Not related to your post today, but to something you said two days ago, about Jonah Goldberg and Crunchy Cons. I figure no one will go back to those comments, so I'm posting here. I went looking for Jonah's thoughts on CC and found this. I think this is an honest critique and I agree with most of what he says, except for the part about homeschoolers abandoning the battlefield; there's nothing to stop homeschoolers from also trying to improve the schools--except, and this is the voice of experience, some in the schools will vilify homeschoolers and claim they're not entitled to an opinion on a system they don't send their children to--but children should not be on a battlefield.
Back in 2002, the year I spent working for National Review, Jonah lobbied hard to keep Rich Lowry from publishing my cover piece on the crunchy cons. One of his arguments, I recall, was that acknowledging that these conservatives exist, and that they critique mainstream conservatism from the Right, would give liberals the idea that the Right is not united.
I don't know if Jonah tried to prevent Rod's piece from being published, or maybe he didn't want it to be a cover story, but his piece explains his position towards Rod's ideas; he certainly doesn't object to "acknowledging these conservatives exist."
Yes, but did he write this response because he failed to get Rod's piece blocked? If so, that surely colors his arguments. I don't remember the initial hubbub about the article because I had long stopped reading NR. I knew Rod's work primarily through Touchstone, and then followed him more closely once the Crunchy Cons book came out.
Goldberg is being naive. For instance, the schools of Baltimore are beyond redemption and any parent who sends their children to Baltimore's schools is a bad parent.
He called homeschooling a strategic retreat; that's not necessarily a criticism. Imho, now 22 years later, better get your kids out first, then reflect on strategy after.
"he argues that because St. Paul omitted in his letter to the Romans explicit instructions on how to deal with demons, therefore Paul must have been telling them that all you have to do is to “expound the Gospel,” and that would take care of it."
This sort of argumentation drives me up the wall. The one I used to hear all the time was, "God never gave us instructions for worship in the New Testament so we must be free to worship any way we please," which can very easily fly in the face of St Paul's command to do all things decently and in order (subject to varying interpretations, of course).
Also, St. Paul refers somewhere in the NT to the importance of Tradition, along with scripture, so just because God didn't give us instructions for how to worship in the NT doesn't mean that God didn't give us instructions for how to worship.
Right -- the Greek word is paradosis if I remember correctly, which means "handing down" or "handing on." Clearly there were things that the early Church was taught that didn't find their way into the New Testament, and to presume that they were therefore not important is a form of circular reasoning.
At the same time, and to follow your logic, to say that your form of worship, or any other form, was that passed on by the early church, though there is no mention in the gospels and no chain of evidence to support it, is likewise circular.
We do know that Temple Judaism was heavily liturgical and into "smells and bells" type stuff. So that sort of worship is certainly not displeasing to God. I would agree that the details of our worship do not matter in any profound way (unless they explicitly embrace heresies)-- whether the Liturgy of John Chrysostom, the Novus Order, the Tridentine mass, the Coptic rite, as long as the object is to praise God we are on a true path.
Temple Judaism ended in 70 A.D. with the destruction of the Temple. Rabbinic Judaism and the synagogue replaced it. Presumably, that was not displeasing to God either.
Post temple Judaism was a religion that rejected Jesus as the Messiah, therefore I always had assumed (as a Christian) that God was not pleased with their form of worship.
Disagree. There are lots of historical works that cover this subject that do not tackle it from a "Bible only" viewpoint, and the reasoning involved is not circular (i.e., it does not argue from silence).
The unasked questions posed to each of those historical works you cite is who is the source? Was it a first person source or a tradition of that particular time and place. Apparently it wasn't a controversy worth mentioning in 397 when the 27 books of the New Testament were canonized or in 405 when Innocent I ratified it, but once again, the absence of mention doesn't really "prove" anything.
The fact that there seemingly was no controversy is telling however, like Holmes's dog that did not bark. The early Christians argued and debated over many things but the basic form of worship wasn't one of them. Historically speaking this argues more for unity than for a free-for-all.
Yes, Pariah -- this is one reason why Catholicism finds sola scriptura unbiblical. See, e.g., John 21:25 (“But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written”); 2 Thes. 2:15 (“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter”); 1 Cor. 11:2 (“I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you”); 2 Thes. 3:6 (“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us”).
The other thing about interpretations of St. Paul is when people over-generalize from what were clearly occasional remarks he was writing in letters to specific congregations with specific problems. I'd think that his apparently misogynistic comments, for example, were directed to people who were having an issue with pagan sex cults, or something along those lines.
Right, and the interpretive homework must be done in order to make that determination. These things are not always readily apparent in the texts themselves.
Did you ever read the book “Paul Among the People,” by Sarah Ruden? Rod mentioned it years ago in an American Conservative article, which is where I heard of it. According to Ruden, when she treats the subject of women in the early Christian church, some of what people today dismiss as misogynistic was actually Paul being rather progressive and egalitarian.
I hope I am remembering the details correctly, but as an example, in ancient Rome only proper ladies were allowed to cover their heads, while prostitutes (occasional or pro) were explicitly forbidden to do so. This proscription wasn’t waived upon giving up a life of ill repute. Paul, however, insisted all women wear head coverings in church because Christian brothers and sisters were equal to one another.
That's very interesting. I haven't heard of that book before, but I'll keep it in mind. Also, Magdalene is pretty central to my understanding of the faith: the apostle to the apostles, and the first witness to the Resurrection.
I read that book after learning about it from Rod. It’s very scholarly and informative. I also remember being struck about the immoral women being forbidden respectable hair coverings.
I remember being most struck by the chapter on homosexuality and Ancient Rome: specifically, how predatory the Ancient Roman idea of sex was, and how what today we would call "victim blaming," and condemn, was in sharp contrast exactly what the Romans would think appropriate.
I'm reminded of a medieval studies professor I had in college—a very sweet old guy—who made the remark in one class that the Ancient Romans were in many ways "terrible people." It blows the mind, some of the things I learned in that book! It was a real eye opener.
I understand why history is sanitized for young people going to school, but it's a shame that that's the last most people ever hear of what went on in other times and cultures (in this case, pagan culture of 2,000 years ago). You get a very skewed idea of humanity and what's "normal" if all you know is what you see going on around you in polite company in what is still arguably a Christian society. People can be really terrible—and for generation after generation—and think what they're doing is just "the way things are." Wow!
The command of Paul's that you reference seemingly rules out most charismatic worship, it seems to me. However, the so-called regulative principle of worship is something I have come to believe is a 16th century innovation that takes things too far. Anything and everything doesn't go, but neither are we so restricted as to be able to do very little. This is where Tradition has abiding value for Christians in every century. Scripture should be the primary yardstick used in evaluating any worship practice, with tradition following.
Please someone, explain: Why do spirits put up walls and such in some places, like where the missionary was in Africa, but not in urban America? I've noticed people from islands other than Manhattan have stories about fairies and spirits doing stuff in their homes, but people on the North American continent generally don't. Do the demons look at the earth and say "Let's inspire people to support a movement to get kids to beg to be neutered in this land, and let's put up invisible walls in that land! Let's inspire the Big Men to make stupid decisions and/or greed that lead to war over here, and let's possess this individual here and make him act crazy! Let's inspire her to binge on Ding-Dongs and let's rattle stuff around in this guy's home to scare him! Let's make Pride Parades look fun and enticing to this crowd and let's make tiktok videos and social media totally distracting to this group so they forget about God, and let's promise these guys that if they worship us we'll grant them special knowledge." I just don't get it. And if these spells and voodoo killings are real, then why don't sitting presidents ever just die in office from spells cast by the opposing party?
Why should we expect demonic activity to follow human logic though? Even human criminals don't always do that. I tend to picture the demons as a sort of supernatural Mafia, not a well-trained army.
I think one ends up with more "tangible" curses and such in places where people practice those more, and also where the cultures acknowledge them. In the Western world, we believe differently, we perceive the world differently, and the demons interact differently with the society.
Yes, much of Europe and America started out with a strong, positive view of God. That view has diminished over the past decades and the results appear to match Matthew 12:43-45:
“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”
In a word, baptism. The presence of a large number of baptized people limits what evil spirits can do. This isn’t to say there’s not evil around but it’s somewhat restrained.
I am no spiritual expert. But I can give a thought, based on an experience. When I was a girl of about 11, my family approached a restaurant while travelling. Other families were inside, there was singing. I expected no special feeling. But - both my mother and I - not my father and sister- drew back at the same time. We were not watching one another, in fact I was surprised when she also drew back and said what she felt. I felt something and so did she. "Jimmy, I'm not going in there, there is something in there", said Mom. It was not *impossible* for me to go in, but it would have felt very unpleasant. It was like a wall, though it would have continued to be unpleasant inside, I think.
I am not sure - Father Maloney said "wall" of course, but might or might not have meant something like this?
My father insisted on entering. He and my sister got food and brought it to the car. My mother and I would not budge. It was that strong of a feeling, even when my very good hearted, kind and logical engineer father talked to us about going in. He and my sister came to no harm. But I still remember the awful feeling. I've never felt that, so strongly, again.
No, he meant a real wall -- an unseen barrier that they could nonetheless feel. It went away after the older priest slung holy water on it and prayed a prayer of exorcism. You can imagine how this must have freaked out a young priest straight off the boat from Ireland.
Thanks for elaborating- You wrote "wall" clearly, and clearly said they could "feel" the barrier. My experience made me wonder if the feeling was perhaps spiritual, so spiritual as to be "almost" tangible. I see now that the priest meant a literal physical barrier, fully tangible.
I've been looking up weeping statues. WP, of all things, had what I thought was a good article. I, a non-subscriber, could access merely by giving an email (a non-used email):
And this proves what, exactly? You and your mother had a feeling. Your father and sister ignored the feeling, went into the restaurant, and got food. By your telling, nothing happened. Sounds like you and your mother were being hysterical.
I think the human mind has a need to find meaning in life. Especially when it comes to close brushes with great human tragedy. We've all heard stories of people who, thanks to happenstance, a change of mind, or an unexplainable sense of foreboding, didn't board the Titanic before it sailed. Or what about those who, due to illness, a family emergency or a flat tire didn't show up for work on 9/11. And so, a minor misfortune saved them from a much greater one.
Perhaps there was some unknown evil or misfortune that was waiting especially for Linda and her mother, but not for her father and sister. Linda and her mother refused to go into the restaurant, so the "spell" was broken and everyones life took a different path. We'll never know for sure because nothing happened ... but something could have. How many times have we said to ourselves "If only I hadn't done this" or "If only she hadn't said that"?
I think the human mind has a need to find meaning in life. Especially when it comes to close brushes with great human tragedy. We've all heard stories of people who, thanks to happenstance, a change of mind, or an unexplainable sense of foreboding, didn't board the Titanic before it sailed. Or what about those who, due to illness, a family emergency or a flat tire didn't show up for work on 9/11. And so, a minor misfortune saved them from a much greater one.
Perhaps there was some unknown evil or misfortune that was waiting especially for Linda and her mother, but not for her father and sister. Linda and her mother refused to go into the restaurant, so the "spell" was broken and everyones life took a different path. We'll never know for sure because nothing happened ... but something could have. How many times have we said to ourselves "If only I hadn't done this" or "If only she hadn't said that"?
Thank you! I wasn't going to engage with that one insulter, so you were kind here. No I get to say more :)
I did say this was the "only time" I'd had such an experience. It would be an odd story if my mother and I were hysterical only once in our lives.
We like to tell stories of unusual experiences here in this Substack. I never said my experience proved anything. I never said I knew for sure something was there. - - It was a story about a "wall" - a place I could not bring myself to cross - that may have been some evil. I felt it confirmed by Mom and I feeling the same. I know I was not imitating Mom in any way and was amazed she, but not others, agreed with me. I fully know it may have been nothing.
I like the comparison of not getting on the Titanic! I'd never thought of it quite that way.
There are too many of us here from discordant traditions. I suspect that these"spirits" may not be external beings at all, but are unconscious creations of the human spirit (or what Jung called the "Collective Unconscious"). We have no unity of belief on such matters here so we cannot create such paranormal emanations.
