Disappointment

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

  The verdict of history, after the most thorough investigation from all sides and by all parties remains unshaken. The whole church, East and West, as represented by the official acts of oecumenical Councils and Popes, for several hundred years believed that a Roman bishop may err ex cathedra in a question of faith, and that one of them at least had so erred in fact. The Vatican Council of 1870 decreed papal infallibility in the face of this fact, thus overruling history by dogmatic authority. The Protestant historian can in conscience only follow the opposite principle: If dogma contradicts facts, all the worse for the dogma. Notes. Bishop Hefele, one of the most learned and impartial Roman Catholic historians, thus states, after a lengthy discussion, his present view on the case of Honorius (Conciliengesch., vol. III. 175, revised ed. 1877), which differs considerably from the one he had published before the Vatican decree of papal infallibility (in the first ed. of his Conciliengesch., vol. III. 1858, p. 145 sqq., and in big pamphlet on Honorius, 1870). It should be remembered that Bishop Hefele, like all his anti-infallibilist colleagues, submitted to the decree of the Vatican Council for the sake of unity and peace.

• From The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography (2008)

  But if we start imbibing regularly, we may start to notice that drinking alcohol produces some unpleasant side effects. One too many and our speech may start to slur or we may say something stupid in a conversation. Our judgment may become impaired and we may lose motor control, causing us to forget things, stumble when we try to walk, and be unable to drive our own car. Chronic alcohol abuse can negatively affect our ability to follow through on family, job, or social responsibilities, and it can tear apart an intimate relationship. In extreme cases, when someone becomes a hardened drinker, they may find themselves with serious physical problems such as liver disease, sexual problems, or addiction-related chemical dependency. They may also find themselves in jail for driving while under the influence. But that cold bottle of beer or glass of wine can be hard to give up when we’ve become accustomed to it. Many people have built drinking into their daily routines and menu choices—a cocktail every day after work, and a beer with a slice of pizza or a hot dog. When we are faced with the realization that alcohol is causing problems, it’s easy and natural to rationalize our use and deny the problem. Eventually, however, if we continue to ignore what’s really going on, the problems compound and become increasingly difficult to tune out. When you’re a porn user, you’re likely to have similar experiences of ignoring the problem and then rationalizing your use and denying the consequences. At first all you may see are the positive things porn brings to your life. Subconsciously, you may have an inkling that your behavior might cause trouble down the road, but when you’re having fun right here right now, it’s hard to consider what could be waiting for you around the bend. But as with alcohol, eventually porn use can cause problems and get out of hand. At that point, it becomes more difficult to hide our problems from ourselves or anyone close to us, no matter how hard we try. For most porn users we’ve talked to, eventually things get out of control. Unfortunately, most porn users are unaware of how destructive their behavior really is until they’re already deep into the porn trap. By then the damage is done. Rob, forty-three years old, had masturbated to porn every day since he was fourteen. He provides a good example of how oblivious we can be about the consequences of our porn actions. He told us, “Porn didn’t appear dangerous like other ‘bad habits.’ With gambling, you eventually run out of money. With drug use you eventually degenerate, can’t function, and become physically ill. Porn didn’t impair my driving or do things like that. I didn’t see it as consequential. There were limited physical side effects. So porn didn’t concern me. I wasn’t worried about it. When my life began to fall apart because of my porn habit, no one saw it coming—least of all me.”

• From The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2007)

  Perhaps it is John, not the synagogue, who is seeking to separate the communities and force those who confess Jesus to dissociate with “the Jews.” Given these enormous historical problems in understanding the causes of John’s rhetoric, the audience to which it was addressed, and the ways that audience understood the Gospel, the solution to the question of anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John specifically, and by extension in any passage in the New Testament generally, cannot be, or at least cannot solely be, a historical one. Historical investigation lacks the data needed to answer the question. The response to the matter of the text’s anti-Jewish potential therefore must be a theological one: Christians must denounce anti-Jewish readings (however defined) because they are counter to the “good news” of Jesus. Only the theologian can firmly pronounce a New Testament text not anti-Jewish. More Than a Prophet When discussion moves from individual verses to the Gospels as a whole, additional explanations (if one agrees with them) or excuses (if one is looking for apologetic) for potentially anti-Jewish New Testament passages appear.10 Some scholars conclude that the Jesus of the Gospels is to be compared to Israel’s prophets, whose level of excoriation of the people was just as high as, if not higher than, Jesus’s invectives against the scribes and Pharisees. Others insist that the New Testament is a Jewish book written by Jews, and therefore it cannot be anti-Jewish. Both arguments have merit, but neither ultimately convinces. Jesus does sound like a prophet. Like Jeremiah, he predicts the destruction of the Temple (chapter 25); like Hosea, he “desires steadfast love and not sacrifice” (6:6). He condemns the leadership for not following in the ways of the Lord—that is what prophets have always done. Had Amos been alive in the first century, he might well have made several of the pronouncements beginning “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees” (Matt. 23). However, although Jesus himself may be perceived as heir to the legacy of Amos and Jeremiah, the Gospels present him as more than a prophet. He is, according to the Evangelists, the Son of God, who adds something new to the prophetic concern for justice. He goes well beyond the role of Isaiah and Micah, who seek what is called in Hebrew t’shuvah, return and repentance. Jesus of the Gospels seeks something new, specifically, following him. He is important not only because of what he says, but also because of who he is. Narrative context also disrupts the prophetic analogy. The prophets as well as the objects of their invectives all recognized themselves as members of the same community; the Jewish community preserved the words of the prophets and recognized itself as the recipients of the prophets’ messages. The prophetic pronouncements are still read in the synagogues and understood as having meaning to present-day Jews. This is not the case with the narratives of Matthew or John.

