Remorse

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)

  To the labors of abbot Peter added the activity of an author. He wrote famous tracts to persuade the Jews and Mohammedans, and against the heretic Peter de Bruys. His last work was on miracles,598in which many most incredible stories of the supernatural are told as having occurred in convents. It was while this mild and wise man held office, that Abaelard knocked at Cluny for admission and by his hearty permission spent within its walls the last weary hours of his life. During Peter’s incumbency St. Bernard made his famous attack against the self-indulgence of the Cluniacs. Robert, a young kinsman of Bernard, had transferred his allegiance from the Cistercian order to Cluny. Bernard’s request that he be given up Pontius declined to grant. What his predecessor had declined to do, Peter did. Perhaps it was not without feeling over the memory of Pontius’ action that Bernard wrote, comparing599 the simple life at Citeaux with the laxity and luxury prevailing at Cluny.

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

  He spent the warmer months in Anagni, where he must have had mixed feelings as he recalled the experiences of his predecessor Boniface VIII., which had been the immediate cause of the transfer of the papal residence to French soil. The atrocities practised at Cesena by Cardinal Robert cast a dark shadow over the events of the year. An uprising of the inhabitants in consequence of the brutality of his Breton troops drove them and the cardinal to seek refuge in the citadel. Hawkwood was called in, and, in spite of the cardinal’s pacific assurances, the mercenaries fell upon the defenceless people and committed a butchery whose shocking details made the ears of all Italy to tingle. Four thousand were put to death, including friars in their churches, and still other thousands were sent forth naked and cold to find what refuge they could in neighboring towns. But, in spite of this barbarity, the pope’s authority was acknowledged by an enlarging circle of Italian commonwealths, including Bologna. Florence, even, sued for peace. When Gregory died, March 27, 1378, he was only 47 years old. By his request, his body was laid to rest in S. Maria Nuova on the Forum. In his last hours, he is said to have regretted having given his ear to the voice of Catherine of Siena, and he admonished the cardinals not to listen to prophecies as he had done.248 Nevertheless, the monument erected to Gregory at Rome two hundred years later is true to history in representing Catherine of Siena walking at the pope’s side as if conducting him back to Rome. The Babylonian captivity of the papacy had lasted nearly three-quarters of a century. The wonder is that with the pope virtually a vassal of France, Western Christendom remained united. Scarcely anything in history seems more unnatural than the voluntary residence of the popes in the commonplace town on the Rhone remote from the burial-place of the Apostles and from the centres of European life.

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

  With all the suddenness and radicalness of the transformation there is nevertheless a bond of unity between Saul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian. It was the same person with the same end in view, but in opposite directions. We must remember that he was not a worldly, indifferent, cold-blooded man, but an intensely religious man. While persecuting the church, he was "blameless" as touching the righteousness of the law.372 He resembled the rich youth who had observed the commandments, yet lacked the one things needful, and of whom Mark says that Jesus "loved him."373 He was not converted from infidelity to faith, but from a lower faith to a purer faith, from the religion of Moses to the religion of Christ, from the theology of the law to the theology of the gospel. How shall a sinner be justified before the tribunal of a holy God? That was with him the question of questions before as well as after his conversion; not a scholastic question merely, but even far more a moral and religious question. For righteousness, to the Hebrew mind, is conformity to the will of God as expressed in his revealed law, and implies life eternal as its reward. The honest and earnest pursuit of righteousness is the connecting link between the two periods of Paul’s life. First he labored to secure it by works of the law, then obedience of faith. What he had sought in vain by his fanatical zeal for the traditions of Judaism, he found gratuitously and at once by trust in the cross of Christ: pardon and peace with God. By the discipline of the Mosaic law as a tutor he was led beyond its restraints and prepared for manhood and freedom. Through the law he died to the law that he might live unto God. His old self, with its lusts, was crucified with Christ, so that henceforth he lived no longer himself, but Christ lived in him.374 He was mystically identified with his Saviour and had no separate existence from him. The whole of Christianity, the whole of life, was summed up to him in the one word: Christ. He determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified for our sins, and risen again for our justification.375 His experience of justification by faith, his free pardon and acceptance by Christ were to him the strongest stimulus to gratitude and consecration. His great sin of persecution, like Peter’s denial, was overruled for his own good: the remembrance of it kept him humble, guarded him against temptation, and intensified his zeal and devotion. "I am the least of the apostles," he said in unfeigned humility that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

