The mythology of two worlds is essentially the basis of any manifestation of dualism. In the Bible, for example, it was expressed in the story of the Tower of Babel. Us and HE. HE must be conquered. Today, something similar can happen through AI. From my Christian perspective, this is a wrong concept. The Apostle Paul said in Athens that we live, we are in God. This non-separation was also expressed in the incarnation of the Son of God. On the other hand, non-separation must not grow into the form of pantheism and the impression that I am god. So there is separation in indivisibility. Just like the hypostatic union and as it was expressed in the Creed.
For those out there that do know myth to be true in much more than just allegorically, please check out this brilliant essay by Andrew Henry at the Saxon Cross. I'm sure you will not be dissapointed.
I know what you mean, but I will always bristle at the use of "myth" to describe Christianity.
For the the past century "myth" has been used by liberal "Christianity" (in quotes because is it really Christianity if it denies the supernatural, the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, etc? But it calls itself "Christianity") to patronize believers, and to erase any claims to exclusive truth inherent in orthodox Christianity.
Of course orthodox Christianity has always acknowledged the use of non-literal language to help convey the ineffable. Symbolism, parable, metaphor. But myth is something different. Unless one is purposely trying to equate Jesus and Zeus, I'll always suspect a darker motive to borrowing "myth" to describe Christianity.
Tolkien might as well have contended that "Christianity is a lie that is true". Blessed are the peacemakers... until they gore your ox on their altar.
Myth is not a synonym for lie. Even myths which are not factually true (like, say, the myth of Persephone being taken to the underworld) express truths. Indeed, the parables told by Jesus were "myths". The point of them is not that those stories tell of things that actually happened, but that we are derive important truths from them.
And no, "myth" is not a synonym for "lie", but "myth" carries with it the understanding that it is not true. Hence, nobody had to have the concept of the very popular "Mythbusters" show explained to them.
Re: "myth" carries with it the understanding that it is not true.
But that a modernist definition, originally absent in the word. Homer after all believed the Trojan War really happened even if he gussied the story up a bit with his poetry. Tolkien and now Rod are appealing to the older meaning of the word: a sacred history (and note that "story" and "history" in English derive from the same root, a Greek word meaning "knowing"). Why not bring back the old meaning rather than accepting the modernist conception? IMO, kowtowing to modernist definitions in such matters is the dead end road we've followed too long. You won't ever find enchantment that way.
I'm not missing his point. I'm disliking his acceptance of a word that, to borrow from the words of Indigo Montoya "doesn't mean what he thinks it means"
And, no, Tolkien is not heralding back to previous definition. He is literally drawing a humorous contrast. His comment would make no sense unless it was already understood that myth is untrue.
Consider the statement"Today I went to an orthopedic shoulder specialist and he gave me a shot of cortisone in my shoulder"
That happens to be factually true for me, but is there any deeper meaning to it?
The truths of Christianity ("Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death") aren't just mere facts of the moment there is also profound meaning to them and that is why they matter. This is what makes them mythical and well as factual.
This is simply not the case except when it's used in the vernacular sense. You can check any number of online definitions from established sources like Brittanica, Cambridge, and Merriam-Webster.
Earth to JonF: The Trojan War did really happen -- albeit Homer did gussy up the story and we don't know if any of the details are accurate. We also don't know if Paris really carried off Helen, but we do know the site of Troy was a strategic one for trade, which grew rich collecting tolls, and was therefore a frequent target.
I am aware of this and did not state otherwise (though I do not believe the war began because three goddesses got in a snit at each other and bribed a human who was called to judge between them)
OK. "Homer believed the Trojan War really happened" does not definitely deny that it did. Since we agree that the three goddesses were mythical in the sense that they did not really exist, and we don't believe God the Father created that set of myths for purposes of his own -- they were man made -- no, I don't believe that was the actual cause of an actual war. Those who go to war generally create myths either to inspire the troops or to pat themselves on the back afterward. Americans would never have supported going to war to defend the Jewish population of Europe. When we had to take on the Nazis anyway, we were awfully proud of ourselves afterward. The story of Helen and Paris was probably a romantic veneer to a cold calculated cash consideration.
Sometimes, events that are known to have happened are described as "legendary." My ancient paperback American Century Dictionary gives "myth" as a definition for "legend." But it first gives "traditional story." Then I look up "myth" and it does not give "legend" but it does give "a traditional story embodying popular ideas on natural or supernatural and social phenomena, etc." Of course dictionaries have to be written by someone, so they too can be biased, or imprecise. I would consider it more dubious to reference Christian legends than Christian myths. Although either one can convey that the story is in some sense false, legend conveys, more the sense of "an inspiring story about something that never happened," while myth conveys something more of "a tale that has purpose and meaning and may or may not have happened but has instructional purpose." Not that Greek myths are on the same level of veracity as the Gospels. But the people who first developed them believed they were true. On the other hand, most thinking people had rejected their veracity long before Paul showed up, so a lot of Greeks were ready for a new exposition. The Ephesians, not so much perhaps.
I definitely see the point about the word " myth".
My understanding of "myth" is that it is a story that may be partially true, but never fully true. The ancients who had fallen away from God created legends and characters that sometimes reflected true things- giants, the flood- because they remembered some things accurately and some not so. The "myths" that they filled in their tales with largely teaches us a lot about them. In other words, if man created God instead of the other way around, he would be like Zeus. I am uncomfortable with the word "myth" in this context, particularly because the guy using it is not a Christian. When Tolkien said his famous line, he was really redefining the word just for us. It's like in your own family, you can say something that outsiders wouldn't understand. We know from what belief or shared history we are coming from. This may seem a trivial point, but using the word " myth" in connection with our faith can turn into a place of compromise. I remember in a woman's magazine years ago, a popular author wrote a Nativity story, adding an afterword that "even though this isn't really true, it's a really beautiful story". Wasn't that easy! That's the risk. And maybe,too, it's the idea of standing with non- believers, talking about " myth" in general, when they think our faith is nothing but a myth.
I like to think of our stories and our history as the literature of the true church. Yes, we have long ago tales about Christians such as Valentine, Patrick, Constantine, various saints that may have elements of "myth"- but the idea of sharing an understanding with non believers on this is uncomfortable. We see what is called mythology as a lesson on how people who are lost take memories from the past and attempt to make sense of things by patching together the true and the made up. They see all " mythology"- which includes our Christian faith!- as an anthropological study in how we create order and harmony by means of made up stories. That's all it is. We can definitely learn from people like this author, and a good understanding of pagan mythology is really useful in understanding people. It's also fascinating. But our faith, and above all, our Lord, are not just facinating and useful. " Let God be true, though everyone be a liar".
