Contempt

Passages

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

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

  AMBROSE. The comparison then is between one man and the whole Jewish people, from whom through the Law the unclean spirit had been cast out. But because in the Gentiles, whose hearts were first barren, but afterwards in baptism moistened with the dew of the Spirit, the devil could find no rest because of their faith in Christ, (for to the unclean spirits Christ is a flaming fire,) he then returned to the Jewish people. Hence it follows, And finding none, he saith, I will return to my house whence I came. ORIGEN. That is, to those who are of Israel, whom he saw possessing nothing divine in them, but desolate, and vacant for him to take up his abode there; and so it follows, And when he came, he findeth it swept and garnished. AMBROSE. For Israel being adorned with a mere outward and superficial beauty, remains inwardly the more polluted in her heart. For she never quenched or allayed her fires in the water of the sacred fountain, and rightly did the unclean spirit return to her, bringing with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. Hence it follows, And he goeth and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. Seeing that in truth she has sacrilegiously profaned the seven weeks of the Law, (i. e. from Easter to Pentecost,) and the mystery of the eighth day. Therefore as upon us is multiplied the seven-fold gifts of the Spirit, so upon them falls the whole accumulated attack of the unclean spirits. For the number seven is frequently taken to mean the whole. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 43. in Matt.) Now the evil spirits who dwell in the souls of the Jews, are worse than those in former times. For then the Jews raged against the Prophets, now they lift up their hands against the Lord of the Prophets, and therefore suffered worse things from Vespasian and Titus than in Egypt and Babylon. Hence it follows, And the last state of that man is worse than the former. Then too they had with them the Providence of God, and the grace of the Holy Spirit; but now they are deprived even of this protection, so that there is now a greater lack of virtue, and their sorrows are more intense, and the tyranny of the evil spirits more terrible. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. The last state also is worse than the first, according to the words of the Apostle, It were better not to have known the way of truth, than after they have known it to turn back from it. (2 Pet. 2:21.)

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  competence. If they feel bored or annoyed, they show it more freely and openly. They often smile less, frequent smiling being a sign of overall insecurity. They feel more entitled to touch people, such as with friendly pats on the back or on the arm. In a meeting, they will tend to take up more space and create more distance around themselves. They stand taller, and their gestures are relaxed and comfortable. Most important, others feel compelled to imitate their style and mannerisms. The leader will tend to impose a form of nonverbal communication on the group in very subtle ways. You will notice people mimicking not only their ideas but also their calm or more frenetic energy. Alpha males like to signal their superior position in the rank in several ways: They speak faster than others and feel entitled to interrupt and control the flow of the conversation. Their handshake is extra vigorous, almost crushing. When they walk in the office, you will see them assume a taller stance and a purposeful stride, generally making inferiors walk behind them. Watch chimpanzees in a zoo and you will notice similar behavior on the part of the alpha chimp. For women in leadership positions, what often works best is a calm, confident expression, warm yet businesslike. Perhaps the best example of this would be current German chancellor Angela Merkel. Her smiles are even less frequent than the average male politician, but when they occur they are especially meaningful. They never seem fake. She listens to others with looks of complete absorption, her face remarkably still. She has a way of getting others to do most of the talking while always seeming to be in control of the course of the conversation. She does not need to interrupt to assert herself. When she wants to attack someone, it is with looks of boredom, iciness, or contempt, never with blustery words. When Russian president Vladimir Putin tried to intimidate her by bringing his pet dog into a meeting, knowing Merkel had once been bitten and had a fear of dogs, she visibly tensed, then quickly composed herself and looked him calmly in the eye. She put herself in the one-up position in relation to Putin by not making anything of his ploy. He seemed rather childish and petty in comparison. Her style does not include all of the alpha male body posturing. It is quieter and yet extremely powerful in its own way. As women come to attain more leadership positions, this less obtrusive style of authority might begin to alter our perception of some of the dominance cues so long associated with power. It is worth observing those in positions of power in your group for signs of dominance cues and for their absence. Leaders who display tension and hesitation in their nonverbal cues are generally insecure in their power and feel it threatened. Signs of such anxiety and insecurity are generally easy to spot. They will talk in a more halting

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  There are two varieties of this: The first comes when people are aware of a negative feeling and try to suppress it, but it leaks out in a fraction of a second. The other comes when we are unaware of their hostility and yet it shows itself in quick flashes on the face or in the body. These expressions will be a momentary glare, tensing of the facial muscles, pursing of the lips, the beginnings of a frown or sneer or look of contempt, with the eyes looking down. Aware of this phenomenon, we can look for these expressions. You will be surprised at how often they occur, because it is nearly impossible to completely control the facial muscles and repress the signs in time. You must be relaxed and attentive, not obviously looking for them but catching them out of the corner of your eye. Once you begin to notice such expressions, you will find it easier to catch them. Equally eloquent are those signs that are subtle but can last for several seconds, revealing tension and coldness. For instance, when you first approach someone who harbors negative thoughts toward you, if you