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

  On the following day, when the whole Senate had come to him in a body, after mutual salutations, and he had begged pardon for their having come to him when he ought rather to have gone to them, first premising that he had long desired this interview with them, but had put it off until he should have a surer presentiment of his decease, he proceeded thus:— " ’Honored Lords,—I thank you exceedingly for having conferred so many honors on one who plainly deserved nothing of the kind, and for having so often borne patiently with my very numerous infirmities. This I have always regarded as the strongest proof of your singular good-will toward me. And though in the discharge of my duty I have had various battles to fight, and various insults to endure, because to these every man, even the most excellent, must be subjected, I know and acknowledge that none of these things happened through your fault; and I earnestly entreat you that if, in anything, I have not done as I ought, you will attribute it to the want of ability rather than of will; for I can truly declare that I have sincerely studied the interest of your Republic. Though I have not discharged my duty fully, I have always, to the best of my ability, consulted for the public good; and did I not acknowledge that the Lord, on His part, hath sometimes made my labors profitable, I should lay myself open to a charge of dissimulation. But this I beg of you, again and again, that you will be pleased to excuse me for having performed so little in public and in private, compared with what I ought to have done. I also certainly acknowledge, that on another account also I am highly indebted to you, viz. your having borne patiently with my vehemence, which was sometimes carried to excess; my sins, in this respect, I trust, have been pardoned by God also. But in regard to the doctrine which I have delivered in your hearing, I declare that the Word of God, intrusted to me, I have taught, not rashly nor uncertainly, but purely and sincerely; as well knowing that His wrath was otherwise impending on my head, as I am certain that my labors in teaching were not displeasing to Him. And this I testify the more willingly before God, and before you all, because I have no doubt whatever that Satan, according to his wont, will stir up wicked, fickle, and giddy men, to corrupt the pure doctrine which you have heard of me!

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

  I really regret that now.” This book is dedicated to Hao Huijun and Chen Guo. My work spans three decades and has included consulting with thousands of families and cult victims. In the 1980s there were dozens of deprogrammers doing cult-intervention work across the United States. But today there are only a handful due to the rigors of the work and also largely as a result of cult harassment. Over the years I have received death threats, I’ve been stalked, and I’ve even been a target of cyber warfare. I can easily understand why some cult-intervention specialists have dropped out or burned out, and I can understand the reluctance of new people to pursue what is often an emotionally draining and ethically challenging career. Considering the shrinking resources and limited alternatives available to families and others concerned about destructive cults, this book is necessary now. My intention is to provide a practical and accessible synthesis of both relevant research and working experience regarding destructive cults. Rather than try to “reinvent the wheel,” this book carefully connects and footnotes the most meaningful research and relevant information. Here are also historical accounts of those affected by some of the most horrible cults in modern history. There are chapters about large, organized groups as well as about small but deadly cults. These historical chapters reflect the diversity and disturbing behavior of destructive cults. It is this history that demonstrates so vividly the cause for concern about cults—that is, because they hurt people. It is this history that forms the basis for why people remain concerned about groups called “cults.” It is the harm they have done, which is neither random nor accidental, that reflects their systemic and systematic practices. Specifically defining a destructive cult has generated considerable debate over the years. Some scholars and academics say any attempt to put forth a definition is pejorative and based on bigotry without any objective basis. A chapter of this book is focused on explaining the nucleus for the definition of a destructive cult. This nucleus definition is based on a specific set of objective criteria, which encompass the most common features and core characteristics found within all groups that have been considered destructive cults. This nucleus definition is based on behavior, not on beliefs. Also much debated is the subject of cult brainwashing. That is, how do groups called “cults” control people? A chapter in this book focuses on the existing body of research, which explains the process of cultic manipulation and control. The same process we can see in the context of large organizations called “cults” is also used by smaller groups. There is also evidence of similar manipulation in abusive, controlling relationships and in families that behave like cults. Some multilevel marketing companies and large-group-awareness training seminars have also employed a similar blend of coercive persuasion techniques to gain undue influence and control over people’s lives.

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

  Lawsuits filed against the Dignidad organization or Schaefer for tax fraud, kidnapping, and the rape of minors were repeatedly dismissed due to “lack of evidence.” Officials ignored the testimony of ex-members for decades. Paul Schaefer reportedly relied on a powerful network of judges, politicians, officials, police, military commanders, and businessman, who benefited from him or his organization in some way. Reportedly that network repeatedly protected its own as well as Schaefer’s interests.224 When Chile returned to democratic government, Schaefer’s corrupt network of influence slowly began to crumble. Finally in 1998 the grievances of families who lived near Colonia Dignidad were heard. Paul Schaefer was charged for sexually abusing twenty-six boys, who had been lured into the community by its free school and clinic.225 Permanent Uncle then quickly vanished. He delegated his power over the compound to subordinates.226 In June 2005 Chilean officials found a cache of machine guns and rocket launchers at the Dignidad compound. Interior minister Jorge Correa said, “What’s been discovered so far is of a dimension that can only be explained in a military context. We’re talking about a large arsenal and I must stress that it’s going to end up being the largest ever found in private hands in the life and history of Chile.”227 In August of the same year, Chilean officials took over the assets of the Dignidad organization, and control of the group compound was handed over to a court-appointed attorney.228 In 2006 former followers of Paul Schaefer published a full-page apology in the prominent Chilean newspaper El Mercurio . They asked for forgiveness for forty years of abuses and human rights violations. The apology read in part, “Since we have been liberated from the domination of Paul Schaefer we have come to understand that our community lived its religious faith as a hermetic sect, which accepted the transformation of the personalities of its members and made them incapable of making decisions contrary to his wishes as sole leader. Soon after we started and amid confessions of sin only to him, Schaefer came to know each of us completely, and he took advantage of that to dominate the community. Cutting us off from the outside world and forcing us to sever relations with our families and relatives, he was able to establish absolute control.” A copy of the apology was also sent to Michelle Bachelet, the Chilean president.229 The following month, in May 2006, Paul Schaefer was sentenced to twenty years in prison and ordered to pay reparations to his victims. A lawyer for the victims said that the cult leader’s conviction was the end of “40 years of impunity and [meant] justice for all the victims who, at the time, had no way to tell how they had been victimized.”230 Schaefer was later sentenced to three more years in prison for weapons violations in 2008.231 Paul Schaefer died in a prison hospital in April 2010. He was eighty-nine.232 In February 2013 six former leaders of Colonia Dignidad surrendered themselves to Chilean authorities.

