Bewilderment

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 Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  That is, by definition a destructive cult leader or a very small, tightly knit authoritarian cadre of leaders at the top of the pyramid is the organizational glue that holds the cult together. The leadership can be seen as the hub of the wheel, without which the group typically loses its cohesiveness and would most likely and ultimately collapse. We discussed the importance and pivotal role of “Master Li,” who is regarded as a “living Buddha,”843 and how this belief might fit into Lifton’s first criterion. For example, Li alone defines Falun Gong through his singular role as the most highly regarded and powerful representative of the “almighty Fa,” which is the only way to “save people.”844 I explained that this criterion could also be seen through Li’s various claims concerning his supposed supernatural powers, which further demonstrate the importance of his personal charisma. Li’s powers allegedly include “floating through walls,” becoming “invisible,”845 having the ability to “move…anywhere by thought alone,” and being able to “rise into the heavens.” I asked if there was anyone else she could think of alive today whom Falun Gong members extolled in the same way with equal significance. We also discussed an important core teaching of Falun Gong, which is that supposedly Li alone can telekinetically install the spinning “falun,” or mystical “wheel of law,”846 into Falun Gong devotees. The wheel subsequently makes it possible to transfer energy to the believer. I asked if this claim imbued Li with special importance and made him essentially indispensable to the group. And wasn’t such a claim about Li’s supernatural abilities a pivotal belief, which largely defined Falun Gong? I asked the young woman whether she could see the repeated pattern of such claims and beliefs. That is, didn’t they specifically emphasize the singular importance and special significance of Li Hongzhi? Didn’t these claims place Li well within Lifton’s definition as the focus of Falun Gong? And therefore wouldn’t Falun Gong fit in the category of a personality-driven group? Her response was typical of many cult members. When confronted with uncomfortable facts about the group or leader, the follower will try to change the subject or refocus the discussion on something else. Instead of directly responding to questions about Li Hongzhi, she tried to shift the focus to the Chabad Lubavitch. The young woman replied, “Wouldn’t the ‘Rebbe’ [Rabbi Schneerson] be a cult leader then by that definition?” She elaborated, “There are supernatural claims made about him, and he is revered as the messiah or ‘King Moshiach.’” At this point her family seemed shocked. But before the conversation went completely off track, I agreed with her, tacitly admitting that the Chabad Lubavitch sect could be seen as a personality-driven cult per Lifton’s criterion regarding the centrality of a charismatic leader. But I added that the level and seriousness of complaints I had received about Falun Gong far exceeded whatever complaints existed concerning Chabad.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Second, Alypius had a decidedly untheological approach to his Christianity. This is hard to see behind the veils of piety Augustine and Augustine’s readers are always ready to cover him with, but already in the Confessions Alypius’s religion has a different flavor.195 At the defining moment of conversion in the Milan garden, his verse from Romans was “but accept the one whose faith is shaky” (13.14), not a text about the strengthening of faith but about the place of the shaky-footed one inside the community. When he and Augustine and their household left Milan for Cassiciacum and plunged into the two intense weeks of dialogue that got recorded in the early books of that winter, Alypius slipped away to go back to Milan for ten days, missing much of the debate. When he was there, his contributions were measured and reserved. His one marked act of piety is of the body rather than the soul: in late winter 386–87, when they headed back to Milan to prepare for baptism at Eastertime, Alypius showed the greatest austerity, walking barefoot on the icy ground. That he fought the fight for the Caecilianist church forever after in Africa and Italy and that he lived the life of that church should still leave us room to consider how much was acquired social role, how much was the physical practice of religion, and how much or little was passion and belief. One more thing about Alypius astonishes us: his textual silence. We can hear his voice in the transcript of the great public confrontation with the Donatists at Carthage in 411, and he is quoted and referred to otherwise. He seems to have written a letter to Paulinus of Nola that we almost know about, but for a long time we had only one tiny fragment of text from his hand. He wrote no books, though few bishops ventured that far. The only letters we have are ones he cowrote with Augustine for diplomatic or tactical purposes. He traveled far, on business of urgent interest to Augustine, but wrote no long informative letters home that we know of. If we did not have Augustine to compare him to, he would seem indeed a typical African bishop, pragmatic and unliterary. A single businesslike memo, recorded in a letter of Augustine’s to another correspondent, has recently come to light.196 Otherwise, he is the silent partner. The one fragment we’ve long had is tantalizing. It comes from an undated letter that is mainly from Augustine to someone called Sebastianus, full of the mildest, if semidepressive, moral reassurance. The evil are always with us, a distressing fact, but divine promises accompany us as well. At the end of that letter, we have two appendages. First, with the notation alia manu (“in another hand,” usually the marker of an authorial addition to a text otherwise written by scribes taking dictation), we get the encouragement: “Pray for us in good health, beloved and holy brethren!” Then this:

