trials

I suppose this is what they call a "trial of faith." Could it be a mark of improvement? I don't know. But it breaks down like this:

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Resurrection, and so forth. I believe that the Catholic Church is the embassy of the Holy Spirit on Earth, in this life. I find it unlikely that the Apostles simply "made it all up," as a group of Galilean peasants "mistaking" their rabbi for Jahweh Himself is a patent absurdity; He either had to be God, or they had to all be deceived or deceivers -- it's a statistical and a moral impossibility. Furthermore, if the Apostles are the ones "really responsible" for the Church, then they must have been a lot smarter than their Master, because the facts they present are clearly beyond reason. Either their claim that their Master is God is true, or the most berated, undermined, spit upon, targeted, idiosyncratic people that ever lived "invented" a religion that would have baffled even Plato.

And yet -- why am I invaded by a pernicious sense of doubt? What happens goes like this: some absurd question arises in me about the authenticity of the gospels, or the honesty of the Apostles (though it never occurs to me to implicate St. Paul, who everyone now likes to make the whipping boy -- somehow I always assume St. Paul is right, and that may be a rock to hold on to), or some such thing, and then I consider the actual objections in the form of questions, and, go figure, the questions always have an answer; I can show how the objection isn't even viable, how it betrays a misunderstanding, or what have you, and I win one more for the team. And yet, and yet.... That's what it's like: "And yet, and yet...." In other words, there is no rational or evidentiary basis for these "and-yets", yet they still bother me. They are not based on reason or upon data; they are based on imaginary hypotheses, "what-ifs," obsessions, or emotions.

This is why the church regards Faith as a virtue. It is not believing something even in the face of contrary evidence: it is simply holding on to what one's reason has previously judged true. That is, one has faith that, given the derivation of two from the square root of four, it will always remain so in every possible world: faith is based on reason.

If after many good reasons you're still bothered by doubt, the problem is with you, not with the data.

oxymoron?

There seem to be some very learned, very orthodox, Catholics pushing a kind of postmodern orthodoxy; they see, apparently, some congruency between the relativistic postmodern movement and the unchanging Faith. What's the rumpus? I don't think I get it. The likes of these include Catherine Pickstock, Romano Guardini, Michael Oakeshott, Eric Voegelin (I think), and, to a certain degree, James Schall. I find it bizarre. Can there really be congruency between that which holds that truth is--or at least the most important truths are--unflinchingly objective and that which holds that there are absolutely no objective truths (except, of course, the proposition, "there are no objective truths")? It's bizarre.

Did I mention: it's bizarre?

insights

Regarding the subject matter discussed below, I've uncovered--by various means--a few insights which I hope will solve the matter. These are the sort of capstone notions I've been looking for all through which would make the issue a non-issue, something to sort of tie it all together.

- Unlike religions which make claims to solitary revelations which must be followed to the letter (e.g., Islam, Mormon), Christ, by writing nothing, opened, rather than closed, Himself to authentication. It's a paradox, so think about it for a minute, even if it hurts your head.

- Admitting, on the one hand, that the New Testament is authentic and then asking, on the other hand, whether something significant has been left out or suppressed is inconsistent. The assertion admits one statement to be true while the question presupposes the falsehood of the same statement.

- Finally, since the first Christians didn't even have any scriptures they could call "their own", the question of "suppression" cannot even be entertained when it comes to that generation. The Apostles had no concern with books; their only concern was preaching, teaching, and the Sacrifice of the Mass. So, any suppression or exclusion would have to have occurred later, e.g., between the Council of Nicea and A.D. 405 when Pope Innocent I approved the canon as it exists today. By that time, the specifically Christian scriptures had been written, and had been commented on heavily, preached and taught heavily, and were accepted throughout the orthodox church as authentic; and those books were: the New Testament as we have it. In other words: the books authenticated themselves by their usefulness, truthfulness, through centuries of use by the Fathers and by the saints, after which the Church collected them into a definitive anthology and gave them her officiating "stamp." Essentially, the Apostolic Age would have been The Time to do any suppressing if any suppressing was to be done, but everything we know about the apostles themselves discourages the view that they were the type to suppress anything. In other words, right where it matters most is right where it is most likely not to have happened.

authenticity

I think a spirit has been provoking me. Either God or the Devil. Either way I think I'm coming out of it now, with some reinforced knowledge.