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

  In this he proceeded with extraordinary sagacity. He abstained from bloody persecution, because he would not forego the credit of philosophical toleration, nor give the church the glory of a new martyrdom. A history of three centuries also had proved that violent measures were fruitless. According to Libanius it was a principle with him, that fire and sword cannot change a man’s faith, and that persecution only begets hypocrites and martyrs. Finally, he doubtless perceived that the Christians were too numerous to be assailed by a general persecution without danger of a bloody civil war. Hence he oppressed the church "gently,"69 under show of equity and universal toleration. He persecuted not so much the Christians as Christianity, by endeavoring to draw off its confessors. He thought to gain the result of persecution without incurring the personal reproach and the public danger of persecution itself. His disappointments, however, increased his bitterness, and had he returned victorious from the Persian war, he would probably have resorted to open violence. In fact, Gregory Nazianzen and Sozomen, and some heathen writers also, tell of local persecutions in the provinces, particularly at Anthusa and Alexandria, with which the emperor is, at least indirectly, to be charged. His officials acted in those cases, not under public orders indeed, but according to the secret wish of Julian, who ignored their illegal proceedings as long as he could, and then discovered his real views by lenient censure and substantial acquittal of the offending magistrates.

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

  But on the other hand, a regular and general system of clerical education was still entirely wanting. The steady decay of the classic literature, the gradual cessation of philosophical and artistic production, the growth of monastic prejudice against secular learning and culture, the great want of ministers in the suddenly expanded field of the church, the uneasy state of the empire, and the barbarian invasions, were so many hinderances to thorough theological preparation. Many candidates trusted to the magical virtue of ordination. Others, without inward call, were attracted to the holy office by the wealth and power of the church. Others had no time or opportunity for preparation, and passed, at the instance of the popular voice or of circumstances, immediately from the service of the state to that of the church, even to the episcopal office; though several councils prescribed a previous test of their capacity in the lower degrees of reader, deacon, and presbyter. Often, however, this irregularity turned to the advantage of the church, and gave her a highly gifted man, like Ambrose, whom the acclamation of the people called to the episcopal see of Milan even before he was baptized. Gregory Nazianzen laments that many priests and bishops came in fresh from the counting house, sunburnt from the plow, from the oar, from the army, or even from the theatre, so that the most holy order of all was in danger of becoming the most ridiculous. "Only he can be a physician," says he, "who knows the nature of diseases; he, a painter, who has gone through much practice in mixing colors and in drawing forms; but a clergyman may be found with perfect ease, not thoroughly wrought, of course, but fresh made, sown and full blown in a moment, as the legend says of the giants.410 We form the saints in a day, and enjoin them to be wise, though they possess no wisdom at all, and bring nothing to their spiritual office, except at best a good will."411 If such complaints were raised so early as the end of the Nicene age, while the theological activity of the Greek church was in its bloom, there was far more reason for them after the middle of the fifth century and in the sixth, especially in the Latin church, where, even among the most eminent clergymen, a knowledge of the original languages of the Holy Scriptures was a rare exception. The opportunities which this period offered for literary and theological preparation for the ministry, were the following: 1. The East had four or five theological schools, which, however, were far from supplying its wants.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  It turns out that everything which has been done by the men who comprehended Christ's teaching in a direct manner and lived in conformity with such a comprehension, everything which all true Christians, all Christian champions, have done, everything which now transforms the world under the guise of socialism and communism,—is exaggeration, of which it is not worth while to speak. Men who have been educated in Christianity for eighteen centuries have convinced themselves in the persons of their foremost men, the scholars, that the Christian teaching is a teaching of dogmas, that the vital teaching is a misconception, an exaggeration, which violates the true legitimate demands of morality, which correspond to man's nature, and that the doctrine of justice, which Christ rejected and in the place of which he put his own teaching, is much more profitable for us. The learned consider the commandment of non-resistance to evil an exaggeration and even madness. If it be rejected, it would be much better, they think, without observing that they are not talking of Christ's teaching at all, but of what presents itself to them as such. They do not notice that to say that Christ's commandment about non-resistance to evil is an exaggeration is the same as saying that in the theory of the circle the statement about the equality of the radii of a circle is an exaggeration. And those who say so do precisely what a man, who did not have any conception as to what a circle is, would do if he asserted that the demand that all the points on the circumference should be equally distant from the centre is an exaggeration. To advise that the statement concerning the equality of the radii in a circle be rejected or moderated is the same as not understanding what a circle is. To advise that the commandment about non-resistance to evil in the vital teaching of Christ be rejected or moderated means not to understand the teaching. And those who do so actually do not understand it at all. They do not understand that this teaching is the establishment of a new comprehension of life, which corresponds to the new condition into which men have been entering for these eighteen hundred years, and the determination of the new activity which results from it. They do not believe that Christ wanted to say what he did; or it seems to them that what he said in the Sermon on the Mount and in other passages He said from infatuation, from lack of comprehension, from insufficient development. [10] Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Britain, though her people are politically more intelligent than those of any modern nation, did not yield in Ireland in time to prevent the formation of a virus which is still poisoning Anglo-Irish relations. And while the American Civil War taught her a lesson, which she applied in preserving her colonial empire, there is as yet no proof that she will be wise enough to admit India into partnership, before the vehemence of Indian reaction to British imperialism will make partnership