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  An old man, living too much by himself in the country, too much absorbed with his books and the adventures of former times that he has fallen among, takes those stories seriously, as true histories, and goes out to shape his life as if those stories were reasonable models. He has one set of misfortunes, the ones more familiar to modern cartoon iconography, when he is alone in his fantasies: a golden helmet that is really a barber’s piece of crockery, looming giants that are really innocent windmills. But Cervantes’ hero has a far more interesting set of adventures in the second half of his history, when the world has begun to read about him, the demented hero, in books, and when it begins both to take him as seriously as he takes the heroes of old. The second half of Don Quixote de la Mancha is the story of the world that takes him seriously and sends out its champions to fight him. So who is Augustine, on those terms? He is Don Quixote in a world that really takes him and his obsessions seriously. That world, it must be emphasized, is Roman Africa, or at most the Latin western Mediterranean. Recall that the space Augustine inhabited is the eastern Maghreb, from Hippo to Carthage, and the world that could be reached easily from there: across in one direction to Rome and Italy, across in another to the Balearics and Spain, and, because of the fellow zealots who were blazing the trail, east to Palestine. The Greek world may as well not have existed, and Augustine’s particular backwater certainly did not exist for the Greek cosmopolites of the eastern Mediterranean. Christianity was still new and fresh in his world, particularly in Augustine’s class and community. The upper-class Christian, the one for whom the religion really was a matter of something you found in a book, was a clumsy newcomer in Augustine’s Africa, as in Paulinus’s Italy. For many, the scripture books were too badly written to merit serious attention and were introduced into serious conversations only with some awkwardness.386 Their clumsiness betrays itself as well in their fumbling with the practices and ideology of ascesis, but it ran much deeper. Augustine and his contemporaries, busy inventing Christianity as we know it, had all the deftness of garage-hobbyists, and some of their constructions had the daffiness and improbability of garage-creations that don’t quite make it. Will the whole elaborate notion of the seven days of creation, charmingly fantastic when the writer of Genesis ventures the riff, sustain Augustine’s killingly literal-minded attempt to make it a serious piece of cosmology? Could the Rube Goldberg notion of seminales rationes387 (implanted by the divine creator in the first creations and left to sprout and blossom into apparently new beings later) ever persuade an objective observer? Do his explanations of the historical and logical inconsequences of scripture ever come across as more than special pleading?

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  The story of Christianity that I have just told under a dissonant pseudonym is demonstrably true on all points, as far as historical fact and verifiability are concerned, at least down to Augustine’s time, but unfamiliar for the range and character of interpretation it includes. The chief unfamiliarity is in the outcome, the failure of the cult to sustain itself. But in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christianity was far from certain to survive and thrive. Christians have commonly claimed that early Christianity was homogeneous, even miraculously so, and that division and disagreement are later degenerations. Though scholars have long since exploded historical claims to homogeneity, it remains a theme of conventional discourse, and the outcome of all the early stories seems to be the rise of a single Christianity. So we tell all the stories of early diversity to one another fully knowing that homogeneity of some kind awaits. Eastern and western branches of Christianity both aver that homogeneity was achieved, but do so only in the face of the evidence of their long mutual mistrust, misunderstanding, and near millennium of outright excommunication. The religious movements of medieval, modern, and postmodern times that carry the name “Christian” have chosen to associate themselves with a body of ancient religious movements and, for the most part, with one or two lines of development within that body of movements. The notion that what one sees today on an evangelist’s television program, in the cave monasteries of the Pechersk Lavra in Kiev, and in an African cathedral welcoming a papal visit, to say nothing of an upper Manhattan Episcopalian Sunday service regularly attended by house pets and their owners, are all of a piece with what happened in Augustine’s lifetime in the Syrian desert, in farming villages in Africa, and among perfumed socialites in Rome is to make a quite extraordinary theological assertion in the guise of history. The doctrines and practices of Christian groups are at sharp variance with each other in almost any period of Christian histories, but the gap separating even the most past-reverent of contemporary Christians from Augustine’s contemporaries simply boggles the imagination. If a time machine could juxtapose moderns with ancients, it would take a great deal of effort merely to keep them from killing one another, and much more to get them to comprehend each other’s beliefs and practices. They would require the intervention of very high authority indeed to acknowledge mutual communion.