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

  The salmonella poisoning was part of an organized effort to incapacitate voters who would vote against Rajneesh’s designated slate of candidates. Cult members ultimately hoped to contaminate The Dalles water supply. The poisoning of local salad bars was done as a preliminary test.48 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh reportedly bragged about bedding hundreds of women, which earned him the title of “sex guru.” He was also said to be addicted to drugs such as Valium and nitrous oxide. Rajneesh was a self-proclaimed “rich man’s guru.” Wealthy disciples bought the guru expensive gifts, including a fleet of more than ninety Rolls-Royce automobiles. When asked why he needed so many cars, Rajneesh replied that his goal was to have 365, a Rolls-Royce for each day of the year.49 He often rode the cars during ceremonial parades at Rajneeshpuram.50 Meanwhile, reportedly about 87 percent of the residents of Rajneeshpuram had a sexually transmitted disease. And when women became pregnant, the guru told them to have an abortion and be sterilized. One woman, Jane Stork, was enthralled by Rajneesh for many years. It wasn’t until she was jailed due to her involvement in the group’s criminal activities that Stork finally broke free from Bhagwan. She later told the press, “He used to speak so lovingly about children, yet behind the scenes everybody’s getting sterilized. There were no children born in the ashram.” Both Stork and her teenage daughter were sterilized.51 Jane Stork eventually came to realize the destructive nature of the group. “To come to terms with that much self-delusion is really difficult.” She said, “It’s a long, slow, painful process.” Insisting on taking the blame herself, Stork said she had “brainwashed” herself. In 1986 two Rajneeshies pleaded no contest to the salmonella poisoning. More than twenty cult members including Stork were criminally indicted. Jane Stork, also known as Catherine Jane Stubbs and Ma Shanti Bhadra, pleaded guilty to plotting the murder of federal prosecutor Charles Turner in 2005.52 She served two years in prison.53 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was fined $400,000 for immigration fraud and deported. After his expulsion from the United States, Rajneesh tried to relocate to twenty-one countries without success. He finally returned to India in 1987.54 Rajneesh died in Pune on January 19, 1990. Rajneesh’s remaining disciples now market an international business based on his legacy of five thousand recorded lectures through Osho International, based in New York City. Osho is a name Rajneesh chose to use not long before his death. 55 A bronze statue of an antelope stands in front of the Wasco County courthouse, donated by the town of Antelope, Oregon. It is inscribed with the following words: “In order for evil to prevail, good men should do nothing.”56 1990—Yahweh ben Yahweh Murders and Terrorist Bombings Hulon Mitchell Jr. was born on October 27, 1935, the eldest child of a Pentecostal preacher who fathered thirteen children. His sister Leona would grow up to become an acclaimed operatic soprano and perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Hulon Mitchell Jr.

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

  His research results can be seen as a possible confirmation of the process of coercive persuasion Edgar Schein identified.611 That is, the discipleship training appeared to employ a process of “unfreezing,” “changing,” and then “refreezing” people. Yeakley says, “To the extent that the members respond to that group pressure, the observed changes in psychological type scores are likely to become (or have already become) actual changes in the personality that is manifested.”612 We should note that the results Yeakley achieved were descriptive and do not precisely explain why these changes occurred or whether they can be seen as permanent. Most probably without continuing group pressure and influence, the observed changes could crumble and ultimately dissipate. Yeakley’s study can be helpful, though, in understanding how malleable people can be within a group environment that uses extreme pressure to manipulate and influence behavior. His study demonstrates that personality characteristics can be affected and shaped through high pressure tactics and then perhaps hardened in place. Lifton also describes how people influenced by a thought-reform program strip themselves of anything objectionable or at variance with the preferred prototype of the true believer. He says, “Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the conviction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false. Totalists thus feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed.” 613 Yeakley‘s book warned of the potential consequences that could be linked to the “falsification of psychological type.” He opined that it might produce detrimental results such as a “serious midlife crisis” and “major burn-out problems, serious depression, and a variety of other psychological…problems.”614 One of the most reported cult personality transformations in history was Leslie Van Houten, a former follower of Charles Manson. Van Houten grew up in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood and was a high school cheerleader. But under Manson’s influence, at the age of nineteen in 1969, she stabbed one of the cult’s targeted victims fourteen to sixteen times in the back.615 After decades of imprisonment, the former cult member said, “Everything that was good and decent in me I threw away.” It was only through her imposed separation from the group through imprisonment and her father’s visits that she apparently came to realize “what had happened.”616 Repeatedly denied parole, Van Houten tried to explain her alleged rehabilitation before a parole board hearing in 2003. She said, “I was raised to be a decent human being. I turned into a monster and I have spent these years going back to a decent human being.” During her incarceration Leslie Van Houten became a model prisoner, earned college degrees, and worked for a prison supervisor.617 Less stigmatized and more sympathetic examples of radical cult transformations include Patty Hearst and Elizabeth Smart. Both women were kidnapped, and their captors radically transformed them.

