Confusion

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 Come As You Are (2015)

  The technical term for this process of organizing your experience according to a preexisting template is “probabilistic generative model.” It means that information—anything you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste—goes first to your emotional brain, where prior learning (possibly about lemons or little rat jackets, possibly about body image or sexual disgust) plus your present brain state (stress, love, self-criticism, disgust, etc.) combine to shape the initial decisions your brain makes about whether to move toward or away from that information. That initial decision sets off a series of expectations about what else might be true and what might happen next. A simpler way to understand it, I think, is in terms of maps versus terrains. the map and the terrain: a tool for reality checkingA map is an abstract representation of something that exists in reality. It’s a simplified picture of an actual place that exists. A place that does not look like the map. If we think of our sexual scripts as a “map,” we can begin to compare it to the terrain—the real thing that actually exists, which the map is supposed to represent. You try to navigate the sexual world by following the map. If the map doesn’t match the terrain, is the terrain wrong? No. The map is the problem. The mapmakers made a mistake or based the map on another map they saw instead of on the terrain itself, or might even have wanted to mislead you deliberately. Maps can be wrong, and that leaves you looking from the map to the terrain to the map again, feeling lost. Sadly, most people’s sexual maps are hugely out of date. We’re like Brendan Fraser’s character in the movie Blast from the Past. His parents raise him in a bomb shelter, mistakenly believing that there was a nuclear attack in 1962, and when he finally goes out into the world thirty-five years later, he is navigating through a landscape that has almost nothing to do with what he has been taught. Like him, we’ve got this map in our heads and we step into the terrain expecting to find a path in one place, and instead we’re instantly lost. As we saw in chapter 5, our maps may have places that are way more than thirty-five years out of date. But perhaps the biggest challenge is that when the map and the terrain don’t match, our brains try to make the map true, forcing our experience into the shape of the map. “No, no, this is the trail,” we say as we stumble through the thicket. “It says so on the map.”

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Archaeologists’ own social statuses—determined, for example, by the gendered assignment of their labor or by their political organization—are in play whenever those archaeologists are at work. Thus ‘science’ is subjective, and only through its subjectivity is its objectivity achieved” (1994:322). Any reconstruction of the past is interactive with the present. Our own personal and individual, social and cultural positions in terms of race, color, creed, gender, class, and everything else as well, are at play in such reconstruction. “The post-processuals … argue [that] archaeology is an ideological enterprise done in the present to serve present interests…. The dimensions chosen for mapping the past are the very ones that are significant, and therefore hotly contested, in today’s societies…. Reconstruction of the past is a component of the social construction of the present…. So-called subjective factors are not ‘noise on the line’ for archaeological data transmission; they are the line itself.” (1994:323, 330). I consider that to be absolutely correct. But where does one go from there? Is it enough to preface all work with an autobiographical confession? Sawicki sees the problem all too clearly. She has three conclusions. One is that “the differences between processual and post-processual archaeology matter little in the field or in the lab, but become significant at the point when a synthetic account of a past society is attempted.” (But that is exactly the point where I am now. How can Lower Galilean archeology build an overall image of that past place and time?) Another conclusion is that “post-processualism does not offer an internally coherent theory and does not seem able on its own to escape a debilitating relativism” (1994:323). That is, of course, the moral black hole threatening all of postmodernism. A final conclusion offers a theoretical solution. That three-way debate leaves archeology in a state of theoretical unrest, but Sawicki suggests that “it is moving toward a chastened realism ,” which she describes very aptly as “planting both feet firmly in scientific processual archaeology while bending into the wind of post-processualism” (1994:323, 324). One minimal aspect of such chastened realism would be for archeologists to pay at least some attention to cross-cultural anthropology, even if not to postmodern epistemology. But what does all of that have to do with Lower Galilean archeology on the 20s of the first century as the third layer of my own interdisciplinary model for obtaining the sharpest possible context for the historical Jesus and the birth of Christianity? First of all, I am working with a general model for context because, without one, I can interpret data almost at will. Second, all three levels of my model are interactive with one another and potentially corrective of each other. Third, within that interaction I still presume a certain hierarchy of stratification: from anthropology, through history, to archeology. Both history’s textual remains and archeology’s material remains are located for me within general anthropological or macrosociological matrixes. Fourth, I have one major problem in this chapter.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  It is hard to avoid that insistence on the reality of bodily death and decay. “Life” and “death” in John 11 are very literal words referring to very literal facts. Yet in the middle of that reality we find this interchange between Jesus and Martha: Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die . Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (11:23–27) Those italicized words indicate a shift from the literal to some metaphorical meaning of “life” and “death.” Furthermore, Martha does not exactly answer Jesus’s question. She believes he is the Messiah, the Son of God, but does she believe that everyone who lives and believes in Jesus will never die ? What does it mean to never die ? Is Lazarus, for John, a positive or negative parable? Is his raising a positive model for that of Jesus or a negative model almost lampooning resuscitation mistaken for resurrection? Is John 11 similar to John 6: Is the physical miracle not important in itself, but only present as a visual aid to the spiritual challenge of Jesus as “the bread of life” (6:35, 42, 48, 51) or “the resurrection and the life” (11:25)? I think that John is using Lazarus in John 11 as a negative foil for Jesus in John 20. Watch, next, what happens there—as a challenge to the synoptic accounts. Two—possibly the two?—most important early Christian leaders known from the synoptic tradition, Mary and Peter, are flatly challenged concerning the resurrection of Jesus in this chapter. They are almost woven together: Mary in 20:1–2 and 20:11–18 frames Peter in 20:3–10. First, Peter. Luke told the story like this: “Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened” (24:12). But John rephrases it like this: Peter and the other disciple [“the one whom Jesus loved” from 20:2] set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  “Okay, so Henry and I were messing around and I said, ‘I’m ready, I want you,’ and he said, ‘No, you’re not wet, you’re just humoring me.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m totally ready!’ And he didn’t believe me because I wasn’t wet. So… should I see a doctor? Is it hormonal? What’s wrong?” “If you’re having pain you should see a doctor, but otherwise you’re probably fine. Sometimes bodies don’t respond with genital arousal in a way that matches mental experience. Tell him to pay attention to your words, not your fluids, and also buy some lube.” “That’s it? Genital response doesn’t always match experience, so buy some lube?” “Yep. It’s called nonconcordance.” “But that’s not what… I mean, is this some new scientific discovery?” “Sorta? The earliest psychophysiological research I’ve read that explicitly measures sexual arousal nonconcordance is from the late seventies, early eighties, though that—” “The eighties? Why did no one tell me this before?” This chapter answers that question, and a whole lot more. The idea that genital response doesn’t necessarily match a person’s experience of arousal runs contrary to the “standard narrative” about sex. As far as most porn, romance novels, and even sex education texts are concerned, genital response and sexual arousal are one and the same. For a long time, I thought the standard narrative was right—of course I did, I believed what I was taught. We all do. So I had no idea what to think when, in college back in the ’90s, a friend told me about her first experiences with power play in a sexual relationship: I let him tie my wrists above my head while I was standing up, and he positioned me so that I was straddling this bar that pressed against my vulva, you know, like a broomstick. And then he went away! He just left, and it was totally boring, and when he came back I was like, “I’m not into this.” He looked at the bar and he looked at me and he said, “Then why are you wet?” And I was so confused because I definitely wasn’t into it, but my body was definitely responding. Like everyone who has ever read a sexy romance novel, I was sure that wet equaled aroused. Desirous. Wanting it. “Ready” for sex. So what could it mean that my friend’s genitals were responding, when she really didn’t feel turned on or desirous at all? What was going on? Nonconcordance is what was going on. In this chapter, I’ll describe the research on nonconcordance, including answering questions like, Who experiences nonconcordance? (Everyone, actually.) How do you know your partner is turned on, if you can’t use their genitals as a gauge? (Pay better attention!) And how can you help your partner understand your nonconcordance? I’ll also address three wrong but beguiling myths about nonconcordance. These myths aren’t just wrong, they’re dangerously wrong.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  If you scored high or low on either scale—especially if your score is at an extreme end—you can say to yourself, “Hey, I’m normal and also comparatively rare!” And as you consider what engages your brakes and accelerator, you’ll begin to realize that you relate to the sexual world around you in ways most other people don’t experience. Camilla, the artist, is smart—smart and curious. One of the things she’s curious about is sex. She doesn’t just read books about it; she reads the original research. And she has struggled to reconcile her intellectual hunger for knowledge about sex with her contrastingly small desire to actually have any sex. That day when we were talking about images of women, she mentioned this puzzle, especially noting that she never seemed to experience “out of the blue” desire. I wondered if she might have sensitive brakes, so I asked her “inhibitors” questions: Do things have to be “just right” in order for you to get aroused? Do you need total trust in your partner? Do you worry about sex while you’re having it? Not really, not really, and not really. Then I asked the “excitors” questions. Do you sometimes get aroused just by watching your partner do something (nonsexual) that they’re good at, or by their smell, or when you feel sexually “wanted”? Are you aroused by new situations? Do you feel turned on by fantasies? Not really, heck no, and… what fantasies? Camilla’s low SE. This doesn’t mean she’s not interested in the idea of sex; it means her brain requires a bunch of stimulation in order to cross the threshold into active desire for sex. I asked about orgasm. “Few in number and slow to come,” she said, “and they don’t often seem worth the effort.” She finds she’s most reliably orgasmic with a vibrator, and that makes perfect sense—mechanical vibration can provide an intensity of stimulation that no organic stimulation can match. But for her, orgasm is sometimes more of a distraction than a goal with sex. She loves being with her partner, she loves playing and exploring. But sometimes she’s just as happy cooking with him as having sex. “Henry isn’t the most sexually driven guy in the world,” she said. (Henry is her husband. He’s a super-nice guy.) “But he’d love it if I initiated sex a little more often. Is this something a person can change?” Yes it is. Part of Camilla’s solution is in chapter 3, but we’ll have to wait until chapter 7 to get to the heart of it. different for girls… sometimesIf you had to guess which group, men or women, has higher SE on average—a more sensitive accelerator—which would you pick? Men, right? Yep. At the population level, on average, men have more sensitive accelerators.10 And which group has higher SI—more sensitive brakes? Uh-huh. Women, on average, as a population, tend to have more sensitive brakes.