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  In light of Paul’s ambiguity and Luke's opacity about the origins of the Pauline Gentile mission, it will be profitable to look at the contours of Paul’s ministry in two stages: before and after the Jerusalem council. If we examine who Paul ministered to during these respective periods, it might tell us something of when he received his call, or when he became conscious of his calling to go the Gentiles. That in turn will inform us further of the place of Jews in Paul’s apostolate. Jewish Evangelism in Paul’s Early Ministry The period between Paul’s conversion and the Jerusalem council is when our sources are the scarcest, but we do have some material to work with. In Gal 1:17 Paul recounts that, after his conversion/call, “I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.” What Paul was doing in Arabia is one of the most perplexing matters of Pauline chronology. Arabia (ApaBia) denotes the region west of Mesopotamia, south and east of Syria, and extends as far as the Sinai Peninsula.** Paul could have stayed in any number of the Hellenistic cities that existed between Damascus and Babylon, among the northern cites of the Decapolis, or as far south as Petra. But Paul’s mention of Arabia in relation to Damascus means that he probably visited the Nabatean kingdom to the immediate south of Damascus, which is why he was brought to the attention of King Aretas (2 Cor 11:32). We do not know how long Paul was in Arabia, how much of the “three years” mentioned in Gal 1:18, or what he was doing there: respite, learning,** or mission? If mission, then to whom? To Gentile Arabs,** the Nabateans who were ethnic cousins of the Jews (i.e., Ishmaelites), 43. See BDAG, 127-28; Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 81-84; Hengel and Schwemer, Paul between Damascus and Antioch, 120-26. 44. See J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’ Epistle to the Galatians (London: Macmillan, 1982), 87-90; Harald Riesenfeld, The Gospel Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), 17-18; Richard N. Longe- necker, Galatians (WBC; Dallas, TX: Word, 1990), 34; Nicholas H. Taylor, Paul, Antioch, and Jerusalem: A Study in Relationships and Authority in Earliest Christianity (JSNTSup 66; Shefheld: JSOT Press, 1992), 73; Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, 259-60; Wedderburn, First Christians, 87. 45. See E. F. Bruce (Paul: Apostle of the Free Spirit [Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1980], 81): “The implication of his own narrative relates his Arabian visit rather closely to his call to preach Christ among the Gentiles”; Murphy-O’Connor (Paul, 81-82): “Paul must have been doing something to draw attention to himself and arouse the ire of the Nabataeans because he had to return to Damascus. ... The only explanation is that Paul was trying to make converts.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 17. --What Varro Says of the Incredible Transformations of Men. In support of this story, Varro relates others no less incredible about that most famous sorceress Circe, who changed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and about the Arcadians, who, by lot, swam across a certain pool, and were turned into wolves there, and lived in the deserts of that region with wild beasts like themselves. But if they never fed on human flesh for nine years, they were restored to the human form on swimming back again through the same pool. Finally, he expressly names one Demaenetus, who, on tasting a boy offered up in sacrifice by the Arcadians to their god Lycaeus according to their custom, was changed into a wolf, and, being restored to his proper form in the tenth year, trained himself as a pugilist, and was victorious at the Olympic games. And the same historian thinks that the epithet Lycaeus was applied in Arcadia to Pan and Jupiter for no other reason than this metamorphosis of men into wolves, because it was thought it could not be wrought except by a divine power. For a wolf is called in Greek lukos, from which the name Lycaeus appears to be formed. He says also that the Roman Luperci were as it were sprung of the seed of these mysteries.

• From The City of God

  But the Jews do not expect that the Christ whom they expect will die; therefore they do not think ours to be Him whom the law and the prophets announced, but feign to themselves I know not whom of their own, exempt from the suffering of death. Therefore, with wonderful emptiness and blindness, they contend that the words we have set down signify, not death and resurrection, but sleep and awaking again. But the 16th Psalm also cries to them, "Therefore my heart is jocund, and my tongue hath exulted; moreover, my flesh also shall rest in hope: for Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou give Thine Holy One to see corruption. " [1107]Who but He that rose again the third day could say his flesh had rested in this hope; that His soul, not being left in hell, but speedily returning to it, should revive it, that it should not be corrupted as corpses are wont to be, which they can in no wise say of David the prophet and king? The 68th Psalm also cries out, "Our God is the God of Salvation:even of the Lord the exit was by death. " [1108]What could be more openly said? For the God of salvation is the Lord Jesus, which is interpreted Saviour, or Healing One. For this reason this name was given, when it was said before He was born of the virgin:"Thou shall bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins. " [1109] Because His blood was shed for the remission of their sins, it behoved Him to have no other exit from this life than death. Therefore, when it had been said, "Our God is the God of salvation," immediately it was added, "Even of the Lord the exit was by death," in order to show that we were to be saved by His dying. But that saying is marvellous, "Even of the Lord," as if it was said, Such is that life of mortals, that not even the Lord Himself could go out of it otherwise save through death. [1097] Ps. iii. 5. [1098] Ps. xli. 5-8. [1099] Ps. xli. 9. [1100] Ps. xli. 10. [1101] 2 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Pet. iv. 5. [1102] John vi. 70. [1103] 1 Cor. xii. 12. [1104] Matt. xxv. 35. [1105] Matt. xxv. 40. [1106] Acts. i. 17. [1107] Ps. xvi. 9, 10. [1108] Ps. lxviii. 20. [1109] Matt. i. 21.