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

  The prosecution proved, to the satisfaction of the jury, that Manson had been so totally in control of his group members that they had essentially become his weapon of choice. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi pointed this out to the jury at trial during his summation. He said, “The Family at Spahn Ranch was Charlie Manson’s Family, ladies and gentlemen. He controlled every single facet of their daily existence.” The prosecutor explained, “Charles Manson’s Family preached love but practiced cold-blooded, savage murder. Why was that so? Because Charles Manson, their boss, ordained it. If Manson had wanted his Family to be singers in a church choir, that is what they would have been.” Bugliosi concluded, “Manson is guilty of all seven counts of murder under the vicarious liability rule of conspiracy.” 240 Charles Manson and his followers—Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Tex Watson—were all found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. But when California briefly abolished the death penalty in 1972, their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Undue influence did nothing to mitigate the sentencing of Manson’s cult disciples despite the premise of their leader’s conviction. And after more than forty years, they remain in prison and are repeatedly denied parole. “Everything that was good and decent in me I threw away,” Leslie Van Houten has said. It was her father, she explained, who ultimately helped her realize during his prison visits “what had happened, and the monster I became.”241 “They were brainwashed in a cult,” explained Simon Fraser University professor Karlene Faith.242 Faith, who teaches in prison, has been friends with Van Houten for years. Van Houten is the focus of Faith’s 2001 book The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten: Life beyond the Cult . When asked during her twentieth parole board hearing to explain her past actions in the Manson cult, Van Houten replied, “I feel that at that point I had really lost my humanity and I can’t know how far I would have gone. I had no regard for life and no measurement of my limitations.”243 Van Houten was once again denied parole after forty-four years in prison at the age of sixty-three. At the hearing Patrick Sequiera, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, offered the opinion that the Manson murders were so heinous that they might warrant an exception excluding the legal guarantee that provides for the possibility of parole.244 Charles Manson continues to be an object of morbid fascination and has become the ultimate icon of evil. Manson reportedly receives more mail than any other prison inmate in the United States.245 1974—SLA Abduction of Patty Hearst In February 1974 a small political cult known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) abducted Patty Hearst, the nineteen-year-old heiress to a newspaper fortune in California. Escaped convict Donald DeFreeze, who called himself “Field Marshall Cinqu,” led the Berkeley-based group of self-styled revolutionary radicals.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Gossip of Trinity College, Glasgow, used to tell his students that when he was ordained to the ministry he felt as if the people were saying to him: ‘We are forever involved in the dust and the heat of the day; we have to spend our time getting and spending; we have to serve at the counter, to toil at the desk, to make the wheels of industry go round. We want you to be set apart so that you can go in to the secret place of God and come back every Sunday with a word from him to us.’ The priest is the link between God and the world. In Israel, the priest had one special function – to offer sacrifice for the sins of the people. Sin disturbs the relationship which should exist between men and women and God and puts up a barrier between them. The sacrifice is meant to restore that relationship and remove that barrier. But we must note that the Jews were always quite clear that the sins for which sacrifice could atone were sins of ignorance. The deliberate sin did not find its atonement in sacrifice. The writer to the Hebrews himself says: ‘For if we wilfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins’ (Hebrews 10:26). This is a conviction that emerges again and again in the sacrificial laws of the Old Testament. Again and again, they begin: ‘When anyone sins unintentionally in any of the Lord’s commandments about things not to be done ...’ (Leviticus 4:2, cf. verse 13). Numbers 15:22–31 is a key passage. There, the necessary sacrifices are laid down ‘if you unintentionally fail to observe all these commandments’. But at the end it is laid down: ‘But whoever acts high-handedly ... affronts the Lord ... shall be utterly cut off and bear the guilt.’ Deuteronomy 17:12 lays it down: ‘Anyone who presumes to disobey ... that person shall die.’ The sin of ignorance is pardonable; the sin of presumption is not. Nevertheless, we must note that by the sin of ignorance the Jews meant more than simply lack of knowledge. They included the sins committed when someone was carried away in a moment of impulse or anger or passion or was overcome by some irresistible temptation, and the sins were followed by repentance. By the sin of presumption, they meant the cold, calculated sin for which the perpetrator was not in the least sorry, the open-eyed disobedience of God.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  In utter silence they walked together, her hand still under his trembling arm. ‘Deborah didn’t never write,’ she at last pursued, ‘about what happened to the baby. Did you ever see him? You going to meet him in Heaven, too?’ ‘The Word tell us,’ he said, ‘to let the dead bury the dead. Why you want to go rummaging around back there, digging up things what’s all forgotten now? The Lord, He knows my life—He done forgive me a long time ago.’ ‘Look like,’ she said, ‘you think the Lord’s a man like you; you think you can fool Him like you fool men, and you think He forgets, like men. But God don’t forget nothing, Gabriel—if your name’s down there in the Book, like you say, it’s got all what you done right down there with it. And you going to answer for it, too.’ ‘I done answered,’ he said, ‘already before my God. I ain’t got to answer now, in front of you.’ She opened her handbag, and took out the letter. ‘I been carrying this letter now,’ she said, ‘for more than thirty years. And I been wondering all that time if I’d ever talk to you about it.’ And she looked at him. He was looking, unwillingly, at the letter, which she held tightly in one hand. It was old, and dirty, and brown, and torn; he recognized Deborah’s uncertain, trembling hand, and he could see her again in the cabin, bending over the table, laboriously trusting to paper the bitterness she had not spoken. It had lived in her silence, then, all of those years? He could not believe it. She had been praying for him as she died—she had sworn to meet him in glory. And yet, this letter, her witness, spoke, breaking her long silence, now that she was beyond his reach for ever. ‘Yes,’ said Florence, watching his face, ‘you didn’t give her no bed of roses to sleep on, did you?—poor, simple, ugly, black girl. And you didn’t treat that other one no better. Who is you met, Gabriel, all your holy life long, you ain’t made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing it still—you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in your grave.’ ‘God’s way,’ he said, and his speech was thick, his face was slick with sweat, ‘ain’t man’s way.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  On the other hand, Paul himself never makes a single reference to that status and admits, in fact, that “three times I was beaten with rods” (2 Cor. 11:25)—a Roman punishment forbidden to be used on Roman citizens. Indeed, Luke himself seems to have forgotten that when he has Paul and Silas “beaten with rods” (Acts 16:22). All in all, therefore, Paul was either not a Roman citizen or, if he were, he never used that privilege for his own advantage. And, indeed, that abstention could be the far more important point. Finally, we move beyond Paul’s general religio-educational and socioeconomic status to a very personal and individual identity—that of the pre-Christian Jewish Paul as a persecutor of Christian Jews. And here, once again, Luke and Paul are in explicit agreement: I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. (Gal. 1:13–14) As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. (Phil. 3:6) I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. (1 Cor. 15:9) Being zealous for God…. I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison. (Acts 22:3–4) But of course, for Luke, Paul was almost a persecutor even in Jerusalem (Acts 7:58; 8:1), although Paul himself says that he was “still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ” (Gal. 1:22). Notice also that both Paul and Luke use that term “zeal(ous),” and in Jewish religious contexts that often denotes paralegal and even lethal action against those considered apostates. We are dealing not just with discrimination, but with very serious and even mortal persecution. What, by the way, was so wrong with Christian Judaism—or at least the part that concerned Paul—that made him launch a lethal persecution against it? We can only conjecture, but here is our best reconstruction. Some Christian Jews claimed that the awaited eschatological era was already present, that, in other words, the kingdom of God’s divine transformation of the world from one of violent injustice to one of nonviolent justice had already begun. Therefore, they concluded, Gentiles could now become full members of the people of God without following Jewish conversion requirements, for example, circumcision for males. Paul began as an opponent of this belief, but was converted to being a proponent of exactly the same belief—he went from persecuting those proposing open Gentile inclusion to becoming its major missionary advocate. DESTINY AT DAMASCUS We turn now to focus on Damascus. Both Luke and Paul connect that city to the inaugural event of Paul’s vocational revelation from God and Christ. But they do it quite differently when describing its two elements—Paul’s vision of Christ and Paul’s mandate as an apostle. And in both those areas the differences are major theological and not just minor historical ones. A vision of Christ.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  view that sufferings atone. The time of a man's death, if he knows that it is imminent, is a time for self-examination and repentance. (And since a man may not know when death approaches, he should repent every day.) On the other hand, death counts as paying one's account with God :128 the man who dies repentant will not be further punished for his transgression, no matter how serious. Further, the death of martyrs (those killed 'by the hand of the nations of the world') is considered atonement. 129 Death, to be sure, must be 'accompanied' by repentance; 130 that is, it does not avail in the case of one who has denied God, thrown off the yoke of the covenant and remained defiant to the end. The view that death as such atones for sin was developed after the destruc tion of the Temple. As Urbach has noted, while the Temple stood, the prescribed sacrifices atoned for transgressions against God, while the punishment of the court and the restitution required by the law atoned for offences against one's fellow .131 Thus, as we shall see, when a man received stripes at the order of the court, he was considered to have atoned for the offence for which he was punished. 132 The view that death in general atones for sins developed from the idea that death at the hands of a court atoned for sin, provided that the one being executed repented:133 When [the condemned man] was about ten cubits from the place of stoning they used to say to him, 'Make thy confession', for such is the way of them that have been condemned to death to make confession, for every one that makes his con fession has a share in the world to come. . . . [This is proved by quoting the story of Achan in Josh. 7.19.] Whence do we learn that his [Achan's] confession made atonement for him? It is written, And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day (Josh. 7.25)-this day thou shalt be troubled, but in the world to come thou shalt not be troubled. If he knows not how to make his confession they say to him, 'Say, May my death be an atonement for all my sins.'134