surprise them by coming up on them from an angle, you will clearly see signs of displeasure at your approach before they have had time to fit on their affable mask. They are not so happy to see you and it shows for a second or two. Or you are expressing a strong opinion and their eyes begin to roll, which they try to quickly cover up with a smile. Sudden silence can say a lot. You have said something that triggers a twinge of envy or dislike, and they cannot help but lapse into silence and brood. They may try to hide this with a smile as they inwardly fume. As opposed to simple shyness or having nothing to say, you will detect definite signs of irritation. In this case, it is best to notice this a few times before coming to any conclusions. People will often give themselves away with the mixed signal—a positive comment to distract you but some clearly negative body language. This offers them relief from the tension of always having to be pleasant. They are betting on the fact that you will tend to focus on the words and gloss over the grimace or lopsided smile. Pay attention as well to the opposite configuration—someone says something sarcastic and pointed, directed at you, but they do this with a smile and a jokey tone of voice, as if to signal it is all in good humor. It would be impolite to not take it in this vein. But in fact, particularly if this occurs a few times, you should pay attention to the words and not the body language. It is their repressed way of expressing their hostility. Take notice of people who praise or flatter you without their eyes lighting up.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  Her eyes move past me, over my head, and I feel suddenly the tepid breath of Barnelle. He’s a swashbuckler today, actually wearing one of those head things, like a doctor in the movies. It is a flat metallic disk connected to a band and he lifts it off and shoves it into the pocket of his suitcoat. The hair over the top of his head is a delicate auburn doily. He pats it down, using the palm of his hand, pushing the tattered strands back in place, willing them to stay there. He’s wearing a plastic Santa Claus face on his lapel. He smiles at her, he has always acted as though he loves her and regrets this. He acknowledges me with a tilt of the head, some kind of invisible language that works, lifts her wrist and counts the pulse, corpuscles stepping through from her hand to her arm, one by one, like soldiers heading back to camp. He finishes and says Hello, girls in a sweet, cheerful voice and then pulls the string on his Santa Claus. The nose lights up and beams across the bedcovers. Barnelle is sending us a signal, Santa’s nose twinkling like Mars. It’s four o’clock and I’m ready to do something else for a while. My legs want to walk, my eyes keep finding the window. “I saw Barn-door,” Linda announces. She is back, ready for her shift, standing in the doorway with snow melting on her coat collar. “He was climbing into his gold-plated Cadillac, hightailing it home.” Linda hates Barnelle with a rare enthusiasm, able to tick off his crimes on the fingers of both hands. She passes the plate where the rejected Christmas cookies used to be. “God, you’ll eat anything,” she remarks cheerfully. She’s leaving tracks all over the clean floor, in meandering circles. She’s been wrapping Christmas presents for her kids, I know, and her eyes look better. She crinkles them at me sympathetically. “Was Barn-door open?” she asks. This is rhetorical. Over on the bed the gray eyes are closed. Linda wants to know how it’s going, how she’s doing, but the eyes might open again unexpectedly. We tiptoe out. “I stopped at home and went through her closet,” Linda tells me. Nowadays she and I speak of the house where we grew up as home, we forget for long hours the places we live now, which have cupboards with our spices and canned peas, dressers with our clothes.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  146 00:06:39,065 --> 00:06:41,267 [Dr. Joseph] He lied to them for fun. 147 00:06:41,367 --> 00:06:43,202 He enjoyed fooling them into believing 148 00:06:43,302 --> 00:06:46,239 that they were special so that he could manipulate them 149 00:06:46,339 --> 00:06:47,673 and sleep with them. 150 00:06:47,774 --> 00:06:51,477 And he used that throughout the rest of his life. 151 00:06:53,212 --> 00:06:54,847 [Narrator] At just 16, 152 00:06:54,947 --> 00:06:57,049 Raniere drops out of high school, 153 00:06:57,150 --> 00:06:59,318 and one year later, enrolls full time 154 00:06:59,419 --> 00:07:01,354 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 155 00:07:01,454 --> 00:07:03,456 in Albany, New York. 156 00:07:03,556 --> 00:07:05,958 [Armando] He was a triple major in college. 157 00:07:06,058 --> 00:07:10,930 He was doing all of these insanely smart things. 158 00:07:11,030 --> 00:07:14,567 Keith talked about starting his own new form of mathematics. 159 00:07:14,667 --> 00:07:16,469 And more than just being a smart guy, 160 00:07:16,569 --> 00:07:17,770 he was very charismatic. 161 00:07:17,870 --> 00:07:19,939 We were told that he was in 162 00:07:20,039 --> 00:07:21,707 The Guinness Book of World Records, 163 00:07:21,808 --> 00:07:24,444 that he was the third-smartest person in the world. 164 00:07:24,544 --> 00:07:29,048 That he graduated college with, like, a 4.0. 165 00:07:29,148 --> 00:07:32,418 Keith Raniere portrayed himself as a genius, 166 00:07:32,518 --> 00:07:35,588 smarter than Albert Einstein. 167 00:07:35,688 --> 00:07:38,591 200-something IQ. 168 00:07:38,691 --> 00:07:40,426 [Narrator] But some say Keith's accomplishments 169 00:07:40,526 --> 00:07:44,030 are just self-aggrandizing lies. 170 00:07:44,130 --> 00:07:47,033 [Rick] He wasn't this genius he made himself out to be. 171 00:07:47,133 --> 00:07:49,168 In fact, I don't think he has more than 172 00:07:49,268 --> 00:07:51,471 an average intelligence. 173 00:07:51,571 --> 00:07:52,872 That was an act. 174 00:07:52,972 --> 00:07:55,675 That was something that he put together 175 00:07:55,775 --> 00:07:57,376 to appear in a certain way. 176 00:07:57,477 --> 00:08:01,848 He was a middling to below-average student. 177 00:08:01,948 --> 00:08:05,151 [Armando] There are two different versions of Keith-- 178 00:08:05,251 --> 00:08:07,620 the legend that he wants you to believe, 179 00:08:07,720 --> 00:08:11,691 and then there is the actual dude. 180 00:08:13,326 --> 00:08:17,497 [Dr. Marie] He seemed to understand exactly what to say 181 00:08:17,597 --> 00:08:21,300 to make you think that he was the answer to 182 00:08:21,400 --> 00:08:24,103 all of your problems. 183 00:08:25,638 --> 00:08:27,006 [Narrator] But Raniere does show another 184 00:08:27,106 --> 00:08:29,976 truer side of himself in college. 185 00:08:32,044 --> 00:08:35,515 [Rick] I got a call from a woman who was his girlfriend 186 00:08:35,615 --> 00:08:38,351 when he attended Rensselaer Polytechnic. 187 00:08:38,451 --> 00:08:41,454 She was terrified of him. 188 00:08:41,554 --> 00:08:44,257 She told me that, uh, he had stalked her 189 00:08:44,357 --> 00:08:47,727 and was just a very frightening individual. 190 00:08:49,395 --> 00:08:52,064 [music] 191 00:08:52,164 --> 00:08:54,700 [Narrator] After graduating in 1982, 192 00:08:54,800 --> 00:08:57,570 Raniere capitalizes on his outgoing personality