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Here in Rome, one could goggle at a preserved piece of the original burning bush, a branch of the very one Moses himself beheld in the Sinai desert three millennia before. It was one of the very branches that, though engulfed in flames, had failed to be consumed, and here was proof! And although everyone knew Judas had been paid thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus, how must it feel to feast one’s eyes on one of those pieces; but here it was, the fabled filthy lucre itself. For beholding this singular abomination, one was awarded an indulgence shortening one’s time in purgatory by fourteen hundred years, almost the very number of years as had passed since this most miserable of all financial transactions. Though it is not mentioned in the Bible, it was believed that before being exiled to the isle of Patmos, the apostle John had been summoned to Rome by Emperor Domitian, who in an effort to humiliate the holy man ordered that all of his hair be cut off. If any of the pilgrims to Rome doubted this, behold! Here they were, the very scissors that—snip-snap-snip!—had done the fabled barbering. The bodies of Saints Peter and Paul were in Rome too, albeit cloven in twain so that twice as many churches might share in the happy bounty. In fact, to stretch these treasures still further, the saints’ heads had been removed from their bodies and now rested comfortably in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. But because of the vast throngs, Luther was not able to avail himself of the special grace of viewing these celebrated icons. He was also unable to say Mass in St. John Lateran, which was more than a pity, because it had been stipulated that a priest saying Mass there could obtain his own mother’s salvation. The very idea of it must have been disturbing and confusing: that because of the gabbling crowds Luther’s dear mother might suffer the horrors of purgatory, or worse. What sense did it all make? But the church was full of such mysteries, and who was this Martin, a mere sinful monk, to question any of it?

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  Learning about her sexual brakes helped some, but it was when she and Carol talked about context—What contexts arouse you? What contexts hit the brakes?—that they discovered that fantasies were great for Merritt, while real life was… a challenge. Which makes lots of sense for a woman with sensitive brakes. The context—external circumstances and internal brain state—of a fantasy is very different from the context of real life. When you’re alone in bed fantasizing about being dominated by five big, unknown men, you are actually safe, there is no threat to activate your stress response, and the novelty of the fantasy adds fuel to the fire. Great context! But if in real life you were surrounded by five big, unknown men, your brain would probably react with a stress response—Run! Fight! or Freeze!—and that stress response would most likely hit your sexual brakes. Not a great context. “So what do we do about that?” Merritt asked me. “Trust,” I said. “Letting go of the brakes is about trust.” Merritt shook her head and looked at Carol. “I trust you one hundred fifty percent. I’d jump off a cliff blindfolded if you said there was a crash pad at the bottom, no hesitation.” And then Carol said, “That only leaves one other person for you not to trust, huh?” Merritt blinked at us both and said, “Me. I don’t trust me. Is that what you’re saying?” I said, “Do you?” “I trust myself to pay bills on time. I trust myself as a parent. As a writer. Yeah, I… huh.” She stopped and frowned thoughtfully at me. “You trust your intellect,” Carol said, “and your heart. But do you trust your body?” Merritt rubbed a hand hard against her forehead and said, “Honestly, no—and for good reason.” And then we talked about the good reason. I’d like to spend some time with the mesolimbic cortex. It gets pretty nerdy right here—in terms of the garden metaphor, these next two sections are like describing how the soil transforms a seed into a seedling. It’s not something the gardener has much control over, and it happens well below the surface, beyond our ability to observe directly. But especially if you have found cultivating your (or your partner’s) sexuality kind of challenging, the next few pages could really enrich your entire understanding of what’s happening in the deep, subconscious parts of your sexual response. Ready? Okay. liking, wanting, and learningYou’ve probably read about exciting research findings related to “the pleasure centers of the brain.” Put food in your mouth, and these systems get to work. Drink water, they respond. Listen to music, look at art, shoot heroin, or read a novel, and your mesolimbic cortex is busily evaluating, learning, and motivating. Watch porn, hear your neighbors having sex, or feel your partner’s hand gripping lightly in your hair, and these brain systems answer—assessing, planning, and encouraging you to move closer… or farther away.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  Why do we talk about penises “getting hard” and vaginas “getting wet,” when from a biological perspective both male and female genitals get both hard and wet? It’s a cultural thing again. Male “hardness” (erection) is a necessary prerequisite for intercourse, and “wetness” is taken to be an indication that a body is “ready” for intercourse (though in chapter 6, we’ll see how wrong this can be). Since intercourse is assumed to be the center of the sexual universe, we’ve metaphorized male hardness and female wetness as the Ultimate Indicators of Arousal. But like our anatomies, our physiologies are all made of the same components—changes in blood flow, production of genital secretions, etc.