Isn’t it true that Genesis is a myth. There was no 6 day creation. No garden of Eden. No fruit. No serpent. No world-wide flood. Accepting these as myths liberates their truth value from the banal question of their actual truth.
I concur. The "myth" talk stems from an idolization of narrative and stories. It leads to the conclusion Vervaeke makes that the Hebrew tradition created the narrative manner of viewing the world -- and that's the greatest achievement from the Hebrew tradition. The narrative/myth structure of the Bible is important; sure. But isn't the content way more important? As just one example, God creating Adam and Eve in his image, thus, they deserved His Love and respect is the genesis (smile) of the democratic ideal. We don't get the Declaration of Independence without this idea or story. The particulars of the Christian myth matter--way more than the fact its got good story-telling structure.
The narrative structure IS the content. How in the world do you separate the "story" from the "ideas"? This is why we didn't receive the Gospels as collections of aphorisms. The story is essential to the "content."
You’re right that narrative/story/content are near synonymous. I thought the Verd fella was talking about how the Hebrews concocted the structure (linear storytelling) that we take for granted. As if that were the contribution—the structure—rather than the specific content.
In my head I thought they were making a distinction between the content and structure of the narratives.
I too am uncomfortable with the word “myth”, and am loathe to apply it at all to the New Testament. But about the various cosmological accounts in Genesis, there will be difficulty. It’s one thing to accept a miracle in a localized event, such as those mentioned in the Gospels. It’s quite another thing to read an account (that is written in language formally similar to mythical language in other traditions) that directly conflicts—if read literally—with the natural history strongly indicated by carefully studied scientific evidence.
So is it 6000 years or 13 billion years? Does our faith depend on our stance on that question?
Bravo. THAT gets to the very nub of the problem, and why it is SO emotional, and why those who want to consider themselves "intellectual" are so comfortable with "myth". It allows one to hold tenuously onto a God they can believe in.
It's also why Christians started referring to their belief in terms of myth at exactly the time in history when science was challenging its core beliefs. God help you if you came down on the wrong side of the debate. Seriously.
As for myself, I do find it impossible to dismiss the evidence presented by modern biology, historical geology, and cosmological astrophysics.
To those who do find a conflict with Genesis, I point to the unmistakably poetic language of the passages in question. We read that “God made” this or that. Now just HOW did God perform this making? THAT is not specified. What tools? Adam was not a chair or a table, so presumably carpentry tools weren’t used. What then?
Secondly, the Christian idea of the Logos is important. Here we have the idea that God can simply “speak” something into existence. (This is my view—that Creation is the primordial act of divine intentionality.) The “tools” then could very well simply be the very processes uncovered or theorized by science. The resemblance between the notion of the Logos and scientific and mathematical laws is, apart from the historical, evolutionary areas of science, obvious. My suggestion is then simply to extend that resemblance to those areas—evolution was the tool that God used.
An interesting part of pre-WW2 intellectual history is how it was considered progressive to endorse eugenics. And it’s obvious that eugenics is simply evolution turned into a conscious industrial process. But the corollary here is often ignored—that it was the orthodox Christian believers who opposed evolution-eugenics because the eugenics aspect was the emphasis. It was THAT which motivated the opposition to go back and insist on a more literal reading of Genesis—as a defense of human values over against the progressive machine ethos.
It’s important for everyone to be clear on what’s what. Science’s inductive methods can never disprove Jesus’ miracles or His Resurrection and Ascension. The only thing science can say about those things is that they have not been reproduced in the laboratory or been available as field data. That’s all.
As for the first chapters or so of Genesis, up through the Flood, as well as any remaining passages alluding to cosmic structure or origin processes, the language used in the Bible is so general and obviously poetic, if not figurative, that there really shouldn’t be any conflict between modern scientific accounts and Biblical narratives of Creation. I simply do not see a meaningful conflict OTHER than an intentionally maintained conflict between two hardened sides in a fruitless current -day standoff between cultural antagonists.
I'm personally comfortable to observe the obvious difference between portions of the Bible that make no pretext of being first hand accounts by eye witnesses (Genesis, Job), and eye witness accounts like the Gospels (or even accounts of historical fact passed down by very reliable oral tradition).
Yes. There’s a big difference between an account that says that a definite person like Peter saw Jesus alive after Peter saw him die and a general account of God creating the Earth. The latter statement is open to a great many concrete interpretations, while the Gospel accounts are quite restricted in their interpretable range (Jesus either rose from the dead or He didn’t.)
“The death of the spirit is the price of progress. Nietzsche revealed this mystery of the Western apocalypse when he announced that God was dead and that He had been murdered. This Gnostic murder is constantly committed by the men who sacrificed God to civilization. The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the great enterprise of salvation through world–immanent action, the farther the human beings who engage in this enterprise move away from the life of the spirit. And since the life the spirit is the source of order in man and society, the very success of a Gnostic civilization is the cause of its decline.
“A civilization can, indeed, advance and decline at the same time—but not forever. There is a limit toward which this ambiguous process moves; the limit is reached when an activist sect which represents the Gnostic truth organizes the civilization into an empire under its rule. Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization.”
"Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization."
Or as the late Marion Montgomery might have put it, it's the rule of people who believe they can lift themselves out of quicksand by pulling their own hair.
Sabbath was also understood to take place in Kairos time. It was an opportunity in one’s daily life to pull apart from the usual routine and experience God in a different space. For the Jews, it was an embodied representation of the duality you’re describing, a weekly participation in the transcendent reality of God. Abraham Heschel talks about this in this book The Sabbath.
The Orthodox Church holds that we experience kairos at every Divine Liturgy when all the faithful from all times, and Christ Himself, commune together in a time out of time — as someone has said, “when everything happens at once.”
And our verses often use the present tense for historical events: "Today Christ Ascends to Heaven", "Today the Theotokos is born". And of course "Christ is risen" not "Christ rose".