I should make it a bit more explicit that I am not referring to demonic beings per se, but to assorted "magical" effects which are being imputed to demons here but which could also be due to psychokinetic (for lack of better word) effects wrought by the community's shaman and potentiated by belief in such powers.
Not everything paranormal should be attributed to divine or demonic acts. Human beings may have the ability to effect such things too under specific circumstances.
You asked about different areas. There is this, from Daniel 10: ;12-13, << “Then he (the angel) said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid, Daniel! For from the first day that you set your heart to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard. I have come because of your words. However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia resisted me for 21 days, but behold Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me because I had been detained there with the kings of Persia. ">> So it appears there was a strong demon assigned to Persia, perhaps one who was in charge of other demons
But actually, I'm mistaken, in my foolish forgetfulness. Snails like shade and dampness. One day after school in kindergarten my best friend and I found some snails in the shade and we worried they might be cold, so we spent the afternoon picking them up and putting them in the sunshine. They were very patient with us, but kept trudging back to the shade. We thought they were confused, so we kept moving them back into the sun. Those poor snails! Later, her father explained to us that snails are not like us, they prefer shade. But the main point still holds: that creatures are drawn to whatever feels good. I wanted to clear this up so more people don't bother the snails like I once did.
An exorcist in Rome told me that where Christianity has been present for a long time, and there has been no worship or intercourse with evil spirits, you see far less of this stuff. But if people abandon the faith, then the evil spirits will return. I guess this Catholic priest would say that supernature abhors a vacuum.
Then why are all the people who I hear about getting demonically possessed already religious people who suddenly have this awful experience? Why don't the demons go after me, or Richard Dawkins, or Sam Harris? It seems like people who have these experiences are primed to believe them already.
One explanation, and I'm not sure I believe it, is that demons attack people who are getting really serious about worshipping God. But that is very different from Rod's explanation, that they enter where there is a vacuum. Maybe there are "spiritual bad neighborhoods" where demons hang out, because there aren't enough practicing Christians, and if a Christian is hanging out in this spiritually bad neighborhood they might get jumped by a demon? It really is puzzling.
Another explanation is that demons aren’t real, any more than the monsters under a child’s bed are real. It’s all mental illness, delusion, and susceptibility to suggestion. Not that atheists are immune to these things, but their delusions take different forms. Aliens. Or Secret Government Agents.
I’d say that our conceptual frameworks do influence and even determine how exactly we interpret these phenomena. Psychological things manifesting from the depths of the self, or metaphysical entities from outside the self?—the line blurs, I think. And that’s part of why I find Jung very interesting.
I know what a demon is; I saw The Exorcist. Just like I know what Bigfoot is, and what unicorns are. I have the conceptual tools to recognize Bigfoot, unicorns, or demons. I just don’t think they exist.
I’m just suggesting that you’d need a metaphysical picture in your head that allows for the reality of demons. Otherwise, you’d likely perceive and interpret them as something else, such as psychological phenomena.
Rob, that almost makes sense! Which is unlike much of the rest of the discussion about demons -- one of Rod's stories about a woman who was demonically attacked because her parents did something wrong, for example. Half the time we're told that the logic of demonic and divine intervention is quite beyond our mortal understanding, but then we get something actually logical.
Their goal is not to possess you. That is just one tool in their toolkit, one of many. Their goal is to have you separate yourself from God. They will use whatever their tools they can use to try to bring that about.
Atheists have already done that. Mission accomplished.
Ever read The Screwtape Letters? Lewis has one of his demons say that in terms of separation from God there's no point in trying to tempt a man to murder if cards will do the trick. In this sense there is a certain logic to the demonic, but as I said in another comment it's more a sort of criminal or "Mafia" logic.
Because Harris and Dawkins have minds not easily dominated by an outside force, and not welcoming entrance to such a dominating force. The Catholic Church believes possession happens but is rare. I think they have it right.
In relation to demons/devils, I'd say that there are situations when they find it more advantageous to reveal themselves (e.g. to African witchdoctors), and others when they find it more advantageous to conceal themselves (e.g. to doctors dealing with gender-troubled youth). C.S. Lewis wrote something like this in "The Screwtape Letters".
They might also just get a kick out of what they do. Some pathetic shaman thinks himself all-powerful because a demon allows him to bend a tree or something: hoho. Secular liberals in the modern West denying the work of Satan when he could hardly make his presence more clear if he were to strut around in horns, hooves, and a red body-stocking: hoho.
Fairies, jinn, etc., are a different issue. They may or may not exist, but, if they do, they're not on clearly on the side of good or evil, but are more like humans in this respect. They have their own issues and problems, and it's foolish to get into a debate about why they do things when we're not even sure they exist.
This is a great explanation answering my question. Would you be able to explain Pete's concern, above, re religious, practicing Christians becoming possessed?
Hazarding a guess, I'd say that with some people being deeply religious is part of their general spiritual sensitivity, and they tend to tune in to evil as well as good. I'm a bit the opposite, and tend to be oblivious to spiritual things; I tend to fall off the Christian wagon on the materialist side, whereas perhaps some people fall off on the magician side.
We had an experience with a spirit or something that attached itself to my 3 year old. When it finally became obvious (there were "off" things and feelings for years but until she could really articulate herself well enough, it was only suspected by us) on All Saints Day when she was almost 3, I didn't feel it was BAD with a capital B, but more that it was mischievous and just didn't belong here. More of a "trickster" energy. A couple days later a glass bowl exploded in my hands. That's when I knew it was time to intervene. We were Episcopalian at the time and the priest came to bless the house and we didn't have any problems after that. Our daughter stopped talking about "Extra Dry" (weird name: maybe an old-timey biblical name she couldn't pronounce?) and she never saw him on the ceiling again after that.
Sometimes I wonder if Extra Dry was a fairy. Or something like that. It didn't feel evil just naughty, in a juvenile way. But my daughter was scared and the glass from the bowl did cut my hands, so who knows. I've had a couple of supernatural experiences in our house, 2 bad, 1 definitely good (scent of roses and my missing rosary--that we turned our bedroom upside for--returned neatly at the end of my bed the morning after the smell of roses and prayers to Mary)...so yeah, I believe in demons, angels, Marian visits, fairies, sasquatch, etc. Where we live in the US is known for Bigfoot, UFOs, missing people, etc (south west Oregon) so we try to educate our kids about not inviting fairies, and things you can't see into our home or their lives.
I should add that the 2 bad experiences happened when I was focusing on rooting out a particular sin/addiction I've struggled with for a long time. As my husband said (and he's not even Catholic like me) "That means you're on the right path or you wouldn't be experiencing this harrassment."
There is a full (or nearly full) moon tonight. How I wish we were all together around a campfire having these discussions late into the night. I love hearing everyone and thoughts about this stuff!
that was nice. Mary is with the people. here in Ireland I started listening this morning to Fr Thadys video on the apparitions in Mount Mellery, Ireland. Though I live here I never knew any details. In August 1985, 4 witnesses claimed Our Lady appeared to them at Melleray Grotto, Co Waterford, Ireland. Three claimed to have received messages from her. Here is the link to this holy priest's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_A1y5OuwhM&t=1745s&ab_channel=God%27sCottage
Some of us Reformed (Calvinist) ministers – especially those of us who are agèd now, survivors of the 60s and 70s counterculture and our “recreational sorcery”, the grass, acid, mushrooms, etc – are well aware of the demonic realm through sometimes bitter experience, and from which the Lord Jesus rescued us.
He has given us power over all the power of the enemy, and has made the demons subject to us (Luke 10:19, 20) by the might of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the Lord’s word of power. There are many places in the New Testament that speak of this warfare, most notable is perhaps apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 6, verses 10 through 18.
He is with us to manifest His power as He deems necessary, both to bring His saving messages and to “resist the devil . . . who will flee from us” (James 4:7).
Such knowledge is in the armory of mature Christians.
I am really trying to get a sense for if re-enchantment and Calvinism/Reformed Theology can even mix or if the latter system is too hermetically sealed. Tom Holland pointed out Pilgrim's Progress as an inspired work on that score and I agreed wholeheartedly. There's a reason that's being rediscovered. But as a Ligonier aficionado, I feel re-enchantment as this Catholic/Orthodox/Arminian thing and it saddens me a little.
I totally feel you on that one, and my experiences with Presbyterianism run the gamut from the PCUSA to the Covenanters (I have no real experience with the Continental Reformed). It's been a while since I've read Pilgrim's Progress, but I don't think it can hold a candle to more liturgical forms of Christianity. I will also say that Ligonier is not what I would consider genuinely Reformed-- there's too much Baptist influence there, which is to say nonsacramental influence. It's hard for me to imagine nonsacramental forms of Protestantism being able to really provide any serious reenchantment as they veer a bit too close to rationalism and materialism.
Completely off-topic, but has anyone else noticed the completely relentless pro-polyamory propaganda in mainstream (especially prestige) media outlets? New York Magazine recently had a whole issue about this, and the NYT seems to put out a new frivolous pro-polyamory article every week.
The most recent one, posted yesterday evening, takes the cake. I can hardly even find a concise way to describe it, and it is impossible not to laugh while reading it (although I really feel sorry for these people).
Long story short, an evangelical seminary student’s wife becomes an atheist, convinces her husband to “open” the relationship, and, predictably, they get divorced; the husband, who wrote this article, celebrates the whole thing as liberating, in an unbelievably self-deluded and nauseating way.
Yep -- I saw that story and I have also noticed the unending stream of poly-related propaganda in the mainstream media.
This was kind of predicted when Obergefell made gay rights final -- that poly would be next.. Although what happened was that trans became very controversial, and likely will remain so for some time, so it's kind of "stuck". And so poly has moved up the queue in terms of the propaganda stack.
I see it as being different in that what is being asked for is social approval rather than legal approval (I haven't seen anything advocating poly marriage recognition for example) -- it's possible legal advocacy would happen later, but it isn't the focus now as it was with gay rights. This is instead a big push towards greater sexual freedom, under the rubric of the broader agenda of the sexual revolution, which is to dismantle all prior social restraints and conventions around sexuality and replace them with mere actual consent.
It's no longer in the "trial balloon" stage (that was around 5 years ago), and has moved to the active advocacy stage. I think we can expect more of it in the years ahead.
And, while opposing, to the extent one can, the naturalizing of this “progress”, pity too, and pray for, the individual participants: when you walk away from what is good and holy, where God is, you move into the realm of the opposite where God is not, a trackless desert of thorns and thistles, snakes and scorpions, a place of searing heat and no water, where the enticing vision of the oasis turns out to be a mirage - and that is a destination one should wish for no one. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Are those children any different from the kids born of publicly acknowledged mistresses and lovers back in the day when men (and sometimes women) of stature could get away with "polyamory" although it wasn't called that then
There really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to people behaving badly.
The handwringing I see here about things that were with us when the Sumerians built their first ziggurats reminds me of the cynical observation that every generation thinks it just invented sex.
Surrogacy and all its permutations after the Baby M case are new. I once read of some lawyers noting it as finally something new under the sun.
What does a Christian say to someone's child born by surrogacy? A complement could be complicity. Women, socially, are sort of supposed to fuss over each other. I don't see how someone else doing surrogacy can be navigated other than to stop talking to them. This is a real life situation, not just a theory.
The traditional way is different, because if I befriend someone who knows they shouldn't have had a child out of wedlock, we may still have shared ideals if they know they made a mistake or have changed or were trapped in some way. If a child by surrogacy came into this world via a new sin but there is no contrition from the parents, there's no shared ground. Forgiveness, including social forgiveness, assumes or overlooks or gives people space to either get right or have gotten right with God.
Shared in a shorter way, new sin has the moral high in addition to being new.
Re:Surrogacy and all its permutations after the Baby M case are new.
The technology is new of course
But we read in Genesis of how Abraham had a son by Hagar, his wife's maidservant, because Sarah could not conceive, and ditto Jacob getting children of his wives' maids too. Surrogacy, low tech version
In Muslim countries, polygamous marriages still happen, though where I'm from they carry a fair bit of social stigma despite being legal.