• From Wild (2012)

  I introduced myself to them, and a few minutes later I was hugging Christine goodbye and clambering into the back of their van. The women were college students who worked at a summer camp; they were going right past the place where the PCT crossed the road. They said they’d be happy to give me a ride, so long as I was willing to wait while they did their errands. I sat in the shade of their lumbering camp van, reading The Novel in the parking lot of a grocery store as they shopped. It was hot and humid—summertime in a way that it hadn’t been up in the snow just that morning. As I read, I could feel my mother’s presence so acutely, her absence so profoundly, that it was hard to focus on the words. Why had I mocked her for loving Michener? The fact is, I’d loved Michener too—when I was fifteen I’d read The Drifters four times. One of the worst things about losing my mother at the age I did was how very much there was to regret. Small things that stung now: all the times I’d scorned her kindness by rolling my eyes or physically recoiled in response to her touch; the time I’d said, “Aren’t you amazed to see how much more sophisticated I am at twenty-one than you were?” The thought of my youthful lack of humility made me nauseous now. I had been an arrogant asshole and, in the midst of that, my mother died. Yes, I’d been a loving daughter and yes, I’d been there for her when it mattered, but I could have been better. I could have been what I’d begged her to say I was: the best daughter in the world. I shut The Novel and sat almost paralyzed with regret until the women reappeared, rolling a cart. Together we loaded their bags into the van. The women were four or five years younger than me, their hair and faces shiny and clean. Both wore sporty shorts and tank tops and colorful strands of braided yarn around their ankles and wrists. “So we were talking. It’s pretty intense you’re hiking alone,” said one of them after we’d finished with the bags. “What do your parents think of you doing it?” asked the other. “They don’t. I mean—I don’t have parents. My mom’s dead and I don’t have a father—or I do, technically, but he’s not in my life.” I climbed into the van and tucked The Novel into Monster so I wouldn’t have to see the discomfort sweep across their sunny faces. “Wow,” said one of them. “Yeah,” said the other. “The upside is that I’m free. I get to do whatever I want to do.” “Yeah,” said the one who’d said wow. “Wow,” said the one who’d said yeah.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  230 Lecture 32: Petrarch Christian dispensation; perhaps the great tension of his life was not caused by his love for Laura as much as by his efforts to blend the classical and the Christian. He was a humanist by both temperament and scholarship. But in his “Letter to Posterity”—how many have written to posterity?—he said this, and we may give him the last word: As a young man I was deluded, as an adult I went astray; but old age corrected me and experience convinced me of the truth of what I had read a long time before—that youth and pleasure are vain; or to be more exact, I was taught that by Him who creates all times and ages, and who allows wretched mortals, swollen with unjusti fi ed pride, to go astray from time to time, so that eventually they may recognize their sinfulness and see themselves as they really are. ■ Mann, Petrarch. Petrarch, Canzoniere. ———, Secret Book, Letter to Posterity, The Ascent of Mount Ventoux. 1. In what ways is humanism a useful concept in re fl ecting on Petrarch’s work and achievement? 2. What themes or concerns seem to you to run through the corpus of Petrarch’s writings? Questions to Consider Essential Reading