Confession: I think the part of my brain that when I was young would have read today's essay, enjoyed and understood it at least at some meta level of a feeling of comprehension, has been dead for decades. I found this to be a very difficult read and to be honest it made my head hurt a little. Read a sentence, reared it, read a paragraph and reread it...I realized that after decades of being a physical scientist, yes a materialist, albeit not a happy materialist, if there is such a person, I read words and sentences for literal meaning and for descriptions of reality. Reality being what I see, feel, touch and can mentally comprehend to the limits of my intellect. I remember feeling so frustrated by Joseph Campbell. My Dutch father in law, a chemist, was taken, even enthralled by Campbell, and his ideas about myth, the occult and ultimately, Catholicism (the cafeteria style). I just did not, and still do not "get it." I even find that the comments written here, without criticism, are mostly incomprehensible to me. Wittgenstein keeps echoing - are we sure we are all using these words in the same way? Are these questions meaningful or merely seemingly meaningful? The one exception among the comments and in the essay is the idea of using myth to describe Christianity. The nuns burrowed deeply enough into my mind that I recoil when I hear this. My mind generates the "you either believe Christianity is true, with all its apparent challenges to our (scientific materialist) way of thinking, or you don't." This as binary as binary gets. You don't get to hedge by calling it myth with all of the ambiguity inherently embodied in that word, but you do have the choice.
I find the themes in Vervaeke's work to be so oft-repeated that they're trite. Maybe that's the source of your incomprehension--the sense you've been here before and it's wholly uninteresting.
It was the liberals who first started using the word "myth" in relation to the Christian faith (remember "demythologizing the Scripture"?). But if C.S. Lewis, who was very much aware of Biblical and theological liberalism, could use the term, even co-opt it, in a positive way, I don't see why we can't.
"When the Christian scripture calls Christ the Bridegroom and the Church the Bride, this is the way of knowing implied by that metaphor."
Readers: If you have ever wondered about Rod's ongoing emphasis on clashes between ancient Christian anthropology and the Sexual Revolution (ancient and modern) read the quoted sentence several times in the context of today's Dreher Diary.
Yes, this. The Biblical writers and Church Fathers were steeped in such figural reading/thinking. We've chucked it to our own detriment. See Andrew Louth, "Discerning the Mystery."
Maybe someone here can tell me if “Adam knew Eve” carries at all same meaning as “Adam became one flesh with Eve.”
I understand that there is a level of existential knowledge that requires love, but I’m asking if this is one of them, because of this in 1 Corinthians 6: "Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.’
There are many experiences we might have that are a kind of knowing that goes beyond the intellect, that lodges in the body and soul, and not all of them are generated by love.
So I question why Rod and Vervaeke broaden the sexual analogy to include love.
It struck me as a bad analogy too. It's as if Vervaeke is trying to spice up his bland work. It's particularly odd given he's a cognitive psychologist and not a biologist.
Words are approximations of something that cannot be expressed in words. It's the constant re-approximating that's really hanging them up now. I say them because they are the ones with the problems that they cannot solve, no matter how much they redefine everything the problems keep coming back. A myth, an analogy, a metaphor, a Dylanesque snippet, nothing works!
I just watched the turdetts chasing each other around the bowl in a race to go...glug, glug, glug. Turns out they all went under. The race didn't matter much at all, but I guess one of the turds won. This is the mystery of the myth of the turds.
Tohu wa-bohu! I am so glad that the evangelicals are on it. I'm glad that someone is as interested in this language as I am. It's meaningful to me. The first few verses in the OT are so packed with meaning. Yet I have to contend with atheists to have it (meaning)!
P.S. I feel like today's discussion shaved points off my IQ. And I really had very few to spare. Now I'm feeling so intellectually insecure I may never get over it. Rats!
The myth of IQ. Best expressed in the story of Wile E Coyote, super genius, who could never catch the Road Runner because he was such a bungler. I've learnt much, over the years, from Looney Tunes.
I can say the same. I learned how to always hope for the best from Sylvester, how to make a Napoleon Complex fun from Yosemite, how to woo women from Pepe and how to be witty from Bugs—not that I'll ever be as good at it as he is. Also how to persevere against all odds from Elmer, how to be innocently annoying from Tweety and how to buck the system from Foghorn. On top of all that, I learned to love classical music and even a little opera. All from Looney Tunes. That was it, they hit the heights. And oh what heights they hit.
You came up with a good pun, though. For several years I was in the grip of punmaking fever thanks to the encouraging evil influence of Facebook groups. I must say I came up with some honeys. But if what wit you do have goes to making puns, count on it, my son, it will take you over and make you into a freak.
A happy thought is this, I say, writing in my best TIME magazine circa 1928 style: there is a book with the execrable title, "The Pun Also Rises." If I remember the ad copy correctly, its author has at least a background in neuroscience. He presents evidence that the meek little pun, far from being, as convention has it, the lowest form of wit, may in fact be the highest. I tell you this hesitantly, knowing as I do that encouraging a punmaker may leave him akin to the Dwight Frye character in the 1931 Dracula, tormenting himself in search of more and more puns as the Frye character shrieks for more and more flies to eat.
One person gets the pun, Dave. I always hated the music of that song. And it sticks to the mind the way thoroughly masticated chewing gum spat out upon a sidewalk sticks to the bottom of an unfortunate shoe.
The search for true meaning I think comes down in large measure to a simple idea - love of Christ. Of course many in history did not know Christianity but today there is no excuse. Love of Christ even answers in some way - why did little girls die in the flood? Love guards against despair. & of course It does not take away the painful feelings themselves. Unjust suffering is just something we must consent. Sure easier said than done. Btw - if you could quantify suffering in an equation, many suffer more in silence over a life time than those affected by the flood. Sure it is a different type of suffering but still. For instance those who lost little ones can adopt & love more over their lives. Some who suffer in silence & loneliness over a lifetime for reasons we don’t know live a life without love & there is little joy on this earth. Mother Teresa is an example. She suffered the dark night of the soul for most of her life. There was no feeling of joy as most perceive joy. Suffering for all its terrible feelings is relative.
Vervaeke, The Meaning Crisis, all that stuff just leaves me cold. There is a cacophony of voices trying to establish What It All Means And Where We Went Wrong. There are simply too many variables in play, the range of human motivations and aspirations is simply too, er, diverse, for any of this to be worth the time and energy expended upon it. Life is to be lived, not dissected for explanation. Meaning is to be found in living, not in Searching For Meaning. Here and there some things could perhaps be fixed or improved. But not because a great theoretician explained it all to us. Didn't we have enough of that with Karl Marx? In the movie Doctor Zhivago, the good doctor tells his older Bolshevik half brother that while he is operating on society and taking out the tumors, "some of us have to keep the patient alive, by living."