—organized in different ways. We put a spotlight on male hardness and a spotlight on female wetness, but male wetness is happening, too, and so is female hardness. Vulvas also have a set of glands at the mouth of the urethra, the orifice we pee out of, called Skene’s glands. These are the homologue of the male prostate. The prostate does two things: It swells around the urethra so that it’s difficult or impossible to urinate during sexual arousal, and it produces about half of the seminal fluid in which sperm travels. In other words, it makes ejaculate. The Skene’s glands also swell around the urethra, making it difficult to urinate when you’re very aroused. If you’ve ever tried to pee right after having an orgasm, you’ve confronted this directly—you have to take deep, cleansing breaths to give your genitals time to relax. Sometimes, the Skene’s glands produce fluid, which is probably a source of “female ejaculate.” Female ejaculation—“squirting”—has gotten some attention lately, in part because more science has been done and in part because it’s been featured in porn. As a result, I get asked about it pretty regularly. In fact, one day I was visiting a student residence hall to answer anonymous questions out of a box, only to find that one student had put in the question, “How do I learn to squirt?” while another student had put in, “How do I stop squirting?”7 Needless to say, our culture sends mixed messages to women about their genital fluids… or their lack thereof. On the one hand, ejaculation is viewed as a quintessentially masculine event and women’s genitals are, ya know, shameful, so for a female body to do something so emphatic and wet is unacceptable. On the other hand, it’s a comparatively rare event, and the perpetual pursuit of novelty, coupled with basic supply-and-demand dynamics, means that the rare commodity of a female body that ejaculates is prized and put on display. So if they’re paying attention to cultural messages about ejaculation, women are understandably confused.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  But it’s men-as-default in a different way from how it worked with arousal and desire. Culture sanctions spontaneous desire as the “expected” kind of desire because that’s how men experience desire (though not all of them do, of course), and culture sanctions concordant arousal as the expected kind of arousal because that’s how men experience arousal (though, again, not all of them do)… but if women’s expected kind of orgasm is whatever men experience, then that should be orgasms from clitoral stimulation, since anatomically the clitoris is the homologue of the penis. To say that women should have orgasms from vaginal penetration is anatomically equivalent to saying that men should have orgasms from prostate or perineal stimulation. Certainly many men can orgasm from that kind of stimulation, but we don’t judge them if they don’t, and they don’t usually wonder if they’re broken if they don’t. So apparently, according to cultural myth, women should be just like men—with concordant arousal and spontaneous desire—right up until we actually start having intercourse, and then we’re supposed to function in an exclusively female way, orgasming from a behavior that also happens to get men off very reliably. Men’s pleasure is the default pleasure. Camilla, with her relatively insensitive sexual accelerator, had always been slow to orgasm and wasn’t all that interested in having more of them. They were a lot of work most of the time, and not rewarding enough to bother. She had masturbated very rarely in her life, and then more out of curiosity than desire. And she often wasn’t too interested in having an orgasm when she had sex with Henry. Henry, gentleman that he was, had a hard time with this. “If you don’t have an orgasm, how can I tell that I satisfied you?” he would ask. “You can tell because I say that I’m satisfied! If I eat less pizza than you and say that I’m full, do you doubt me? If I have two glasses of wine and feel as tipsy as I want to feel, am I supposed to try to increase my tolerance? If I read a novel but don’t feel compelled to read the sequel, is there something wrong with that?” “Of course not,” was the answer to all three questions. “So why,” Camilla said, “do you need me to experience some physiological reflex in order to feel like I’ve had an awesome time?” “Because that reflex is how I know you were satisfied!” It was one of those disagreements where each person’s point of view is so obvious to each person but so foreign to the other person that they didn’t even know where to start. Their solution was the kind of problem-solving that shows me they’ll be together for decades. They literally switched places—they swapped seats—and took on the other person’s point of view. Camilla argued for Henry, and he argued for her.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  41 It Makes a Body Wonder I am only a man; I need visible signs... —Czeslaw Milosz, “Come, Holy Spirit” Toby faces my mental block about not believing stuff from the Bible by pointing out that with my current spiritual construct, only stuff that happens to me firsthand counts as divine intervention. With total faith, I cling to the notion that God sent me—little Mary Karr, sinner deluxe—checks in the mail and healed my severely depressed head, got me car loans and a grant. I use the G-word now—God. I feel Him holding me when I’m scared—the invisible hands I mocked years before. But this same power couldn’t turn water into wine or—here’s the biggie—raise the dead, could it? It’s kind of like, Toby says to me at his glossy dining room table one afternoon, not believing in Bob Dylan because you’ve only heard the CDs and never saw him in concert. (Again: What is your source of information?) Based on my experience, I say, I am the center of the universe. Lord help us, Toby says, pulling the corner of his mustache. The magic stuff is what runs me off, I say. Sometimes I think of Jesus as some carnival trickster. Maybe the whole Resurrection was a scam. Like some televangelists saying, Send me a dollar and put your hand on the TV screen and I’ll heal you. Toby tells me how being Christian during the Roman occupation was (as scams go) not so lucrative. The followers weren’t rich guys but riffraff—tax collectors and whores. So let’s say Jesus was sincere. Maybe it’s the Church. Maybe Paul’s the big fakir. You think Paul’s conversion made him some rich cult leader? That’s a laugh. He essentially resigned a CPA job to ride with the Hells Angels. Early Christians, he tells me, partly won converts by going to death singing. I mean, a lion is eating your face and you’re singing. Or you’re crucified upside down and you’re singing. It’s