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Bigger and newer is better as churches begin to resemble shopping malls with multiple outlets for their parishioners/customers. In certain areas, belonging to a particular church indicates one's socioeconomic level, enhancing possible business and political contacts. Economic philosophers like Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) critique the typical consumer who acquires goods that do not satisfy any particular need. Such conspicuous consumption of a commodity is usually undertaken to enhance the reputation of the consumer. The flaunting of “luxury” commodities causes an “invidious comparison” to occur among those consumers who are unable to obtain this particular commodity.11 Examples include placing undue emphasis on the clothing labels we wear, the car we drive, the neighborhood we live in, and, yes, the church we attend. Certain churches propagate the view that those who belong to their congregations are closer to biblical accuracy and truth than other churches, specifically those of other denominations. The success of the church (measured by growth) serves as proof of God's approval. Success in ministry is demonstrated by God's blessings, in the form of a bigger sanctuary, a larger congregation, or greater community recognition. When was the connection made between economic success and God's blessings? For sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), the exchange between a religion that encouraged an ethics of abstinence (understood as puritanism) and economic success within modern social life (or, as he calls it, the spirit of capitalism) can be traced to the theology of John Calvin (1509–1564). Weber's understanding of Calvin led him to contend that Protestantism, as a religious ideology, was able to dismantle inhibiting factors of Catholicism that prevented the development of a modern economic system. By spiritualizing the very nature of capitalism, Weber concluded that capitalism was able to flourish in Europe because it provided a rational response to the religious teachings concerning the “Protestant work ethic.” According to Calvin's monumental work, Institutes of the Christian Religion , God determines the eternal fate of each person. Those who are elected are chosen not because of anything they may have done but purely by the grace and mercy of God. God knows who is elected, but how do the elect know they are chosen? After all, according to Calvin, they cannot rely on feeling (as in the case of a conversion experience) because feelings are deceptive. Nor can they rely on good works, because salvation is a gift, not something earned. Nor does church membership assure salvation, for there are those who attend churches that are not chosen (i.e., the Catholic Church, according to Calvin). According to Weber, one knew that one was saved by the visible fruits produced by one's labor. Weber understood Calvinism in a way that linked capitalism with Protestantism. God requires Christians to attain social achievements because it is the will of God that social life be organized according to God's commandments and purpose. Labor ceases to be mundane as it is elevated to the realm of a divine calling, a proposition also voiced by Martin Luther.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  15 not pretend to float above it all with their claims to esoteric truth or the bizarre hope of evacuation into the sky. 23 By the early fourth century, from a position of rapidly growing confidence, Eusebius turns the tables and debuts the game-changing Christian lexical palette: “Christianismos breaks with both Hellēnismos and Ioudaismos, yes. Deal with it!” (1.5.5). Back at the beginning, Paul had parried the same accusation of defection from civic loyalty without benefit of Eusebius’ capsule lexicon. Rejecting demands from others for this-worldly affiliation, he declared: “our political community (ἡμῶν ... τὸ πολίτευμα) exists in heaven, from where we also await a saviour-lord, Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:21). By about 200 CE, increasingly learned Christian writers felt strong enough to confront the “champions and avengers of laws and ancestral institutions” (Tertullian, Apol. 5–6). Thus Tertullian, for example: This is what our project is against: it is against the arrangements made by the ancestors, authoritative opinions [or models] passively received, the laws of those in power, and the reasonings of the wise; it is against antiquity, custom, coercion; it is against precedents, marvels, and wonders—all of which conspired to create your corrupt view of the Deity. (Ad nat. 2.1.7) Claiming a pristine revealed truth in Christ, Christ-followers often viewed variegated local traditions as moldy and corrupting, not as the beautifully varied gardens of the oikoumenē, which gave security and substance to human life. Although Tertullian, like Paul, has the customs of all gentes and nationes in view, as for Paul the Judaeans are his most germane example because they were the precursors of Christians. God had once chosen that gens, but abandoned them and transferred his favor to more faithful followers from all nations (ex omni iam gente et populo et loco cultores sibi adlegeret deus multo fideliores in quos gratiam transferret, Apol. 21.4–6), in a community no longer defined by local tradition. 24 Ethnos- or gens-identity, identified with ancestral customs and laws, has lost its relevance. Clement’s Exhortation to the Greeks weaponizes the same points, contrasting customs “handed down from fathers” with revealed truth: “Let us then steer clear of custom! Let us steer clear of it like a dangerous headland. .... Custom is a snare, a trap, a pit, an evil treat” (Protr. 10, 12.1). At least fictively from the Roman side, the character Caecilius in Minucius Felix’s Octavius mocks Christ-followers’ claim to stand above nations and tribes (gentes nationesque), in their arrogant expectation that the universe will burn while these naïfs alone are saved (11.1). The philosopher Celsus assails the same view (Origen, C. Cels. 5.14–16). Inured to such criticism, however, Tertullian is still confidently awaiting the coming conflagration, in which the world with its ancient ways and origin-claims (cum tanta saeculi vetustas et tot eius nativitates uno igni haurientur), magistrates, philosophers, poets, and other scoffers, will be consumed (Spect. 30). Although each of these authors