We of the scribbling classes who like to comment here are but a thin slice of the faith. These sorts of topics, while interesting to us, only scratch that damnable, superfluous itch we call “intelligence.” As Duke Ellington would instruct us, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”
For all I’ve read that brought me back to the faith, I still return to memories of my mother, an Irish farm girl in her youth, and her example of saying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary with tears in her eyes. To quote Evelyn Waugh, from Helena, his short novel on St. Helena on her quest for the true Cross, and her addressing the Three Magi:
“You are my especial patrons,” said Helena, “and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have had a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.
“Dear cousins, pray for me,” said Helena, “and for my poor overloaded son [the Emperor Constantine himself, who was still unbaptized]. May he, too, before the end find kneeling-space in the straw. Pray for the great, lest they perish utterly. . .
“For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.”
If I were a Calvinist, I might dismiss your mother saying the rosary and her tears, but I don't. I am Protestant, but I grew up in a neighborhood full of Catholics. A girl next door who used to babysit us became a nun, and I think eventually a Mother Superior. The rosary brought your mother closer to God, and her tears were real, which is all that matters. If someone were to tell me, saying the rosary is the essence of Christian faith, or essential to salvation, I would have to reject that argument, and hopefully I could do so gently. But to get back to the real point, faith is not, for the most part, a matter of intellectual understanding. I've been told by a Baptist minister that I overthink these things, and I keep in mind that he may be right. I think while John Wesley was struggling with these things, his brother Charles, who was a little ahead of him, said "For once in your life, just let yourself go." I recently watched the movie Gandhi for the first time in about forty years; one of his most profound observations was that India is not a congress of intellectuals, it is 700,000 villages. Leadership may not be at the village level, but the foundation for everything else is.
Wow Michael, this really hit the spot for me today. Exactly what I was going to say, if anything needed to be said. I'm tired of endless 10,000 word disquisitions on "The Meaning of Life" and I just retreat to my Rosary most days, and meditate on the fact that all of this stuff is Real and True, and it's really all that matters to me in my life at my current margin of long experience, as a member of the so-called Intellectual Classes.
What Vervaeke seems to be doing is examining these various threads and attempting to pull them together into a sort of contemporary whole. Therefore not derivation so much as distillation, which is not in and of itself a problem.
Maybe Bacon’s “oft thought yet never so well expressed” does apply. I expected more scientific rigor—more specificity from a cognitive psychologist. His account reads more like philosophy of mind stuff than empirical examination of cognition.
"all that stuff just leaves me cold. There is a cacophony of voices trying to establish What It All Means And Where We Went Wrong."
But giving the overwhelming amount of data available this could be said to be true of virtually everything. It's exactly the reason why discussions of Trump, tariffs, Israel, etc., leave ME cold. We all have to pick our poison, so to speak, so why bitch about what other people find interesting?
If you like orchids and I prefer roses, no reason to debate. Its a matter of taste. If we are discussing the future of our entire way of life, world, social and cultural relationships, whether its all going to fall down, or how we can save what ... its a matter of somewhat greater interest. If someone is saying "This is what's happening and this is what we need to do about," even a general denial can be of some significance.
I actually skip over a lot of denunciation of Trump. Much as I think he's a crazy unqualified loon who is going to do a lot of damage, most of the railing and caterwauling isn't going to change anything. I prefer to hunker down, keep my focus on things I might be able to nudge in a better direction, and keep half an eye on what might come next. The prospect that massive desertion of Trump will result in a Democratic triumph is rather ominous -- we need to break that cycle.
You might find it interesting to look at Mark Halperin on 2way, the other day he has a talk on how President Trump makes decisions. https://youtu.be/tmVfyDSkNGE?feature=shared
I think this has to do with what one is interested in. Some people are interested in the "history of ideas," some are not. I have well-educated friends in both camps.
Charlie, I’m a Calvinist/Reformed Protestant, and I don’t belittle or dismiss a faithful Catholic praying the Rosary either. And I very much relate to the idea of a Christian faith being far more than intellectual, dry doctrine and presuppositions.
At the risk of being doctrinal, I turn back to the Westminster Catechism:
Q1: What is the chief end of man?
A: The chief end of man is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever.
The sexual union is a powerful sacrament and metaphor for our union with Christ. That is why the Devil works so hard to denigrate and pervert it, unfortunately very successfully in our culture. It is more spiritual than physical.
Sex is not a sacrament, at least not a formal sacrament of the Church sort. Grace can come to us by any means God chooses, and it may come to some people via sex, but I rather dislike the tendency of some Christians to sacramentalize sex. It's the flip side of the old error of seeing sex as morally problematic in every and any context.
I suspect you are making more Catholic traffics than you realize.
The whole idea that Catholicism is an ascent to propositions, and therefore the proposition must be explained well for all, is the entire reason for VII’s existence. What they meant, but never said is “modern man no longer understands the faith by doing, he must be able to explain”
Is it possible to disable Spellcheck? Spellcheck is like a young cousin with whom you have nothing in common, and in whom you sense the seeds of real evil are germinating, but whom you have to force yourself to be pleasant to for a few days every summer. If I could I'd kill my cousin, thereby making the world a considerably better place. I can't, for theological and police procedural reasons, but I would happily murder Spellcheck. Ideas? Anyone?
The mythology of two worlds is essentially the basis of any manifestation of dualism. In the Bible, for example, it was expressed in the story of the Tower of Babel. Us and HE. HE must be conquered. Today, something similar can happen through AI. From my Christian perspective, this is a wrong concept. The Apostle Paul said in Athens that we live, we are in God. This non-separation was also expressed in the incarnation of the Son of God. On the other hand, non-separation must not grow into the form of pantheism and the impression that I am god. So there is separation in indivisibility. Just like the hypostatic union and as it was expressed in the Creed.
Ugh--if that conference had been during the first week of August, I could have come. Oh well, maybe another time.
For those out there that do know myth to be true in much more than just allegorically, please check out this brilliant essay by Andrew Henry at the Saxon Cross. I'm sure you will not be dissapointed.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thesaxoncross/p/the-cauldron-of-reality?r=36l0iu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I know what you mean, but I will always bristle at the use of "myth" to describe Christianity.
For the the past century "myth" has been used by liberal "Christianity" (in quotes because is it really Christianity if it denies the supernatural, the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, etc? But it calls itself "Christianity") to patronize believers, and to erase any claims to exclusive truth inherent in orthodox Christianity.
Of course orthodox Christianity has always acknowledged the use of non-literal language to help convey the ineffable. Symbolism, parable, metaphor. But myth is something different. Unless one is purposely trying to equate Jesus and Zeus, I'll always suspect a darker motive to borrowing "myth" to describe Christianity.