undeniable that some experience changed them from the normal consciousness. Maybe they were hypnotized, brainwashed. Aren’t suicide bombers gleeful? Hell, maybe I’ve gone nuts already, I tell him, though no small number of people—including mental health professionals—can attest that I’m saner and happier than before I went Navy SEAL on the spiritual front. However much I balk at Christian miracles, I think friends manufacturing secular miracles—me included sometimes—is loonier. Like Deb thinks her wind chimes tinkling are messages from her dead ex-husband. You mean to tell me, I say to her on the phone, you don’t believe in the Resurrection but you think Richard controls the wind? If Jesus isn’t (a) crazy, (b) a false prophet or con man or (c) his disciples weren’t, I have to at least consider the fourth possibility: that (d) some of those miracles had some foundation in fact. Somebody saw something remarkable. Once you allow even that sliver of possibility, that crack of light, it’s not long before the stone rolls away from the tomb.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Afterward, Karlstadt—clearly emboldened by this service—decided that on New Year’s Day he would hold a similar one in the Wittenberg City Church. The pastor there was not against it, but all of these reforms happening so quickly contributed to the revolutionary atmosphere in Wittenberg, and rather than calm the mobs, it seemed to further inflame them. At the Christmas Eve service, lamps in the church were broken, and popular songs were caterwauled in the streets, doubtless drunkenly. Then, on the day after Christmas, as though he must do everything radical in one fell swoop, Karlstadt became engaged to a fifteen-year-old. He was himself thirty-five, and it was the fashion among those of nobler birth to marry much younger women, and she was indeed from a noble family. But things were now shooting forward at a pace that was not long sustainable. The clash of traditionalists with Karlstadt and Zwilling and the others had contributed to an atmosphere at times tense and violent, at other times giddy and reckless. The Zwickau ProphetsOn December 27, in the midst of the developing maelstrom, three men arrived from the town of Zwickau, a textile center ninety miles south of Wittenberg. They claimed to have direct communication from God and immediately betook themselves to the home of Melanchthon to tell him all about it. The first two, Nicholas Storch and Thomas Drechsel, were a pair of wild-eyed weavers, while the third, Thomas Stübner, was a former student of Melanchthon’s, but because his father was a bathhouse attendant, he had taken the pointedly egalitarian name Stübner, which was the German word for that profession.*

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But then Zwilling also took on the issue of private masses, declaring on October 6 that he would say them no more and also telling the Wittenberg townspeople that they ought not to attend any masses if the bread and the wine were not offered together to all. Luther had written that private masses were not biblical, not least because the Greek word for the Eucharist in the New Testament was synaxis, which meant an assembly. Nor had anything like them been done until about the seventh century. Still, it is remarkable that the man who had put forth all of these radical ideas was not there to oversee them first being put into practice. The Wittenbergers also incorporated the German language into the Mass by using German for the words that Jesus spoke when he instituted Communion at the Last Supper. Thus Hoc est corpus meum became Das ist mein Körper (This is my body). The radicalness of hearing one’s own language spoken by the priest at the holy culmination of the Mass must have been jarring and even shocking for some in the pews, but the Wittenberger leaders were kicking out the traces and roaring ahead, and Melanchthon evidently didn’t feel he had the authority to slow them down. Part of the problem in Wittenberg at this time was that there was no clear consensus and no clear leader, even though Luther had deputized Melanchthon as his personal choice to lead in his absence. But Melanchthon was simply not up to the responsibility. So there was often confusion and disagreement, mainly because things were moving too fast and some of the faithful were indeed not at all ready to accept these radical changes. In the absence of a leader, therefore, Frederick now stepped in. He sternly ordered the lot of them to resolve their differences and come together on how to proceed, and he appointed a committee—consisting of Melanchthon, Jonas, Karlstadt, Schurff, and one of his own advisers—to investigate the influence of Zwilling. Luther still believed he had left Melanchthon in charge, and in a famous letter that August he urged him to lead and not to be afraid of making mistakes, not to be afraid even of sinning. Luther wrote,

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But there were other things that made him wonder whether he—or the church—was missing something important. For example, during his time in the Erfurt monastery, Luther once happened upon the sermons of Jan Hus. It is curious to think the sermons of this infamous heretic were available for monks to read, but apparently they were and Luther read them. We also know that in reading them, Luther was mystified and disturbed as to why Hus had been denounced as a heretic and burned. But he was not yet ready to speak of this or discuss it with anyone. He was still at this time willing simply to be obedient and to trust the judgment of the church, to assume that he himself had missed something that he would eventually see. Luther began his studies at the monastery in the summer of 1507; but already by the fall of 1508, Staupitz had sent him to Wittenberg. It was fully expected that he would spend his life in Erfurt, but Staupitz was the vicar-general of the order and had the authority to send monks wherever he needed them, and he needed Luther in Wittenberg for a short period. Luther was never meant to stay there indefinitely. In fact, he stayed only for a year. We know that he would return to Wittenberg in due time and never leave again, but when Staupitz sent him there in 1508, that was not the plan. We suspect that Staupitz sent Luther there because he saw Luther was not making any real progress in his own struggles with sin, so perhaps he felt that a change of environment would help. Or we may guess that Staupitz indeed had a secret master plan to bring Luther to Wittenberg for good eventually. Perhaps because he was the dean of the theological department there, he hoped Luther might be a spectacular addition to it.