• From The City of God

  [1499] Aristotle does not affirm it as a fact observed by himself, but as a popular tradition (Hist. anim. v. 19). Pliny is equally cautious (Hist. nat. xxix. 23). Dioscorides declared the thing impossible (ii. 68). --Saisset. [1500] So Lucretius, ii. 1025: "Sed neque tam facilis res ulla 'st, quin ea primum Difficilismagis ad credendum constet:itemque Nil adeomagnum, nec tam mirabile quicquam Principis, quod non minuant mirarier omnes Paulatim. " Chapter 5. --That There are Many Things Which Reason Cannot Account For, and Which are Nevertheless True. Nevertheless, when we declare the miracles which God has wrought, or will yet work, and which we cannot bring under the very eyes of men, sceptics keep demanding that we shall explain these marvels to reason. And because we cannot do so, inasmuch as they are above human comprehension, they suppose we are speaking falsely. These persons themselves, therefore, ought to account for all these marvels which we either can or do see. And if they perceive that this is impossible for man to do, they should acknowledge that it cannot be concluded that a thing has not been or shall not be because it cannot be reconciled to reason, since there are things now in existence of which the same is true. I will not, then, detail the multitude of marvels which are related in books, and which refer not to things that happened once and passed away, but that are permanent in certain places, where, if any one has the desire and opportunity, he may ascertain their truth; but a few only I recount. The following are some of the marvels men tell us:--The salt of Agrigentum in Sicily, when thrown into the fire, becomes fluid as if it were in water, but in the water it crackles as if it were in the fire. The Garamantae have a fountain so cold by day that no one can drink it, so hot by night no one can touch it. [1501] In Epirus, too, there is a fountain which, like all others, quenches lighted torches, but, unlike all others, lights quenched torches. There is a stone found in Arcadia, and called asbestos, because once lit it cannot be put out. The wood of a certain kind of Egyptian fig-tree sinks in water, and does not float like other wood; and, stranger still, when it has been sunk to the bottom for some time, it rises again to the surface, though nature requires that when soaked in water it should be heavier than ever. Then there are the apples of Sodom which grow indeed to an appearance of ripeness, but, when you touch them with hand or tooth, the peal cracks, and they crumble into dust and ashes. The Persian stone pyrites burns the hand when it is tightly held in it and so gets its name from fire. In Persia too, there is found another stone called selenite, because its interior brilliancy waxes and wanes with the moon. Then in Cappadocia the mares are impregnated by the wind, and their foals live only three years. Tilon, an Indian island, has this advantage over all other lands, that no tree which grows in it ever loses its foliage.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Aye, my dear, that I do, indeed. And as to the house being a bad one, I do not know what the Colonel would be at, for it is as good a one as ever I saw.” “He spoke of its being out of repair.” “Well, and whose fault is that? why don’t he repair it?—who should do it but himself?” They were interrupted by the servant’s coming in to announce the carriage being at the door; and Mrs. Jennings immediately preparing to go, said,— “Well, my dear, I must be gone before I have had half my talk out. But, however, we may have it all over in the evening; for we shall be quite alone. I do not ask you to go with me, for I dare say your mind is too full of the matter to care for company; and besides, you must long to tell your sister all about it.” Marianne had left the room before the conversation began. “Certainly, ma’am, I shall tell Marianne of it; but I shall not mention it at present to any body else.” “Oh! very well,” said Mrs. Jennings rather disappointed. “Then you would not have me tell it to Lucy, for I think of going as far as Holborn to-day.” “No, ma’am, not even Lucy if you please. One day’s delay will not be very material; and till I have written to Mr. Ferrars, I think it ought not to be mentioned to any body else. I shall do _that_ directly. It is of importance that no time should be lost with him, for he will of course have much to do relative to his ordination.” This speech at first puzzled Mrs. Jennings exceedingly. Why Mr. Ferrars was to have been written to about it in such a hurry, she could not immediately comprehend. A few moments’ reflection, however, produced a very happy idea, and she exclaimed;— “Oh, ho!—I understand you. Mr. Ferrars is to be the man. Well, so much the better for him. Ay, to be sure, he must be ordained in readiness; and I am very glad to find things are so forward between you. But, my dear, is not this rather out of character? Should not the Colonel write himself?—sure, he is the proper person.” Elinor did not quite understand the beginning of Mrs. Jennings’s speech, neither did she think it worth inquiring into; and therefore only replied to its conclusion. “Colonel Brandon is so delicate a man, that he rather wished any one to announce his intentions to Mr. Ferrars than himself.” “And so _you_ are forced to do it. Well _that_ is an odd kind of delicacy! However, I will not disturb you (seeing her preparing to write.) You know your own concerns best. So goodby, my dear. I have not heard of any thing to please me so well since Charlotte was brought to bed.” And away she went; but returning again in a moment,