Tolkien might as well have contended that "Christianity is a lie that is true". Blessed are the peacemakers... until they gore your ox on their altar.
Myth is not a synonym for lie. Even myths which are not factually true (like, say, the myth of Persephone being taken to the underworld) express truths. Indeed, the parables told by Jesus were "myths". The point of them is not that those stories tell of things that actually happened, but that we are derive important truths from them.
No, parables are not myths.
And no, "myth" is not a synonym for "lie", but "myth" carries with it the understanding that it is not true. Hence, nobody had to have the concept of the very popular "Mythbusters" show explained to them.
Re: "myth" carries with it the understanding that it is not true.
But that a modernist definition, originally absent in the word. Homer after all believed the Trojan War really happened even if he gussied the story up a bit with his poetry. Tolkien and now Rod are appealing to the older meaning of the word: a sacred history (and note that "story" and "history" in English derive from the same root, a Greek word meaning "knowing"). Why not bring back the old meaning rather than accepting the modernist conception? IMO, kowtowing to modernist definitions in such matters is the dead end road we've followed too long. You won't ever find enchantment that way.
The resurrection, the virgin birth, the incarnation are not Christian myths unless you are a modern day intellectual or a liberal Christian.
You're insisting on "myth" = "lie" so you are missing Rod's point.
I'm not missing his point. I'm disliking his acceptance of a word that, to borrow from the words of Indigo Montoya "doesn't mean what he thinks it means"
And, no, Tolkien is not heralding back to previous definition. He is literally drawing a humorous contrast. His comment would make no sense unless it was already understood that myth is untrue.
I agree with you on that. Tolkien was being wry, in my opinion.
Are these questions meaningful or merely seemingly meaningful?
I incline to , seemingly.
A myth that is true is no longer a myth.
Consider the statement"Today I went to an orthopedic shoulder specialist and he gave me a shot of cortisone in my shoulder"
That happens to be factually true for me, but is there any deeper meaning to it?
The truths of Christianity ("Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death") aren't just mere facts of the moment there is also profound meaning to them and that is why they matter. This is what makes them mythical and well as factual.
This is simply not the case except when it's used in the vernacular sense. You can check any number of online definitions from established sources like Brittanica, Cambridge, and Merriam-Webster.
Earth to JonF: The Trojan War did really happen -- albeit Homer did gussy up the story and we don't know if any of the details are accurate. We also don't know if Paris really carried off Helen, but we do know the site of Troy was a strategic one for trade, which grew rich collecting tolls, and was therefore a frequent target.
I am aware of this and did not state otherwise (though I do not believe the war began because three goddesses got in a snit at each other and bribed a human who was called to judge between them)
OK. "Homer believed the Trojan War really happened" does not definitely deny that it did. Since we agree that the three goddesses were mythical in the sense that they did not really exist, and we don't believe God the Father created that set of myths for purposes of his own -- they were man made -- no, I don't believe that was the actual cause of an actual war. Those who go to war generally create myths either to inspire the troops or to pat themselves on the back afterward. Americans would never have supported going to war to defend the Jewish population of Europe. When we had to take on the Nazis anyway, we were awfully proud of ourselves afterward. The story of Helen and Paris was probably a romantic veneer to a cold calculated cash consideration.
A myth, or a legend?
Sometimes, events that are known to have happened are described as "legendary." My ancient paperback American Century Dictionary gives "myth" as a definition for "legend." But it first gives "traditional story." Then I look up "myth" and it does not give "legend" but it does give "a traditional story embodying popular ideas on natural or supernatural and social phenomena, etc." Of course dictionaries have to be written by someone, so they too can be biased, or imprecise. I would consider it more dubious to reference Christian legends than Christian myths. Although either one can convey that the story is in some sense false, legend conveys, more the sense of "an inspiring story about something that never happened," while myth conveys something more of "a tale that has purpose and meaning and may or may not have happened but has instructional purpose." Not that Greek myths are on the same level of veracity as the Gospels. But the people who first developed them believed they were true. On the other hand, most thinking people had rejected their veracity long before Paul showed up, so a lot of Greeks were ready for a new exposition. The Ephesians, not so much perhaps.
Beat me to it.
I definitely see the point about the word " myth".
My understanding of "myth" is that it is a story that may be partially true, but never fully true. The ancients who had fallen away from God created legends and characters that sometimes reflected true things- giants, the flood- because they remembered some things accurately and some not so. The "myths" that they filled in their tales with largely teaches us a lot about them. In other words, if man created God instead of the other way around, he would be like Zeus. I am uncomfortable with the word "myth" in this context, particularly because the guy using it is not a Christian. When Tolkien said his famous line, he was really redefining the word just for us. It's like in your own family, you can say something that outsiders wouldn't understand. We know from what belief or shared history we are coming from. This may seem a trivial point, but using the word " myth" in connection with our faith can turn into a place of compromise. I remember in a woman's magazine years ago, a popular author wrote a Nativity story, adding an afterword that "even though this isn't really true, it's a really beautiful story". Wasn't that easy! That's the risk. And maybe,too, it's the idea of standing with non- believers, talking about " myth" in general, when they think our faith is nothing but a myth.
I like to think of our stories and our history as the literature of the true church. Yes, we have long ago tales about Christians such as Valentine, Patrick, Constantine, various saints that may have elements of "myth"- but the idea of sharing an understanding with non believers on this is uncomfortable. We see what is called mythology as a lesson on how people who are lost take memories from the past and attempt to make sense of things by patching together the true and the made up. They see all " mythology"- which includes our Christian faith!- as an anthropological study in how we create order and harmony by means of made up stories. That's all it is. We can definitely learn from people like this author, and a good understanding of pagan mythology is really useful in understanding people. It's also fascinating. But our faith, and above all, our Lord, are not just facinating and useful. " Let God be true, though everyone be a liar".
Isn’t it true that Genesis is a myth. There was no 6 day creation. No garden of Eden. No fruit. No serpent. No world-wide flood. Accepting these as myths liberates their truth value from the banal question of their actual truth.
We threaten no one. We're not making some offensive claim to exclusivity. We come in peace. We're just a myth. Just a myth. Harmless, really.
And very intellectual.
I concur. The "myth" talk stems from an idolization of narrative and stories. It leads to the conclusion Vervaeke makes that the Hebrew tradition created the narrative manner of viewing the world -- and that's the greatest achievement from the Hebrew tradition. The narrative/myth structure of the Bible is important; sure. But isn't the content way more important? As just one example, God creating Adam and Eve in his image, thus, they deserved His Love and respect is the genesis (smile) of the democratic ideal. We don't get the Declaration of Independence without this idea or story. The particulars of the Christian myth matter--way more than the fact its got good story-telling structure.
