A Bit of Singing...

CSMI Concert July 29th, A.D. 2022

Book of the Month July 2022: Third Time Around

 Our winner this time around was the historical treatise Third Time Around: A History of the Pro-life Movement from the First Century to the Present (1991) by George Grant. He recounts that the book was inspired by the question, "Women have been suffering for centuries. What were all you Christians doing before Roe v. Wade?"

Well, quite a lot, actually. Grant traces the Christian influence on the treatment of babies (and all other unwanted human beings) from the Roman Empire to the present, showing just how involved the church has been in such matters for centuries. The idea that a parent has the right to kill any child he or she does not want is an extremely old one. In Rome, it was the father who decided who lived or died; now, the mother does instead--but the principle is the same. Human beings always want to sin, and child sacrifice is a primary and obvious way to do it. They can't really fight back, after all.

Grant traces the Christian influence through three major movements:  

1. Christianity's expansion into the Roman Empire and then the pagan north (until abortion and slavery were both finally outlawed).

 2. How the church had to overcome the reversion to pagan values (and abortion) that marked the Renaissance, and the world-wide missions movement that made "human values" a coherent concept. 

3. Modern pushback against those like Margaret Sanger, Hitler, and the current abortion crowd. 

The Christians of each era are treated generally, then several specific examples are given. Some are more well-known (Boniface, William Carey, Francis Schaeffer) and some are less (Barlaam of Antioch, anyone?). Grant casts the struggle for life as an eternal one, a war that the saints will always have to step up and fight again; the book is dedicated to his children "who will have to take up the cause the next time around." Fighting a battle that feels hopeless is a recipe for disaster. But knowing this battle has been won multiple times before is reassuring, though the difficulty remains.

At this moment in history, with Roe v. Wade twitching on the dissecting table and plenty of storm clouds on the horizon, this book is worth picking up, both as a reminder of what can be achieved and a comfort to those bracing for the onslaught. 

Commonplaces July 2022

“The two major views of history throughout time are that it is cyclical, and that it is linear. Both capture an element of Christian truth. Death and resurrection is cyclical. But the idea of progress is linear, it means the end is coming. If you put a circle and a line together, you get a spiral. So in the Christian view, history is a corkscrew—and every resurrection digs a little further into the wood.”—some forgotten NSA Disputatio speaker, c. 2016, found in a notebook.

[A comparison of the worth of orators to military commanders] “It was more important for the people of Athens to have tight roofs over their heads than to possess the famous ivory statue of Minerva; yet I should have preferred to be a Phidias than to be a master-roofer. Thus in weighing a man's significance it is not how useful he is that should enter in, but what is his real worth. There are few competent painters or sculptors, but no shortage of porters and laborers.”—Cicero, Brutus lxxiv (Loeb sec 257)

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”—Cicero, Orator xxxiv

“For it is true of all important arts that, like trees, their lofty height pleases us, but their roots and stems do not to the same degree; yet the latter are essential to the former.”—Cicero, Orator xliii

“Quod scis, nihil prodest; quod nescis, multum obest.” (What you know does not help, what you do not know greatly hinders.)—Cicero, Orator xlix

“As Augustine rightly states, the heretics, although they preach the name of Christ, have herein no common ground with believers, but it remains the sole possession of the Church.”—Calvin, Institutes II.XV.1 

“Paul yokes faith to teaching, as an inseparable companion.”—Calvin, Inst. III.ii.6

“Piety always adapts God’s might to use and need, and especially sets before itself the works of God by which he has testified that he is the Father.”—Ibid. III.ii.31

“No man ever hates sin unless he has previously been seized with a love of righteousness.”—Ibid. III.iii.20

“If they reply [with additional material] which they do not include in their definitions, there is no reason to accuse me; let them blame themselves for not defining it more precisely and clearly. Now for my part, when there is a dispute concerning anything, I am stupid enough to refer everything back to the definition itself, which is the hinge and foundation of the whole debate.”—Ibid. III.iv.1

“No task will be so sordid and base, provided you obey your calling in it, that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in the sight of Christ.”—Ibid. III.x.6

“Duties are weighed, not by deeds, but by ends.”—Ibid. III.xiv.3

“Now since God reveals himself to us partly in teaching, partly in works, we can hallow him only if we render to him what is his in both respects, and so embrace all that proceeds from him.”—Ibid. III.xx.41 