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  Martyn, Theological Issues, 111-23, 161-75; idem, Galatians, 570-74; idem, “Apocalyptic » Gospel in Galatians,” 254-59. 112 An Apocalyptic and Salvation-Historical Rereading of Galatians Israel in God's cosmic rescue. In other words, there is no praeparatio evangelica in the history of Israel, for Christ comes not into the context of Israel’s saving history but into the epoch of Israel’s slavery under the law. Martyn writes: “Indeed, one has to say that throughout Galatians, far from proposing a linear history that begins with Abraham, Paul stands in opposition to such a view. Given the work of the Teachers, Paul's insistence on the singularity of the gospel has necessarily to be anti-heilsgeschichte:'* More recently, Douglas Campbell has provided a further critique of the salvation-historical approach by emphasizing that salvation history is not re- ally a soteriology but merely an account of history from a particular salvific perspective. He wishes to accommodate salvation-historical concerns, but he maintains that salvation history inevitably places the determinative empha- sis on Paul’s Jewish background rather than upon Paul’s Christian experi- ence, and salvation history can easily lend itself to a supersessionist view of Israel.” What is needed, instead, is an account of how Paul’s worldview de- 18. Martyn, “Events in Galatians,” 160-79 (quote from 176, italics original); idem, Theolog- ical Issues, 168-70; idem, Galatians, 302-6, 343-52. See similarly Beverly Roberts Gaventa, “The Singularity of the Gospel: A Reading of Galatians,” in Pauline Theology, vol. 1, Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, ed. J. M. Bassler (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985), 147-59. John M. G. Barclay (“Paul’s Story: Theology as Testimony,’ in Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Crit- ical Assessment, ed. B. W. Longenecker [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002], 154-55), in Kasemannesque fashion, thinks that Israel’s history and Paul's own story are reconstituted by “grace-shaped stories,’ which speak to God’s justification of the ungodly. “In other words, ‘justification’ and ‘salvation history’ cannot be played off against one another: the justification of the ungodly, the gift of life to the dead, or hope to the despairing (in short grace) is what constitutes ‘salvation history, which cannot be detected other than by this criterion.” Even so, Barclay adds that Paul “does not trace linear lines through historical processes of human continuities: indeed, the justification of the ungodly is more likely to proceed through paradox, surprise, and the breaking of human connection.

• From The City of God

  487 The City of God as a Single Book A t some point in your life, everybody should have the experience of reading one book. Travel is important; friendship is crucial. Being engaged in your community, caring for others and being cared for by them, finding a meaningful vocation which might, but need not, eventuate in a career—all that is really vital. You can do lots of other things, too. But reading one book is crucial. What does reading one book get you? Well, much depends on the topic of the book, of course. And typically the kinds of books that fit this classification will engage their explicit theme with such command of the topic, profundity of understanding, and brilliance of execution that you can simply be dazzled by the surface of the work. And that can be enough to reward your reading. But by and large, there will be more. For behind the putative topic of one of these books, they will share a common feature. There are many ways to say it, but in honor of Augustine’s classical philosophical interlocutors, let me use their language. A book like this will bring into view the old philosophical puzzle of the one and the many. A book worthy of this kind of engagement will address a bewilderingly diverse set of issues—through diverse characters and plot lines, perhaps; through a manifoldly complicated series of thematic issues, distinguished and braided together. It will reach its tendrils, like an octopus, into many different nooks and crannies of the human experience or the natural world. And it will do so—it must do so—since life, as we experience it, is bewilderingly diverse. And yet that book, for it to be one book and the composition of a reasonably coherent intelligence, will sustain a singularity of vision amidst the diversity. And we ourselves, in Lecture 23 Transcript

• From The City of God

  74 Augustine’s Pagan and Christian Audience W hat has Athens to do with Jerusalem? This line, uttered by the 3 rd -century North African theologian Tertullian, has echoed down the centuries in Christian thought. By it, Tertullian meant to oppose Christian faith to Greek rationalist philosophy. He was worried that the kinds of questions and the sort of attitude popular among skeptically-minded philosophical types were anathema to the absolute truths of Christian dogma. He set up this opposition to assert the two approaches were utterly opposed, and to insist on affirming Christianity without regard for human reason. His was a minority position in his time and ever since, but the question he asked has remained alive to haunt Christian theologians, and as ammunition to non-Christians, about the confluence of, or conflict between, reason and faith. The relationship between holy dogma and human inquiry was fraught for Augustine, as well. His awareness of the need for both active human inquiry and receptive human faith is intricate and very influential for the rest of the tradition. But in this context, and in particular in the context of the writing of The City of God, he knew that his audience, Christian and pagan alike, were asking a slightly different version of Tertullian’s question: What has Rome to do with Jerusalem? Augustine shaped his book to answer that question. For, as a teacher of rhetoric, he knew that you must always keep your audience in mind. Writing was always dialogical for him, a matter of conversation between a particular speaker and particular hearers. Thus it behooves us to understand who made up the audience for The City of God, for in no other of his works was his audience as richly diverse as it was here. In this lecture, I want to explore how his audiences invisibly shaped his book, and how their silent, looming presences—in his Lecture 4 Transcript