upon even a minimum basis impossible. So runs the sad story of the social ignorance of nations. There is always, in every nation, a body of citizens more intelligent than the average, who see the issues between their own and other nations more clearly than the ignorant patriot, and more disinterestedly than the dominant classes who seek special advantages in international relations. The size of this group varies in different nations. Although it may at times place a check upon the more extreme types of national self-seeking, it is usually not powerful enough to affect national attitudes in a crisis. The British liberals could not prevent the Boer War; American economists have recently inveighed against a suicidal tariff policy in vain, and German liberals were unable to check the aggressive policy of imperial Germany. Sometimes the humanitarian impulses and the sentiment of justice, developed in these groups, serve the policy of official governments and seem to affect their actions. Thus the agitation of E. D. Morel against the atrocities in the Belgian Congo was supported by the British Government as long as it desired, for other reasons, to bring political pressure upon the Belgian King. Once this purpose was satisfied the British Cabinet dropped Mr. Morel’s campaign as quickly as it had espoused it. 4 It is of course possible that the rational interest in international justice may become, on occasion, so widespread and influential that it will affect the diplomacy of states. But this is not usual. In other words the mind, which places a restraint upon impulses in individual life, exists only in a very inchoate form in the nation.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  The only qualification I admit is that the country we desire to annex or take under our protection should be calculated to confer a tangible advantage upon the British Empire.” 2 National ambitions are not always avowed as honestly as this, as we shall see later, but that is a fair statement of the actual facts, which need hardly to be elaborated for any student of history. What is the basis and reason for the selfishness of nations? If we begin with what is least important or least distinctive of national attitudes, it must be noted that nations do not have direct contact with other national communities, with which they must form some kind of international community. They know the problems of other peoples only indirectly and at second hand. Since both sympathy and justice depend to a large degree upon the perception of need, which makes sympathy flow, and upon the understanding of competing interests, which must be resolved, it is obvious that human communities have greater difficulty than individuals in achieving ethical relationships. While rapid means of communication have increased the breadth of knowledge about world affairs among citizens of various nations, and the general advance of education has ostensibly promoted the capacity to think rationally and justly upon the inevitable conflicts of interest between nations, there is nevertheless little hope of arriving at a perceptible increase of international morality through the growth of intelligence and the perfection of means of communication. The development of international commerce, the increased economic interdependence among the nations, and the whole apparatus of a technological civilisation, increase the problems and issues between nations much more rapidly than the intelligence to solve them can be created. The silk trade between America and Japan did not give American citizens an appreciation of the real feelings of the Japanese toward the American Exclusion Act. Co-operation between America and the Allies during the war did not help American citizens to recognise, and deal sympathetically with, the issues of inter-allied debts and reparations; nor were the Allies able to do justice to either themselves or their fallen foe in settling the problem of reparations. Such is the social ignorance of peoples, that, far from doing justice to a foe or neighbor, they are as yet unable to conserve their own interests wisely. Since their ultimate interests are always protected best, by at least a measure of fairness toward their neighbors, the desire to gain an immediate selfish advantage always imperils their ultimate interests. 3 If they recognise this fact, they usually recognise it too late. Thus France, after years of intransigence, has finally accepted a sensible reparations settlement. Significantly and tragically, the settlement is almost synchronous with the victory of an extreme nationalism in Germany, which her unrelenting policies begot. America pursued a selfish and foolhardy tariff policy until it, together with other imbecilities in international life, contributed to the ruin of prosperity in the whole world.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  It is partially due to the reabsorption of the whole semi-proletarian movement into the national soul. That will seem a virtue to those who identify the nation with absolute values; but it must appear a weakness to those who recognise the perils of nationalism to all high human values. The nation will always claim a portion of man’s loyalties. Since it usually claims too large a portion, it is necessary that other communities compete with it. There is no reason why a class which is fated by its conditions of life to aspire after an equalitarian society should not have a high moral claim upon the loyalty of its members. Both its ultimate aims and the peril in which it stands justify such a loyalty by every rule of reason. If the nation’s claims seem to be higher, that is only because traditional sentiments overpower rational considerations. The tendency of socialist leaders to espouse the cause of the enemies of labor under the guise of preserving the peace of the state, may be actuated by the motives of personal ambition, which we have suggested; but the political milieu in which such a policy is at all possible is created by the semi-nationalism of the whole political movement which they lead. The parliamentary working class movement stands inside of the national ethos and thus creates the opportunities for its leaders to become imbued with the national instinct of self-preservation. This instinct expresses itself in defense against both internal and external foes of the state. Evolutionary socialists are therefore involved in both international wars and the suppression of strikes and other alleged perils to the state’s internal peace. When Briand defended himself against the attacks of Jaurés for his suppression of the strike of French railroad workers, he gave a very illuminating example of the triumph of the national spirit over class loyalty in the heart of a labor leader who had become a national official: “I am ready to admit that theoretically they possess the right to strike and that they may use it legally. But there is another right which has not been mentioned in this debate, and which is superior to all other rights. It is society’s right to live. There is no liberty, time-honored though it may be, whose exercise can be permitted to endanger the nation’s right to live. . . The right that is above all other rights is the nation’s right to live and to maintain its independence and pride.”