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Thus did this trio find themselves at Melanchthon’s home, where they quickly overwhelmed the shy genius with their confident biblical interpretations and stories of heavenly ecstasies. Amsdorf too was taken in. It is easy to see how in that extraordinary environment Melanchthon and others seriously wondered whether they were in some kind of new apostolic era, especially when Storch and his followers had no doubt about it—and there was no Luther nearby to show these miscreants the door. Melanchthon and Amsdorf could not help but be intrigued at the idea that these three Zwickauers had revived the early church’s spiritual gifts. Of course Paul and Peter and other disciples had seen visions. No one doubted this, nor that the apostles had experienced the miracles of speaking in tongues. Who knew but that this was something the Lord wished to bring back now, through these three men? Who knew whether all that had transpired meant that they were living in the last days, just before the Lord’s promised return? For some strange reason, none of the outlandish things these men said seemed theologically iffy—until they shared with Melanchthon their views on infant baptism, which they were implacably against. Of all things, it was this that got his attention. But they said other things that ought to have alerted him, such as the idea that direct revelation from God himself could now supersede the Bible. After all, they said, if the Bible were so necessary, God might have sent it to them directly from heaven. Now they had the Holy Spirit. Melanchthon was in a dither. He didn’t feel confident enough to understand whether these fast-talking holy men were onto something or not, and he felt sure that Luther needed to return again to judge the situation properly. And this was what the prophets themselves wanted too. Where was Luther? They must meet with him and were aggressively pushing on this front. So Melanchthon now wrote to Frederick, asking whether Luther might again be recalled to Wittenberg: I can scarcely tell you how deeply I am moved. But who shall judge them, other than Martin, I do not know. Since the gospel is at stake, arrangements should be made for them to meet with him. They wish it. I would not have written to you if the matter were not so important. We must beware lest we resist the Spirit of God, and also lest we be possessed of the Devil.8

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  three messagesMany of my students believe that they know kind of a lot about sex, only to discover, about halfway through the first lecture, that they kind of don’t. What they do know a lot about—and they really know a lot about it—is not sex itself but rather what their culture believes about sex. They, we, all of us, are surrounded by messages about these beliefs, messages that are not only short on facts but are also actively self-contradictory. I was puzzled by the false beliefs my students brought with them into the classroom, until I began reading antique sex advice manuals. And there they were in black and white, written a hundred years ago or more—the same false ideas my students believed. Students have absorbed these ideas from their families and their cultures, without any of them ever having read those books. One day in class, I read aloud a couple of definitions of “sex.” First I read from Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique by T. H. van de Velde, from 1926. He wrote that “normal sexual intercourse” is that intercourse which takes place between two sexually mature individuals of opposite sexes; which excludes cruelty and the use of artificial means for producing voluptuous sensations; which aims directly or indirectly at the consummation of sexual satisfaction, and which, having achieved a certain degree of stimulation, concludes with the ejaculation—or emission—of the semen into the vagina, at the nearly simultaneous culmination of sensation—or orgasm—of both partners.1 Then I read from The Hite Report, published in 1976, from the chapter titled “Redefining Sex”: Sex is intimate physical contact for pleasure, to share pleasure with another person (or just alone). You can have sex to orgasm, or not to orgasm, genital sex, or just physical intimacy—whatever seems right to you. There is never any reason to think the “goal” must be intercourse, and to try to make what you feel fit into that context. There is no standard of sexual performance “out there,” against which you must measure yourself; you aren’t ruled by “hormones” or “biology.” You are free to explore and discover your own sexuality, to learn or unlearn anything you want, and to make physical relations with other people, of either sex, anything you like.2 And I asked my students, “Which of these is more like what you learned growing up?” No contest. Ideal Marriage. Many of us have absorbed ideas about sex that are at home in a century-old sex manual, even though all the research and political change since then has busily dismantled every single aspect of those old ideas. Somehow the culture has not absorbed the more inclusive and evidence-based ideas of more recent decades.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Is it not also possible that the event was so festive and such a palpable relief from two years of unspoken tension that Luther’s question was asked half in jest? And that his father’s response was less a withering public rebuke, made awkwardly in front of the gathered assemblage, than a “you should talk” tu quoque riposte, made in the same semi-jesting spirit? We know that later in life Luther’s taste for japery knew no bounds, and we know that the Thuringian/Saxon world was famously fond of just this kind of playful persiflage, so it’s impossible to say. “But Father,” replied the son, “I could do you more good by prayers than if I had stayed in the world.” And then to cinch things nicely, he reminded his father that it was God speaking to him through the thunder that had brought him to where he was. Surely no good father would wish to overrule God himself. But Luther’s father was as clever as his son, replying, “God grant it was not an apparition of the Devil!” What we do know