• From The City of God

  144 Books That Matter: The City of God emergency medical crews, mail services, medical care for retirees and others, unemployment insurance, and many other things—these are all pretty much innovations in state power in the past couple centuries. Before then, state systems did not so much enable citizens’ power as disable it. For instance, the emperor Trajan, a very well-regarded, thoughtful emperor of the Roman Empire, was deeply suspicious of local fire brigades, for having them would create in citizens a separate locus of power and possibly political identity that would not rely on the direct command or control of the empire but only on themselves. So the empire often would forgo good government policies out of fear that such actions could subvert its own long-term authority. And this is part of that larger theme that I said, that pre-industrial states—and the Roman Empire was very definitely one of these— were better at stopping things happening than in encouraging new developments. Typically, states did two very distinct things. First, they ran armies and the necessary support systems for the armies; and second, they ran systems for taxing the populace to pay for those armies. The Roman Empire was unusual in the ancient world in effectively using its army—its legions—not simply as a military force but as an engineering force as well, building roads and aqueducts and the like. But the unusualness of this practice speaks not simply to the rarity of it in the ancient world overall, but the fact that, for Rome as well, this was pretty much the single exception to the more basic rule. The second thing to realize is that this meant that the government could not reliably police the social order to meet problems when they first arose, but had to manage such policing mostly by indirect deterrence rather than direct coercion. We actually have vestiges of this today, which is why speeding tickets are priced so high. We compensate for the unlikeliness of speeders being caught by the high cost to them if they are indeed caught.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I thought it my duty,” said he, “independent of my feelings, to give her the option of continuing the engagement or not, when I was renounced by my mother, and stood to all appearance without a friend in the world to assist me. In such a situation as that, where there seemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living creature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly insisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but the most disinterested affection was her inducement? And even now, I cannot comprehend on what motive she acted, or what fancied advantage it could be to her, to be fettered to a man for whom she had not the smallest regard, and who had only two thousand pounds in the world. She could not foresee that Colonel Brandon would give me a living.” “No; but she might suppose that something would occur in your favour; that your own family might in time relent. And at any rate, she lost nothing by continuing the engagement, for she has proved that it fettered neither her inclination nor her actions. The connection was certainly a respectable one, and probably gained her consideration among her friends; and, if nothing more advantageous occurred, it would be better for her to marry _you_ than be single.” Edward was, of course, immediately convinced that nothing could have been more natural than Lucy’s conduct, nor more self-evident than the motive of it. Elinor scolded him, harshly as ladies always scold the imprudence which compliments themselves, for having spent so much time with them at Norland, when he must have felt his own inconstancy. “Your behaviour was certainly very wrong,” said she; “because—to say nothing of my own conviction, our relations were all led away by it to fancy and expect _what_, as you were _then_ situated, could never be.” He could only plead an ignorance of his own heart, and a mistaken confidence in the force of his engagement. “I was simple enough to think, that because my _faith_ was plighted to another, there could be no danger in my being with you; and that the consciousness of my engagement was to keep my heart as safe and sacred as my honour. I felt that I admired you, but I told myself it was only friendship; and till I began to make comparisons between yourself and Lucy, I did not know how far I was got. After that, I suppose, I _was_ wrong in remaining so much in Sussex, and the arguments with which I reconciled myself to the expediency of it, were no better than these:—The danger is my own; I am doing no injury to anybody but myself.” Elinor smiled, and shook her head.

• From The City of God

  303 Lecture 14 Transcript—Fall of the Rebel Angels (Book 12) Let me read this again to you; it’s very dense. “Let no one seek to know from me what I know that I do not know—unless, perhaps, he wishes to know how not to know that which we should know cannot be known.” In this passage, Augustine reveals something very deep. What he is saying here is that the difficulty we have in properly understanding that there is, strictly speaking, no cause to evil is itself a sign of our own need to change our vision of the world—to change what is obvious to us, and what is puzzling to us. But we’ll come back to that in a little bit. Focus now on how this really is a radically different account than the one found in many other early Christian and pagan thinkers, such as, for example, the Christian Origen. There, evil is contained within cyclical structures which constrain it and make it not a radical rupture in the integration of creation as a whole, but rather an integral part of a larger system. And Origen is not far away from another Christian theologian, Irenaeus, who proposed that evil was a necessary stage of painful separation from a loving God, much as teenagers today rebel against their parents but are eventually, we hope, able to reconcile with them, in no small part due to the independence and hence maturity that their rebellion brought them. On such accounts as these, evil is part of a larger system again which will be wholly reconciled back to God—only then, on Origen’s account, to re-begin the whole cycle of Creation, fall, redemption, restoration, and return, on and on. For Augustine, such accounts make a large mistake, Endless cycles or even any necessity for evil or separation at all, fail to sustain the distinctiveness of good and evil. They blend everything into a kind of metaphysical smoothie, where the distinct tastes of all the discrete realities have been smooshed together. Such an account, Augustine thinks, cannot really respect the metaphysically peculiar and particular nature of history.