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Such is the inclination of the human mind for beginning with assumptions which have been determined by other than rational considerations, and building a superstructure of rationally acceptable judgments upon them, that all this can be done without any conscious dishonesty. If the expert can function under any type of regime, whether conservative or radical, the experience of socialist governments of Britain and Germany proves that the civil servant is more inclined to conservatism than to radicalism and that he sometimes knows how to frustrate and divert the general policy of the government which he serves by the kind of detailed application which he makes of its general line of policy. A careful study of the history of political and economic life proves conclusively that the educators, as all other middle-class moralists, underestimate the conflict of interest in political and economic relations, and attribute to disinterested ignorance what ought usually to be attributed to interested intelligence. Their very error in this regard is a result of the faulty perspective of their class. There will always be individuals in the more privileged classes who will, by force of rational and moral idealism, identify themselves with the less privileged classes and fight their political battles. But the number of these will probably always remain limited. Whatever social intelligence is created in the total body of any privileged class, can be used to mitigate the conflict between the classes, but it will not be powerful enough to obviate the necessity of such a conflict. If it should be maintained that the past does not yield conclusions which are valid for the future, since no middle-class group has ever been subjected to an educational process which placed it in full possession of all relevant social facts, the answer is that there is no educational process which can place any class in possession of all the facts, or cause it to appreciate all the feelings which actuate another class. Since civilisation constantly increases indirect and mechanical human relations, this will probably be even more true in the future than it is at present. It is a question whether any middle class will ever be intellectually better disciplined and socially more intelligent than that class in England and Germany. In both of these nations the entire middle-class community turned to conservatism rather than radicalism in the moment of crisis; in England in the election of 1931, when it participated in the overwhelming tory defeat of labor, and in Germany, where it expresses itself through the policies of fascism. These very recent examples of middle-class attitudes in politically advanced and socially intelligent nations are a fairly good basis for predicting middle-class political attitudes in the future.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  The Phoenix bus had left already and the next one didn’t come through until late that night, but we were in luck—there was a bus leaving for Portland in a couple of hours, and from there we could make an easy connection to Seattle. I tried to conceal my disappointment but my mother saw it and bought me off with a handful of change. I played the pinball machines for a while and then stocked up on candy bars for the trip, Milk Duds and Sugar Babies and Idaho Spuds, most of which were already curdling in my stomach when at dusk we boarded our bus and stood in the dazed regard of the other passengers. We hesitated for a moment as if we might get off. Then my mother took my hand and we made our way down the aisle, nodding to anyone who looked at us, smiling to show we meant well. Uncool____ We lived in a boardinghouse in West Seattle. At night, if my mother wasn’t too tired, we took walks around the neighborhood, stopping in front of different houses to consider them as candidates for future purchase. We went for the biggest and most pretentious, sneering at ranches and duplexes—anything that smelled of economy. We chose half-timbered houses, houses with columns, houses with sculpted bushes in front. Then we went back to our room, where I read novels about heroic collies while my mother practiced typing and shorthand so she wouldn’t fall behind in her new job. Our room was in a converted attic. It had two camp beds and between them, under the window, a desk and chair. It smelled of mildew. The yellow wallpaper was new but badly hung and already curling at the edges. It was the kind of room that B-movie detectives wake up in, bound and gagged, after they’ve been slipped a Mickey. The boardinghouse was full of old men and men who probably only seemed old. Besides my mother only two women lived there. One was a secretary named Kathy. Kathy was young and plain and shy. She stayed in her room most of the time. When people addressed her she would look at them with a drowning expression, then softly ask them to repeat what they had said. As time went on, her pregnancy began to show through the loose clothes she wore. There didn’t seem to be a man in the picture. The other woman was Marian, the housekeeper. Marian was big and loud. Her arms were as thick as a man’s, and when she pounded out hamburger patties the whole kitchen shook. Marian went with a marine sergeant from Bremerton who was even bigger than she was but more gentle and soft-spoken. He had been in the Pacific during the war. When I kept after him to tell me about it he finally showed me an album of photographs he’d taken. Most of the pictures were of his buddies. Doc, a man with glasses.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Fabianism, which gave British socialism its philosophy, had little use for the class conflict. It was an ethical socialism, in which the nation as such was called upon to extend the principles of justice which had been previously accepted in the more radical type of liberalism. The spiritual history of British socialism, as an extension and logical consequence of radical liberalism, is rather well symbolised in the development of the thought of John Stuart Mill, who turned in his later years from individualistic to collectivistic political ideas. “In view of the fact,” declared Sidney Webb, “that the socialist movement has been hitherto inspired, instructed and led by members of the middle class or bourgeoisie, the Fabian society protests against the absurdity of socialists, denouncing the very class from which socialism has sprung, as especially hostile to it.” 2 This judgment is, interestingly enough, a good example of the natural confusion into which ethically motivated middle-class leaders, who have identified themselves with the working class, fall, when they imagine that their own attitudes and convictions offer a significant clue to the dominant attitudes of their class. The middle class, though it has furnished leadership for the labor movement, has remained hostile to the labor cause, for all of Mr. Webb’s assurances. The less bellicose attitude of British labor and its softer emphasis upon the class conflict may be a result of the long history of British parliamentarism and the solid achievements of British liberalism in the nineteenth century, which justified, or seemed to justify, confidence in the democratic movement as something more than mere middle-class strategy. Nevertheless it is significant that the difference between the more Marxian socialism of the continent and the quite indigenous socialism of England has been pretty well wiped out by subsequent history. The parliamentary socialists of the continent have not been more revolutionary than the English, even though they did have a stronger admixture of Marxism in their thought. And the British socialists, who seemed for a time to be winning the middle classes to a degree, which the continental socialists found impossible, saw in the election of 1931 how the middle class will inevitably turn against socialism in a crisis when national patriotism is arrayed against the policy of the working class. In both England and Germany the socialist party has been at one time or another the largest party in the nation; and in these countries as well as in France, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries, the party has collaborated in government in either a major or minor capacity. The hope that socialism could be achieved progressively by parliamentary action has been at least partially justified by the history of all these nations.