is that no matter how it came across at the time, these final words of this exchange somehow struck Luther and haunted him for many years. This was of course because Luther in later years often wondered about what really had happened to him that day amid the cracking thunder and lightning. Had it been God or the devil? The thin twenty-three-year-old was years from thinking of monkery as nonsense, but the seeds were planted that day that would in time germinate and inadvertently soar up into a beanstalk of such power that it would split the monolith of European Christendom, something which at that time was as shocking as if it had cracked the very sky itself. Trying to Get to HeavenIn 1507, Luther was a monk and an ordained priest. But it wasn’t enough simply to be a monk. Now he had to do what monks did: be scrupulous in his prayers and his thoughts and constantly confess the slightest unscrupulousness that he could see in these areas. Whereas it would be wrong to suggest other monks didn’t take all of this seriously, one gets the impression that Martin Luther took it about as seriously as anyone ever could, and because of this he bumped hard into the limitations of this life in a way that few ever did, which in turn is precisely what caused him to think about the whole religious system in a way that few ever did.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When at last the titles were ended, Luther spoke, first in German, and then translating what he had said in Latin. One observer remarked, “He spoke with subdued, soft voice, as if frightened and shocked, with little calm in his visage and gestures, also with little deference in his attitude and countenance.”10 It seems that many listening that day found it quite difficult to understand him. But what he in fact said now was “The books are all mine. And I have written more.” Then von der Ecken asked the second question: Did Luther defend them, or wish to recant them?11 Included in the long list, near the end, was Luther’s recently published volume of lectures on the psalms. Aleander had ordered it from the Frankfurt book fair and added it to the list of books. This recent book, like many others on the long list, was not the source of any of the troubling statements cited in the papal bull. Von der Ecken had made it very clear that they wanted only simple yes or no answers. They would not be drawn into a debate. So Luther said, “This touches God and his Word. This affects the salvation of souls. Of this Christ said, ‘He who denies me before men, him will I deny before my father.’ To say too little or too much would be dangerous. I beg you, give me time to think it over.”12 He said that he wanted to answer “satisfactorily” and in a way that did “no violence to the divine Word and danger to my own soul.” To be sure, this was not the response anyone expected. It was irregular and confusing. And indeed, what was it exactly? Was it merely Saxon cunning, a buffoonish stunt to buy time and enable the crafty Luther to do something that would throw sand in the faces of these august men here arrayed? Or was it a sign that Luther was frightened and like a rabbit must scamper back to his warren to cower, for he knew not what else to do? But the simple answer to this conundrum, which scholars have debated for five centuries, is likely that Luther was fully expecting to be confronted with his own purportedly heretical statements and assertions, which he would be given a chance to reiterate or deny. That, and nothing more. He never expected to be confronted with an impossibly jumbled pile of his many works and to be asked from his mind to make a definitive statement upon them all. He had certainly prepared none. If people thought that fear of a painful death at the stake would have prodded Luther simply to say, “Yes they are mine, and yes I recant anything you wish me to recant,” they were mistaken.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The conversation went back and forth, and it was clear the two of them had different views of how things had proceeded over the previous two years. To his credit, Luther wholeheartedly accepted Karlstadt’s position as being implacably against violence, but he struggled to determine whether Karlstadt’s and Müntzer’s positions nevertheless somehow partook of the same “spirit.” Both of them believed in the mystical idea of hearing God’s voice. Both of them believed infant baptism a wicked idea. Both of them believed images must never be used. Both of them seemed to be antiauthority in their disdain for nobles and their special affinity with the peasants. Luther was not adamant in making his larger point, but he was sincerely trying to puzzle it through. Was there a “spirit of Allstedt” common to both men? Of course no one questioned Luther’s own doctrine of “spirits,” which was itself at least unclear and not at all scripturally based. Did he mean to say that there was a specific demonic power leading Müntzer onward and that one was either wholly against that “spirit” or for that “spirit”? Could there not be a host of such demonic spirits? Luther’s insistence at times that one be clearly on board with him in all matters, or else anathema, ironically betrayed the same inflexibility that he had experienced with the papists and the Schwärmer both. At some point in their long conversation, Karlstadt accused Luther of having changed his position on something. At this point, Luther cheerfully said, “My dear doctor, if you really know that to be the case, then write it out freely and boldly so that it comes to light.”14 This was an important moment. Soon Luther repeated the challenge, pulling a gulden from his pocket as a token of his seriousness and tossing it to Karlstadt. “The more boldly you attack me, the dearer you will be to me.”15 Karlstadt then bent the soft gold coin—presumably with his teeth—to take it out of circulation and thus made it a permanent token of Luther’s promise that he was free to write against him. So it seemed that things ended on a reasonably friendly note, but what happened two days later casts doubt on that interpretation. Luther two days after this meeting arrived in Orlamünde to preach, but when he did, he was not greeted by the townspeople, all of whom claimed to have been in the fields, harvesting. Luther seemed in a sour mood already and likely took offense at what he perceived as a lack of courtesy toward him. So when some of the town council appeared, he pointedly did not deign to doff his hat, as was customary and polite, and promptly took them to task over a letter they had sent him complaining of his treatment of Karlstadt, which he had found exceedingly rude and harsh in its tone. He even accused Karlstadt of having written it himself, which the Orlamünders flatly denied.