Saturday, July 28, 2007

Plato's Symposium: Which speech is the most dangerous to the city?

There are six speeches in the symposium. There is Phaedrus, who proposes that love is a goad towards virtue, Pausanias who proposes that there are two loves, and that love is only as good as it makes us[1], Eryximachus, who proposes that love is central to everything, and that good love must triumph over bad love, Aristophanes, who says that love is a desire for oneness because we have been split in half, Agathon, who proposes that love is the best and most beautiful god, and Socrates, who says love isn’t a god but rather a search for the true form of beauty. The first three speeches share a focus on love being linked to virtue, which is beneficial to the city. The last two focus on the attributes of love and the focus of love, which seems neutral in its effect on the city. Aristophanes speech, however, is different. He teaches that love is a force that is intrinsic, unstoppable, and should never be resisted. That is deeply dangerous.

If Love is nothing but the longing of two halves to become a whole, and becoming whole is the ultimate good, then everything else is going to go out the window. If ‘becoming one’ is all that people do in a city, and all that they are interested in, the city will fall to pieces. Literally. The city needs people to do things like building things, growing food, keeping things in order, and defending the city against invasion. Those aren’t going to happen unless there is a higher moral good than becoming a whole. Virtue is necessary.

Aristophanes’ speech is all the more deeply dangerous because it is very difficult to defeat. The idea of allowing love to rule is very appealing, and throws out all need of logic. There is no good evidence that he is wrong in his history of human kind, and it actually does sound like the kind of thing that the gods would do. There is nothing but the ruin that it will cause that I can think of that is a good argument against it, and even that is on shaky ground.



[1] 465

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Three Theban Plays: Is it right to defy authority for the sake of a higher authority? If it is, what is the appropriate way to go about it?

Antigone presents a way to examine this question in an environment that is not as charged as the modern day. Looking at this issue through Antigone gives perspective, because it is not one’s own city or life that is at risk. In Antigone one is able to see the issue from both the perspective of the authority and also of the defying the authority.

Creon is looking out for the city. He holds up the unburied body of Polynices as an example of what happens to those who betray their city[1]. This is a safeguard against anarchy, and a very good incentive for the people to never betray their city. To allow someone to disobey this command and live is to invite anarchy. For the good of the city, that decree had to be enforced.

Antigone knew that she had a duty to her kin. She knew that the gods and common decency demanded that she not allow the body of her brother to rot, unburied. She had to bury him, decree or no decree. Better to die than to betray this familial duty.

I think that Antigone was right to bury her brother, but she was wrong to try to destroy Creon’s authority. There is line between obeying a higher authority and promoting anarchy. If a higher authority conflicts with the governmental authority it seems appropriate to obey the higher authority. If one disobeys a lower authority for the sake of a higher authority, one ought to be willing to accept the consequences of having disobeyed the lower authority. For the good of the city, disobedience, no matter how well meant, must be punished, or anarchy reigns. Creon was right to punish Antigone for her crime. He, however, might have been wrong to make her deed a crime. This is why it is so important that leasers be just, and that they not make rash laws. Stupid laws are an invitation to anarchy just as much as unenforced laws.



[1] Antigone 222-235

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Psalms: How do they help us grow emotionally and in our relationship with God?

The Psalms are beautiful, full of passion and skillfully written. But they are more than that. They are a window into the soul of those who wrote them, beautiful people of God. As such, they offer us valuable insight into who we aught to become as followers of God.

I can’t put my finger on why, but it seems that Christians aren’t supposed to feel certain emotions. I think it comes from Puritanism, but I am not sure. This stigma that is placed on certain emotions is really unhealthy, because we cannot control our initial emotional reactions. We can control how we react to those emotions, whether we encourage them or not. If then, we are trained to feel shame for having certain initial emotional reactions despite the fact that we have little or no control over them, we are forced either into hopelessness, or into squelching or ignoring emotional responses. Neither of these options are healthy.