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  He indicates that he has heard of these problems from two different sources, one oral and one written. At the beginning of the letter, after the pre- script (1:1-3) and thanksgiving (1:4-9; notice how much shorter it is than the one to the Thessalonians), Paul states that he has learned about the activities of the congregation from "Chloe's people" (1:11). We do not know who this Chloe was; the name occurs nowhere else in the letter or in the rest of the New Testament. We do know that it was the name of a woman, and the reference to her "people" is usually taken to mean her slaves or former slaves who had come to Ephesus, perhaps on her business, and had met with Paul to pass along some news. Since Chloe owned slaves who managed her business affairs, she must have been a wealthy woman in Corinth; whether she herself was a member of the Christian community is difficult to judge. In any event, her unnamed "people" must have been active in the congregation, given the inside information that they passed along to Paul. The news was not good. The church was divided against itself, with different factions claiming differ- ent leaders, each of whom, from Paul's perspective, 2?6 THE Nw TESTAMENT: A HISTOP. ICAI_ INllODUCTION was seeking to usurp the claims of others by demon- strating their own spiritual superiority and claiming to represent the true faith as expounded by one or another famous authority (Paul, Cephas, Apollos, and Christ himself; 1:12). The conflicts had gotten nasty at times, with some of the members taking others to court over their differences (not their dif- ferences over inner church politics, of course, but over matters that the civil law courts could decide). Moreover, immorality was evidently rampant. Generally, this was not the happy community of the faithful that Paul had envisioned, especially com- pared to the model church of the Thessalonians. The information from Paul's other source was equally troubling. It appears that he had received a letter from some of the Corinthians (probably not all of them; as we will see, not everyone felt beholden to him) in which they expressed their different opinions on some critical matters and sought Paul's judgment (e.g., see 7:1). The letter had been brought by three members of the church Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus-- who evidently had waited for Paul to pen a reply (16:15-18). The issues were of some moment; there were members of the congregation, just to take one example, who had been teaching that it was not right even for married couples to have sex. One can sense the urgency of their query. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to deal with the various problems and issues that had arisen. Giving fairly straightforward answers, he deals with each problem in turn, in the sequence shown in box 19.1. From Paul's perspective, however, one big problem evidently underlay all of these specific problems.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  It is moreover, much more remote from the will of the nation than in private individuals; for the government expresses the national will, and that will is moved by the emotions of the populace and the prudential self-interest of dominant economic classes. Theoretically it is possible to have a national electorate so intelligent, that the popular impulses and the ulterior interests of special groups are brought under the control of a national mind. But practically the rational understanding of political issues remains such a minimum force that national unity of action can be achieved only upon such projects as are either initiated by the self-interest of the dominant groups, in control of the government, or supported by the popular emotions and hysterias which from time to time run through a nation. In other words the nation is a corporate unity, held together much more by force and emotion, than by mind. Since there can be no ethical action without self-criticism, and no self-criticism without the rational capacity of self-transcendence, it is natural that national attitudes can hardly approximate the ethical. Even those tendencies toward self-criticism in a nation which do express themselves are usually thwarted by the governing classes and by a certain instinct for unity in society itself. For self-criticism is a kind of inner disunity, which the feeble mind of a nation finds difficulty in distinguishing from dangerous forms of inner conflict. So nations crucify their moral rebels with their criminals upon the same Golgotha, not being able to distinguish between the moral idealism which surpasses, and the anti-social conduct which falls below that moral mediocrity, on the level of which every society unifies its life. While critical loyalty toward a community is not impossible, it is not easily achieved. It is therefore probably inevitable that every society should regard criticism as a proof of a want of loyalty. This lack of criticism, as Tyrrell the Catholic modernist observed, makes the social will more egotistic than the individual will. “So far as society has a self,” he wrote, “it must be self-assertive, proud, self-complacent and egotistical.” 5 The necessity of using force in the establishment of unity in a national community, and the inevitable selfish exploitation of the instruments of coercion by the groups who wield them, adds to the selfishness of nations. This factor in national life has been previously discussed and may need no further elaboration. It may be well to add that it ought not to be impossible to reduce this source of national selfishness. When governing groups are deprived of their special economic privileges, their interests will be more nearly in harmony with the interests of the total national society. At present the economic overlords of a nation have special interests in the profits of international trade, in the exploitation of weaker peoples and in the acquisition of raw materials and markets, all of which are only remotely relevant to the welfare of the whole people.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  More specifically, they have refused or failed (it is unclear which) to carry forth the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, whom Baker characterizes as “not only the most exemplary race man ever born in the United States, but also the greatest black public intellectual leader of the liberation struggle our world has ever known.” 