• From The City of God

  187 Lecture 9 Transcript—Public Religion in Imperial Rome (Books 6–7) Now we turn to the second big section of the book, Books 6–10, about those elites who seek happiness not in this-worldly accomplishment, such as the grandeur of Rome, but in the stability of otherworldly tranquility. Thus the worldviews espoused by these pagan thinkers are more akin to Augustine’s Christian message. But their similarities render them more dangerous still. Here, the problem is not the problem of the loss of moral innocence, the coming to recognize the power of the problem of evil. Here, the problem is, rather, the loss of intellectual innocence, as it were, and the problem of learning how to think once you have begun to see through some of the stories you were told in your childhood, and come face-to-face with the question of the increased complexity, obscurity, and ambiguity of the world. So where he earlier dealt primarily with historical and political thinkers, here Augustine begins to engage directly with non-Christian philosophy. These books, six and seven, investigate how one group of philosophers, intellectuals, answered this question—they discuss the Roman intellectuals’ interpretations of popular religion, and how they made peace with it. But Augustine’s aim in expositing this story is not to applaud. In fact, he finds the intellectuals’ attitudes abhorrent. In this book and the following ones, Augustine is engaging these pagan philosophers, especially their critique of myth and popular religion. So, to understand his critique, you have to understand their position. Now, the question of how to understand myth is actually one of the deepest themes of ancient philosophy, and one of the most basic challenges for humanity, the challenge of figuring out how to grow into a fully adult understanding of how the world works. In a way, this problem is the problem of how to get past a relation to the world marked by superstition. Now, by superstition, I mean the idea that we may be deeply mistaken about the structure of the world. We may be being tricked metaphysically to believe things are one way where they are not that way at all. Once we understand the power of Xenophanes’s claim about cows making cow gods, how do we come back to our own world and make sense of it anew? The

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I am not sorry to see you alone,” he replied, “for I have a good deal to say to you. This living of Colonel Brandon’s—can it be true?—has he really given it to Edward?—I heard it yesterday by chance, and was coming to you on purpose to enquire farther about it.” “It is perfectly true.—Colonel Brandon has given the living of Delaford to Edward.” “Really!—Well, this is very astonishing!—no relationship!—no connection between them!—and now that livings fetch such a price!—what was the value of this?” “About two hundred a year.” “Very well—and for the next presentation to a living of that value—supposing the late incumbent to have been old and sickly, and likely to vacate it soon—he might have got I dare say—fourteen hundred pounds. And how came he not to have settled that matter before this person’s death? Now, indeed it would be too late to sell it, but a man of Colonel Brandon’s sense! I wonder he should be so improvident in a point of such common, such natural, concern! Well, I am convinced that there is a vast deal of inconsistency in almost every human character. I suppose, however—on recollection—that the case may probably be this. Edward is only to hold the living till the person to whom the Colonel has really sold the presentation, is old enough to take it. Aye, aye, that is the fact, depend upon it.” Elinor contradicted it, however, very positively; and by relating that she had herself been employed in conveying the offer from Colonel Brandon to Edward, and, therefore, must understand the terms on which it was given, obliged him to submit to her authority. “It is truly astonishing!”—he cried, after hearing what she said—“what could be the Colonel’s motive?” “A very simple one—to be of use to Mr. Ferrars.” “Well, well; whatever Colonel Brandon may be, Edward is a very lucky man.—You will not mention the matter to Fanny, however, for though I have broke it to her, and she bears it vastly well,—she will not like to hear it much talked of.” Elinor had some difficulty here to refrain from observing, that she thought Fanny might have borne with composure, an acquisition of wealth to her brother, by which neither she nor her child could be possibly impoverished. “Mrs. Ferrars,” added he, lowering his voice to the tone becoming so important a subject, “knows nothing about it at present, and I believe it will be best to keep it entirely concealed from her as long as may be. When the marriage takes place, I fear she must hear of it all.”

• From The City of God

  In book 12, August ine discusses evil at length. What does he think evil is in its essence? 2. Given t his metaphysical and ontological account of evil, how does Augustine explain wicked acts? What, for example, causes the angels to fall? Can we conceive of evildoing in these terms? 3. Do you t hink Augustine’s account captures something important about the phenomenon of evil? Do you think it leaves anything important out? 294 Fall of the Rebel Angels (Book 12) I f Book 11 explores the most basic fact about our world, the fact that it was created and has a beginning Book 12 addresses the next issue. If there are right beginnings, there are also wrong ones; most famously and fundamentally, there is the wrong beginning of creatures who decide inexplicably to rebel against God’s plan for them in creation—that is, the wrong beginning of the Fall and evil. So here we find the core of Augustine’s analysis of the problem of evil, conceived here in terms of the Fall of the rebel angels, as an exemplary account of the origins of sin and the nature of evil in a creature with a will of its own. We will focus especially on Augustine’s curious insistence that, when considered aright and taken with full seriousness, the Fall is inconceivable, means that literally, we’ll see. We believe we know what caused the Fall, but we are mistaken, Augustine thinks. Hence we must learn, and I’m quoting him here, “how not to know what cannot be known.” Before we get into the weeds on this issue, step back and ask, Why do we want to think about evil at all? Many people today think the language of evil is irredeemably mythological and should just be kicked to the side. Typically, when we respond in the affirmative, we offer two kinds of positive replies to why we’d want to think about evil. One a relatively straightforward one, one more complicated. The straightforward one is simple. We study the language of evil to understand others, both historical others and our contemporaries, who still operate with this language and believe that it has illuminative power. The second argument is a bit more challenging. We study this language since, despite the many legitimate worries about it, it might irreplaceably articulate an ineliminable element of the experience of Lecture 14 Transcript