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  In general, be wary about people’s promises and never completely rely on them. With those who fail to deliver, it is more likely a pattern, and it is best to have nothing more to do with them. The Insinuating-Doubt Strategy: In the course of a conversation, someone you know, perhaps a friend, lets slip a comment that makes you wonder about yourself and if they are in some way insulting you. Perhaps they commend you on your latest work, and with a faint smile they say they imagine you will get lots of attention for it, or lots of money, the implication being that that was your somewhat dubious motive. Or they seem to damn you with faint praise: “You did quite well for someone of your background.” Robespierre, one of the leaders of the Terror of the French Revolution, was the absolute master of this strategy. He came to see Georges Danton, a friend and fellow leader, as having become an enemy of the revolution, but did not want to say this outright. He wanted to insinuate it to others and strike some fear in Danton. In one instance, at an assembly, Robespierre leaped to his feet to support his friend, who had been accused of using his power in the government to make money. In defending Danton, Robespierre carefully repeated all of the various charges leveled against him in great detail, then concluded, “I may be wrong about Danton, but, as a family man, he deserves nothing but praise.” As a variation on this, people may say some rather harsh things about you, and if you seem upset, they will say they were kidding: “Can’t you take a joke?” They may interpret things you have said in a slightly negative light, and if you call them on this, they will innocently reply, “But I’m only repeating what you said.” They may use these insinuating comments behind your back as well, to sow doubts in other people’s minds about you. They will also be the first ones to report to you any bad news, or bad reviews, or the criticisms of others, always expressed with sympathy, but secretly delighting in your pain. The point of this strategy is to make you feel bad in a way that gets under your skin and causes you to think of the insinuation for days. They want to strike blows at your self-esteem. Most often they are operating out of envy. The best counter is to show that their insinuations have no effect on you. You remain calm. You “agree” with their faint praise, and perhaps you return it in kind. They want to get a rise out of you, and you will not give them this pleasure. Hinting that you might see through them will perhaps infect them with their own doubts, a lesson worth delivering. The Blame-Shifter Strategy: With certain people, you feel irritated and upset by something they have done. Perhaps you have

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  Brenner followed with the announcement that Madison Square Garden would never host another of his fights. “I don’t want him to come over to me some day and say, ‘What’s your name?’ The trick in boxing is to get out at the right time, and the fifteenth round last night [against Earnie Shavers] was the right time for Ali.” A week later, Ali’s fight doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, also tried to get him to retire after receiving a post-fight lab report about the condition of Ali’s kidneys. After getting no response, Pacheco was the one who quit. In 1978, Ali lost his title to Leon Spinks, who had boxed as a professional only seven times. In 1980, he barely and only under suspicious circumstances obtained medical clearance in Nevada to fight Larry Holmes, the current champion. Ali suffered such a physical beating in that loss that Holmes cried after the match. Sylvester Stallone, who was in the audience that night, described the last round as “like watching an autopsy on a man who’s still alive.” Yet, Ali still wouldn’t give up. Giving up wasn’t how he had knocked out George Foreman. Giving up wasn’t how he became the Greatest. By 1981, Muhammad Ali couldn’t get licensed to fight in America, usually a formality, with race-to-the-bottom standards between state commissions to get any marketable fight. If the world was ever screaming, “Time to hang up your gloves!,” that was it. But he went ahead and fought in the Bahamas anyway. He lost again, in an embarrassing spectacle even by boxing standards. The promotion was such a mess that they couldn’t find a key to the venue. They provided only two sets of gloves for the entire undercard so there were additional lengthy delays to unlace the fighters’ gloves so they could be reused. They had to borrow a cowbell to signal the start and end of each round. Muhammad Ali obviously paid a heavy price for continuing to fight until he was nearly forty. He had already shown signs of neurological damage toward the end of his career. All those punches he absorbed after vanquishing Foreman unquestionably contributed to the 1984 diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, and his physical and mental decline thereafter. Persistence is not always the best decision, certainly not absent context. And context changes.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  Picture a group of high school boys standing by their lockers when a girl walks by. One of the boys asks, “How do you rate that?” They then take turns assigning numerical values to the various parts of her anatomy, discussing in great detail how they evaluate her physical attributes.7 This scenario happens all the time, all over the world, every day. It’s a pastime for some. There are television shows and websites and endless discussions all devoted to deciding who’s hot and who’s not. It’s an industry, a form of entertainment, a culture. And it’s everywhere. The problem is that “that” is actually a “she.” A person. A woman. With a name, a history, with feelings. It seems harmless until you’re that girl—and then it hurts. It’s degrading. It’s violating. It does something to a person’s soul. When a “She” Becomes a “That” Jesus had much to say about what happens when a woman, an image-bearer, a carrier of the divine spark, becomes a “that.” In the book of Matthew, Jesus teaches that “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”8 