10 Although Baker raises a number of important concerns about the ways in which the radical messaging of the contemporary Black intellectual elite has been co-opted by mainstream forces and the seduction of celebrity, his turn back to King should give us pause. Most notably, Baker’s chapter “After Civil Rights: The Rise of Black Public Intellectuals,” manages not to mention even one Black woman public intellectual from the past or present. This is in part a problem of numbers, because the rise of prominent Black female public intellectuals did not keep pace in the post–Civil Rights years with the rise of figures like West, Gates, or Dyson. This is precisely why folks like hooks and Harris-Perry (who came to prominence after Baker’s book) are so visible. Their brilliance and intellectual skill is undeniable, but they also have a level of visibility available to only a select and elite few Black women scholars. However, the refusal to even acknowledge the work and career of bell hooks is an egregious error on Baker’s part. Not only has she maintained a strident critique of structures of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy , a term she coined and popularized, but she has resisted formal structures of elitism in a number of ways that dovetail the kinds of radical political critique for which Baker calls. Baker also offers a paragraph of acknowledgment to Angela Davis, particularly her work on prison abolition, in the final chapter of Betrayal. But other than cursory gestures to the work of women like Davis and Tricia Rose, Black women are absent from Baker’s account of Black intellectual leadership in the twentieth century. Though Baker claims gender inclusivity in his use of the term race people , it is clear that he thinks race men have failed us and that a deliberate turn back to the race man model of the King era is the only thing that has the potential to save us. But Baker’s account of the problems in Black leadership say much more about the persistence and limitations of the politics of racial manhood in defining and mapping effective forms of Black leadership than they do about the actual state of Black leadership. The story shifts dramatically when we look toward the work of race women.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  must have been to those who controlled the teaching of the Church.) So the millennium was dropped out, while the safer and more distant parts of the Jewish eschatology were retained. Personal immortality, of course, had long ago crowded the racial eschatology aside in point of real interest. But the most decisive fact in transforming the substance of primitive eschatology was the Church itself. Its future was now the future of Christianity. In Jewish eschatology there was no Church in the picture; only the people. In primitive Christian thought the Church was real, but it was like a temporary house put up to shelter the believers till the Lord came and the real salvation began. But the Parousia did not come, and the temporary shelter grew and grew, and became the main thing. Even if the doctrines of eschatology had been kept unchanged, they would no longer have been the same after the Catholic Church had come on the scene. The considerations discussed above are necessary, it seems to me, for a proper understanding and valuation of the biblical material in traditional eschatology. A few constructive propositions can now be made about the future of the race. 1. The future development of the race should have a larger place in practical Christian teaching. The great ethical issues of the future lie in this field, and the mind of Christian men and women should be active there. If we can not be guided by moral and spiritual thought, we shall be guided by bitter experience. The Great War is in truth a grim discussion of the future of the race on this planet, but a discussion with both reason and religion left out. We have the amplest warrant for directing the prophetic thought of religious men toward the social and political future of humanity, for all eschatology derived from Hebrew sources dealt with these interests. A stronger emphasis on the future of the race will simply restore the genuinely Christian emphasis. But if Christian teachers are to teach truth about history, they must have truth to teach. If all ministers and Bible School teachers should now suddenly begin to talk on these subjects, the angels above would probably be astonished to see a still thicker vapour of partisan fury and nationalistic egotism rising from all countries. 2. All Christian discussions of the past and the future must be religious, and filled with the consciousness of God in human affairs. God is in history. He has the initiative. Where others see blind forces working dumb agony, we must see moral will working toward redemption and education. A religious view of history involves a profound sense of the importance of moral issues in social life. Sin ruins; righteousness establishes, and love consolidates. In the last resort the issues of future history lie in the moral qualities and religious faith of nations. This is the substance of all Hebrew and Christian eschatology.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  3. In the New Testament it is our business to sift out what is distinctively Christian in origin and spirit. It stands to reason that the leaven of the Christian spirit was not able at once to transform the inherited ideas of Jews and Gentiles of the first generation. For instance, Christianity had to struggle hard with the stubborn nationalistic pride of Judaism which claimed either a monopoly of messianic salvation or at least special privileges within it. Even Paul, the chief exponent of international religion, could not get away from his pro-Jewish feelings, and thought God was saving the Gentiles in order to stir up the Jews and get them saved. Jesus did not make the judgment depend on nationality but on the sense of human solidarity, and repeatedly foreshadowed that the Jews would be supplanted. In the Apocalypse we are carried back into Jewish feeling and points of view. The mind of Jesus Christ is our criterion for an ethical scrutiny of these ingredients. 4. The effort to systematize the eschatological statements of biblical writers has always been muddled by the supposition that they all thought alike. There was, as yet, no orthodoxy. All were deeply interested in these questions, and men of strong conviction made their own formulations. The Apocalypse, Paul, and the fourth gospel are strikingly unlike. The Apocalypse expounds the old social hope of Israel. The great woes and the overthrow of the mystic Babylon have political significance. There are a thousand years of messianic peace on this earth. Even after the last eruption of Satan and the great judgment the new earth is still on the old earth; the new Jerusalem comes down here, and there are trees, and a river, and happy people. Paul, on the other hand, has no room for a millennium of flesh and blood men on a material earth. The coming of Christ would usher in a cosmic change; the material world would end and the groaning of dying creation would cease; the living and the dead would receive spiritual bodies; therewith the last enemy, Death, would be overcome, and God would be all in all. In Paul the Jewish and the Greek streams of thought join. Probably in this, as in other things, Paul stood for a new theology; the Apocalypse comes nearer to being the prevalent view of the first generation. In the fourth gospel and the epistles of John we see the future translated into the present tense. The chief points of primitive eschatology, the antichrist, the parousia, the judgment, the resurrection, are still acknowleged; but there are many antichrists now present; the coming of the Comforter takes the place of the parousia; the judgment takes place when men accept or reject the light; the spiritual transformation into eternal life takes place now. Eschatology is dissolved into Christology; the Kingdom of God gives way to the Church. It is