Psalms provides us with a way out of that trap. The psalmists felt and were honest about feeling rage, hatred, fear, and other emotions that we have stigmatized. They show us how to feel those emotions without being destroyed by them. It is true that those emotions are dangerous, and trying to be honest about them without indulging them is like walking through a minefield. The psalms provide us with a map. They show us how to respond, and how to find God in our rage, our despair, our hatred, our fear.

The psalms also show how we are supposed to interact with God. It is so weird to think of interacting with the Almighty God as our father, to actually talk with God. How are we supposed to do that? Isn’t it disrespectful, what if we don’t say things right, won’t he smite us or something? It’s frightening, because the stakes are so high. The Psalms show us that it is okay to be honest with God, and that it is the only way to find ourselves. They give us permission to be honest.

Psalms: Why are they included in the Cannon?

The psalms are part of what we call the inspired word of God. There seem, however, to be many similarities between the psalms and things that are not considered as divinely inspired. What is the difference between the psalms and the well written songs of a believer now? One argument for the superiority of the psalms is that David was a man after God’s heart, and that he had the spirit of God upon him. If, however, the status of Psalms is based solely on the merits of David, then there is nothing to differentiate them from things written by the saints, because the saints were really godly and Christians have the Holy Spirit. There is another problem, however, with basing the status of the psalms on David, which is that David didn’t write all of the psalms. Another reason that the Psalms should be counted as part of the cannon is that they are riddled with prophesy. While it can be argued that because the authors were not prophets per se the passages that seem prophetic are just a coincidence, there are too many instances where the Psalms clearly are referring to events in the future for them to simply to have been a coincidence. Whether or not the authors themselves knew what they were doing, there is something more organized than chance in the prophesy of the Psalms. However, while the presence of prophesy in the psalms is evidence of some supernatural intervention and inspiration, is that enough reason to include a book in the cannon?

I am really not sure then, why the Psalms are included in the scriptures and are counted the word of God. I really couldn’t think of good reasons why it should be included. However, I trust that there probably are some really good reasons to include it since the early church fathers chose to include it.

*edit*

After discussing psalms again with my group, I realized that the psalms provide us with examples of proper emotions and the proper way to interact with God. They are the real thoughts of godly people, and they show us how to be godly people. This is very different than the rest of the bible, which is either stories of people’s lives, or God telling us what to do and how to live through other people. The psalms, then, fulfill a very important and unique role.

*sigh*

Well, I thought that I was gonna be away from my computer untill next wednesday. Life, however, happened, and I am back. I am also beginning a new series of posts based on the essays I wrote about the books I read last semester. This should be fun.

Monday, July 16, 2007

oops

My apologies for my sudden disappearance form the blogosphere. I thought I was gonna be away from my computer for only a couple of days, and a week at max. Plans changed however, and now it looks like I will be able to resume regular posting on Monday.
Have a great week!

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

What ties together the different books in the Origins Semester?