He connects our eyes and our intentions and our thoughts with the state of our hearts.9 Jesus then takes it farther. He says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.” Which is a bit violent. Not to mention painful. And if taken literally, renders half of the human race blind in a matter of moments. Not to mention that blind people are fully capable of lusting. Our only conclusion is that Jesus is using the “it’s merely a flesh wound” picture here to point us to something else.10 Some truth beyond the removing of body parts. If we’re not supposed to take it literally, then how, or where, are we supposed to take it? Jesus explains by saying, “It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” How did we get from lust, which is so common and doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, to having your body thrown into hell in just a couple of sentences? And to avoid this fate you should cut off your hand? Poke out your eye? That would be better? He’s stretching it a bit, isn’t he? Or did we miss something? To understand how Jesus makes these connections, we have to explore the first-century Jewish understanding of heaven. In the book of Psalms, it’s written: “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.”11 To the Jewish mind, heaven is not a fixed, unchanging geographical location somewhere other than this world. Heaven is the realm where things are as God intends them to be. The place where things are under the rule and reign of God. And that place can be anywhere, anytime, with anybody.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Matthew highlights the value of interiority in religion. The religion of the Sermon on the Mount is one that while not introspective after the fashion of Luther and the West was nevertheless preoccupied with interiority—that is, in motives or inclinations of the inner person.36 These inclinations are all related to interpersonal issues and yet are nevertheless a form of interiority. Matthew’s stereotyping of the Pharisees in the Sermon on the Mount establishes the Pharisees as the foil for this interiority. They, unlike the Matthean followers of Jesus, have merely an exterior form of religion—a religion that delights in human praise and outward show (see also Matt 23:5–9), but which is essential y hypocritical because, as the il ustrations (the antitheses) in the Sermon on the Mount show, it does not come from the heart. Jesus proclaims a faith from the heart (a fulfilled righteousness) and the Pharisee stereotype possess nothing more than empty religion. They do not penetrate to the depths of the matter. Through the Pharisee stereotype Matthew turns away the eyes of the followers of Jesus from the exterior realities toward the interior ones. The Roman Empire existed on the plane of the exterior and thus by directing eyes away from this (through the foil provided by the stereotype of the Pharisees) to the interior, Matthew was doing the Empire a service. By emphasizing piety (interiority) at the expense of politics (exteriority) Matthew made his followers of Jesus more “user-friendly” from the empire’s point of view. 34 It should be noted that this is a text from Q, and if it was retained by Matthew merely because it was in a valued source, then it might not represent Matthew’s own view. On the other hand, there is no reason to suspect that its usage here does not reflect Matthew’s own view. 35 S. Moscovici and G. Paicheler, “Social Comparison and Social Recognition: Two Complementary Processes of Identification,” in Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups, 266. 36 Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” in Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976), 78–96. 12 122 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles “Borders” and Stereotypes When one identifies oneself as a plumber or as a pregnant woman, one is defining oneself in categories that have been social y created and are inhabited by others who share them. 37 This shared quality goes hand-in-hand with a non-shared component, so that the “us” is clearly determined in large part by not being “them.” Social identity defines people (and the self) “in terms of … shared similarities with members of certain social categories in contrast to other categories.” 38 When a pregnant woman stereotypes herself as such, she places herself in a shared location with other pregnant woman as well as differentiating herself from woman who are not pregnant and from men. There is always an implicit “us and them” in self-designations.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  with emotion, she begged Feo to give up the fortress, but he refused. As the two of them continued their dialogue, Ronche and Orsi sensed the countess and Feo were playing some sort of game, talking in code. Ronche had had enough of this. Pressing the sharp edge of his lance tight against her chest, he threatened to run her through unless she got Feo to surrender, and he gave her the sternest glare. Suddenly the countess’s expression changed. She leaned further into the blade, her face inches from Ronche, and with a voice dripping with disdain, she told him, “Oh, Giacomo del Ronche, don’t you try to frighten me. . . . You can hurt me, but you can’t scare me, because I am the daughter of a man who knew no fear. Do what you want: you have killed my lord, you can certainly kill me. After all, I’m just a woman!” Confounded by her words and demeanor, Ronche and Orsi decided they had to find other means to pressure her. Several days later Feo communicated with the assassins that he would indeed hand over the fortress, but only if the countess would pay him his back wages and sign a letter absolving him of any guilt for such surrender. Once again, Orsi and Ronche led her to the castle and watched her closely as she seemed to negotiate with Feo. Finally Feo insisted that the countess enter the fortress to sign the document. He feared the assassins were trying to trick him and he insisted she enter alone. Once the letter was signed, he would do as he had promised. The conspirators, feeling they had no choice, granted his request but gave the countess a brief time frame to conclude the business. For a fleeting moment, just as she disappeared over the drawbridge into Ravaldino, she turned with a sneer and gave the Italian equivalent of “the finger” to Ronche and Orsi. The entire drama of the past few days had been planned and staged by her and Feo, with whom she had communicated through various messengers. She knew that the Milanese had sent an army to rescue her and she only had to play for time. A few hours later Feo stood on the ramparts and yelled down that he was holding the countess hostage and that was that. The enraged assassins had had enough. The next day they returned to the castle with her six children and called Caterina to the ramparts. With daggers and spears pointed at them in the most menacing fashion, and with the children wailing and begging for mercy, they ordered Caterina to surrender the fortress or they would kill them all. Surely they had already proven they were more than willing to shed blood. She might be fearless and the daughter of a Sforza, but no mother could possibly watch her children die before her eyes. Caterina wasted no time. She shouted down: “Do it then,