This is a long-winded way of saying I know a lot of kids of polygamous relationships, including some in my own extended family. It's awful for them all. Not one of them views it as happy or even benign.
Human beings can endure a lot of emotional pain and turn out ok. Adultery, polygamy, all these things inflict emotional pain on children. Always have, always will. The fact that most kids survive it doesn't make it a good thing to do to them.
So what’s your point? That we should not pity the children born of these “unions” because, after all, people have been screwing around and abusing their children from time immemorial?
What's your point? That these kids ought never have been born? That sounds like the logic of abortion. Some of those kids will have very good lives. Others not. The circumstances of their birth are not important. It's the future that shall determine how they will live.
This is good advice for those of us next to situations that leave us speechless. I have made progress praying for adults and their sins, but if I pray too much for the children I'll become more attached, and it will break my heart further. It's work in that other prayer comes more naturally.
I read that too. Rod's written about it before. Of course the usual suspects (there were more of them back then) gave us the "this isn't really happening and if it is happeing it's not ever going to happen often " (Which is along the way to "It's not a big deal this is happening" and "What are you talking about? I never said this wasn't going to happen!")
I think it was Slate which had an article Rod linked to about how wonderful her poly life was. Later her blog detailed how her husband gave her just one man who was absoultely off limits, and so she went and had sex with the forbidden man. (She refered to him as "the forbidden fruit") Then the whole thing went behind a paywall.
I think it's the desire to be transgressive. It used to be transgressive to say that being gay was OK. This is now a mainstream position. So, on to Trans. But that whole debate is getting messy. So the choices are pedophilia, bestiality, or polyamory. The first triggers our instinct to protect children; the second is just gross, and so that leaves us with polyamory.
By the way, as Rod's only Materialist subscriber, I'll add that I think there are good secular arguments that polyamory is socially destabilizing. Historically, monogamy and bans on cousin marriage may have had religious origins, but those are, in fact, useful social institutions, even shorn of religion.
In fairness, it's all kind of old hat. There were "swingers" and "open marriages" in the 70s. On British TV at least, it's kind of a stock joke: couples putting their car keys in the fruit bowl, and so on. I grew up in the middle of all that, having hippyish parents in that era. At one stage it was kind of a sign of being "with it", sophisticated, and reasonably affluent. I find it merely disgusting and sleazy, rather than hallucinatorily evil, like the transgender craze, which pretty much caught me off guard.
Trans was certain to come "next", following the triumph of gay rights, because the gay rights advocacy was LGBT and trans are a part of that, so the segue to trans was to be expected.
I get that a lot of people were surprised by it because the advocacy for gay marriage was not talking at all about trans (for good strategic reasons). But the approach was simply strategic timing, since the consolidated movement leadership was well aware trans would pose unique problems due to the differences in perception between gay people and trans. It therefore made sense to lead with the gay issues and get to the trans ones once the gay issues were more or less secured, which they were, in the US at least, in 2015. Trans advocacy started virtually immediately after that because they were the remaining part of the coalition that had not been addressed.
2001. I recently some of the learned that the Trans push started much earlier. Jennifer Bilek recommended this substack, which also uses Synthetic Sex Identity instead of Transgender.
When a Kaiser vice president held the first meeting for LGBT employees in 1992 with an HRC representative as a speaker, was it the start of a business venture? Wrapped under the guise of “civil rights,” KP Pride was born. By 2001 transgender care became a Kaiser add-on benefit and by 2015 transgender care became an employee benefit. Support would seem difficult to come by if consideration were given to patient risk, yet support was had by then Kaiser President Bernard Tyson, actuarial services, and the PMGS."
White roses! (I always notice that! They have special meaning to me.)
"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
St. John of the Cross, in teaching us to pray, admonishes us not to imagine that we can understand the meaning of what we perceive to be messages from God. It is not an assertion that God does not send us messages; it is rather a reminder that we lack the capacity to fully understand the meaning of the message. Best to note it and, in humility, let it settle and try not to impose prematurely a mundane meaning on a revelation that may or may not be of divine origin. What he calls the "dark night" is precisely that time and place where we are confronted by the awareness that we cannot avoid or conquer suffering or, through our own will and effort and knowledge, secure for ourselves, much less anyone else, spiritual bliss. It is our Calvary, and we are free to embrace it along with Christ, or to turn away from it and Him. In short, the call is coming from inside the house. And the pastor is spot on.
There are (though they are now uncommon) recipes for savory ice creams. I see no reason why a frozen iced cream cannot be made with, say, caramelized onions and garlic just fine. Toss in some turmeric, perhaps some curry powder and a bit of cayenne for heat?
I wouldn't go near onion in ice cream ... but I did have a delicious olive oil and black pepper gelato in Dallas once, and on another occasion, some custardy vanilla ice cream studded with salty Mangalica bacon for dessert at a John Besh restaurant.
Onions and butter can go well together, as can a sour cream and onion dip, so while it may not be to your taste per se, if one likes onions (as I very much do), then I think it could work. But you're not alone if you don't care for onions - I know a few people who find their taste (no matter how they're prepared) just overwhelming, sort of like others with cilantro. I personally cannot touch rhubarb as it takes like iron filings to me - no better way to ruin a strawberry pie for me than to include rhubarb.
I think I’m going to have that for dinner Linda, it’s around 100 F here in Virginia and it’s too hot to eat anything else other than gazpacho! Great recipes!
At one time I would have rejected modern miracles and spiritual warfare out of hand. At present I'm agnostic. I have no experience with either -- but perhaps that's because God knows I couldn't handle it. Or maybe there are reasons certain people can see it. As to the tears on the statue, I think a bit of condensation on any physical object in a humid climate like Louisiana has a rather obvious material explanation. But. C.S. Lewis pointed out that any answered prayer necessarily involves a series of empirical steps, so a person with a mind to do so could respond "See? It would have happened anyway." Now we see through a glass darkly.
Actually, quite likely in an air conditioned house. This brings us to one of my favorite secular topics: Our devotion to air conditioning is often misplaced. A good deal of our summer discomfort is due to humidity, rather than to temperature. I suspect we could dehumidify for a lower expenditure of energy than cooling. It is true that warmer air can hold more humidity, but up to a point, dry heat is considerably more comfortable than humid heat. (Residents of south Texas and California's central valley will testify there are limits to that comfort.) But, if humid air is cooled, but not dehumidified, the opportunities for condensation are sometimes even greater. All that empirical stuff aside, that could just be God's way of arranging for tears to form in the eyes of the statue.
Personally, I find that I feel a little indifferent to most miracle stories, in the "Well of course they happen" sort of way. Any given reported case could be suspect, but not the phenomenon as such. But God's presence is everywhere all the time anyway, so something like that statue crying would just be another drop in the ocean to me.
A recent story in my own life about a highly impactful chance encounter, though, did stun me. It's sort of the way that all the little pieces line up, and coincidence is just totally ruled out, and synchronicity rises to a genuine sense of providence. The sheer complexity of such a thing compels me to see God's hand at work and feel impressed, more so than apparent violations of natural laws—such laws don't exist anyway. They're only inductions inside our own heads.
I feel much the same way. Any specific miracle could be an instance of charlatanry and we should found our faith ought be on a firmer foundations than "signs and wonders" which might turn out to be frauds.
Christians need to be especially sensitive to the small happenings and coincidences that add up to a particular outcome. I read George Mueller’s biography and there was one passage where he was detailing how, if he’d actually taken the shorter route, which he was unable to do so because of some reason, then he would’ve been too early to have met a person at his destination who was coming just to give him money. God times things just right in small and big matters.
I woke up yesterday morning hearing a strong internal voice that told me to pray for a particular famous person who is now in prison. I had very slight dealings with this person once upon a time. I think this person ought to be in prison ... but I could not ignore this strong voice. I began writing a letter to this person, letting this person know that s/he is in my prayers, and offering spiritual counsel. I feel like something of a fool doing so, but man, that voice was strong, and it seemed to come out of nowhere. I haven't thought about that person in a very long time.
As "logical" people, it's hard to just do. On the other hand, of course, we're told to test all the spirits. But how to know that such things aren't just our brains working overtime or some malevolent spirit? Prayer is always a good thing, and reaching out to people in love as well.
I have friends from way, way back whom I met online when I first became Orthodox. This husband and wife were about my age and had become Orthodox slightly before I did. For awhile, we were in pretty regular contact, but as they started having kids and I ended up moving back to the US (mind you, they had offered their place as somewhere I could move back to) we completely lost contact after 2011. A couple of years ago, over on Telegram, I saw a familiar username, and it was the husband. He was happy to hear from me and said his wife would be thrilled to hear from me as well. We went back and forth a couple of times via text, but life happens (everything over here, and they have six kids as well, five of whom are about the same ages as my five) and there wasn't a lot of contact until about a year and a half ago, when, out of the blue, I get a text from the wife asking for prayers for all of them, and in particular, her husband. I responded that I would, and tried to follow up asking what happened, and I got no response. Well, her husband did something and ended up being sentenced to something over a year in jail. I did not know this, but last summer, an audio file of our evening prayers (from before times) on my phone started playing randomly and the bit that I caught before I could stop it was of the friend's name... So I decided to reach out, and we talked for two hours or so. The woman is not perfect to be sure, but very close to a living saint. We've kept up a little better (life is still insane) but it's a challenge to me to keep praying and reaching out. I found her husband's address in jail and wrote him a couple of times. The wife said it was something he appreciated a lot. Yes, he did something terrible, and one can hope that the time in jail gave him some time to consider what's important in his life, but... we're also not supposed to write off people completely, are we? We're not just "church" in a building, but we're supposed to be that community, that communion, all the time. The world will ridicule us for that, especially as times get stranger and stranger, and I suppose that's why it's all the more important to work to build that and hold on to each other through the storm.
Rod , this is and is not off topic . First…I read the Randall Sullivan book Devil’s Best Trick. Great book , inspired me to read his other book The Miracle Detective. I highly recommend this to you Rod and all readers of this Blog. It’s mostly about the apparitions at Medjugorje but it is also about much more. Truth and the nature of “ apparitions” the war in Bosnia/Yugoslavia, miracles and healing as well as the author’s personal search for Faith and Redemption . Again, highly recommend!
BTW it’s 100 F here in Alexandria, gazpacho sounds like a plan tonight!🥵🍅🫑🥒
My library didn’t have Devil’s Best Trick except audio book, and I was…a little worried to listen to it, but his Oak Island Book was in the stacks. It was phenomenal and made me really wonder what’s buried there. Thanks for recommending Randall Sullivan, Rod. He’s a very talented writer.
Rod , this is and is not off topic . First…I read the Randall Sullivan book Devil’s Best Trick. Great book , inspired me to read his other book The Miracle Detective. I highly recommend this to you Rod and all readers of this Blog. It’s mostly about the apparitions at Medjugorje but it is also about much more. Truth and the nature of “ apparitions” the war in Bosnia/Yugoslavia, miracles and healing as well as the author’s personal search for Faith and Redemption . Again, highly recommend!
BTW it’s 100 F here in Alexandria, gazpacho sounds like a plan tonight!🥵🍅🫑🥒
I would suggest checking with your confessor or a trusted person whose spiritual counsel you value, before you send. I'm not saying anything about the impression itself - not my business. Simply trying to consider the appropriate Orthodox way to proceed.
I am in a place where such stories help me, if I feel they are proven or close to proven. My intellectual doubts mean I rely on faith from my heart, but also, I need mental ammunition against doubts.
These experiences of awe provide that for me.
(Yes, I wondered about condensation, but how odd for the water drops to be only on the eye. So, while not 100 percent convinced, I think this counts as evidence, for which I am thankful, though not proof.)
If that helps you, then great, but I'm with Søren Kierkegaard on this one: doubt entered the world through a decision, and it will only be abolished through a decision. Ultimately, I don't think any amount of mental ammo would ever be enough; the real solution is more radical than that.