The narrative structure IS the content. How in the world do you separate the "story" from the "ideas"? This is why we didn't receive the Gospels as collections of aphorisms. The story is essential to the "content."
You’re right that narrative/story/content are near synonymous. I thought the Verd fella was talking about how the Hebrews concocted the structure (linear storytelling) that we take for granted. As if that were the contribution—the structure—rather than the specific content.
In my head I thought they were making a distinction between the content and structure of the narratives.
John, the Devil has a penchant for stealing the best words and using them to mask evil. Consider his success with the lovely word, "gay."
Good point.
I too am uncomfortable with the word “myth”, and am loathe to apply it at all to the New Testament. But about the various cosmological accounts in Genesis, there will be difficulty. It’s one thing to accept a miracle in a localized event, such as those mentioned in the Gospels. It’s quite another thing to read an account (that is written in language formally similar to mythical language in other traditions) that directly conflicts—if read literally—with the natural history strongly indicated by carefully studied scientific evidence.
So is it 6000 years or 13 billion years? Does our faith depend on our stance on that question?
Bravo. THAT gets to the very nub of the problem, and why it is SO emotional, and why those who want to consider themselves "intellectual" are so comfortable with "myth". It allows one to hold tenuously onto a God they can believe in.
It's also why Christians started referring to their belief in terms of myth at exactly the time in history when science was challenging its core beliefs. God help you if you came down on the wrong side of the debate. Seriously.
Just came across this yesterday:
https://biologos.org/articles/what-the-scopes-trial-meant-bryan-the-protestant-modernists-and-science?fbclid=IwY2xjawLggUJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHvXWwNdx2GsOF_VQzbEHPKnAdW7JaBTJug1hWek8RZahxBWJZuAfTriKLBl2_aem_y3RVnXyvsec8xfqmjyYYdA
As for myself, I do find it impossible to dismiss the evidence presented by modern biology, historical geology, and cosmological astrophysics.
To those who do find a conflict with Genesis, I point to the unmistakably poetic language of the passages in question. We read that “God made” this or that. Now just HOW did God perform this making? THAT is not specified. What tools? Adam was not a chair or a table, so presumably carpentry tools weren’t used. What then?
Secondly, the Christian idea of the Logos is important. Here we have the idea that God can simply “speak” something into existence. (This is my view—that Creation is the primordial act of divine intentionality.) The “tools” then could very well simply be the very processes uncovered or theorized by science. The resemblance between the notion of the Logos and scientific and mathematical laws is, apart from the historical, evolutionary areas of science, obvious. My suggestion is then simply to extend that resemblance to those areas—evolution was the tool that God used.
An interesting part of pre-WW2 intellectual history is how it was considered progressive to endorse eugenics. And it’s obvious that eugenics is simply evolution turned into a conscious industrial process. But the corollary here is often ignored—that it was the orthodox Christian believers who opposed evolution-eugenics because the eugenics aspect was the emphasis. It was THAT which motivated the opposition to go back and insist on a more literal reading of Genesis—as a defense of human values over against the progressive machine ethos.
It’s important for everyone to be clear on what’s what. Science’s inductive methods can never disprove Jesus’ miracles or His Resurrection and Ascension. The only thing science can say about those things is that they have not been reproduced in the laboratory or been available as field data. That’s all.
As for the first chapters or so of Genesis, up through the Flood, as well as any remaining passages alluding to cosmic structure or origin processes, the language used in the Bible is so general and obviously poetic, if not figurative, that there really shouldn’t be any conflict between modern scientific accounts and Biblical narratives of Creation. I simply do not see a meaningful conflict OTHER than an intentionally maintained conflict between two hardened sides in a fruitless current -day standoff between cultural antagonists.
I'm personally comfortable to observe the obvious difference between portions of the Bible that make no pretext of being first hand accounts by eye witnesses (Genesis, Job), and eye witness accounts like the Gospels (or even accounts of historical fact passed down by very reliable oral tradition).
Yes. There’s a big difference between an account that says that a definite person like Peter saw Jesus alive after Peter saw him die and a general account of God creating the Earth. The latter statement is open to a great many concrete interpretations, while the Gospel accounts are quite restricted in their interpretable range (Jesus either rose from the dead or He didn’t.)
Get thee to Eric Voegelin.
“The death of the spirit is the price of progress. Nietzsche revealed this mystery of the Western apocalypse when he announced that God was dead and that He had been murdered. This Gnostic murder is constantly committed by the men who sacrificed God to civilization. The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the great enterprise of salvation through world–immanent action, the farther the human beings who engage in this enterprise move away from the life of the spirit. And since the life the spirit is the source of order in man and society, the very success of a Gnostic civilization is the cause of its decline.
“A civilization can, indeed, advance and decline at the same time—but not forever. There is a limit toward which this ambiguous process moves; the limit is reached when an activist sect which represents the Gnostic truth organizes the civilization into an empire under its rule. Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization.”
"Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization."
Or as the late Marion Montgomery might have put it, it's the rule of people who believe they can lift themselves out of quicksand by pulling their own hair.
Sabbath was also understood to take place in Kairos time. It was an opportunity in one’s daily life to pull apart from the usual routine and experience God in a different space. For the Jews, it was an embodied representation of the duality you’re describing, a weekly participation in the transcendent reality of God. Abraham Heschel talks about this in this book The Sabbath.
The Orthodox Church holds that we experience kairos at every Divine Liturgy when all the faithful from all times, and Christ Himself, commune together in a time out of time — as someone has said, “when everything happens at once.”
And our verses often use the present tense for historical events: "Today Christ Ascends to Heaven", "Today the Theotokos is born". And of course "Christ is risen" not "Christ rose".
That conference next month is cost prohibitive. I’ll wait till the book comes out.