“Temptations are either from the right or from the left. From the right are, for example, riches, power, honors, which often dull men’s keenness of sight by the glitter and seeming goodness they display, and allure with their blandishments, so that, captivated by such tricks and drunk with such sweetness, men forget their God. From the left are, for example, poverty, disgrace, contempt, afflictions, and the like. Thwarted by the hardship and difficulty of these, they become despondent in mind, cast away assurance and hope, and are at last completely estranged from God.”—Ibid, III.xx.45

“Where you hear God’s glory mentioned, think of his justice. For whatever deserves praise must be just. Accordingly, man falls according as God’s providence ordains, but he falls by his own fault.”—Ibid. III.xxiii.8

“He whose life is one even and smooth path, will see but little of the glory of the Lord, for he has few occasions of self-emptying, and hence, but little fitness for being filled with the revelation of God.”—Spurgeon, Morning and Evening M July 19

Book of the Month June 2022: The Divine Comedy

 Finally knocked this out during a nine-and-a-half hour plane ride over the Atlantic, which just goes to show that even torture is occasionally good for something.

"Like a wheel in perfect balance turning/ I felt my will and my desire impelled/ by the Love that moves the sun and other stars."--Paradiso XXXIII

I can’t add much to this one—it is a great classic, and deservedly so. Every protagonist who begins his story “lost in a dark wood,” every modern depiction of Hell, and every novelist who writes in his mother tongue owes this story a massive debt. Dante Aligheri did us all a great favor by casting his verse in Tuscan instead of Latin; though I love Latin, it’s hard to imagine being assigned Fabula Duarum Civitatum (by Carolus Dicensius) to enjoy in high school. The victory for the vulgar tongue has produced some great things. The fact that Dante manages an almost imperceptible fusion of medieval theology, Renaissance classics, and contemporary Italian politics—in flowing verse, no less—is just as stunning today as it must have been in 1320.

Although the Inferno is understandably the most popular part of the work, the whole thing is worth perusing, since taking the journey only as far as Hell makes for some seriously lopsided reading. I enjoyed persevering through the Purgatorio and Paradiso, particularly when it came to Dante's views of the Roman Empire. Though I do not yet teach these sections, my students will reap many benefits from this completion. I read the Penguin Classics translation by Mark Musa--if you have a good word for another version for my next read-through, let me know.

The short verdict—find it and read it. It will do far more for you than the latest pulp novel.

Terrify Us Into Faith

Habakkuk I.5 “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.”

Lord, we confess that we are a small-minded people, and cannot see very far ahead. When we look into the mysterious mirror of Providence, we often hope for prosperity, ease, and smooth peacefulness. In this we show our weakness, for these things are often hazardous to our reflection of the image of Christ. So you in your mercy send us Chaldeans, as Habakkuk wrote long ago—pains and trials and enemies that we do not believe when we hear of them. So we are terrified: for their pangs are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves; our foes press proudly on in every headline and news story. Our smug confidence is shaken when they come from afar and dive upon us like an eagle swift to devour. May all this violence terrify us not into doubt, but into faith.

We pray first about the troop of pains and illnesses that march against us. Guard Libby Jackson in her knee surgery this week, and Elodie Nieuwsma, Reign Wright, and Scott Spuler as they recover from surgery. There are many sick, pained, and weary in our company—guard them all from despair and unbelief, and grant them deliverance.

We pray for the host of men who march against us. Whether they be those who oppose us locally or our brothers far away in places like North Korea, Russia, the Ivory Coast, and China, rebuke our enemies and humble them. Help us not to take such confrontation personally, as we so often do, but to receive their taunts as from the Lord—let it drive us to love.

We pray for those among the perils of the world—the college students in their summer wanderings, all those coming to Moscow for the Called Conference, those under church discipline. Guard them all and bring them back home safely.

We ask all this—and we do not ask it in vain, for it is a small thing for you to control even great and powerful Babylon so long ago. Turn our fear to you, and let us truly reflect you in our name and deeds. Amen.