True, but on the other hand, I once heard a priest say in a sermon that while doubt is always a temptation it is never a good idea to cultivate it, as it shows up enough on its own.
Yes, but you don't think in words, you have said. For those who do, wondering and doubts are going to be thoughts. No willpower can arrest an initial thought, though it can be dismissed.
Haha. Well, yes, doubts may get whispered into our heads outside of our will, but whether we choose to entertain them is another matter.
Also, here's some William Blake (because when is it ever a bad time for some William Blake?): "If the sun and moon did ever doubt, they would immediately go out."
Yes, and I am not at all questioning your path at all. For me, even a "decision" does not dispel doubt. Nothing takes all doubt away, but difficult-to-disprove stories of the miraculous do help me.
Also - if weeping statues are real, if preserved roses are real, if preserved corpses are real, etc. they are not serving a purpose such as teaching a doctrine. They are there only for the purpose of increasing faith for those who could use a boost, I guess.
One of my great academic triumphs: I was in a class on the philosophy or religion, and I said that Aquinas thought reason could give us a running start on the leap of faith, while Kierkegaard thought that it was like the standing broad jump. At a reunion more than twenty years later, my professor said he was still using that in class.
I brought up air conditioning, but then remembered that I went to see Stephanie in January. You're not going to get indoor condensation in January under normal conditions, even in Louisiana.
Thank you! Today's column, and particularly that remark, were of great help to this math teacher and engineer's daughter. Who said math and science aren't your thing? :)
It’s never easy to interpret the thoughts going through your mind, especially when you’re trying to sense whether God is nudging or directly speaking to you. One time last month, my wife and I both, but independently and unspoken to each other, came to the same thought at the same time. When she brought up the issue, I was shocked. I’d been cogitating over it for a week or so, but not seriously. Then she raised the exact issue with the exact conclusion I’d arrived at.
I concluded that, it’s fine to misread and not take initial action that God wants you to do, but your spirit needs to be of the attitude that God can and will speak to you—by keeping it on your mind, via conversation, via what Rod just shared about the voice. And course correction will happen thru his grace. Just another story for you, even if it’s anecdotal from me. I believe 100% that was God.🙂
Thank you! - Earlier I said "intrusive thoughts" meaning some entity outside that was bad. I think the Spirit can speak but I don't think of it as intrusive. I like your story. Also, I believe that when two people are close in Spirit, such links happen.
I'm with you here up until you say that natural laws don't exist. They exist, but because they originate in God's will, he is free to work outside them.
The stories that always strike me are not so much the blatantly supernatural ones, but the ones that appear natural but have ridiculous probabilities working against them -- things that you look at after the fact and say, "What are the odds?"
About natural laws, I'm just referring to the problem of induction. It's like how we inferred that all swans were white because we'd never seen a black one before, but then we discovered Australia. There isn't any logical a priori necessity to the things we call natural laws, and thus we wouldn't know when one has been violated. The "inside" and "outside" here are our own cognitive constructs, based on inferences made from an intrinsically limited dataset.
And about the odds: yes, exactly. Accepting the reality of providence is the most *rational* interpretation of such events. It would take a certain kind of demented, dogmatic anti-faith to insist on coincidence in the face of what is self-evidently the hand of the Maker at work.
OK, yes, but the medical miracles of the simultaneous state of the six Medjugorje visionaries does, I contend, violate natural law, meaning it is supernatural. Saying "Well, it was natural though not seen/examined before, and it just happened to take place only at times they said Mary appeared, but no miracles here" just does not seem to work with Occam's Razor, to me.
My point is simply that the concept of "natural law" is incoherent and has no ontological referent. In a sense, everything is supernatural and permeated with God, so the distinction between natural and supernatural is a cognitive construct within our own heads (useful for some purposes and not others), and not the way that things are in themselves or in how God sees them.
Can't go that far with you, I'm afraid. I think Christianity entails the notion of natural law, even if not in a full Thomistic sense. It was, after all, present in the thought of both Plato and Aristotle, and aspects of it appear in both the Bible and the Church Fathers. I do not think it can be dispensed with.
I think there are definitely stable patterns. But I love the idea that gravity doesn't just "go" on its own, it's the result of an archangel consistently doing his job. But then if (say) God asked the archangel to stop for a second so that a monk could fly, would that be a violation of "natural law", given that the pattern was supernatural in the first place? So I'm just trying to think of it the other way around.
I remember the first time that I noticed this as a child. Not sure how old I was, but my dad had a pickup truck with a water tank in the back (he owned a window cleaning business) and he asked me to go out and empty the tank for the weekend. When I got there I noticed that a very small maple or sycamore leaf had fallen into a round depression in the tank's valve handle, and that said leaf was in fact a perfect fit for that depression, almost like a puzzle piece. I immediately thought, what are the odds of that happening, given the vast number of leaves of so many sizes, the distance between the trees and the truck, the fact that it would have to fall at the right speed and angle, etc., etc.
When I told my dad about it, he said that you could climb the nearest tree, leaf in hand, and drop it a million times and never hit that spot. From that time on I've always considered such things in terms of probabilities.
Growing up with missionary kids, you’re bound to hear their parent’s stories. This one time, a close friend’s father was talking to a village witch doctor, and the witch doctor took him to a hill top. He told my friend’s father, “Your God is strong, I accept that, but see what my god can do.” And then he points his staff at a cloud in the sky, and as he moved the staff across the open sky, the cloud was dragged across it following the staff.
I’ll never understand people who are cessationists. We are spiritual beings in a temporary body, which will be glorified one day.
"... he argues that because St. Paul omitted in his letter to the Romans explicit instructions on how to deal with demons, therefore Paul must have been telling them that all you have to do is to “expound the Gospel,” and that would take care of it."
Or perhaps, cf. 15:20 of the same epistle, he was not accustomed to give apostolic instructions to a church that was "another man's foundation."
Even if Paul had given explicit direction on exorcism, I suspect Dr Poythress would then explain that such practices ended with the closing of the canon, or the death of the last apostle.
Dr. Poythress seems to be from a Reformed background. I have followed Jack Deere, a former professor from Dallas Theological Seminary, who used to be a cessationist. He has an updated edition of his classic book out, called "Why I Am Still Surprised by the Power of the Spirit". He relates not only how he had never seen a miracle or healing, making it easy to not believe in them, but also how he had been taught cessationism by older professors who he highly respected. How could they be wrong about a subject when they know the Bible so well? But then he met someone who was having miracles happen around him all the time. That was John Wimber who founded the Vineyard movement. Just having him as a friend got him kicked out of the seminary. They didn't want anything rocking their boat! The thing is that Deere was very good at arguing for cessationism. They had lots of arguments, all based on the Bible, though when you really examined them, you'd find that all these wonderful professors, all very good believers in God, had nonetheless distorted what the Bible really says.
Another thing is that the history books of the (Protestant) fathers in the faith are full of miracles. And so over time, with each new edition, they erase those miracles, or explain them away. So today, when students in these seminaries read about the fathers, they never hear about all the miracles associated with them. And they come to believe that no miracles ever happened, so God must have stopped doing them back in the first century.
Which history books? Also, I could totally believe that about Luther, who talked about all sorts of weird happenings you would never see in Calvin's writings.
Jake Deere tells about going into a bookstore in Edenborough and finding an old edition of a book on the history of the Scottish martyrs. But even that older edition had things already removed or downplayed.
Deere tells of George Wishart, a Scottish martyr, who was burned at the stake for heresy. They not only burned him, but hung a sack of gun powder from his neck. Cardinal Beaton watched him burn from a palace window when the gun powder exploded, spinning Wishart around, so that he could now face the Cardinal, at which point he spoke a prophetic word, saying that not soon thereafter the Cardinal would meet an ignominious death and his body would be hung from that very window. And so it happened.
The edition of the history book that Deere found in that bookstore, which was published about seventy years after Wishart was martyred, was edited to say that Wishart was not a prophet, but rather he had organized the murder of the Cardinal himself. Rather than believe Wishart, a hero of the faith, had spoken a prophetic word, they made him out to be a murderer. They ignored the fact that Wishart had lived after the gunpowder exploded to even give the prophetic word. How does one plan that! And they said that other instances of seeming prophetic words simply meant that Wishart had "sagacious foresight", i.e., he was a good guesser.
Huh, interesting. Perhaps a different topic, but that reminded me of Dr. Jordan Cooper (the prominent Lutheran pastor) mentioning something in one of his videos/podcasts. It was on the Lord's supper, and according to him John Calvin said that Jesus must have appeared to the disciples through a secret door (instead of literally walking through walls), I want to say in The Institutes. That was a shocker to me even already knowing of Calvin's rationalist tendency. I would have to do some research on exactly where he said it, but I believe Dr. Cooper.
If that history book came out no later than the 17th century, it provides yet more evidence of how early the elements of thought contributing to the Enlightenment were becoming dominant in Protestant lands.
You may be interested in Craig Keener's massive "Miracles : 2 Volumes: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts", that includes historical accounts of miracles, as well as modern ones with lots of documentation.
"It was on the Lord's supper, and according to him John Calvin said that Jesus must have appeared to the disciples through a secret door (instead of literally walking through walls), "
I've never come across this. I'll ask a close friend who was a learned PCA elder before he became Orthodox 20 years ago (and is, like me, an historian).
I do know that Oecolampadius, the principal Reformer of Basle, tried to explain the Words of Institution by postulating that Our Lord said "This is My Body," while pointing at himself, "which is given for you;" and only thereafter spoke of the bread under "do this in memory of me."
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Zwingli wasn't the only one to import his own assumptions into the text. Let me know if you find out anything from your friend.
This is Calvin's comment on John 20. I don't know where this comes from:
"and yet I am far from admitting the truth of what the Papists assert, that the body of Christ passed through the shut doors. Their reason for maintaining this is, for the purpose of proving not only that the glorious body of Christ resembled a spirit, but that it was infinite, and could not be confined to any one place. But the words convey no such meaning; for the Evangelist does not say that he entered through the shut doors, but that he suddenly stood in the midst of his disciples, though the doors had been shut, and had not been opened to him by the hand of man."
Have a good weekend Rod.
Not related to your post today, but to something you said two days ago, about Jonah Goldberg and Crunchy Cons. I figure no one will go back to those comments, so I'm posting here. I went looking for Jonah's thoughts on CC and found this. I think this is an honest critique and I agree with most of what he says, except for the part about homeschoolers abandoning the battlefield; there's nothing to stop homeschoolers from also trying to improve the schools--except, and this is the voice of experience, some in the schools will vilify homeschoolers and claim they're not entitled to an opinion on a system they don't send their children to--but children should not be on a battlefield.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2002/10/crunchy-conservatism-reconsidered-jonah-goldberg/
It should be noted that this is Goldberg's response to Rod's original column and not his book, which wasn't published until 2006 if memory serves.
True.
Rod wrote--
Back in 2002, the year I spent working for National Review, Jonah lobbied hard to keep Rich Lowry from publishing my cover piece on the crunchy cons. One of his arguments, I recall, was that acknowledging that these conservatives exist, and that they critique mainstream conservatism from the Right, would give liberals the idea that the Right is not united.
I don't know if Jonah tried to prevent Rod's piece from being published, or maybe he didn't want it to be a cover story, but his piece explains his position towards Rod's ideas; he certainly doesn't object to "acknowledging these conservatives exist."
Yes, but did he write this response because he failed to get Rod's piece blocked? If so, that surely colors his arguments. I don't remember the initial hubbub about the article because I had long stopped reading NR. I knew Rod's work primarily through Touchstone, and then followed him more closely once the Crunchy Cons book came out.
Goldberg is being naive. For instance, the schools of Baltimore are beyond redemption and any parent who sends their children to Baltimore's schools is a bad parent.
He called homeschooling a strategic retreat; that's not necessarily a criticism. Imho, now 22 years later, better get your kids out first, then reflect on strategy after.
"he argues that because St. Paul omitted in his letter to the Romans explicit instructions on how to deal with demons, therefore Paul must have been telling them that all you have to do is to “expound the Gospel,” and that would take care of it."