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Any one of these possibilities is far more probable than other suggestions that have been made. His treatment of Una would justify the self-condemning language Augustine uses. He was not merely persuading Una to live with him, but to make a break with her church (and, no doubt, her Catholic parents). Augustine would later reproach himself bitterly for trying to persuade a dear friend to give up Catholicism. Though the Church admitted some forms of legal concubinage, Augustine said (4.2) theirs was not such a union, since they did not intend to have children. And the lack of further offspring after the first shows that Augustine—against her will, he implies—used contraceptive strategies. Later, as a bishop, Augustine would pose a case that was very clearly what his own life with Una had been, her faithfulness contrasted with his faithlessness on the basis of the intent to bear children. If a man lives with one woman for some time, but only until he finds another worthier in terms of rank or advantages, he commits adultery in his heart, not against the one he wants to claim but against the one he lived with, even though they were not married. As for the woman who had knowingly and willingly lived with him outside the marriage contract—if she was true to his bed [tori fidem—exactly the way Augustine described his faithfulness to Una’s bed] and does not seek another partner, I could bring no evident charge of adultery against her. . . . In fact, she is better than many married mothers if, in her sexual relations she did what she could to have children, but had to submit against her will to the prevention of conception. (What Is Good in Marriage 5.5) O’Donnell suggests that this passage has the feel of a thing Una or her family may have been expected to hear. In his dramatic sixteenth year at home, Augustine developed a relationship that would last even longer than the one with Una, though it was ended with an emotional rupture (O’Donnell 2.381–82). That was with his influential friend, the Thagaste multimillionaire Romanian (Lepelley 2.178–82). In The Testimony, Augustine credits his father with trying to raise money for his further education in Carthage. But in the earlier Answer to Skeptics (2.2), he makes it clear that Romanian took over his education from the outset: When I lacked money in young manhood, and was ready to travel for my education, you opened your estate [domus] to me, your resources [sumptus], and, what is more than either, your heart [animus]. And when I was deprived of my father, you compensated for that by your patronage, encouragement, and financial help.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  It is doubtful, however, if the author would agree that forgiveness could be given to a repentant contemporary transgressor of one of the command ments for which there is no atonement. In the case of Judah, he was faced with the fact that Judah had not been burned and his descendants not immediately destroyed, and, like the Rabbis later, the author attributed Judah's being forgiven to his repentance. 30 In a lengthy passage in chapter 1 we see another instance in which repentance was considered to have secured forgiveness for Israel in the past, although the author was well aware that the Israelites had transgressed the eternal ordinances and forsaken God's commandments. God, addressing Moses, prophesies that Israel 'will forget all My commandments'. They will 'walk after the Gentiles ... , and will serve their gods' (1.9). Although God will send them witnesses, they will slay them (1.12), 'and they will abrogate and change everything so as to work evil before My eyes' (ibid.). Consequently God will tum them over as prey to the Gentiles (1.13); and, being scattered among the Gentiles, 'they will forget all My law and all My commandments and all My judgments, and will go astray as to new moons, and sabbaths, and festivals, and ordinances' ( 1.14). And after this they will turn to Me from amongst the Gentiles with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their strength, and I will gather them from amongst all the Gentiles, and they will seek me, so that I shall be found of them, when they seek me with all their heart and with all their soul. ( 1.15) The passage continues by having God promise that he will dwell with his people and 'not forsake them nor fail them' (1.17f.). After a prayer by Moses that God should keep the people from evil, God says: I know their contrariness and their thoughts and their stiff-neckedness, and they will not be obedient till they confess their own sin and the sin of their fathers. And after this they will turn to Me in all uprightness and with all (their) heart and with all (their) soul, and I will circumcise the foreskin of their heart and the foreskin 30 Above, p. 176. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha [III of the heart of their seed, and I will create in them a holy spirit, and I will cleanse them so that they shall not tum away from Me from that day unto eternity. ( 1.22f.)

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  It should also be noted that Nathan does not refer to any specific law or remind the king about the exodus or Israelite tradition. The story assumes a common sense of justice, grounded perhaps in natural law, or at least in the common traditions of the ancient Near East. Kings were specifically supposed to uphold justice, and especially to defend the more vulnerable members of society (cf. Pss 45:7; 72:2). But anyone should know that it is wrong for a rich man to take from a poor man, and the story adds pathos by the fact that it involves the killing of a little ewe lamb. The approach of the prophet presupposes that the king is ultimately a person of goodwill, that he has the decency to deplore injustice. Nathan’s technique would not work for an Elijah or an Amos who had adversarial relations with the kings of their day. But where the parable can work, it is more likely to lead the listener to repentance than the fiery denunciations characteristic of later prophets. The child born to Bathsheba dies. If this is punishment for David’s sin, we must feel that the punishment is misplaced. It is characteristic of David that he escapes the consequences of his actions by well-timed repentance. Moreover, Bathsheba becomes the mother of David’s eventual heir, Solomon. Once again, providence works in unexpected ways, and the Lord seems to write with crooked lines. As we have seen already in the story of Jacob, the blessing of the Lord is not necessarily reserved for virtuous people. The pattern of sin, repentance, and misplaced punishment is evident again in the last story in 2 Samuel, the story of the census in chapter 24. The purpose of the census is not stated explicitly, but it is transparent—it is a prelude to taxation. Hence the resistance even of David’s loyal henchman, Joab. David, characteristically, repents after the deed is done. Yet he is offered his choice of punishment, and it falls primarily on the people (even if we assume that David was grieved by their suffering). Supposedly, seventy thousand people died. Again, the punishment is misplaced. David does not lose the favor of the Lord. The upshot of this incident is that he acquires the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite and builds an altar to the Lord. This threshing floor is later identified as the site of Solomon’s temple (1 Chron 22:1; 2 Chron 3:1).