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  I could see that there were two strategies to cutting the time short, perhaps best exemplified by the tortoise and the hare. The hare moves as fast as possible, hands a blur, instruments clattering, falling to the floor; the skin slips open like a curtain, the skull flap is on the tray before the bone dust settles. As a result, the opening might need to be expanded a centimeter here or there because it’s not optimally placed. The tortoise, on the other hand, proceeds deliberately, with no wasted movements, measuring twice, cutting once. No step of the operation needs revisiting; everything moves in a precise, orderly fashion. If the hare makes too many minor missteps and has to keep adjusting, the tortoise wins. If the tortoise spends too much time planning each step, the hare wins. The funny thing about time in the OR, whether you race frenetically or proceed steadily, is that you have no sense of it passing. If boredom is, as Heidegger argued, the awareness of time passing, then surgery felt like the opposite: the intense focus made the arms of the clock seem arbitrarily placed. Two hours could feel like a minute. Once the final stitch was placed and the wound was dressed, normal time suddenly restarted. You could almost hear an audible whoosh. Then you started wondering: How long until the patient wakes up? How long until the next case is rolled in? And what time will I get home tonight? It wasn’t until the last case finished that I felt the length of the day, the drag in my step. Those last few administrative tasks before leaving the hospital were like anvils. Could it wait until tomorrow? No. A sigh, and Earth continued to rotate back toward the sun. — As a chief resident, nearly all responsibility fell on my shoulders, and the opportunities to succeed—or fail—were greater than ever. The pain of failure had led me to understand that technical excellence was a moral requirement. Good intentions were not enough, not when so much depended on my skills, when the difference between tragedy and triumph was defined by one or two millimeters. One day, Matthew, the little boy with the brain tumor who had charmed the ward a few years back, was readmitted. His hypothalamus had, in fact, been slightly damaged during the operation to remove his tumor; the adorable eight-year-old was now a twelve-year-old monster. He never stopped eating; he threw violent fits. His mother’s arms were scarred with purple scratches. Eventually Matthew was institutionalized: he had become a demon, summoned by one millimeter of damage. For every surgery, a family and a surgeon decide together that the benefits outweigh the risks, but this was still heartbreaking. No one wanted to think about what Matthew would be like as a three-hundred-pound twenty-year-old.