This sort of argumentation drives me up the wall. The one I used to hear all the time was, "God never gave us instructions for worship in the New Testament so we must be free to worship any way we please," which can very easily fly in the face of St Paul's command to do all things decently and in order (subject to varying interpretations, of course).
Also, St. Paul refers somewhere in the NT to the importance of Tradition, along with scripture, so just because God didn't give us instructions for how to worship in the NT doesn't mean that God didn't give us instructions for how to worship.
Right -- the Greek word is paradosis if I remember correctly, which means "handing down" or "handing on." Clearly there were things that the early Church was taught that didn't find their way into the New Testament, and to presume that they were therefore not important is a form of circular reasoning.
At the same time, and to follow your logic, to say that your form of worship, or any other form, was that passed on by the early church, though there is no mention in the gospels and no chain of evidence to support it, is likewise circular.
We do know that Temple Judaism was heavily liturgical and into "smells and bells" type stuff. So that sort of worship is certainly not displeasing to God. I would agree that the details of our worship do not matter in any profound way (unless they explicitly embrace heresies)-- whether the Liturgy of John Chrysostom, the Novus Order, the Tridentine mass, the Coptic rite, as long as the object is to praise God we are on a true path.
Temple Judaism ended in 70 A.D. with the destruction of the Temple. Rabbinic Judaism and the synagogue replaced it. Presumably, that was not displeasing to God either.
Which is why many scholars trace early Church worship to that of the synagogue.
Post temple Judaism was a religion that rejected Jesus as the Messiah, therefore I always had assumed (as a Christian) that God was not pleased with their form of worship.
Disagree. There are lots of historical works that cover this subject that do not tackle it from a "Bible only" viewpoint, and the reasoning involved is not circular (i.e., it does not argue from silence).
The unasked questions posed to each of those historical works you cite is who is the source? Was it a first person source or a tradition of that particular time and place. Apparently it wasn't a controversy worth mentioning in 397 when the 27 books of the New Testament were canonized or in 405 when Innocent I ratified it, but once again, the absence of mention doesn't really "prove" anything.
The fact that there seemingly was no controversy is telling however, like Holmes's dog that did not bark. The early Christians argued and debated over many things but the basic form of worship wasn't one of them. Historically speaking this argues more for unity than for a free-for-all.
Yes, Pariah -- this is one reason why Catholicism finds sola scriptura unbiblical. See, e.g., John 21:25 (“But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written”); 2 Thes. 2:15 (“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter”); 1 Cor. 11:2 (“I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you”); 2 Thes. 3:6 (“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us”).
As with almost any topic, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The other thing about interpretations of St. Paul is when people over-generalize from what were clearly occasional remarks he was writing in letters to specific congregations with specific problems. I'd think that his apparently misogynistic comments, for example, were directed to people who were having an issue with pagan sex cults, or something along those lines.
Right, and the interpretive homework must be done in order to make that determination. These things are not always readily apparent in the texts themselves.
Did you ever read the book “Paul Among the People,” by Sarah Ruden? Rod mentioned it years ago in an American Conservative article, which is where I heard of it. According to Ruden, when she treats the subject of women in the early Christian church, some of what people today dismiss as misogynistic was actually Paul being rather progressive and egalitarian.
I hope I am remembering the details correctly, but as an example, in ancient Rome only proper ladies were allowed to cover their heads, while prostitutes (occasional or pro) were explicitly forbidden to do so. This proscription wasn’t waived upon giving up a life of ill repute. Paul, however, insisted all women wear head coverings in church because Christian brothers and sisters were equal to one another.
I thought it was a very good book.
That's very interesting. I haven't heard of that book before, but I'll keep it in mind. Also, Magdalene is pretty central to my understanding of the faith: the apostle to the apostles, and the first witness to the Resurrection.
I read that book after learning about it from Rod. It’s very scholarly and informative. I also remember being struck about the immoral women being forbidden respectable hair coverings.
I remember being most struck by the chapter on homosexuality and Ancient Rome: specifically, how predatory the Ancient Roman idea of sex was, and how what today we would call "victim blaming," and condemn, was in sharp contrast exactly what the Romans would think appropriate.
I'm reminded of a medieval studies professor I had in college—a very sweet old guy—who made the remark in one class that the Ancient Romans were in many ways "terrible people." It blows the mind, some of the things I learned in that book! It was a real eye opener.
I understand why history is sanitized for young people going to school, but it's a shame that that's the last most people ever hear of what went on in other times and cultures (in this case, pagan culture of 2,000 years ago). You get a very skewed idea of humanity and what's "normal" if all you know is what you see going on around you in polite company in what is still arguably a Christian society. People can be really terrible—and for generation after generation—and think what they're doing is just "the way things are." Wow!
Also cf. Romans 15:20.
The command of Paul's that you reference seemingly rules out most charismatic worship, it seems to me. However, the so-called regulative principle of worship is something I have come to believe is a 16th century innovation that takes things too far. Anything and everything doesn't go, but neither are we so restricted as to be able to do very little. This is where Tradition has abiding value for Christians in every century. Scripture should be the primary yardstick used in evaluating any worship practice, with tradition following.
Please someone, explain: Why do spirits put up walls and such in some places, like where the missionary was in Africa, but not in urban America? I've noticed people from islands other than Manhattan have stories about fairies and spirits doing stuff in their homes, but people on the North American continent generally don't. Do the demons look at the earth and say "Let's inspire people to support a movement to get kids to beg to be neutered in this land, and let's put up invisible walls in that land! Let's inspire the Big Men to make stupid decisions and/or greed that lead to war over here, and let's possess this individual here and make him act crazy! Let's inspire her to binge on Ding-Dongs and let's rattle stuff around in this guy's home to scare him! Let's make Pride Parades look fun and enticing to this crowd and let's make tiktok videos and social media totally distracting to this group so they forget about God, and let's promise these guys that if they worship us we'll grant them special knowledge." I just don't get it. And if these spells and voodoo killings are real, then why don't sitting presidents ever just die in office from spells cast by the opposing party?
Why should we expect demonic activity to follow human logic though? Even human criminals don't always do that. I tend to picture the demons as a sort of supernatural Mafia, not a well-trained army.
I think one ends up with more "tangible" curses and such in places where people practice those more, and also where the cultures acknowledge them. In the Western world, we believe differently, we perceive the world differently, and the demons interact differently with the society.
So in the West, we threw out the demons, and then we threw out God, or at least we tried.
Yes, much of Europe and America started out with a strong, positive view of God. That view has diminished over the past decades and the results appear to match Matthew 12:43-45:
“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”
In a word, baptism. The presence of a large number of baptized people limits what evil spirits can do. This isn’t to say there’s not evil around but it’s somewhat restrained.
I am no spiritual expert. But I can give a thought, based on an experience. When I was a girl of about 11, my family approached a restaurant while travelling. Other families were inside, there was singing. I expected no special feeling. But - both my mother and I - not my father and sister- drew back at the same time. We were not watching one another, in fact I was surprised when she also drew back and said what she felt. I felt something and so did she. "Jimmy, I'm not going in there, there is something in there", said Mom. It was not *impossible* for me to go in, but it would have felt very unpleasant. It was like a wall, though it would have continued to be unpleasant inside, I think.
I am not sure - Father Maloney said "wall" of course, but might or might not have meant something like this?
My father insisted on entering. He and my sister got food and brought it to the car. My mother and I would not budge. It was that strong of a feeling, even when my very good hearted, kind and logical engineer father talked to us about going in. He and my sister came to no harm. But I still remember the awful feeling. I've never felt that, so strongly, again.
No, he meant a real wall -- an unseen barrier that they could nonetheless feel. It went away after the older priest slung holy water on it and prayed a prayer of exorcism. You can imagine how this must have freaked out a young priest straight off the boat from Ireland.
Thanks for elaborating- You wrote "wall" clearly, and clearly said they could "feel" the barrier. My experience made me wonder if the feeling was perhaps spiritual, so spiritual as to be "almost" tangible. I see now that the priest meant a literal physical barrier, fully tangible.
I've been looking up weeping statues. WP, of all things, had what I thought was a good article. I, a non-subscriber, could access merely by giving an email (a non-used email):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/07/18/a-virgin-mary-statue-has-been-weeping-olive-oil-church-leaders-cant-explain-it/
It was obviously spiritual not material. A material wall would have been made of, well duh, matter and been visible.
And this proves what, exactly? You and your mother had a feeling. Your father and sister ignored the feeling, went into the restaurant, and got food. By your telling, nothing happened. Sounds like you and your mother were being hysterical.
I will ignore that ugly remark. But I want you to know I am ignoring it.
That's not actually ignoring it. But, whatever.
I think the human mind has a need to find meaning in life. Especially when it comes to close brushes with great human tragedy. We've all heard stories of people who, thanks to happenstance, a change of mind, or an unexplainable sense of foreboding, didn't board the Titanic before it sailed. Or what about those who, due to illness, a family emergency or a flat tire didn't show up for work on 9/11. And so, a minor misfortune saved them from a much greater one.
Perhaps there was some unknown evil or misfortune that was waiting especially for Linda and her mother, but not for her father and sister. Linda and her mother refused to go into the restaurant, so the "spell" was broken and everyones life took a different path. We'll never know for sure because nothing happened ... but something could have. How many times have we said to ourselves "If only I hadn't done this" or "If only she hadn't said that"?
I think the human mind has a need to find meaning in life. Especially when it comes to close brushes with great human tragedy. We've all heard stories of people who, thanks to happenstance, a change of mind, or an unexplainable sense of foreboding, didn't board the Titanic before it sailed. Or what about those who, due to illness, a family emergency or a flat tire didn't show up for work on 9/11. And so, a minor misfortune saved them from a much greater one.
Perhaps there was some unknown evil or misfortune that was waiting especially for Linda and her mother, but not for her father and sister. Linda and her mother refused to go into the restaurant, so the "spell" was broken and everyones life took a different path. We'll never know for sure because nothing happened ... but something could have. How many times have we said to ourselves "If only I hadn't done this" or "If only she hadn't said that"?
Thank you! I wasn't going to engage with that one insulter, so you were kind here. No I get to say more :)
I did say this was the "only time" I'd had such an experience. It would be an odd story if my mother and I were hysterical only once in our lives.
We like to tell stories of unusual experiences here in this Substack. I never said my experience proved anything. I never said I knew for sure something was there. - - It was a story about a "wall" - a place I could not bring myself to cross - that may have been some evil. I felt it confirmed by Mom and I feeling the same. I know I was not imitating Mom in any way and was amazed she, but not others, agreed with me. I fully know it may have been nothing.
I like the comparison of not getting on the Titanic! I'd never thought of it quite that way.
There are too many of us here from discordant traditions. I suspect that these"spirits" may not be external beings at all, but are unconscious creations of the human spirit (or what Jung called the "Collective Unconscious"). We have no unity of belief on such matters here so we cannot create such paranormal emanations.
And on that note, see the concept of the egregore:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore
I should make it a bit more explicit that I am not referring to demonic beings per se, but to assorted "magical" effects which are being imputed to demons here but which could also be due to psychokinetic (for lack of better word) effects wrought by the community's shaman and potentiated by belief in such powers.
Not everything paranormal should be attributed to divine or demonic acts. Human beings may have the ability to effect such things too under specific circumstances.
Or maybe humans are subject to delusions. Which they interpret in various ways.
Your phrasing here is awesome.
You asked about different areas. There is this, from Daniel 10: ;12-13, << “Then he (the angel) said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid, Daniel! For from the first day that you set your heart to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard. I have come because of your words. However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia resisted me for 21 days, but behold Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me because I had been detained there with the kings of Persia. ">> So it appears there was a strong demon assigned to Persia, perhaps one who was in charge of other demons
Hey, also, I was thinking the other day about what you said about snails: that stuck with me.
Thanks, What did I say about snails?
Something about how human beings are like snails drawn toward the light as they crawl along, apropos of how people respond to kindness.
Ah, yes, thank you for reminding me. That is something I often think about when I see snails.