(King's Cross Prayer of Petition, 7/10/22)

Commonplaces--June 2022

“Noah was so shut into the ark that no evil could reach him. Floods did but lift him heavenward, and winds did but waft him on his way. Outside the ark all was ruin, but inside all was rest and peace. Without Christ we perish, but in Christ Jesus there is perfect safety.”—C.H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening M. June 5

“Almost all error is, really, Truth perverted, Truth wrongly divided, Truth disproportionately held and taught…Here is where so many have failed in the past. A single phrase of God’s Truth has so impressed this man or that, that he has concentrated his attention upon it almost to the exclusion of everything else.”—A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God 

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. The learned life then is, for some, a duty.”—C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-time”

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.”—Lewis, Ibid.

“If men’s judgements were right, custom would have always been derived from good men. But it often happens far otherwise: what is seen being done by the many soon obtains the force of custom; while the affairs of men have scarcely ever been so well regulated that the better things pleased the majority.”—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, “Address to King Francis” 

“There is nothing less in accord with God’s nature than for him to cast off the government of the universe and abandon it to fortune, and to be blind to the wicked deeds of men, so that they may lust unpunished. Accordingly, whoever heedlessly indulges himself, his fear of heavenly judgement extinguished, denies that there is a God.”—Ibid., I.iv.2 

“Indeed, men who have either quaffed or even tasted the liberal arts penetrate with their aid far more deeply into the secrets of divine wisdom.”—Ibid., I.v.2 

“Manifold indeed is the nimbleness of soul with which it surveys heaven and earth, joins past to future, retains in memory something heard long before, nay, pictures to itself whatever it pleases. Manifold also is the skill with which it devises things incredible, and which is the mother of so many marvelous devices. These are unfailing signs of divinity in man.”—Ibid., I.v.5

“By His Word, God rendered faith unambiguous forever, a faith that should be superior to all opinion.”—Ibid., I.vi.2

“What is the beginning of true doctrine but a prompt eagerness to listen to God’s voice?”—Ibid., I.viii.5 

“Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”—Ibid., I.xi.8 

“Faith ought not to gaze hither and thither, nor to discourse of various matters, but to look upon the one God, to unite with him, to cleave to him.”—Ibid., I.xiii.16

“It is ill-advised to pit God’s might against his truth.”—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.VII.5

 

Material Cause

I can only imagine how lonely it is being a materialist.

There is no plan to the universe. There is no god above you, only sky. There is no one who really knows you, all the way down. There is just you. Every day this “you” goes out into a world where most things are trying to hurt, exploit, and manipulate all the other things; worse, they’re supposed to be that way, as Darwin so helpfully informed us. And if you want to make any progress through this war zone toward your goals, no one is really going to help get you there—except, again, you.

The resulting pressure of being a consciously self-conscious materialist must be unbearable. How can someone as limited as the “you” knows itself to be deal with an infinite number of outcomes and an infinite number of possible obstacles (most of them the people closest to you)? No wonder Nietzsche went insane. But there are workarounds. That pressure can be dulled by routines; smothered by the anodyne embrace of sex, drugs, and alcohol; ignored by the mass of flesh-colored emoticons that pass for people in our logic-free society. But I believe most often it is channeled into the Cause.

The Cause can be anything. Better schools for the kids. A new car. The top of the career ladder. Conservative politics. Progressive politics. A famous Instagram account. Freedom. Safety. A Hollywood career. Global warming. The perfect body. One more dollar. One more cat.

All that really matters in the long run is that the Cause inevitably becomes part of the Self. It has to, really—the Self is the only cause-er we know from the inside out, and therefore the only force in the world that is personal. Nobody knows what is really making that other Joe do anything, the same way nobody knows what makes gravity do anything. Some folks with funny Greek names (psychiatrists and physicists, respectively) have pretty good guesses, but they still don’t know. All they know is what the stuff is made of and some of what it’s doing. But we know the Cause—no matter who you are, for you it is the obvious, normal thing to do. Often it is also the thing most noticeable about you, betrayed by social media posts, bumper stickers, clothing, attitude. You give it life, and in return it becomes part of what you are. How many people have you met that one of the first things they uttered was “I am (whatever Cause they are currently chasing)”? The Cause, no matter how trivial, becomes part and parcel of the person. When it succeeds, they do, and when it doesn’t…

Well, that is not to be contemplated, for no man ever hated his own Cause. It must be the fault of all those other Causes out there, competing for the same limited resources, time, applause, and support. In this world there are only those who support the Cause, and those who hinder it. And since the Cause is part of the Self, there are only those who help you, and those who hurt. Failure is personal: it is other people. And the vast majority of them are out to get you.