The issue has been the authenticity--or inauthenticity--of the New Testament. I've ruled out the solitary Ingenious Deceiver hypothesis on the Chestertonian observation that, given the actual content and variety of the anthology of writing that makes up the New Testament, no one could have come up with it. As Pascal pointed out, no one would even ever think to make up something like the Resurrection. As a purely human notion it is either insane or absurd. The only way it makes sense is if the action is Divine.

The originating concern, however, has been how we know whether or not--even granting the historical viability of the gospel narratives--there mightn't be documents that were suppressed by the Apostles; e.g., a document written by Jesus's own hand. But the only reason to suppress a document is that it makes claims contrary to the document(s) you're pushing; in this case, the "contrary" claims would be that Jesus is not, in fact, God, and that the Apostles were not His representatives. The latter is exactly the kind of thing we would expect from a man-made religion, whereas the idea that an orthodox Jew of the first century could casually commit blasphemy is untenable. But besides all that, there is the fact that the Church precedes the gospel writings. "The Gospel" is simply the witness of the Resurrection, not this or that particular book about the Riser. The Gospel was taught for years before "the gospels" were ever written. So I finally realized I've been working with a backwards axiom. It is not scripture that authorizes the Church: it is the Church that authorizes scripture. The fact is, even if the New Testament had never been "authorized," the Catholic Church would still be today exactly what it is. The Church is the Body of Christ and a Living Tradition.

But the real problem has been the vicious circle I've been going through, pondering and repondering, checking and rechecking. The question of the reliability of the Apostles has really been a bugger. But it seems unlikely that some small group of Galilean tradesmen would be capable of a vast KGB-esque conspiracy. And the claims of St. Paul to have received a direct post-Resurrection revelation of Christ, and the subsequent lack of disagreement of the original Apostles with his teaching, sure is curious. A zealot like Saul of Tarsus would never have given up his Jewish heritage--with full knowledge of the condemnation he would receive as a Christian--without damning evidence of its incompleteness.

And one more point: I read last night a great apologetic for the authenticity of the four Catholic gospels, as against the counterfeit apocrypha: To say that the unreliability of the apocrypha demonstrates the potential unreliability of the canonical gospels is like saying that the fact that there are counterfeit coins proves that all coins are counterfeit. Rather the very existence of fakes demonstrates the necessity of the originals. In any case, as above, the way any given writing was determined as worthy to be included in the canon was the degree to which it reflected or bore witness to the already-existing Church.

Christianity is not an "of-the-book" religion.

(Not that Protestants would have you believe that.)