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Al-Ghazzali, however, had a restless temperament that made him struggle with truth like a terrier, worrying problems to the bitter death and refusing to be content with an easy, conventional answer. As he tells us, I have poked into every dark recess, I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss. I have Scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every community. All this I have done that I might distinguish between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation. 9 He was searching for the kind of indubitable certainty that a philosopher like Saadia felt, but he became increasingly disillusioned. No matter how exhaustive his research, absolute certainty eluded him. His contemporaries sought God in several ways, according to their personal and temperamental needs: in Kalam, through an Imam, in Falsafah and in Sufi mysticism. Al-Ghazzali seems to have studied each of these disciplines in his attempt to understand “what all things really are in themselves.” 10 The disciples of all four of the main versions of Islam that he researched claimed total conviction but, al-Ghazzali asked, how could this claim be verified objectively? Al-Ghazzali was as aware as any modern skeptic that certainty was a psychological condition that was not necessarily objectively true. Faylasufs said that they acquired certain knowledge by rational argument; mystics insisted that they had found it through the Sufi disciplines; Ismailis felt that it was only found in the teachings of their Imam. But the reality that we call “God” cannot be tested empirically, so how could we be sure that our beliefs were not mere delusions? The more conventionally rational proofs failed to satisfy al- Ghazzali’s strict standards. The theologians of Kalam began with propositions found in scripture, but these had not been verified beyond reasonable doubt. The Ismailis depended upon the teachings of a hidden and inaccessible Imam, but how could we be certain that the Imam was divinely inspired, and if we cannot find him what is the point of this inspiration? Falsafah was particularly unsatisfactory. Al-Ghazzali directed a considerable part of his polemic against al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Believing that they could only be refuted by an expert in their own discipline, al-Ghazzali studied Falsafah for three years until he had completely mastered it. 11 In his treatise The Incoherence of the Philosophers, he argued that the Faylasufs were begging the question. If Falsafah confined itself to mundane, observable phenomena as in medicine, astronomy or mathematics, it was extremely useful but it could tell us nothing about God. How could anybody prove the doctrine of emanation, one way or the other? By what authority did the Faylasufs assert that God knew only general, universal things rather than particulars? Could they prove this? Their argument that God was too exalted to know the baser realities was inadequate: since when was ignorance about anything excellent?

• From A History of God (1993)

  As he tells us, I have poked into every dark recess, I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss. I have Scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every community. All this I have done that I might distinguish between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation. 9 He was searching for the kind of indubitable certainty that a philosopher like Saadia felt, but he became increasingly disillusioned. No matter how exhaustive his research, absolute certainty eluded him. His contemporaries sought God in several ways, according to their personal and temperamental needs: in Kalam, through an Imam, in Falsafah and in Sufi mysticism. Al-Ghazzali seems to have studied each of these disciplines in his attempt to understand “what all things really are in themselves.” 10 The disciples of all four of the main versions of Islam that he researched claimed total conviction but, al-Ghazzali asked, how could this claim be verified objectively? Al-Ghazzali was as aware as any modern skeptic that certainty was a psychological condition that was not necessarily objectively true. Faylasufs said that they acquired certain knowledge by rational argument; mystics insisted that they had found it through the Sufi disciplines; Ismailis felt that it was only found in the teachings of their Imam. But the reality that we call “God” cannot be tested empirically, so how could we be sure that our beliefs were not mere delusions? The more conventionally rational proofs failed to satisfy al-Ghazzali’s strict standards. The theologians of Kalam began with propositions found in scripture, but these had not been verified beyond reasonable doubt. The Ismailis depended upon the teachings of a hidden and inaccessible Imam, but how could we be certain that the Imam was divinely inspired, and if we cannot find him what is the point of this inspiration? Falsafah was particularly unsatisfactory. Al-Ghazzali directed a considerable part of his polemic against al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Believing that they could only be refuted by an expert in their own discipline, al-Ghazzali studied Falsafah for three years until he had completely mastered it. 11 In his treatise The Incoherence of the Philosophers , he argued that the Faylasufs were begging the question. If Falsafah confined itself to mundane, observable phenomena as in medicine, astronomy or mathematics, it was extremely useful but it could tell us nothing about God. How could anybody prove the doctrine of emanation, one way or the other? By what authority did the Faylasufs assert that God knew only general, universal things rather than particulars? Could they prove this? Their argument that God was too exalted to know the baser realities was inadequate: since when was ignorance about anything excellent? There was no way that any of these propositions could be satisfactorily verified, so the Faylasufs had been irrational and unphilosophical by seeking knowledge that lay beyond the capacity of the mind and could not be verified by the senses.