowers. Mary had gone for a walk with David, so Stephen must leave her desk with a sigh. ‘Come in, Brockett. I say! What wonderful lilac!’ He sat down, lighting a cigarette. ‘Yes, isn’t it fine? I brought it for Mary. How is she?’ Stephen hesitated a moment. ‘Not awfully well . . . I’ve been worried about her.’ Brockett frowned, and stared thoughtfully into the fire. There was something that he wanted to say to Stephen, a warning that he was longing to give, but he did not feel certain how she would take it—no wonder that wretched girl was not fit, forced to lead such a deadly dull existence! If Stephen would let him he wanted to advise, to admonish, to be brutally frank if need be. He had once been brutally frank about her work, but that had been a less delicate matter. He began to fidget with his soft, white hands, drumming on the arms of the chair with his fingers. ‘Stephen, I’ve been meaning to speak about Mary.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She struck me as looking thoroughly depressed the last time I saw her—when was it? Monday. Yes, she struck me as looking thoroughly depressed.’ ‘Oh, but surely you were wrong . . .’ interrupted Stephen. ‘No, I’m perfectly sure I was right,’ he insisted. Then he said: ‘I’m going to take a big risk—I’m going to take the risk of losing your friendship.’ His voice was so genuinely regretful, that Stephen must ask him: ‘Well—what is it, Brockett?’ ‘You, my dear. You’re not playing fair with that girl; the life she’s leading would depress a mother abbess. It’s enough to give anybody the hump, and it’s going to give Mary neurasthenia!’ ‘What on earth do you mean?’ ‘Don’t get ratty and I’ll tell you. Look here, I’m not going to pretend any more. Of course we all know that you two are lovers. You’re gradually becoming a kind of legend—all’s well lost for love, and that sort of thing. . . . But Mary’s too young to become a legend; and so are you, my dear, for that matter. But you’ve got your work, whereas Mary’s got nothing—not a soul does that miserable kid know in Paris. Don’t please interrupt, I’ve not nearly finished; I positively must and will have my say out! You and she have decided to make a ménage—as far as I can see it’s as bad as marriage! But if you were a man it would be rather different; you’d have dozens of friends as a matter of course. Mary might even be going to have an infant. Oh, for God’s sake, Stephen, do stop looking shocked. Mary’s a perfectly normal young woman; she can’t live by love alone, that’s all rot—especially as I shrewdly suspect that when you’re working the diet’s pretty meagre. For heaven’s sake let her go about a bit! Why on earth don’t you take her to Valérie Seymour’s? At Valérie’s place she’d meet lots of people; and I ask you, what harm could it possibly do? You shun your own ilk as though they were the devil! Mary needs friends awfully badly, and she needs a certain amount of amusement. But be a bit careful of the so-called normal.’ And now Brockett’s voice grew aggressive and bitter. ‘I wouldn’t go trying to force them to be friends—I’m not thinking so much of you now as of Mary; she’s young and the young are easily bruised. . . .’ He was perfectly sincere. He was trying to be helpful, spurred on by his curious affection for Stephen. At the moment he felt very friendly and anxious; there was nothing of the cynic left in him—at the moment.