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  Jackie heard the brokenness and despair, but also the excitement, in his voice. She took pity on him. “Everybody’s got to find their own porthole,” she said. “It’s harder for men to get in than women unless they pay and pay. Although you’re pretty cute—you’ll have a chance.” “Any hints on where to find a porthole?” “Try the fourth dryer from the left at the laundromat at the corner of 18th Street and Grover Avenue,” said Jackie. She waved. “Bye.” Her face began to blur and liquefy, and then she poured herself down into her straw and was gone. Cardell picked up the straw and looked through it. There was no blockage. “Jackie?” he said. The bartender stood watching him, holding a glass. “What just happened?” Cardell said. “Your lady friend seems to have been sucked into her straw,” the bartender said. “That’s what I think, too,” Cardell said. The bartender shrugged. “It happens, man.” “Well,” Cardell said, “I guess I’ll be heading out.” “Have a good night.” Cardell dropped a twenty in the brandy snifter and waved at the pianist, humming along to Hoagy Carmichael. In the elevator down, Cardell smelled his fingers. Then he felt in his pocket. Yes, the silver egg was still there. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Marcela Admires Koizumi’s Sculpture [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Marcela, an art critic, was in the sculpture garden. Koi-zumi, the well-known Japanese artist, was mounting one of her newest wooden sculptures onto its base. The sculpture was of a woman resting on all fours—large thighed and stylized, with a wide bottom and a moon face. She was carved out of black wood with yellow streaks. Marcela wore a boatneck shirt and white Bermuda shorts. She brushed her hair from her face, watching Koizumi bolt both of the wooden woman’s knees to her pedestal. Then the sculptress pulled out a big manual drill with a kink in it where the handle was. Marcela opened her notebook. “And what are you going to do with that?” she asked. Koizumi, a slight woman with a small mouth, said, “Once I get the sculptures mounted, I do the last step, which is to drill this auger bit into their asses.” “Can I watch?” Koizumi almost said no. She preferred to work in private. But then, struck by Marcela’s fresh, curious face and generous hips, she changed her mind. She took a metal poker and tapped it lightly into the wooden seam of the sculpted woman’s bottom. Then she removed it and fitted the tip of the auger into the tiny guide hole she had made. “Now I will drill her asshole,” Koizumi said simply. She pressed against the handle and began slowly turning the crank of the hand drill. Curls of wood came twirling up off the spirals of the bit. Marcela walked around to look at the wooden woman’s face. “She looks like she’s enjoying that pressure,” she said.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Even though the missionaries preached in the first instance to their fellow Jews, they found that they were also attracting gentiles, especially among the God-fearers.21 In the diaspora, Jews welcomed these pagan sympathizers, and the huge outer court of Herod’s new temple had been deliberately designed to accommodate crowds of gentiles who liked to participate in the Jewish festivals. The pagan worshippers had not become monotheists. They continued to worship other gods and participate in the local cults, and most Jews did not object to this, since God had only demanded exclusive worship of Israel. But if a gentile converted to Judaism, he had to be circumcised, observe the whole Torah and eschew idol worship. So the arrival of significant numbers of gentile converts in their congregations put the leaders of the Jesus sect in a quandary. Nobody seems to have felt that gentiles should be excluded, but there was considerable disagreement about the terms on which they could be admitted. Some believed that gentile Christians should convert to Judaism, take on the Torah and face the dangerous ordeal of circumcision, but others felt that, since the present world order was passing away, conversion was unnecessary. The debate became heated but eventually it was agreed that those gentiles who accepted Jesus as messiah need not convert to Judaism. They must simply shun idolatry and follow a modified version of the dietary rules.22 But instead of seeing these gentile converts as problematic, some enthusiasts were actually seeking them out and undertaking ambitious missions to the gentile world. Peter, one of the Twelve, had made converts in the Roman garrison town of Caesarea; Barnabas, a Greek-speaking Jew from Cyprus, had many gentiles in his ekklesia (church) in Antioch,23 the city where those who believed that Jesus was the christos were first given the name of ‘Christians’.24 Somebody – we have no idea who – had even founded a church in Rome. Some of the Jerusalem congregation of Christians, especially Jesus’s brother, James, found this disconcerting. These gentiles were showing a truly impressive commitment. Many Jews regarded pagans as chronically addicted to vicious habits:25 the fact that so many of them were able to observe the high moral standards of their Jewish sect suggested that God must be at work among them. Why was he doing this? The gentile converts were prepared to cut themselves off entirely from the cults that were basic to social life in a pagan city and found themselves in an unenviable limbo; they could eat no meat that had been sacrificed to false gods, so socializing with neighbours and relatives had become well-nigh impossible.26 They had lost their old world and did not feel wholly welcome in the new. And yet gentile converts kept arriving. What did this mean?