Confession: I think the part of my brain that when I was young would have read today's essay, enjoyed and understood it at least at some meta level of a feeling of comprehension, has been dead for decades. I found this to be a very difficult read and to be honest it made my head hurt a little. Read a sentence, reared it, read a paragraph and reread it...I realized that after decades of being a physical scientist, yes a materialist, albeit not a happy materialist, if there is such a person, I read words and sentences for literal meaning and for descriptions of reality. Reality being what I see, feel, touch and can mentally comprehend to the limits of my intellect. I remember feeling so frustrated by Joseph Campbell. My Dutch father in law, a chemist, was taken, even enthralled by Campbell, and his ideas about myth, the occult and ultimately, Catholicism (the cafeteria style). I just did not, and still do not "get it." I even find that the comments written here, without criticism, are mostly incomprehensible to me. Wittgenstein keeps echoing - are we sure we are all using these words in the same way? Are these questions meaningful or merely seemingly meaningful? The one exception among the comments and in the essay is the idea of using myth to describe Christianity. The nuns burrowed deeply enough into my mind that I recoil when I hear this. My mind generates the "you either believe Christianity is true, with all its apparent challenges to our (scientific materialist) way of thinking, or you don't." This as binary as binary gets. You don't get to hedge by calling it myth with all of the ambiguity inherently embodied in that word, but you do have the choice.
Wittgenstein keeps echoing - are we sure we are all using these words in the same way?- I think you know the answer to that.
I find the themes in Vervaeke's work to be so oft-repeated that they're trite. Maybe that's the source of your incomprehension--the sense you've been here before and it's wholly uninteresting.
It was the liberals who first started using the word "myth" in relation to the Christian faith (remember "demythologizing the Scripture"?). But if C.S. Lewis, who was very much aware of Biblical and theological liberalism, could use the term, even co-opt it, in a positive way, I don't see why we can't.
"When the Christian scripture calls Christ the Bridegroom and the Church the Bride, this is the way of knowing implied by that metaphor."
Readers: If you have ever wondered about Rod's ongoing emphasis on clashes between ancient Christian anthropology and the Sexual Revolution (ancient and modern) read the quoted sentence several times in the context of today's Dreher Diary.
Yes, this. The Biblical writers and Church Fathers were steeped in such figural reading/thinking. We've chucked it to our own detriment. See Andrew Louth, "Discerning the Mystery."
Maybe someone here can tell me if “Adam knew Eve” carries at all same meaning as “Adam became one flesh with Eve.”
I understand that there is a level of existential knowledge that requires love, but I’m asking if this is one of them, because of this in 1 Corinthians 6: "Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.’
There are many experiences we might have that are a kind of knowing that goes beyond the intellect, that lodges in the body and soul, and not all of them are generated by love.
So I question why Rod and Vervaeke broaden the sexual analogy to include love.
They had a little baby, yes they did!
It struck me as a bad analogy too. It's as if Vervaeke is trying to spice up his bland work. It's particularly odd given he's a cognitive psychologist and not a biologist.
I don't think it's a bad analogy; I just think something happens when we participate physically in Knowing, regardless of our awareness or intentions.
Words are approximations of something that cannot be expressed in words. It's the constant re-approximating that's really hanging them up now. I say them because they are the ones with the problems that they cannot solve, no matter how much they redefine everything the problems keep coming back. A myth, an analogy, a metaphor, a Dylanesque snippet, nothing works!
I just watched the turdetts chasing each other around the bowl in a race to go...glug, glug, glug. Turns out they all went under. The race didn't matter much at all, but I guess one of the turds won. This is the mystery of the myth of the turds.
Tohu wa-bohu! I am so glad that the evangelicals are on it. I'm glad that someone is as interested in this language as I am. It's meaningful to me. The first few verses in the OT are so packed with meaning. Yet I have to contend with atheists to have it (meaning)!
Amen, Brother. It's only words, and words are all we have to take our smarts away.
P.S. I feel like today's discussion shaved points off my IQ. And I really had very few to spare. Now I'm feeling so intellectually insecure I may never get over it. Rats!
The myth of IQ. Best expressed in the story of Wile E Coyote, super genius, who could never catch the Road Runner because he was such a bungler. I've learnt much, over the years, from Looney Tunes.
I can say the same. I learned how to always hope for the best from Sylvester, how to make a Napoleon Complex fun from Yosemite, how to woo women from Pepe and how to be witty from Bugs—not that I'll ever be as good at it as he is. Also how to persevere against all odds from Elmer, how to be innocently annoying from Tweety and how to buck the system from Foghorn. On top of all that, I learned to love classical music and even a little opera. All from Looney Tunes. That was it, they hit the heights. And oh what heights they hit.
You came up with a good pun, though. For several years I was in the grip of punmaking fever thanks to the encouraging evil influence of Facebook groups. I must say I came up with some honeys. But if what wit you do have goes to making puns, count on it, my son, it will take you over and make you into a freak.
A happy thought is this, I say, writing in my best TIME magazine circa 1928 style: there is a book with the execrable title, "The Pun Also Rises." If I remember the ad copy correctly, its author has at least a background in neuroscience. He presents evidence that the meek little pun, far from being, as convention has it, the lowest form of wit, may in fact be the highest. I tell you this hesitantly, knowing as I do that encouraging a punmaker may leave him akin to the Dwight Frye character in the 1931 Dracula, tormenting himself in search of more and more puns as the Frye character shrieks for more and more flies to eat.
Bobby, you mean one can have too much pun? I'm thinking if brevity is the soul of wit, wordplay is surely its chatulence.
One person gets the pun, Dave. I always hated the music of that song. And it sticks to the mind the way thoroughly masticated chewing gum spat out upon a sidewalk sticks to the bottom of an unfortunate shoe.
The search for true meaning I think comes down in large measure to a simple idea - love of Christ. Of course many in history did not know Christianity but today there is no excuse. Love of Christ even answers in some way - why did little girls die in the flood? Love guards against despair. & of course It does not take away the painful feelings themselves. Unjust suffering is just something we must consent. Sure easier said than done. Btw - if you could quantify suffering in an equation, many suffer more in silence over a life time than those affected by the flood. Sure it is a different type of suffering but still. For instance those who lost little ones can adopt & love more over their lives. Some who suffer in silence & loneliness over a lifetime for reasons we don’t know live a life without love & there is little joy on this earth. Mother Teresa is an example. She suffered the dark night of the soul for most of her life. There was no feeling of joy as most perceive joy. Suffering for all its terrible feelings is relative.
To quote Modest Mouse:
"Language is the liquid that we're all dissolved in - great for solving problems, after it creates the problem."
Vervaeke, The Meaning Crisis, all that stuff just leaves me cold. There is a cacophony of voices trying to establish What It All Means And Where We Went Wrong. There are simply too many variables in play, the range of human motivations and aspirations is simply too, er, diverse, for any of this to be worth the time and energy expended upon it. Life is to be lived, not dissected for explanation. Meaning is to be found in living, not in Searching For Meaning. Here and there some things could perhaps be fixed or improved. But not because a great theoretician explained it all to us. Didn't we have enough of that with Karl Marx? In the movie Doctor Zhivago, the good doctor tells his older Bolshevik half brother that while he is operating on society and taking out the tumors, "some of us have to keep the patient alive, by living."