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  208The History of Christianity II “Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.” It’s no wonder that he earned the nickname Darwin’s Bulldog. õBut the truth is that a large proportion of Christian thinkers in Britain found ways to assimilate Darwin’s theory into their worldview. Remember, natural theologians thought of themselves as responsible scientists. Many accepted natural selection as a tool that God may use to guide the world, even if he doesn’t necessarily have his finger on every mate pairing. õThe historian Frank Turner has argued that if anything, Darwin was doing the church a favor by helping to answer that awkward question of how a benevolent God could have created such a savage world of merciless competition. But in time, more and more Christians would fail to see it that way, particularly in the United States. õThere, in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, many conservative Protestants would increasingly see Darwin’s theory as a threat to the core of their faith as well as a symbol for all that had gone awry in the modern age. These conservatives drew a clear connection between Darwin and the blasphemous writings of David Strauss. õBoth worshipped the false god of Wissenschaft. Both dared to question the traditional interpretation of scripture, God’s inerrant revelation. And as to the problem of evil: Darwin didn’t solve it; he made it worse. If apes and humans are descended from a common ancestor—as Darwin would argue in a later book—we can no longer blame the mistakes of Adam and Eve for introducing sin and suffering into the world. Would that mean that God is to blame for sin? õThese conservatives also went after Darwin and the German scholars on the question of method. It wasn’t just that these scholars were wrong, it was that Strauss was a faulty historian and Darwin a faulty scientist. 209Lecture 21—The Church’s Encounter with Modern Learning õPart of what made Darwin’s work so revolutionary is that he helped introduce a new approach to doing scientific work. Until the late 19 th century, many scholars thought of science in terms of collecting and sorting the data from God’s creation, formulating a hypothesis based on that data, and perhaps designing an experiment to test the hypothesis. õThe early 17 th -century philosopher Francis Bacon pioneered this experimental method and sharply differentiated it from the medieval method of reasoning from syllogism to syllogism. But Darwin’s approach was radically different. õDarwin had collected a lot of data on board the Beagle, but he couldn’t exactly test the theory of natural selection in a lab. He had to rely on probability and accept big gaps in his hypothesis that later scientists would fill in. And he wanted to strip out any and all theological assumptions. To Christian critics, this looked like bad science.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Moniz, as I mentioned earlier, shared the Noble Prize for his horrendous and blatantly pseudo-scientific, freakish work, which “docilized” tens of thousands of patients worldwide. The procedure was most popular in the United States, where Walter Freeman (ironically, the father of one of my graduate advisors, Walter B. Freeman Jr.) invented a procedure called a prefrontal lobotomy. Bizarrely, this treatment, according to the senior Freeman, “was simple enough to be conducted in the offices of any general physician.” Basically, in his own words, his method consisted of “knocking them out with an electric shock” and then (in a “medical procedure” reminiscent of Phineas Gage’s accidental lobotomy by tamping iron) “thrusting an ice pick into the crease of the eyelid and into the frontal lobe of the brain and making the lateral cut by swinging the thing from side to side ... an easy procedure, though definitely a disagreeable thing to watch.” (Note Freeman’s curious and callous use of “them” and “thing,” as well as his choice of “surgical instrument”—an ice pick!) It may seem contradictory that this procedure can produce, as in the case of Phineas Gage, “an individual both animal and childlike”; while Ferrier’s monkeys lacked curiosity and exploration; and, with Damasio’s patient Elliot, the capacity to make valuations and to choose appropriate options was permanently destroyed. Unfortunately, the trend that followed created a Frankensteinian group of tens of thousands of lobotomized patients (and hundreds of thousands more who were zoned out on doctor-prescribed Thorazine and Hadol). Without the animal in the human and without the human in the animal, there is little we can recognize as being a vitally engaged and alive person. It is interesting that many people struggling with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as many violent offenders, appear to exhibit hypo-arousal of their instinctual brains, together with a shutdown in their prefrontal cortex. In this regard the maladaptive behaviors associated with both may be attempts to stimulate themselves in order to feel more human. Unfortunately, the cost of these impulse disorders may be disastrous to both the individual and society. On the other hand, people who are chronically flooded by emotional eruptions can be just as limited in life. While they are less inhuman (like the Gage-Elliot zombie “body-snatchers”), their explosions can be just as corrosive to the maintenance of intimate and professional relationships, and—it goes without saying—to a coherent sense of self. Traumatized individuals are imprisoned with the proverbial worst of both worlds. At one moment, they are flooded with intrusive emotions like terror, rage and shame, while alternately being shut down, alienating them from feeling-based instinctual grounding, rendering them incapable of a sense of purpose and inept in finding a direction. These may be our clients, relatives, friends or acquaintances who are caught in either extreme, endlessly swinging between emotional convulsion and coma (blandness/shutdown).