But actually, I'm mistaken, in my foolish forgetfulness. Snails like shade and dampness. One day after school in kindergarten my best friend and I found some snails in the shade and we worried they might be cold, so we spent the afternoon picking them up and putting them in the sunshine. They were very patient with us, but kept trudging back to the shade. We thought they were confused, so we kept moving them back into the sun. Those poor snails! Later, her father explained to us that snails are not like us, they prefer shade. But the main point still holds: that creatures are drawn to whatever feels good. I wanted to clear this up so more people don't bother the snails like I once did.
Haha—that is hilarious, and also good to know.
An exorcist in Rome told me that where Christianity has been present for a long time, and there has been no worship or intercourse with evil spirits, you see far less of this stuff. But if people abandon the faith, then the evil spirits will return. I guess this Catholic priest would say that supernature abhors a vacuum.
The exorcist literature I read and the ones I've heard talk say the same thing.
Isn't that paraphrasing what Jesus said about casting out a demon and when the house is clean, 7 demons move back in?
Correct. As I mentioned in an earlier reply today (as well as others previously) it relates to Matt 12:43-45.
I want to thank everyone who helped answer my question, but that would take a lot of space, so Thank You Everyone!
Then why are all the people who I hear about getting demonically possessed already religious people who suddenly have this awful experience? Why don't the demons go after me, or Richard Dawkins, or Sam Harris? It seems like people who have these experiences are primed to believe them already.
One explanation, and I'm not sure I believe it, is that demons attack people who are getting really serious about worshipping God. But that is very different from Rod's explanation, that they enter where there is a vacuum. Maybe there are "spiritual bad neighborhoods" where demons hang out, because there aren't enough practicing Christians, and if a Christian is hanging out in this spiritually bad neighborhood they might get jumped by a demon? It really is puzzling.
Another explanation is that demons aren’t real, any more than the monsters under a child’s bed are real. It’s all mental illness, delusion, and susceptibility to suggestion. Not that atheists are immune to these things, but their delusions take different forms. Aliens. Or Secret Government Agents.
I’d say that our conceptual frameworks do influence and even determine how exactly we interpret these phenomena. Psychological things manifesting from the depths of the self, or metaphysical entities from outside the self?—the line blurs, I think. And that’s part of why I find Jung very interesting.
Possibly, only the believers would think to identify them as demons, since the heathens don’t have the conceptual tools to do so.
I know what a demon is; I saw The Exorcist. Just like I know what Bigfoot is, and what unicorns are. I have the conceptual tools to recognize Bigfoot, unicorns, or demons. I just don’t think they exist.
I’m just suggesting that you’d need a metaphysical picture in your head that allows for the reality of demons. Otherwise, you’d likely perceive and interpret them as something else, such as psychological phenomena.
Or perhaps they know that they've already got you and Dawkins and Harris and would rather not waste their time?
Rob, that almost makes sense! Which is unlike much of the rest of the discussion about demons -- one of Rod's stories about a woman who was demonically attacked because her parents did something wrong, for example. Half the time we're told that the logic of demonic and divine intervention is quite beyond our mortal understanding, but then we get something actually logical.
Their goal is not to possess you. That is just one tool in their toolkit, one of many. Their goal is to have you separate yourself from God. They will use whatever their tools they can use to try to bring that about.
Atheists have already done that. Mission accomplished.
Ever read The Screwtape Letters? Lewis has one of his demons say that in terms of separation from God there's no point in trying to tempt a man to murder if cards will do the trick. In this sense there is a certain logic to the demonic, but as I said in another comment it's more a sort of criminal or "Mafia" logic.
Because Harris and Dawkins have minds not easily dominated by an outside force, and not welcoming entrance to such a dominating force. The Catholic Church believes possession happens but is rare. I think they have it right.
The Devil uses the available tools.
Don't worry, you'll get it when you get it when you get to heaven and your perspective improves. The you'll un
In relation to demons/devils, I'd say that there are situations when they find it more advantageous to reveal themselves (e.g. to African witchdoctors), and others when they find it more advantageous to conceal themselves (e.g. to doctors dealing with gender-troubled youth). C.S. Lewis wrote something like this in "The Screwtape Letters".
They might also just get a kick out of what they do. Some pathetic shaman thinks himself all-powerful because a demon allows him to bend a tree or something: hoho. Secular liberals in the modern West denying the work of Satan when he could hardly make his presence more clear if he were to strut around in horns, hooves, and a red body-stocking: hoho.
Fairies, jinn, etc., are a different issue. They may or may not exist, but, if they do, they're not on clearly on the side of good or evil, but are more like humans in this respect. They have their own issues and problems, and it's foolish to get into a debate about why they do things when we're not even sure they exist.
This is a great explanation answering my question. Would you be able to explain Pete's concern, above, re religious, practicing Christians becoming possessed?
Hazarding a guess, I'd say that with some people being deeply religious is part of their general spiritual sensitivity, and they tend to tune in to evil as well as good. I'm a bit the opposite, and tend to be oblivious to spiritual things; I tend to fall off the Christian wagon on the materialist side, whereas perhaps some people fall off on the magician side.
Don’t forget the kami!
We had an experience with a spirit or something that attached itself to my 3 year old. When it finally became obvious (there were "off" things and feelings for years but until she could really articulate herself well enough, it was only suspected by us) on All Saints Day when she was almost 3, I didn't feel it was BAD with a capital B, but more that it was mischievous and just didn't belong here. More of a "trickster" energy. A couple days later a glass bowl exploded in my hands. That's when I knew it was time to intervene. We were Episcopalian at the time and the priest came to bless the house and we didn't have any problems after that. Our daughter stopped talking about "Extra Dry" (weird name: maybe an old-timey biblical name she couldn't pronounce?) and she never saw him on the ceiling again after that.
Sometimes I wonder if Extra Dry was a fairy. Or something like that. It didn't feel evil just naughty, in a juvenile way. But my daughter was scared and the glass from the bowl did cut my hands, so who knows. I've had a couple of supernatural experiences in our house, 2 bad, 1 definitely good (scent of roses and my missing rosary--that we turned our bedroom upside for--returned neatly at the end of my bed the morning after the smell of roses and prayers to Mary)...so yeah, I believe in demons, angels, Marian visits, fairies, sasquatch, etc. Where we live in the US is known for Bigfoot, UFOs, missing people, etc (south west Oregon) so we try to educate our kids about not inviting fairies, and things you can't see into our home or their lives.
I should add that the 2 bad experiences happened when I was focusing on rooting out a particular sin/addiction I've struggled with for a long time. As my husband said (and he's not even Catholic like me) "That means you're on the right path or you wouldn't be experiencing this harrassment."
There is a full (or nearly full) moon tonight. How I wish we were all together around a campfire having these discussions late into the night. I love hearing everyone and thoughts about this stuff!
Me too!
that was nice. Mary is with the people. here in Ireland I started listening this morning to Fr Thadys video on the apparitions in Mount Mellery, Ireland. Though I live here I never knew any details. In August 1985, 4 witnesses claimed Our Lady appeared to them at Melleray Grotto, Co Waterford, Ireland. Three claimed to have received messages from her. Here is the link to this holy priest's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_A1y5OuwhM&t=1745s&ab_channel=God%27sCottage
Hi Rod,
Some of us Reformed (Calvinist) ministers – especially those of us who are agèd now, survivors of the 60s and 70s counterculture and our “recreational sorcery”, the grass, acid, mushrooms, etc – are well aware of the demonic realm through sometimes bitter experience, and from which the Lord Jesus rescued us.
He has given us power over all the power of the enemy, and has made the demons subject to us (Luke 10:19, 20) by the might of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the Lord’s word of power. There are many places in the New Testament that speak of this warfare, most notable is perhaps apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 6, verses 10 through 18.
He is with us to manifest His power as He deems necessary, both to bring His saving messages and to “resist the devil . . . who will flee from us” (James 4:7).
Such knowledge is in the armory of mature Christians.
I am really trying to get a sense for if re-enchantment and Calvinism/Reformed Theology can even mix or if the latter system is too hermetically sealed. Tom Holland pointed out Pilgrim's Progress as an inspired work on that score and I agreed wholeheartedly. There's a reason that's being rediscovered. But as a Ligonier aficionado, I feel re-enchantment as this Catholic/Orthodox/Arminian thing and it saddens me a little.
Hello E.J., see this: 'Thoughts about “Re-enchantment” ' https://apocalypsefield.substack.com/p/thoughts-about-re-enchantment
I totally feel you on that one, and my experiences with Presbyterianism run the gamut from the PCUSA to the Covenanters (I have no real experience with the Continental Reformed). It's been a while since I've read Pilgrim's Progress, but I don't think it can hold a candle to more liturgical forms of Christianity. I will also say that Ligonier is not what I would consider genuinely Reformed-- there's too much Baptist influence there, which is to say nonsacramental influence. It's hard for me to imagine nonsacramental forms of Protestantism being able to really provide any serious reenchantment as they veer a bit too close to rationalism and materialism.
Completely off-topic, but has anyone else noticed the completely relentless pro-polyamory propaganda in mainstream (especially prestige) media outlets? New York Magazine recently had a whole issue about this, and the NYT seems to put out a new frivolous pro-polyamory article every week.
The most recent one, posted yesterday evening, takes the cake. I can hardly even find a concise way to describe it, and it is impossible not to laugh while reading it (although I really feel sorry for these people).
Long story short, an evangelical seminary student’s wife becomes an atheist, convinces her husband to “open” the relationship, and, predictably, they get divorced; the husband, who wrote this article, celebrates the whole thing as liberating, in an unbelievably self-deluded and nauseating way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/style/modern-love-polyamory-i-was-content-with-monogamy.html
Yep -- I saw that story and I have also noticed the unending stream of poly-related propaganda in the mainstream media.
This was kind of predicted when Obergefell made gay rights final -- that poly would be next.. Although what happened was that trans became very controversial, and likely will remain so for some time, so it's kind of "stuck". And so poly has moved up the queue in terms of the propaganda stack.
I see it as being different in that what is being asked for is social approval rather than legal approval (I haven't seen anything advocating poly marriage recognition for example) -- it's possible legal advocacy would happen later, but it isn't the focus now as it was with gay rights. This is instead a big push towards greater sexual freedom, under the rubric of the broader agenda of the sexual revolution, which is to dismantle all prior social restraints and conventions around sexuality and replace them with mere actual consent.
It's no longer in the "trial balloon" stage (that was around 5 years ago), and has moved to the active advocacy stage. I think we can expect more of it in the years ahead.
Pity the children born of these “unions”.
And, while opposing, to the extent one can, the naturalizing of this “progress”, pity too, and pray for, the individual participants: when you walk away from what is good and holy, where God is, you move into the realm of the opposite where God is not, a trackless desert of thorns and thistles, snakes and scorpions, a place of searing heat and no water, where the enticing vision of the oasis turns out to be a mirage - and that is a destination one should wish for no one. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Are those children any different from the kids born of publicly acknowledged mistresses and lovers back in the day when men (and sometimes women) of stature could get away with "polyamory" although it wasn't called that then
There really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to people behaving badly.
The handwringing I see here about things that were with us when the Sumerians built their first ziggurats reminds me of the cynical observation that every generation thinks it just invented sex.
Surrogacy and all its permutations after the Baby M case are new. I once read of some lawyers noting it as finally something new under the sun.
What does a Christian say to someone's child born by surrogacy? A complement could be complicity. Women, socially, are sort of supposed to fuss over each other. I don't see how someone else doing surrogacy can be navigated other than to stop talking to them. This is a real life situation, not just a theory.
The traditional way is different, because if I befriend someone who knows they shouldn't have had a child out of wedlock, we may still have shared ideals if they know they made a mistake or have changed or were trapped in some way. If a child by surrogacy came into this world via a new sin but there is no contrition from the parents, there's no shared ground. Forgiveness, including social forgiveness, assumes or overlooks or gives people space to either get right or have gotten right with God.
Shared in a shorter way, new sin has the moral high in addition to being new.
Re:Surrogacy and all its permutations after the Baby M case are new.