This is very good and very important.
We of the scribbling classes who like to comment here are but a thin slice of the faith. These sorts of topics, while interesting to us, only scratch that damnable, superfluous itch we call “intelligence.” As Duke Ellington would instruct us, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”
For all I’ve read that brought me back to the faith, I still return to memories of my mother, an Irish farm girl in her youth, and her example of saying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary with tears in her eyes. To quote Evelyn Waugh, from Helena, his short novel on St. Helena on her quest for the true Cross, and her addressing the Three Magi:
“You are my especial patrons,” said Helena, “and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have had a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.
“Dear cousins, pray for me,” said Helena, “and for my poor overloaded son [the Emperor Constantine himself, who was still unbaptized]. May he, too, before the end find kneeling-space in the straw. Pray for the great, lest they perish utterly. . .
“For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.”
If I were a Calvinist, I might dismiss your mother saying the rosary and her tears, but I don't. I am Protestant, but I grew up in a neighborhood full of Catholics. A girl next door who used to babysit us became a nun, and I think eventually a Mother Superior. The rosary brought your mother closer to God, and her tears were real, which is all that matters. If someone were to tell me, saying the rosary is the essence of Christian faith, or essential to salvation, I would have to reject that argument, and hopefully I could do so gently. But to get back to the real point, faith is not, for the most part, a matter of intellectual understanding. I've been told by a Baptist minister that I overthink these things, and I keep in mind that he may be right. I think while John Wesley was struggling with these things, his brother Charles, who was a little ahead of him, said "For once in your life, just let yourself go." I recently watched the movie Gandhi for the first time in about forty years; one of his most profound observations was that India is not a congress of intellectuals, it is 700,000 villages. Leadership may not be at the village level, but the foundation for everything else is.
Wow Michael, this really hit the spot for me today. Exactly what I was going to say, if anything needed to be said. I'm tired of endless 10,000 word disquisitions on "The Meaning of Life" and I just retreat to my Rosary most days, and meditate on the fact that all of this stuff is Real and True, and it's really all that matters to me in my life at my current margin of long experience, as a member of the so-called Intellectual Classes.
That novel is a favorite of a regular here, Dr William Tighe. I own it but haven't read it yet. I love the excerpt, and thank you for it.
"Vervaeke, The Meaning Crisis, all that stuff just leaves me cold."
I totally agree. Most of all it's not new or revelatory; just derivative.
"Meaning is to be found in living, not in Searching For Meaning."
I think this sums up Frankl's work quite well.
"Most of all it's not new or revelatory; just derivative."
I must ask -- "derivative" of what?
Nietzsche, Frankl, Nehamas, Dreher, 1000s of trauma psychologists; just off the top of my head.
What Vervaeke seems to be doing is examining these various threads and attempting to pull them together into a sort of contemporary whole. Therefore not derivation so much as distillation, which is not in and of itself a problem.
Maybe Bacon’s “oft thought yet never so well expressed” does apply. I expected more scientific rigor—more specificity from a cognitive psychologist. His account reads more like philosophy of mind stuff than empirical examination of cognition.
Why not “The glory of God is a man fully alive”? Meaning comes from living but not from living for yourself.
"all that stuff just leaves me cold. There is a cacophony of voices trying to establish What It All Means And Where We Went Wrong."
But giving the overwhelming amount of data available this could be said to be true of virtually everything. It's exactly the reason why discussions of Trump, tariffs, Israel, etc., leave ME cold. We all have to pick our poison, so to speak, so why bitch about what other people find interesting?
If you like orchids and I prefer roses, no reason to debate. Its a matter of taste. If we are discussing the future of our entire way of life, world, social and cultural relationships, whether its all going to fall down, or how we can save what ... its a matter of somewhat greater interest. If someone is saying "This is what's happening and this is what we need to do about," even a general denial can be of some significance.
I actually skip over a lot of denunciation of Trump. Much as I think he's a crazy unqualified loon who is going to do a lot of damage, most of the railing and caterwauling isn't going to change anything. I prefer to hunker down, keep my focus on things I might be able to nudge in a better direction, and keep half an eye on what might come next. The prospect that massive desertion of Trump will result in a Democratic triumph is rather ominous -- we need to break that cycle.
You might find it interesting to look at Mark Halperin on 2way, the other day he has a talk on how President Trump makes decisions. https://youtu.be/tmVfyDSkNGE?feature=shared
I think this has to do with what one is interested in. Some people are interested in the "history of ideas," some are not. I have well-educated friends in both camps.
Charlie, I’m a Calvinist/Reformed Protestant, and I don’t belittle or dismiss a faithful Catholic praying the Rosary either. And I very much relate to the idea of a Christian faith being far more than intellectual, dry doctrine and presuppositions.
At the risk of being doctrinal, I turn back to the Westminster Catechism:
Q1: What is the chief end of man?
A: The chief end of man is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever.
The sexual union is a powerful sacrament and metaphor for our union with Christ. That is why the Devil works so hard to denigrate and pervert it, unfortunately very successfully in our culture. It is more spiritual than physical.
Sex is not a sacrament, at least not a formal sacrament of the Church sort. Grace can come to us by any means God chooses, and it may come to some people via sex, but I rather dislike the tendency of some Christians to sacramentalize sex. It's the flip side of the old error of seeing sex as morally problematic in every and any context.
I guess my main point is that our culture had completely vulgarized and degraded the sexual union and we need to re-elevate it
I suspect you are making more Catholic traffics than you realize.
The whole idea that Catholicism is an ascent to propositions, and therefore the proposition must be explained well for all, is the entire reason for VII’s existence. What they meant, but never said is “modern man no longer understands the faith by doing, he must be able to explain”
Intriguing comment. What are Catholic traffics?
Ugh. Traddies. I detest spell check. It’s my nemesis.
Is it possible to disable Spellcheck? Spellcheck is like a young cousin with whom you have nothing in common, and in whom you sense the seeds of real evil are germinating, but whom you have to force yourself to be pleasant to for a few days every summer. If I could I'd kill my cousin, thereby making the world a considerably better place. I can't, for theological and police procedural reasons, but I would happily murder Spellcheck. Ideas? Anyone?
It is on an iPhone. On mine: Settings-> General-> Keyboard-> Auto-Correction
Stuck with an Android. But thanks.