We started the semester with Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. These books taught us that the gods are arbitrary, unjust, and chaotic. Ovid in particular portrayed the gods as being immortal and powerful humans, more human than we are.
Then we moved on to Dante, who even in Hell offered us hope. Here was a system that is ordered. Hell is not a random pile of all the humanity that ever offended a God. It is instead a carefully organized and orchestrated system of punishment based on a very detailed moral system. In Purgatory and Paradise, we got a glimpse of a way of escape from the doom that we all seem to deserve.
Spenser's Faerie Queen was next. Here we saw the possibility of redemption displayed in myth. Here was a good human wanting to accomplish his quest, but he is incapacitated by weakness. Then he is healed, and equipped to conquer, redeemed.
Milton then went to the root of everything, the very beginning. He showed how the thing that brought this chaos in the first place was that Satan wanted to be God, and then brought mankind around to his way of thinking as well. Satan is the ultimate Homeric hero. He is in it for the glory. In Paradise Regained, we see the perfect man being the perfect hero: Christ is in it for God's glory, not his own. So here we see the problem begin, and how to defeat it, but we are incapable of being the perfect man. We cannot beat this problem.
Then we move on to the Pentateuch. Here we see God show an insane amount of mercy. Even as he punished mankind for their disobedience, he shows mercy. He saves us from immortality. If the gods are what we would become if we were immortal, than this is a mercy indeed. Humans, in this weakened state cannot stand immortality. Also, from the midst of the horror of the Canaanite and Egyptian gods, we see him rescue a nation. He calls them his own people, and says that he will be their God. He gives them these laws that separate them from the other nations and mark them as his. Some of these laws must have seemed so arbitrary at the time, but with modern technology, they make perfect sense. The laws he gave them protected them from many ills, both physical and societal. He offers them a way to atone for their rebellions so that he can live among them without destroying them. His mercy seen here is exquisite.
But then comes Hebrews, and the world suddenly becomes painfully beautiful. In Hebrews we see that the mercy show in the Pentateuch is nothing compared to the mercy that has been shown us. We thought that the sacrificial system was merciful. Christ accomplished more in one death than the death of all of the animals killed in the history of the world. In the death of the perfect man, the debt owed by sinners was forever paid. In the resurrection of the triumphant sacrifice, death was forever conquered. We may die, but there is no longer any need to fear. The sort of immortality we were created for awaits us on the other side. In the continual perfection of the perfect man sin was destroyed. Suddenly we are no longer trapped in the chaos. The door to heaven has been unlocked, and all that is needed now is to enter it.
How is that we miss this? God is good. infinitely so. He is not safe, but he is good. The beauty of what he has done and who he is is breathtaking and so much more than we can even begin to imagine...I am blown away.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Joshua: How did God relate differently with the people of Israel after Joshua became their leader?

It seems God relates to the people of Israel differently in the book of Joshua than he relates to the people throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. There are three major differences. The first is who God uses as a mediator between himself and the people. The second is whether God is the judge and executor in sins against God. The third is his reaction when the people don’t follow his instructions.

In the first books, God spoke face to face with Moses and Moses would then relate the messages to the people. Moses served as a high priest to both the priests and the people, as well as the leader and judge of the people. When he died, he passed his duties on to not one but several people. His priestly duties went to Eleazar, the high priest and son of Aaron, his leadership duties went to Joshua, and his duties as a judge went to the heads of the tribes. This decentralization means that Joshua was not in as much contact with God as Moses was. God was communicating with three separate parts of the government rather than only one person.

Also, in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy when sins were committed against God, he intervened to execute the guilty. In Joshua this seems to change. When Achan disobeys God by keeping things from Jericho for himself, it is the leaders and the people who execute the guilty. They stone him, burn him, and then stone him again, leaving a pile of stones to remind their children not to repeat Achan’s mistake. An argument against this is the case of the person who broke the Sabbath in Numbers 15:32. In this instance as well the people punish the lawbreaker. So in this case, there does not seem to be much difference between the earlier books and Joshua.

There are also the cases of mass rebellion that are found frequently in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy that God dealt with through mass deaths. There are no examples of this in Joshua, so it is impossible to compare them.

In Joshua the people make a covenant with the Gibeonites without consulting God, and broke his command not to make treaties with the Canaanite people. However, instead of striking them dead like would have been expected, God leaves them to experience the curses he gave regarding that particular sin. In the other books, however, there isn’t a similar example, so it is hard to compare the ways that God interacted with them on that type of sin.

In conclusion, while there is a clear difference between God’s interaction with Moses and Joshua, there is not such a clear difference in the punishments of sins. In the case of sins that are directly against god in the case of only a few people, God tends to require the people to exact justice. In the case of mass sins against God there are no examples found in Joshua so the two cannot be compared. Concerning the people as a whole making a mistake and not following what God said in a way that is not challenging his sovereignty, there are only examples in Joshua, so the two cannot be compared.