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Cosmic Horror Evil is a powerful word. You use it once, and it tastes bad: metallic, false. But what other word can you use for a person who makes you feel so powerless? Lots of people in the world have made you feel powerless. Run-of-the-mill bullies; both of your parents, and most adults, when you were a child; unflinching bureaucrats at the DMV, the post office. A doctor who didn’t believe you were sick, approximately two minutes before you projectile vomited against the wall. A cadre of nurses who pried your arms away from your body to take your blood when they thought you had cancer. (You didn’t have cancer, but they never did figure out why you spent so much of your childhood cramping with agony.) But did any of them seem to enjoy it? Did any of them make you feel complicit in your own suffering? You’ve outgrown parents and bullies. You’ve railed against the everyday tyrants to friends; you chastised the doctor while dropping a long line of sour saliva down to the floor; you fought those nurses as hard as if they were trying to murder you. Sick seems more appropriate, but it too tastes bad. It feels too close to disordered , which is a word your oldest and dearest friend, who had become very religious after childhood, used when you came out to her. It was over email but you flinched anyway, and before the end of the next paragraph—which explained that she was sort of relieved you hadn’t said you had a crush on her—you were already crying.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  Or, in this case, a spoonful of euphemism, the most famous of which is “pivot.” If you search any major bookselling website, you will see that titles with pivot in them are awfully popular. Many books are simply titled Pivot (plus one titled Pivot! ). There is also The Big Pivot , The Great Pivot , Pivot with Purpose , Pivot to Win , and Pivot for Success , among countless others. I’m certainly not knocking these books. But whether you say “pivot” or “moving on to the next chapter” or “strategic redeployment,” all of these things are, by definition, quitting. After all, stripped of its negative connotation, quitting is merely the choice to stop something that you have started. We ought to stop thinking that we need to wrap the idea of quitting in bubble wrap and serve it soft. After all, there are lots of circumstances in which quitting is the right choice, particularly when the world tells you that you ought to, and your kidneys are failing, or you’re facing another set of career-ending injuries. Or you’re in a miserable marriage, or a dead-end job, or a major you hate. Why is the word given the Voldemort treatment (The-Word-Which-Must-Not-Be Named)? Back in the days when people bought their meat at a local butcher’s shop, every comic had a gag about getting cheated by the butcher’s scale. One of Borscht Belt comedian Milton Berle’s famous bits went like this: “I’m beginning to question my butcher’s accuracy. The other day a fly landed on his scale. It weighed four-and-a-half pounds.” What Berle was talking about was a common Borscht Belt meme of the butcher “gaffing” the scale, usually by sneaking his thumb on it, to cheat customers. A carnival’s wheel of fortune could be gaffed with some mechanism that got it to stop at a certain point in its spin, guaranteeing the house would not have to pay out. Shady backroom roulette wheels could be similarly gaffed. The dice in an impromptu craps game could be gaffed. When it comes to quitting, the scale is similarly gaffed. What Muhammad Ali, Lindsey Vonn, the aphorisms, the language, and the euphemisms are telling us is that there is a cognitive and behavioral thumb tilting the scale’s balance toward persevering when it comes to weighing grit versus quit. Science SaysGiven the way the scale is gaffed toward grit, and the way we admire people who persist as heroes, it shouldn’t surprise us that books about the power of perseverance, like Angela Duckworth’s Grit and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (with its famous ten-thousand-hours trope), are so popular. The implication of the massive, enthusiastic audience for such books is that the human condition is one of persevering too little. But anybody who reads Grit as suggesting that perseverance, absent context, is always a virtue, is misinterpreting Angela Duckworth’s work.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  Bob pokes at his pipe with a bent paper clip. Shan yawns hugely and then looks embarrassed. Chris erases what he put on the blackboard and tries unsuccessfully to redraw my pecking parakeet. “I don’t know how it goes,” he says to me. Gang Lu looks around the room idly with expressionless eyes. He’s sick of physics and sick of the buffoons who practice it. The tall glacial German, Chris, who tells him what to do; the crass idiot Bob who talks to him like he is a dog; the student Shan whose ideas about plasma physics are treated with reverence and praised at every meeting. The woman who puts her feet on the desk and dismisses him with her eyes. Gang Lu no longer spends his evenings in the computer lab, running simulations and thinking about magnetic forces and invisible particles; he now spends them at the firing range, learning to hit a moving target with the gun he purchased last spring. He pictures himself holding the gun with both hands, arms straight out and steady; Clint Eastwood, only smarter. Clint Eastwood as a rocket scientist. He stares at each person in turn, trying to gauge how much respect each of them has for him. One by one. Behind black-rimmed glasses, he counts with his eyes. In each case the verdict is clear: not enough. The collie fell down the basement stairs. I don’t know if she was disoriented and looking for me or what. But when I was at work she used her long nose like a lever and got the door to the basement open and tried to go down there except her legs wouldn’t do it and she fell. I found her sleeping on the concrete floor in an unnatural position, one leg still awkwardly resting on the last step. I repositioned the leg and sat down next to her and petted her. We used to play a game called Maserati, where I’d grab her nose like a gearshift and put her through all the gears, first second third fourth, until we were going a hundred miles an hour through town. She thought it was funny. Now I’m at work but this morning there’s nothing to do, and every time I turn around I see her sprawled, eyes mute, leg bent upward. We’re breaking each other’s hearts. I draw a picture of her on the blackboard using brown chalk. I make X s where her eyes should be. Chris walks in with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. He looks around the clean office. “Why are you here when there’s no work to do?” he asks. “I’m hiding from my life, what else,” I tell him. This sounds perfectly reasonable to him. He gives me part of the paper. His mother is visiting from Germany, a robust woman of eighty who is depressed and hoping to be cheered up.