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  feeling, and gut levels, with a clear awareness of the different aspects of this unified learning. I suspect that in its purest form, this occurs rarely, but perhaps learning experiences can be judged by their closeness to or remoteness from this definition. Let me give an example closer to the academic world. Roger Hudiburg (undated), a teacher in a Colorado junior high school, describes a number of the effects of his attempts to be open in his classroom. He says, “Openness scares the hell out of me—it also makes me feel good.” In its effect on learning he speaks of the shared learning through inquiry and discovery: Excited girl peering through microscope at snow crystals: “Wow, look at this, Teach!” Boy experimenting with electromagnetism inadvertently produces copper carbonate: “What’s this weird blue stuff? Where’d it come from?” He follows this for weeks, happy and excited. Others are surprised when they put alcohol and salt in snow and frost forms on outside of container: someone says “ice cream!”—they learn much more than this, for they fool around for days; in fact they turn the whole class on to their “freezer.” Students do learn in an open environment. They learn about the excitement and importance of discovery, about their capabilities, their limits, self-discipline, and responsibility. They also learn facts. How many? Who knows? I just know that they learn some facts. They know this, too. I don’t think I every really knew this before, and I don’t think that they did either. It makes me feel good to really know something and to know down deep that we are learning. Openness. . . . You’ve got to experience it, live it, do it! To me, this description sounds like learning by the whole person. It has plenty of cognitive elements—the intellect is working at top speed. It certainly has feeling elements—curiosity, excitement, passion. It has experiential elements— caution, self-discipline, self-confidence, the thrill of discovery. So it is another example of what I am endeavoring to speak about. THE CURRENT SITUATION I am deeply concerned with what is going on in American educational institutions. They have focused so intently on ideas, have limited themselves so completely to “education from the neck up” that the resulting narrowness is having serious social consequences. I think of a weekend attempt to close the communications gap at Columbia University—with trustees, administrators, students, and faculty participating. Some progress was made, but not much. It seemed as though the faculty could communicate only intellectual ideas, while the students were expressing deep feelings about their education and about the institution. Following this weekend, one of the students, Greg Knox, wrote a letter (Lyon, 1971). He tells how, as a freshman, he had heard a talk saying that the goal of the student at Columbia was to become a “whole man,” and this thought “blew” his mind. He continues:

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  If penance in its entirety can be called exomologesis, this is because the public and ostentatious expressions of repentance, which are required in a particularly solemn manner and with a very marked intensity in the moments preceding reconciliation, also form part of the penitential action during the time the latter unfolds. Penance—and this is one of its essential aspects—must constitute a kind of demonstration, of renewed “confession,” attesting that one has committed a sin, that one knows one is a sinner, and that one repents. Such is the meaning that Tertullian, in chapters 9 and 10 of De paenitentia, gives to exomologesis as a permanent dimension of penance. Repentance must not be accomplished “solely within one’s conscience but it must be shown forth in some external act.” It is to this act—which is not so much an episode of penance but its external side, its visible and manifest face—that the word exomologesis should be applied. And thereby a “discipline,” a way of being and of living, a regimen that involves habitus atque victus, is designated: “It bids you to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover your body with filthy rags, to plunge your soul into sorrow, to exchange sin for suffering. Moreover, it demands that you know only such food as is plain; this means it is taken for the sake of your soul, not your belly. It requires that you habitually nourish prayer by fasting, that you sigh and weep and groan day and night to the Lord your God, that you prostrate yourself at the feet of the priests and kneel before the beloved of God, making all the brethren commissioned ambassadors of your prayer for pardon. Exomologesis does all this to render penitence acceptable.”61 The obligation to do penance and the status in which it takes form imply, throughout its unfolding, these acts of exomologesis that manifest and attest it. Texts more recent than Tertullian’s De paenitentia or De pudicitia show this. And they emphasize the demonstrative value of these practices. Through them it’s a matter not only of exhibiting penitence, but of proving it. A cleric of the Church of Rome wrote to Saint Cyprian, apropos of the apostates: “It is time that they should do penance for the sin, that they should prove sorrow for their lapse, that they should show reserve.”62 Saint Cyprian himself, calling the lapsed to penance, exhorts them to these manifestations in which the groanings of those who have sinned should be mixed with the tears of the faithful.63 And at the end of the fourth century, it is still by these acts for the purpose of testing and proving that the practice of the penitent life is being characterized: groanings and tears, says Saint Ambrose at the beginning of De paenitentia;64 groanings, lamentations, and tears, he adds a little further on, stressing that these are a freely consented-to expression, a sort of voluntary confession—but in the sense of a profession of faith—by which the apostates try to gain pardon for the involuntary disavowal, which they may have declared under torture.65 And Pacian, in his Paraenesis, notes that the true life of penance—the life that is led not just in a nominal way—finds its instruments in the sackcloth, ashes, fasting, and affliction and the participation of many people in prayers asking for forgiveness of the sinner.66