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

  We begin with Jovinian, the most important among them, who is sometimes compared, for instance, even by Neander, to Luther, because, like Luther, he was carried by his own experience into reaction against the ascetic tendency and the doctrines connected with it. He wrote in Rome, before the year 390 a work, now lost, attacking monasticism in its ethical principles. He was at that time himself a monk, and probably remained so in a free way until his death. At all events he never married, and according to Augustine’s account, he abstained "for the present distress,"391 and from aversion to the encumbrances of the married state. Jerome pressed him with the alternative of marrying and proving the equality of celibacy with married life, or giving up his opposition to his own condition.392 Jerome gives a very unfavorable picture of his character, evidently colored by vehement bitterness. He calls Jovinian a servant of corruption, a barbarous writer, a Christian Epicurean, who, after having once lived in strict asceticism, now preferred earth to heaven, vice to virtue, his belly to Christ, and always strode along as an elegantly dressed bridegroom. Augustine is much more lenient, only reproaching Jovinian with having misled many Roman nuns into marriage by holding before them the examples of pious women in the Bible. Jovinian was probably provoked to question and oppose monasticism, as Gieseler supposes, by Jerome’s extravagant praising of it, and by the feeling against it, which the death of Blesilla (384) in Rome confirmed. And he at first found extensive sympathy. But he was excommunicated and banished with his adherents at a council about the year 390, by Siricius, bishop of Rome, who was zealously opposed to the marriage of priests. He then betook himself to Milan, where the two monks Sarmatio and Barbatian held forth views like his own; but he was treated there after the same fashion by the bishop, Ambrose, who held a council against him. From this time he and his party disappear from history, and before the year 406 he died in exile.393 According to Jerome, Jovinian held these four points (1) Virgins, widows, and married persons, who have once been baptized into Christ, have equal merit, other things in their conduct being equal. (2) Those, who are once with full faith born again by baptism, cannot be overcome (subverti) by the devil. (3) There is no difference between abstaining from food and enjoying it with thanksgiving. (4) All, who keep the baptismal covenant, will receive an equal reward in heaven.

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

  We may freely acknowledge the profound and beautiful truth at the bottom of this old catholic doctrine of the church, and the historical importance of it for that period of persecution, as well as for the great missionary work among the barbarians of the middle ages; but we cannot ignore the fact that the doctrine rested in part on a fallacy, which, in course of time, after the union of the church with the state, or, in other words, with the world, became more and more glaring, and provoked an internal protest of ever-growing force. It blindly identified the spiritual unity of the church with unity of organization, insisted on outward uniformity at the expense of free development, and confounded the faulty empirical church, or a temporary phase of the development of Christianity, with the ideal and eternal kingdom of Christ, which will not be perfect in its manifestation until the glorious second coming of its Head. The Scriptural principle "Out of Christ there is no salvation," was contracted and restricted to the Cyprianic principle: "Out of the (visible) church there is no salvation;" and from this there was only one step to the fundamental error of Romanism: "Out of the Roman Church there is no salvation." No effort after outward unity could prevent the distinction of all Oriental and Occidental church from showing itself at this early period, in language, customs, and theology;—a distinction which afterwards led to a schism to this day unhealed. It may well be questioned whether our Lord intended an outward visible unity of the church in the present order of things. He promised that there should be "one flock one shepherd," but not "one fold."243 There may be one flock, and yet many folds or church organizations. In the sacerdotal prayer, our Lord says not one word about church, bishops or popes, but dwells upon that spiritual unity which reflects the harmony between the eternal Father and the eternal Son. "The true communion of Christian men—’the communion of saints’ upon which all churches are built—is not the common performance of external acts, but a communion of soul with soul and of the soul with Christ. It is a consequence of the nature which God has given us that an external organization should help our communion with one another: it is a consequence both of our twofold nature, and of Christ’s appointment that external acts should help our communion with Him. But subtler, deeper, diviner than anything of which external things can be either the symbol or the bond is that inner reality and essence of union—that interpenetrating community of thought and character—which St. Paul speaks of as the ’unity of the Spirit,’ and which in the sublimest of sublime books, in the most sacred words, is likened to the oneness of the Son with the Father and of the Father with the Son."244 § 54. Councils. Best Collections of Acts of Councils by Harduin (1715, 12 vols.), and Mansi (1759, 31 vols.).