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  because this time the financial tool is different and new, not subject to the usual rules. We can be as greedy as we like without worrying about the consequences. We tend to be dazzled by the strength of people’s convictions and interpret excessive behavior as simply overzealousness. But we should look at it in another light. By overidealizing a cause, person, or object, people can give free rein to the Shadow. That is their unconscious motivation. The bullying, the manipulations, the greed that comes out for the sake of the cause or product should be taken at face value, the overly strong conviction providing simple cover for repressed emotions to play themselves out. Related to this, in arguments people will use their powerful convictions as a perfect way to disguise their desires to bully and intimidate. They trot out statistics and anecdotes (which can always be found) to buttress their case, then proceed to insult or impugn our integrity. It’s just an exchange of ideas, they say. Pay attention to the bullying tone, and do not be fooled. Intellectuals might be subtler. They will lord it over us with obscure language and ideas we cannot decode, and we are made to feel inferior for our ignorance. In all cases, see this as repressed aggression finding a way to leak out. Projection: This is by far the most common way of dealing with our Shadow, because it offers almost daily release. We cannot admit to ourselves certain desires—for sex, for money, for power, for superiority in some area—and so instead we project those desires onto others. Sometimes we simply imagine and completely project these qualities out of nothing, in order to judge and condemn people. Other times we find people who express such taboo desires in some form, and we exaggerate them in order to justify our dislike or hatred. For instance, we accuse another person in some conflict of having authoritarian desires. In fact, they are simply defending themselves. We are the ones who secretly wish to dominate, but if we see it in the other side first, we can vent our repressed desire in the form of a judgment and justify our own authoritarian response. Let us say we repressed early on assertive and spontaneous impulses so natural to the child. Unconsciously we wish to have back such qualities, but we cannot overcome our internal taboos. We look out for those who are less inhibited, more assertive and open with their ambition. We exaggerate these tendencies. Now we can despise them, and in thinking about them, give vent to what we cannot admit to ourselves or about ourselves. The great nineteenth-century German composer Richard Wagner frequently expressed anti-Semitic sentiments. He blamed Jews for ruining Western music with their eclectic tastes, sentimentality, and emphasis on technical brilliance. He yearned for a more pure German music, which he would create. Most of what he blamed Jews for in music was completely made up. Yet Wagner, strangely

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Wall Street brokers peddling dubious investments or as criminals stealing what they can, has an immensely addictive quality.) At first glance, this might seem self-destructive, as each aggressive outburst creates more enemies and unintended consequences. But aggressors are often adept at upping the ante with even more intimidating behavior, so that few will challenge them. This often leads to the phenomenon of the aggressor’s trap: the more power they get, and the larger their empire, the more points of vulnerability they create; they have more rivals and enemies to worry about. This sparks in them the need to be more and more aggressive and gain more and more power. (Certainly Rockefeller fell victim to this dynamic.) They also come to feel that to stop acting in this way would make them seem weak. No matter what aggressors might say to us or how they try to disguise their intentions, we must realize that their past pattern of behavior will inevitably continue in the present, because they are both addicted and trapped. We must never be naive in dealing with them. They will be relentless. If they take a step back, it is only momentary. They are rarely capable of changing this essential pattern in their behavior. We must also be aware that aggressors see the people around them as objects to use. They might have some natural empathy, but because their need for power and control is so strong, they cannot be patient enough to rely solely upon charm and social skills. To get what they want, they have to use people, and this becomes a habit that degrades any empathy they once had. They need adherents and disciples, so they train themselves to listen, to occasionally praise others, and to do favors for people. The charm they may display upon occasion, however, is only for effect and has little human warmth to it. When they are listening to us, they are gauging the strength of our will and seeing how we can serve their purposes down the road. If they praise us or do us a favor, it is a way to further entrap and compromise us. We can see this in the nonverbal cues, in the eyes that look through us, in how thinly they are engaged in our stories. We must always try to make ourselves immune to any attempt at charm on their part, knowing what purpose it serves. It is interesting to note that despite all of the socially negative qualities that aggressors inevitably reveal, they are frequently able to attract enough followers to help them in their quest for power. The people who are attracted to such aggressors often have their own deep-seated issues, their own frustrated aggressive desires. They find the confidence and sometimes brazenness of the aggressor quite exciting and appealing. They fall in love with the narrative. They become infected with the leader’s aggression and get to act it out on others, perhaps those below them. But such an environment

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Of course, this preference for the universal over the particular was not unique to nineteenth–century Germany. One early English example: in his book The Church of the Early Fathers, Alfred Plummer argues, “All religions previous to Christianity were national or state religions. Each tribe, country, and government had its own gods and its own forms of worship.” 9 This universal–particular dichotomy, so prevalent in nineteenth–century scholarship, has enjoyed a resurgence of sorts in the so-called new perspective on Paul, a reading of Paul that stresses the ethnocentric nature of Second Temple Judaism and contrasts it to Paul’s anti-ethnocentric gospel. As N. T. Wright pithily puts it, Paul preached “grace, not race,” 10 and railed against the “badges of Jewish privilege. ”11 Further, James Dunn compares early Jewish ethnocentrism to modern ethnic conflicts such as apartheid in South Africa, segregation in the United States, and the Rwandan genocide, concluding of early Jewish ethnocentrism: 5 Ibid. 6 F. C. Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Epistles and Teachings; A Contribution to a Critical History of Primitive Christianity (trans. Al an Menzies; 2 vols; London: Williams and Norgate, 1873–85), 2:126. Similarly, Baur states: “The step from Judaism to Christianity could only be made by recognising that Judaism was merely a finite form” (2:131). 7 Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ, 1:265. 8 Anders Gerdmar, “Baur and the Creation of the Judaism-Hellenism Dichotomy,” in Ferdinand Christian Baur and the History of Early Christianity (ed. Martin Bauspiess et al.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 96–115. 9 Alfred Plummer, The Church of the Early Fathers, 4th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1890), 2. 10 N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992), 194, 247. 11 Ibid., 247. Although in his more recent work on Paul Wright no longer stresses the purportedly ethnocentric/particularistic nature of the Judaism that Paul rejects, the idea still persists, as seen, for instance, in his claim that Israel’s “meta-sin” is believing that its election and vocation are its “exclusive privilege”: Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2 vols.; Minneapolis,MN: Fortress, 2013), 1:38. 89 Remapping Paul 89 It is a kind of fundamentalism which can only safeguard the correctness of its belief by persecuting those who disagree or by seeking to eliminate (through conversion or otherwise) those who hold divergent views. That sort of exclusivism can produce a complete spectrum of violence, from the most subtle of social pressure to outright force. It was that sort of “attitude to the law” which Paul came to abhor.12