Materialism wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Instead of turning the universe against you, it was supposed to bring freedom from the Great Enslaver, Religion. After all, hadn’t it given us the Industrial Revolution? Was not Utopia in sight at the turn of the last century? Finally, we could feed and clothe the world, travel around it at lightning speeds, and explain virtually every natural phenomenon (not to mention the supernatural) we saw along the way. Man’s labor could accomplish anything. We bored through mountains, bridged oceans, harnessed the lightning bolt, caught and rode the very winds. There was a price, of course—work became mostly boring, stifling, repetitive, and soul-killing. But we didn’t believe in souls anymore, and until we figured out how to fix that (and of course we would) there were escape hatches. Sex has always been a popular choice, but now there was “reaching the top of the ladder” and “vacation” and “recreation” and most importantly “progress” to help it out. Every machine needs a little oiling now and then, and materialism’s two major oils were sex and science. Each could save you from the perils of the other—sex made the Self feel real in a sterile scientific world, and science made the ugly biproducts of a sexual liberty less and less of a problem.

Enter Roe v. Wade.

Now Roe v. Wade is dead, and the response is showing just how much of a Cause it is for so many people out there. When those judges struck it down, they struck down all those Selves, too. No wonder the Christians are being exhorted to “be sensitive” or “watch our tones”—they are strolling through the middle of a mass grave, and a cheery whistle just seems like the final unwitting insult to the Apocalypse. “Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of selves, heaps of Causes, dead bodies without end—they stumble over the bodies!”

Long ago, a reluctant African academic also lived through an Apocalypse. He was exhorted to be sensitive, to watch his tone, to cautiously mourn with those who mourn, to love these Selves as they loved themSelves and their own threatened bodies. Instead he glanced at the shattered Cause around him, and he gave the following exhortation to those around him:

“There is no need to be instructed to love oneself and one’s body; we always love what we are and what is inferior to us but belongs to us, according to an immovable unvarying natural law, one which was also made for animals, because even animals love themselves and their bodies. It therefore remains for us to receive instruction about what is above us, and what is close to us. Scripture says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. The aim of the commandment is love, a twofold love of God and of one’s neighbor. No class of things to be loved is missing from these two commandments…The person who lives a just and holy life is one who is a sound judge of these things. He is also a person who has ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more), or love two things equally if one of them should be loved either less or more than the other, or love things either more or less if they should be loved equally. No sinner, qua sinner, should be loved; every human self, qua human self, should be loved on God’s account; but God should be loved for Himself.”—Augustine of Hippo, De Doctrina Christina Bk. I

Love God, love His Cause, and love all those selves out there like they were your Self, in that order. That includes the million-plus helpless kids who now have a better chance to see the light of day. 

Be thankful, and rejoice, for Material and Cause is not all there is. We know it, because Roe is dead, and the fight is just starting.

Book of the Month May 2022: Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory

 So it turns out that John Quincy Adams (tenth president of the United States, and son of the second) was appointed a professor of Harvard University. The things you learn.

He was named as the inaugural Boylston professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in 1805, when the United States were not yet thirty years old. As one of America's best-educated and foremost public men, he was greatly in demand and could not afford to devote all his time to the school. But when he could get away from his post as Massachusetts's United States Senator, he would journey to Harvard and deliver a lecture or two to the students.

The result was the thirty-six Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory. Adams could not finish his intent for the series because he was named Ambassador to Russia and resigned his professorship to travel to the Baltic. However, the lectures he did give are a lucid and succinct summary of rhetorical practice and theory during the days of the Founding Fathers. If writing and speaking well are skills you want in your toolbox, this is a good summary read.

The most fascinating part of this book was when Adams showed the limitations of the English language when it comes to emphasis. Many languages (including the classical Greek and Latin) can show emphasis by the location of the word in the sentence--particularly by placing it at the beginning or end. English, however, because of its strict requirement of subject-verb-object and massive use of articles (a/an/the) is usually forced to begin a sentence with an insignificant word. That is a limitation that I had never considered, and one that as a speaker and writer, I can now keep in mind. Words are powerful weapons, in storage in the mind. Knowing how to use them is what arms them.

