Opinion 150: on how one cannot "return to the Fathers" (or at least not with any ease!)

As I am writing my senior thesis on certain aspects of Gregory of Nazianzus' life and thought, I find myself back with the Fathers again, for the first time in a long time. It is hard to read their letters and sermons and not feel compelled to rigorous traditional Christianity. I start to feel pious. I think about acts of asceticism. Suddenly, things - all things - seem simple and clear. I think about Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy ORTHODOXY, that simple and invincible solution to all wiles of the devil. Yet I don't trust this instinct. First and foremost, there is some doubt as to whether this is the instinct which the Fathers themselves were trying to instill. Yes, they were in some ways pious traditionalists, but their lives and setting were so dramatically different from ours that I just cannot easily assume that, for example, an ultra-traditional ROCOR setting would be the first choice for the likes of Gregory or his friend Basil.

Moreover I cannot convince myself for any long period of time that modernity didn't happen and that many of my most basic assumptions about the way in which the world works are very different than ancient assumptions. I don't think the deserts are full of demons. When a famine hits some poor country in Africa, it is not my first inclination to think God is reprimanding those people for falling away from him. I certainly have not seen many miracles in my life, and the ones which may or may not have occurred I am very willing to doubt. The heart, after all, is above all things deceiving.

Yet I do believe that the content of the Christian faith which the Fathers handed down to us is in some way or another true. How it translates into this contemporary world of ours, however, is a question which confounds me. There is a well-known and good-hearted Orthodox priest blogger who instructs us not to live in a "two-storey" world, in which God is up there and we are down here and a great gap has come between us. It's a nice thought, Father, but it’s really too late. In a very real way God is dead and we have killed him as Nietzsche declared (pointing out what was only obvious). A great sundering has happened and it has changed the human mind and heart and many an effort to undo this change look, to me at least, like games of make-believe.

That Jesus of Nazareth rose from the tomb is something I somehow believe, something I even assuredly believe. Yet the collective conscious of humanity has rejected this truth. Even those who believe it subjectively cannot help but be effected by humanity's decisions to disbelieve it. Our belief has been handicapped for we cannot escape the fate of our common humanity. We are flesh and blood and our flesh and blood has been changed by our age. We can not see things which those before us could see, thus for all intents and purposes these things do not exist. God has died in modernity. We are again waiting outside his tomb.

Opinion 149

There is an old abandoned building downtown Minneapolis, with glass doors that still open and allow folks waiting for their bus to stand out of the wind and enjoy a good view of oncoming buses. The doors are still open, I believe, since they provide one way out of a parking lot in the neighboring building. Recently I was told by a newly-arrived and well-bundled security figure that I "couldn't wait for the bus here". Well, okay. It's strange that someone has hired a figure to stand in a cold abandoned building in order to tell others not to stand in a cold abandoned building.

Yes, I realize there could be an "incident". Then the owner of the abandoned building would be liable for whatever nonsense takes place within its empty storefront. But doesn't he or her know how damn cold that wind can be? And how are we to be human without incidents?

Opinion 148: greasing the wheels

When you e-mail an academic and mention that you've read their book, you're bound to get a quick reply.

Opinion 147: Misinterpreting Nietzsche

"What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" asked Nietzsche's madman.

Yes, but what is Christianity but the message of those who gathered at the tomb of their God? Take that, you idiot!

Opinion 146

Some days you just wake up feeling religious.

Opinion 145: wherein he tries his hand at Marxism and cultural theory

nevermind

Opinion 144: toothpaste

According to its packaging, our new toothpaste has been "Proven by science".
Thank God.

Opinion 143

Four hours of sleep or four hundred dollars. Lord, it's not an easy decision anymore.

Opinion 142: Birth Control

Three thoughts about the Obama administration's attempts to make Catholics pay for birth control and other unseemly commodified assaults on human nature:

1-Fuck off, Mr. President.
2- The best line from the Bishops written response: "All the other mandated 'preventive services' prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease."
3-The real winners in all this, of course, are the pharmaceutical companies, who one way or another will increase their sales, I'm sure.

Opinion 141: anthropology

"Great in its littleness," was how St. Gregory described the creation of us and our world. One is reminded of hobbits.

Opinion 140: on the glories of the Eastern Church

At some point in his tumultuous time in Constantinople, St. Gregory Nazianzus was trying to work as a mediator between two factions of bishops, one with an eye to the West, the other to the East. Those in the East brought up as an argument for Eastern supremacy the fact that Christ had been sent to the Eastern part of the world to be incarnate. Gregory replied with nefarious wit that perhaps he had been sent to the East because he knew it to be wicked enough that there was a good chance he'd find someone there willing to crucify him.

Opinion 139: A saintly crankiness

From Gregory Nazianzus' Farewell Oration to the Bishops at Constantinople (Oratio 42):

"Besides all the issues, this is simply my temperament: one most subjects, I do not agree with the crowd, nor can I endure walking the same path as they do. That may be rash or ignorant, but it is nevertheless the way I habitually feel. The things that others enjoy annoy me, and I delight in what is annoying to others."

Opinion 138: Aesthetics

This new design is wonderfully hideous.

Opinion 137

"They Shall Beat their Swords" - Paul Mariani

With my father's Army ballpeen hammer I'd found
down in the cellar, I kept banging on the swordblade,
trying to turn it back into a plowshare like the ones
the prophets sang of. Plowshares, Hell, what did I know
of plowshares? Once more trouble was stewing-

you could taste it-what with old Shermans phosphoring
into ash across the desert, and all those blackened corpses
on the road to Tripoli and Hell. My right forefinger
stood poised on the passage from Isaiah, searching for
the recipe for peace. Too late, the pundits wagged. Too late!

Too late for anything like peace. A thousand generations
since Cain clubbed his brother in some field, and a million
cries for peace, for plowshares, say, and what's to show?
The bells keep tolling in their broken towers for the dead
at Megiddo or at Manhattan's smoking prow, as at Shiloh,

Passchendaele, the Bulge...and now in some hell hole called
Abbotabad. Four Blackhawks in and one already down.
And the ballpeen hammer bangs once more as some blinded
prophet scrambles from his bed. Ah, my father, look how
the plowshares keep turning into bullets, and the bullets into brains.

Opinion 136: The dissapointing Jesus

"He is not what we would make of him."

A line from an anymous Mt. Athos monk.

Opinion 135: A good point, Master Webb

Fervent Christians see in Mormonism a mirror distorting their own faith, reflecting an image strangely recognizable yet recognizably strange. Hard-core secularists think Mormonism is the best example of the strangeness and danger inherent in all religious belief. Deriding Mormonism pulls off the neat trick of making the devout and the godless feel as if they are on the same side.
-From Steven Webb's "A Mormonism Obsessed with Christ" in this month's First Things