libre

This is one of those posts--or is it a note? briefing? memorandum?--where I just go on and on and on. Or, rather, it is one of my On-and-on-and-on's which is executed by the act of writing. Correct: the written word is secondary, the concept is primary. So "Take that!" you spineless deconstructionist chumps. You could say this is my coffee hour, though it is not my coffee hour, because "coffee hour" suggests--like "tea time"--that this is the time of day I ordinarily have coffee. Not so, in this case (indeed, it is not so lately in general, as it once was in yonder dayes, when my coffeehouse was my sanctuary). In this particular case, "coffee hour" refers to the time I make a Real Coffee around midnight ("when the moment is not right") and muse upon the possibilities of a more thrilling life. Thrilling, not the way a Jack Bauer's life is thrilling, but more as, say, the narrator of "The Waste Land"'s life is thrilling. What happened to those days when I wandered and wandered not knowing what to do, not knowing what to be, or who to be, or is it whom? In those moments of utmost despair I found more meaning than the humdrum of my daily being nowadays. Boredom. That is my great devil. I have a good mind to chop boredom into little pieces, break early into a sushi bar, and switchout the pieces with some fine raw seafaring meats. O! To sabotage some chink bastards with the deadly dish of raw boredom! Or, what is even better, to poison unsuspecting whites or blacks who, attending frequent sushi bars, merely think themselves fine multicultural bastards with my vanquished and spliced and diced foe, boredom. The pufferfish was never so deadly as this. So, getting back to the point, I used to always wonder, "Oh what do I do? what shall I ever do?" and I hated it. Plans were cleverly devised and deduced and revised and destroyed and begun all over again. It was a truly hellish state of mind. Indeed I gave it up. I said to myself, I shall make no more "plans"; "goals" are for suckers. My only goal is the fly by the seat of my pants, as it were. My only plan was to make sure I never sit down to the dreadful task of actually drawing out a plan. But what fortune is there now? Now that I have abandoned my plans, I have indeed got a few things that needed to get done finished; e.g., my bachelor's degree. If I had kept making and revising plans academically, I would still be saying that I don't know what I'm going to major in, English or Philosophy. But all of that is finished now. But besides that. The point is this: that maybe I'm not obsessive enough anymore. Maybe life was more interesting when I was obsessive, even though I never got anything done. Because as it stands now, I am neither obsessive nor am I getting anything done. In other words, I'm doing nothing. If I start obsessing again, at least then I'll be doing something, even if only obsessing. On the other hand, when you really break it down, I don't want to do anything. I really have no ambition. If I work, I work for the sake of leisure and only have the itch for money. I don't care about cars, computers, selling goods or services, helping people, writing books, doing math, travelling, building models, or taking photographs. Give me my premium coffee, my premium books, premium cigars, a premium atmosophere, and, on occasion, some premium narcotics, and I have all I want. Entrepreneurs say you should make a job out of doing what you like to do best. I'm afraid that could never work in my case, because what I like to do best cannot be sold to anyone but me.

So run and hide, ladies, run and hide, sweet ladies,
For from me ye never finde securitye,
And ye dreams of all that husbands be
Shatter, when me blank stare be employed.

all there is

Let's see, you have Lewis, Eliot, and Hammett; you got The Godfather and Inglourious Basterds; and you have the Catholic Church.

And that's pretty much everything there is.

cut down to nothing

I find it somewhat disconcerting that every "philosophical insight," once you boil it down to its essentials, is merely one more boring instance of the phenomenological reduction in action. Every "original" idea ends up being a juxtaposition between two apparent contraries, a paradox, which ultimately is so because of the nature of the relationship between the intended and the intendor, i.e., between the world and one's consciousness of it. One can either accept the mystery and move on, and in time become wise. Or, one can endeavor to explain it--or, what more often happens, to explain it away--and in time become a mere philosopher. In most cases you must pick either one or the other. I haven't noticed many "wise philosophers"; they don't usually come in that pattern.

multiply variety

I just noticed an interesting connection. While reading Eliot's poem "Gerontion" I noticed how nearly identical the overall mood is to Chandler's The Big Sleep; not the content, the mood. But perhaps General Sternwood, in the latter, is modelled on Gerontion? Furthermore, Sternwood's greenhouse houses many orchids, and Sternwood refers to himself--in his near-death condition--as living on heat like a spider. The latter reminds me specifically of the spider in the poem. But even more interesting is the orchid connection, by accident. The original chief of counterintelligence for the CIA was James Angleton, who was friends with Eliot, was very fond of orchids, and saw their entire existence as a metaphor for deception, viz., in his profession of espionage, which Angleton, quoting Eliot, called a "wilderness of mirrors." Passages from "Gerontion" were read at Angleton's funeral. So we have this web of interrelations between Eliot, Chandler, Angleton, Orchids. Eliot doesn't mention orchids, but Chandler and Angleton do. And Chandler and Angleton seem to lean on Eliot for inspiration, and both see orchids as a key metaphor. So we've found this curious link, via Chandler and Angleton, between Eliot and Orchids. More than anything, however, all of these persons and objects point to an indescribable mood. And perhaps the Orchid is the symbol for that particular mood.