Commonplaces--May 2022

“Not one of the public speakers in repute had any extent of attainment in literature, the inexhaustible fountain of eloquence; nor in philosophy, the parent of moral refinement; nor in the laws municipal or national, so indispensable to all solid eloquence at the bar; nor in history, which makes all the experience of ancient days tributary to the wisdom of our own. They had neither the strength of logic, that key-stone to the arch of persuasion; nor its subtlety to perplex, and disconcert an opponent. They knew neither how to enliven a discussion by strokes of wit and humor, nor how to interweave the merits of the question with the facts of the cause; nor how to relieve tediousness by a seasonable and pertinent digression; nor finally to enlist the passions and feelings of their auditors on their side.”—John Quincy Adams, Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, Lecture V

“With more confidence than safety, they have relied on the fertility 

of their own genius.”

"But praise is only the illuminated hemisphere of demonstrative eloquence. Her orb on the other side is darkened with invective and reproach.”

“General encomium is the praise of fools.”—Adams, Lecture X

“Learning in a head of indolence is like the sword of a hero in the hand of a coward . The credit and the usefulness of a merchant depends at least as much upon the employment, as upon the extent of his capital. The reputation of learning is no better, than that of a pedantic trifler, unless accompanied with the talent of making that learning useful to its possessor and to mankind.”—Adams, Lecture XV

“There can be no possible advantage in supposing our antagonist a fool. The most probable effect of such an imagination is to prove ourselves so.”—Adams, Lecture XXII

“A speaker may be unintelligible either for want of distinct ideas, or of proper expressions. No man can give what he has not.”—Adams, Lectures, XXVI

“Let your metaphors be not too thickly crowded...The poet may soar beyond the flaming bounds of space and time; but the orator must remember, that an audience is not so readily excursive, and is always under the power of gravitation.”—Adams, Lecture XXXIII

“The mastery of our own passions can perhaps be only accomplished by religion; but, in acquiring it, her most effectual, as well as her most elegant instruments, are letters and learning. At no hour of your life will the love of letters ever oppress you as a burden, or fail you as a resource.”—Adams, Lecture XXXVI

“There are three chief things concerning which men in general greatly err: misery and happiness, folly and wisdom, bondage and liberty. The world counts none miserable but the afflicted, and none happy but the prosperous, because they judge by the present ease of the flesh. Again; the world is pleased with a false show of wisdom (which is foolishness with God), neglecting that which makes wise unto salvation. As to liberty, men would be at their own disposal, and live as they please. The suppose the only true liberty is to be at the command and under the control of none above themselves, and live according to their heart’s desire. But this is a thralldom and bondage of the worst kind. True liberty is not the power to live as we please, but to live as we ought!”—A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God

“An attitude of fatalistic inertia, because I know that God has irrevocably decreed whatsoever comes to pass, is to make a sinful and hurtful use of what God has revealed for the comfort of my heart.”—Ibid.

Favorite Student Bloopers of 2021-2022

 It's that time again--time to revel in the hasty misspelling, the overlooked word, or the unconscious alteration. Not to mention a few good old fashioned instances of ignorance...

“In my opinion the writer obviously tried to make the point of Roland being a brave worrier with strength and might.”

“Solomon was led astray by his desire to worship idles.”

“She has climbed great and risky hills and braved some deranged and treacherous rivers.”

“The Apocrypha was written in Greek because the land it was written in was concurred by Alexander."

“Shakespeare wrote in iambic pintometer.”

“Promises to futile lords were what the entire economy was built on.”

“In the Medical Catholic Church, the Bible was kept in Latin.”

“Fabian Tactics are a form of Gorilla Warfare where instead of attacking your enemy head on, you wear them down.”

“The Jewish Temple furnishings were carved into the Archer Titus.”

(Or, alternatively) “The Temple furnishings can still be seen on the italics.”

“The Pax Romana was a piece of Rome."

And my personal favorite from last year, as an honorable mention:

In answer to the question, “What was the name of the famous speech Cicero delivered against Mark Antony?” a Canadian student answered, “The 2nd Amendment.”