The technology is new of course
But we read in Genesis of how Abraham had a son by Hagar, his wife's maidservant, because Sarah could not conceive, and ditto Jacob getting children of his wives' maids too. Surrogacy, low tech version
In Muslim countries, polygamous marriages still happen, though where I'm from they carry a fair bit of social stigma despite being legal.
This is a long-winded way of saying I know a lot of kids of polygamous relationships, including some in my own extended family. It's awful for them all. Not one of them views it as happy or even benign.
Human beings can endure a lot of emotional pain and turn out ok. Adultery, polygamy, all these things inflict emotional pain on children. Always have, always will. The fact that most kids survive it doesn't make it a good thing to do to them.
Thank you for your perspective,and I am glad to see you round these parts still.
So what’s your point? That we should not pity the children born of these “unions” because, after all, people have been screwing around and abusing their children from time immemorial?
Yes, that about sums it up. Anytime today looks worse than the past you can always appeal to original sin to get decadence off the hook.
What's your point? That these kids ought never have been born? That sounds like the logic of abortion. Some of those kids will have very good lives. Others not. The circumstances of their birth are not important. It's the future that shall determine how they will live.
Non sequitur
This is good advice for those of us next to situations that leave us speechless. I have made progress praying for adults and their sins, but if I pray too much for the children I'll become more attached, and it will break my heart further. It's work in that other prayer comes more naturally.
I read that too. Rod's written about it before. Of course the usual suspects (there were more of them back then) gave us the "this isn't really happening and if it is happeing it's not ever going to happen often " (Which is along the way to "It's not a big deal this is happening" and "What are you talking about? I never said this wasn't going to happen!")
I think it was Slate which had an article Rod linked to about how wonderful her poly life was. Later her blog detailed how her husband gave her just one man who was absoultely off limits, and so she went and had sex with the forbidden man. (She refered to him as "the forbidden fruit") Then the whole thing went behind a paywall.
I think it's the desire to be transgressive. It used to be transgressive to say that being gay was OK. This is now a mainstream position. So, on to Trans. But that whole debate is getting messy. So the choices are pedophilia, bestiality, or polyamory. The first triggers our instinct to protect children; the second is just gross, and so that leaves us with polyamory.
By the way, as Rod's only Materialist subscriber, I'll add that I think there are good secular arguments that polyamory is socially destabilizing. Historically, monogamy and bans on cousin marriage may have had religious origins, but those are, in fact, useful social institutions, even shorn of religion.
In fairness, it's all kind of old hat. There were "swingers" and "open marriages" in the 70s. On British TV at least, it's kind of a stock joke: couples putting their car keys in the fruit bowl, and so on. I grew up in the middle of all that, having hippyish parents in that era. At one stage it was kind of a sign of being "with it", sophisticated, and reasonably affluent. I find it merely disgusting and sleazy, rather than hallucinatorily evil, like the transgender craze, which pretty much caught me off guard.
Interesting.
Trans was certain to come "next", following the triumph of gay rights, because the gay rights advocacy was LGBT and trans are a part of that, so the segue to trans was to be expected.
I get that a lot of people were surprised by it because the advocacy for gay marriage was not talking at all about trans (for good strategic reasons). But the approach was simply strategic timing, since the consolidated movement leadership was well aware trans would pose unique problems due to the differences in perception between gay people and trans. It therefore made sense to lead with the gay issues and get to the trans ones once the gay issues were more or less secured, which they were, in the US at least, in 2015. Trans advocacy started virtually immediately after that because they were the remaining part of the coalition that had not been addressed.
2001. I recently some of the learned that the Trans push started much earlier. Jennifer Bilek recommended this substack, which also uses Synthetic Sex Identity instead of Transgender.
https://margox.substack.com/p/a-synthetic-sex-candidate-for-the
"Kaiser and Insurance for Synthetic Sex
When a Kaiser vice president held the first meeting for LGBT employees in 1992 with an HRC representative as a speaker, was it the start of a business venture? Wrapped under the guise of “civil rights,” KP Pride was born. By 2001 transgender care became a Kaiser add-on benefit and by 2015 transgender care became an employee benefit. Support would seem difficult to come by if consideration were given to patient risk, yet support was had by then Kaiser President Bernard Tyson, actuarial services, and the PMGS."
White roses! (I always notice that! They have special meaning to me.)
"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
St. John of the Cross, in teaching us to pray, admonishes us not to imagine that we can understand the meaning of what we perceive to be messages from God. It is not an assertion that God does not send us messages; it is rather a reminder that we lack the capacity to fully understand the meaning of the message. Best to note it and, in humility, let it settle and try not to impose prematurely a mundane meaning on a revelation that may or may not be of divine origin. What he calls the "dark night" is precisely that time and place where we are confronted by the awareness that we cannot avoid or conquer suffering or, through our own will and effort and knowledge, secure for ourselves, much less anyone else, spiritual bliss. It is our Calvary, and we are free to embrace it along with Christ, or to turn away from it and Him. In short, the call is coming from inside the house. And the pastor is spot on.
Re: ...returned by my own version, which leaves out onion and garlic
Heresy! Onion and garlic go with everything, with the possible exception of ice cream. :)
There are (though they are now uncommon) recipes for savory ice creams. I see no reason why a frozen iced cream cannot be made with, say, caramelized onions and garlic just fine. Toss in some turmeric, perhaps some curry powder and a bit of cayenne for heat?
I wouldn't go near onion in ice cream ... but I did have a delicious olive oil and black pepper gelato in Dallas once, and on another occasion, some custardy vanilla ice cream studded with salty Mangalica bacon for dessert at a John Besh restaurant.
Onions and butter can go well together, as can a sour cream and onion dip, so while it may not be to your taste per se, if one likes onions (as I very much do), then I think it could work. But you're not alone if you don't care for onions - I know a few people who find their taste (no matter how they're prepared) just overwhelming, sort of like others with cilantro. I personally cannot touch rhubarb as it takes like iron filings to me - no better way to ruin a strawberry pie for me than to include rhubarb.
I wonder what your thoughts are on salsa, which should have at least onion if not also garlic in it.
In Japan, there are all sorts of weird ice cream flavours. I particularly like wasabi (similar to horseradish).
I should love to try that someday.
Thank you for the blessing of today's Substack!
Here is a summer blessing for all of you. IMHO, it even beats homemade gazpacho:
Bite sized pieces of watermelon
Small squares of feta
Torn up leaves of fresh basil (or use mint if preferred)
Dressing: honey, lemon, olive oil, salt and black pepper -
blended dressing to taste, sufficient pepper recommended.
(a balsamic vinegar dressing is a variation though I like this one best)
These ingredients can all be had at my local Budapest covered market or perhaps at your local stores.
I've been making it for friends, who rave, as a salad or desert.
The taste is amazing!! And, it can be a light meal.
I think I’m going to have that for dinner Linda, it’s around 100 F here in Virginia and it’s too hot to eat anything else other than gazpacho! Great recipes!
Thank you! That sounds refreshing!
At one time I would have rejected modern miracles and spiritual warfare out of hand. At present I'm agnostic. I have no experience with either -- but perhaps that's because God knows I couldn't handle it. Or maybe there are reasons certain people can see it. As to the tears on the statue, I think a bit of condensation on any physical object in a humid climate like Louisiana has a rather obvious material explanation. But. C.S. Lewis pointed out that any answered prayer necessarily involves a series of empirical steps, so a person with a mind to do so could respond "See? It would have happened anyway." Now we see through a glass darkly.
Not in an air-conditioned house.
Actually, quite likely in an air conditioned house. This brings us to one of my favorite secular topics: Our devotion to air conditioning is often misplaced. A good deal of our summer discomfort is due to humidity, rather than to temperature. I suspect we could dehumidify for a lower expenditure of energy than cooling. It is true that warmer air can hold more humidity, but up to a point, dry heat is considerably more comfortable than humid heat. (Residents of south Texas and California's central valley will testify there are limits to that comfort.) But, if humid air is cooled, but not dehumidified, the opportunities for condensation are sometimes even greater. All that empirical stuff aside, that could just be God's way of arranging for tears to form in the eyes of the statue.
Central Texas, over here.
Personally, I find that I feel a little indifferent to most miracle stories, in the "Well of course they happen" sort of way. Any given reported case could be suspect, but not the phenomenon as such. But God's presence is everywhere all the time anyway, so something like that statue crying would just be another drop in the ocean to me.
A recent story in my own life about a highly impactful chance encounter, though, did stun me. It's sort of the way that all the little pieces line up, and coincidence is just totally ruled out, and synchronicity rises to a genuine sense of providence. The sheer complexity of such a thing compels me to see God's hand at work and feel impressed, more so than apparent violations of natural laws—such laws don't exist anyway. They're only inductions inside our own heads.
I feel much the same way. Any specific miracle could be an instance of charlatanry and we should found our faith ought be on a firmer foundations than "signs and wonders" which might turn out to be frauds.
Christians need to be especially sensitive to the small happenings and coincidences that add up to a particular outcome. I read George Mueller’s biography and there was one passage where he was detailing how, if he’d actually taken the shorter route, which he was unable to do so because of some reason, then he would’ve been too early to have met a person at his destination who was coming just to give him money. God times things just right in small and big matters.
I woke up yesterday morning hearing a strong internal voice that told me to pray for a particular famous person who is now in prison. I had very slight dealings with this person once upon a time. I think this person ought to be in prison ... but I could not ignore this strong voice. I began writing a letter to this person, letting this person know that s/he is in my prayers, and offering spiritual counsel. I feel like something of a fool doing so, but man, that voice was strong, and it seemed to come out of nowhere. I haven't thought about that person in a very long time.
Yes! Do it.
As "logical" people, it's hard to just do. On the other hand, of course, we're told to test all the spirits. But how to know that such things aren't just our brains working overtime or some malevolent spirit? Prayer is always a good thing, and reaching out to people in love as well.
I have friends from way, way back whom I met online when I first became Orthodox. This husband and wife were about my age and had become Orthodox slightly before I did. For awhile, we were in pretty regular contact, but as they started having kids and I ended up moving back to the US (mind you, they had offered their place as somewhere I could move back to) we completely lost contact after 2011. A couple of years ago, over on Telegram, I saw a familiar username, and it was the husband. He was happy to hear from me and said his wife would be thrilled to hear from me as well. We went back and forth a couple of times via text, but life happens (everything over here, and they have six kids as well, five of whom are about the same ages as my five) and there wasn't a lot of contact until about a year and a half ago, when, out of the blue, I get a text from the wife asking for prayers for all of them, and in particular, her husband. I responded that I would, and tried to follow up asking what happened, and I got no response. Well, her husband did something and ended up being sentenced to something over a year in jail. I did not know this, but last summer, an audio file of our evening prayers (from before times) on my phone started playing randomly and the bit that I caught before I could stop it was of the friend's name... So I decided to reach out, and we talked for two hours or so. The woman is not perfect to be sure, but very close to a living saint. We've kept up a little better (life is still insane) but it's a challenge to me to keep praying and reaching out. I found her husband's address in jail and wrote him a couple of times. The wife said it was something he appreciated a lot. Yes, he did something terrible, and one can hope that the time in jail gave him some time to consider what's important in his life, but... we're also not supposed to write off people completely, are we? We're not just "church" in a building, but we're supposed to be that community, that communion, all the time. The world will ridicule us for that, especially as times get stranger and stranger, and I suppose that's why it's all the more important to work to build that and hold on to each other through the storm.
Rod , this is and is not off topic . First…I read the Randall Sullivan book Devil’s Best Trick. Great book , inspired me to read his other book The Miracle Detective. I highly recommend this to you Rod and all readers of this Blog. It’s mostly about the apparitions at Medjugorje but it is also about much more. Truth and the nature of “ apparitions” the war in Bosnia/Yugoslavia, miracles and healing as well as the author’s personal search for Faith and Redemption . Again, highly recommend!
BTW it’s 100 F here in Alexandria, gazpacho sounds like a plan tonight!🥵🍅🫑🥒
My library didn’t have Devil’s Best Trick except audio book, and I was…a little worried to listen to it, but his Oak Island Book was in the stacks. It was phenomenal and made me really wonder what’s buried there. Thanks for recommending Randall Sullivan, Rod. He’s a very talented writer.
Oh I saw that Oak Island book , might read that next!!!
Rod , this is and is not off topic . First…I read the Randall Sullivan book Devil’s Best Trick. Great book , inspired me to read his other book The Miracle Detective. I highly recommend this to you Rod and all readers of this Blog. It’s mostly about the apparitions at Medjugorje but it is also about much more. Truth and the nature of “ apparitions” the war in Bosnia/Yugoslavia, miracles and healing as well as the author’s personal search for Faith and Redemption . Again, highly recommend!
BTW it’s 100 F here in Alexandria, gazpacho sounds like a plan tonight!🥵🍅🫑🥒
I would suggest checking with your confessor or a trusted person whose spiritual counsel you value, before you send. I'm not saying anything about the impression itself - not my business. Simply trying to consider the appropriate Orthodox way to proceed.
Dana
I am in a place where such stories help me, if I feel they are proven or close to proven. My intellectual doubts mean I rely on faith from my heart, but also, I need mental ammunition against doubts.
These experiences of awe provide that for me.
(Yes, I wondered about condensation, but how odd for the water drops to be only on the eye. So, while not 100 percent convinced, I think this counts as evidence, for which I am thankful, though not proof.)
If that helps you, then great, but I'm with Søren Kierkegaard on this one: doubt entered the world through a decision, and it will only be abolished through a decision. Ultimately, I don't think any amount of mental ammo would ever be enough; the real solution is more radical than that.
True, but on the other hand, I once heard a priest say in a sermon that while doubt is always a temptation it is never a good idea to cultivate it, as it shows up enough on its own.
Oh, of course we shouldn't cultivate doubt. I just mean that doubt in matters of faith is ultimately a weakness of the heart, not the intellect.
Yes, but you don't think in words, you have said. For those who do, wondering and doubts are going to be thoughts. No willpower can arrest an initial thought, though it can be dismissed.
Haha. Well, yes, doubts may get whispered into our heads outside of our will, but whether we choose to entertain them is another matter.
Also, here's some William Blake (because when is it ever a bad time for some William Blake?): "If the sun and moon did ever doubt, they would immediately go out."
Yes, and I am not at all questioning your path at all. For me, even a "decision" does not dispel doubt. Nothing takes all doubt away, but difficult-to-disprove stories of the miraculous do help me.
Also - if weeping statues are real, if preserved roses are real, if preserved corpses are real, etc. they are not serving a purpose such as teaching a doctrine. They are there only for the purpose of increasing faith for those who could use a boost, I guess.
Very much a reminder that there's more to the world than what is seen. :)
One of my great academic triumphs: I was in a class on the philosophy or religion, and I said that Aquinas thought reason could give us a running start on the leap of faith, while Kierkegaard thought that it was like the standing broad jump. At a reunion more than twenty years later, my professor said he was still using that in class.
Not that it worked on me.
I brought up air conditioning, but then remembered that I went to see Stephanie in January. You're not going to get indoor condensation in January under normal conditions, even in Louisiana.
Thank you! Today's column, and particularly that remark, were of great help to this math teacher and engineer's daughter. Who said math and science aren't your thing? :)
It’s never easy to interpret the thoughts going through your mind, especially when you’re trying to sense whether God is nudging or directly speaking to you. One time last month, my wife and I both, but independently and unspoken to each other, came to the same thought at the same time. When she brought up the issue, I was shocked. I’d been cogitating over it for a week or so, but not seriously. Then she raised the exact issue with the exact conclusion I’d arrived at.
I concluded that, it’s fine to misread and not take initial action that God wants you to do, but your spirit needs to be of the attitude that God can and will speak to you—by keeping it on your mind, via conversation, via what Rod just shared about the voice. And course correction will happen thru his grace. Just another story for you, even if it’s anecdotal from me. I believe 100% that was God.🙂
Thank you! - Earlier I said "intrusive thoughts" meaning some entity outside that was bad. I think the Spirit can speak but I don't think of it as intrusive. I like your story. Also, I believe that when two people are close in Spirit, such links happen.
I'm with you here up until you say that natural laws don't exist. They exist, but because they originate in God's will, he is free to work outside them.
The stories that always strike me are not so much the blatantly supernatural ones, but the ones that appear natural but have ridiculous probabilities working against them -- things that you look at after the fact and say, "What are the odds?"
About natural laws, I'm just referring to the problem of induction. It's like how we inferred that all swans were white because we'd never seen a black one before, but then we discovered Australia. There isn't any logical a priori necessity to the things we call natural laws, and thus we wouldn't know when one has been violated. The "inside" and "outside" here are our own cognitive constructs, based on inferences made from an intrinsically limited dataset.
And about the odds: yes, exactly. Accepting the reality of providence is the most *rational* interpretation of such events. It would take a certain kind of demented, dogmatic anti-faith to insist on coincidence in the face of what is self-evidently the hand of the Maker at work.
OK, yes, but the medical miracles of the simultaneous state of the six Medjugorje visionaries does, I contend, violate natural law, meaning it is supernatural. Saying "Well, it was natural though not seen/examined before, and it just happened to take place only at times they said Mary appeared, but no miracles here" just does not seem to work with Occam's Razor, to me.
My point is simply that the concept of "natural law" is incoherent and has no ontological referent. In a sense, everything is supernatural and permeated with God, so the distinction between natural and supernatural is a cognitive construct within our own heads (useful for some purposes and not others), and not the way that things are in themselves or in how God sees them.
Can't go that far with you, I'm afraid. I think Christianity entails the notion of natural law, even if not in a full Thomistic sense. It was, after all, present in the thought of both Plato and Aristotle, and aspects of it appear in both the Bible and the Church Fathers. I do not think it can be dispensed with.
I think there are definitely stable patterns. But I love the idea that gravity doesn't just "go" on its own, it's the result of an archangel consistently doing his job. But then if (say) God asked the archangel to stop for a second so that a monk could fly, would that be a violation of "natural law", given that the pattern was supernatural in the first place? So I'm just trying to think of it the other way around.
I remember the first time that I noticed this as a child. Not sure how old I was, but my dad had a pickup truck with a water tank in the back (he owned a window cleaning business) and he asked me to go out and empty the tank for the weekend. When I got there I noticed that a very small maple or sycamore leaf had fallen into a round depression in the tank's valve handle, and that said leaf was in fact a perfect fit for that depression, almost like a puzzle piece. I immediately thought, what are the odds of that happening, given the vast number of leaves of so many sizes, the distance between the trees and the truck, the fact that it would have to fall at the right speed and angle, etc., etc.
When I told my dad about it, he said that you could climb the nearest tree, leaf in hand, and drop it a million times and never hit that spot. From that time on I've always considered such things in terms of probabilities.
That's beautiful.
Growing up with missionary kids, you’re bound to hear their parent’s stories. This one time, a close friend’s father was talking to a village witch doctor, and the witch doctor took him to a hill top. He told my friend’s father, “Your God is strong, I accept that, but see what my god can do.” And then he points his staff at a cloud in the sky, and as he moved the staff across the open sky, the cloud was dragged across it following the staff.
I’ll never understand people who are cessationists. We are spiritual beings in a temporary body, which will be glorified one day.
"... he argues that because St. Paul omitted in his letter to the Romans explicit instructions on how to deal with demons, therefore Paul must have been telling them that all you have to do is to “expound the Gospel,” and that would take care of it."
Or perhaps, cf. 15:20 of the same epistle, he was not accustomed to give apostolic instructions to a church that was "another man's foundation."
Even if Paul had given explicit direction on exorcism, I suspect Dr Poythress would then explain that such practices ended with the closing of the canon, or the death of the last apostle.
Paul himself casts out demons, Acts 16:18. This particular one was apparently fully acquainted with the Gospel.
Dr. Poythress seems to be from a Reformed background. I have followed Jack Deere, a former professor from Dallas Theological Seminary, who used to be a cessationist. He has an updated edition of his classic book out, called "Why I Am Still Surprised by the Power of the Spirit". He relates not only how he had never seen a miracle or healing, making it easy to not believe in them, but also how he had been taught cessationism by older professors who he highly respected. How could they be wrong about a subject when they know the Bible so well? But then he met someone who was having miracles happen around him all the time. That was John Wimber who founded the Vineyard movement. Just having him as a friend got him kicked out of the seminary. They didn't want anything rocking their boat! The thing is that Deere was very good at arguing for cessationism. They had lots of arguments, all based on the Bible, though when you really examined them, you'd find that all these wonderful professors, all very good believers in God, had nonetheless distorted what the Bible really says.
Another thing is that the history books of the (Protestant) fathers in the faith are full of miracles. And so over time, with each new edition, they erase those miracles, or explain them away. So today, when students in these seminaries read about the fathers, they never hear about all the miracles associated with them. And they come to believe that no miracles ever happened, so God must have stopped doing them back in the first century.
Which history books? Also, I could totally believe that about Luther, who talked about all sorts of weird happenings you would never see in Calvin's writings.
Jake Deere tells about going into a bookstore in Edenborough and finding an old edition of a book on the history of the Scottish martyrs. But even that older edition had things already removed or downplayed.
Deere tells of George Wishart, a Scottish martyr, who was burned at the stake for heresy. They not only burned him, but hung a sack of gun powder from his neck. Cardinal Beaton watched him burn from a palace window when the gun powder exploded, spinning Wishart around, so that he could now face the Cardinal, at which point he spoke a prophetic word, saying that not soon thereafter the Cardinal would meet an ignominious death and his body would be hung from that very window. And so it happened.
The edition of the history book that Deere found in that bookstore, which was published about seventy years after Wishart was martyred, was edited to say that Wishart was not a prophet, but rather he had organized the murder of the Cardinal himself. Rather than believe Wishart, a hero of the faith, had spoken a prophetic word, they made him out to be a murderer. They ignored the fact that Wishart had lived after the gunpowder exploded to even give the prophetic word. How does one plan that! And they said that other instances of seeming prophetic words simply meant that Wishart had "sagacious foresight", i.e., he was a good guesser.
Huh, interesting. Perhaps a different topic, but that reminded me of Dr. Jordan Cooper (the prominent Lutheran pastor) mentioning something in one of his videos/podcasts. It was on the Lord's supper, and according to him John Calvin said that Jesus must have appeared to the disciples through a secret door (instead of literally walking through walls), I want to say in The Institutes. That was a shocker to me even already knowing of Calvin's rationalist tendency. I would have to do some research on exactly where he said it, but I believe Dr. Cooper.
If that history book came out no later than the 17th century, it provides yet more evidence of how early the elements of thought contributing to the Enlightenment were becoming dominant in Protestant lands.
You may be interested in Craig Keener's massive "Miracles : 2 Volumes: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts", that includes historical accounts of miracles, as well as modern ones with lots of documentation.
"It was on the Lord's supper, and according to him John Calvin said that Jesus must have appeared to the disciples through a secret door (instead of literally walking through walls), "
I've never come across this. I'll ask a close friend who was a learned PCA elder before he became Orthodox 20 years ago (and is, like me, an historian).
I do know that Oecolampadius, the principal Reformer of Basle, tried to explain the Words of Institution by postulating that Our Lord said "This is My Body," while pointing at himself, "which is given for you;" and only thereafter spoke of the bread under "do this in memory of me."
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Zwingli wasn't the only one to import his own assumptions into the text. Let me know if you find out anything from your friend.
My friend responded:
This is Calvin's comment on John 20. I don't know where this comes from:
"and yet I am far from admitting the truth of what the Papists assert, that the body of Christ passed through the shut doors. Their reason for maintaining this is, for the purpose of proving not only that the glorious body of Christ resembled a spirit, but that it was infinite, and could not be confined to any one place. But the words convey no such meaning; for the Evangelist does not say that he entered through the shut doors, but that he suddenly stood in the midst of his disciples, though the doors had been shut, and had not been opened to him by the hand of man."