Learn Latin: A Manifesto

“You study Latin? When on earth are you ever going to use that?”

Every student going to a classical school has heard this gibe at one point or another. It is inevitable, like running into someone who thinks pineapple on pizza is a good idea. In our economic and outcome-centered age, learning a language of no immediate, practical use seems like a colossal waste of time, money, and effort. A student should spend hard-earned hours on doing something advantageous, like Spanish; something that will give a return on the investment. (It’s rather essential if you want to manage a fast-food restaurant in the Southwest, after all.) Latin will only give you a career if you somehow make the one-in-a-million shot of working for the Vatican, or if you teach it to some other poor saps. The “useless subject” ad hominem goes double for Latin teachers—they have all the day-to-day relevance of a gender studies professor, without nearly as much street cred. “Not only is your subject useless,” runs the popular thought, “but worse, you have somehow conned people into paying for it.” Classical school administrators face a barrage of objections from parents whose children find Latin boring as well as useless; this, in a subject that is often seen as the sine qua non of classical schools. In the face of this triad of objections—Latin is impractical, a bad substitute for a modern language, and boring to boot—what is the importance of studying it in the 21st century?

There is an answer to that question, but before we reach it, it is worthwhile to note that this same friend, acquaintance, or worried parent never raises the same question about basketball. Sports are seen as a universal positive. But are they really all that different? Compare for a second: basketball will only provide you with a steady career—a return on all that time investment—if you are either the one-in-a-million who can play professionally in the NBA or you coach a team somewhere at a high school (where you rub shoulders with that Latin teacher at staff meetings). It is of virtually no “practical use” other than fat prevention; there are far easier and less involved ways to keep off the pounds. And standing on a court dribbling or shooting yet another free throw, for hours on end, cannot be categorized as anything besides boring—and that leaves out warming the bench! Why are administrators never pestered about why their child has to play basketball? The answer has to do with the philosophy of education: what is a school, and school work, for? We raise no furor over basketball because around the end of the 19th century the idea of mens sana in corpore sano (“a sound mind in a sound body”) and the innate character-building qualities of genteel collegiate athleticism gained traction, and now they are commonplace. It is accepted that part of a school’s job is to care for the body, and so sports are expected and often required. But what is the point of a child’s mental development?

Here is where the “useless” or “impractical” objection really stems from. Underlying it (and providing it with all its impetus, as well as snark) is the assumption that education exists to provide the student with career opportunities. This mindset is most prevalent around colleges, but exists in primary and secondary schools as well. If the purpose of schooling is to load a child’s brain with usable, easily marketable data that transfers easily to a career path, then Latin does not meet those criteria. Simple enough; that is why it fell out of favor in the first place. But this particular assumption about education is increasingly challenged in the modern day—particularly by the very classical schools that make Latin such a centerpiece of their curricula. They posit that education is about developing far more than career skills—it involves likes and dislikes, character, truth, reason, tastes, goodness, skills, beauty, etc.; in short, all of life. What benefit does studying Latin give in such a scheme of study? The usual arguments in favor of learning the language (boiled down to their essence) generally fall into three categories: first, acquiring Latin is immensely useful in dealing with other languages, particularly English. Second, it works the brain in ways other subjects usually do not, as well as building character through hard work. Third, it allows access to a myriad of original sources. We will examine each of these points individually, noting strengths and weaknesses of each in an educational environment in the 21st century, to show that Latin truly is a worthwhile endeavor.

The First Claim: learning Latin is worthwhile because it is immensely useful in dealing with other languages, particularly English.

This claim is most often made by those trying to defend against the attack on Latin as “useless”; they can refute their opponents by showing a measurable, practical benefit to spending some time in a classroom trying to conjugate all those persnickety verbs. First, they point to the advantages of working on Latin before moving on to another language; of mastering the concepts of subject, person, case, gender, neuter, etc. in the Roman tongue before attempting, say, Greek or French. This is actually a fairly good point for their side, because Latin (unlike virtually every other currently spoken language) is highly regular in form. The men who created and enriched it were engineers without equal; hard, practical men who often had little time for philosophy and nuance. Generally, Latin actually follows its own rules. Anyone who finds this point underwhelming obviously never had to learn to pronounce the word slough (not to mention cough and bough, and dough) around fifth grade! Therefore, it takes comparatively less time and effort to master the basics (since there are few exceptions), which makes it an ideal commencement to second language acquisition.

Even better, because Latin is a “museum language” there is no changing idiomatic context to confuse with the classroom version; that is, a student will never have to figure out how to switch between “proper” Latin and “real-world” Latin the way he would using a modern language, and he does not have to worry about a word changing meanings.[1] As a point of comparison, consider the poor student sweating through learning English in a classroom. His teacher may tell him that the proper way to ask his friends a question is, “Would any of you care to proceed to the movie theater?” and as far as it goes, she’s right. But asking the question that way instantly marks him as an outsider. Additionally, as soon as the question changes to the far more common “Y’all wanna go see a movie?” he is forced to deal with slang, bad pronunciation, synedoche, a missing conjunction, and an uncommon 2nd-person plural…on top of an accent, if he’s far enough South. This is why modern languages, to be mastered, must usually be learned by immersion—speaking the language as it is actually spoken, under mental pressure, for large amounts of time. It is not practical for most high schools (and even some colleges) to do this with Spanish or Arabic. But they can do it with Latin, because it is a regular, largely unchanging tongue--it can be learned in the tight parameters of a classroom, in five hours per week.

The second part of the first point is that it aids in manipulating English. This is true as far as it goes; English has been heavily influenced by Latin (and by languages that came from Latin) and a student who has mastered some basic Latin words will probably do quite well on the vocabulary portion of the SAT. A student reading this essay (for instance) who has never taken any of the language might stumble over some of the earlier inclusions that have grown common in English such as sine qua non or et cetera. A Latin vocabulary can be helpful in English vocabulary; a quick survey of the first paragraph of this piece discloses around twenty words with Latin roots that even a casual Latin student would have no problem spotting, like immediate or practical. The obvious flaw with this point is that a student with a dictionary can acquire exactly the same vocabulary, with far less labor; there is no inherent benefit from Latin itself. [2] The manipulation argument grows slightly stronger if the student intends to venture into English from an earlier era: works from two or three hundred years ago are Latinate not only in vocabulary, but also in structure. A reader used to relative clauses and out-of-sequence sentences will have a much easier time than the one who has only dealt with modern English (because he was too busy learning to order a taco over in Spanish I). But since both of these can occur outside of any study of Latin, and possibly more rapidly without it, I am skeptical of their value in persuading study in the modern day.

The Second Claim: Latin is worth studying because it works the brain in a way other subjects usually do not. 

My own experience and the testimony of a number of Latin teachers lends support to this theory. [3]Unlike history, which tends to confine itself to memorizing facts; or math, which tends to focus on sustained process reasoning; the subject of Latin combines both memory (vocabulary) and regular processes (cases, conjugations, and modification) with the key additional factor of translation. In order to describe one thing in terms of another, a student must know both on a far deeper level than the superficial. This becomes even more the case if the school’s program includes speaking as well as a written element. All of us have dealt with the situation where we know the material in the notes but cannot verbalize it at a question from another; Latin, as a language (unlike math, for instance) is a splendid opportunity to force the brain to bridge that gap. The resulting mental development is perhaps comparable only to achieving fluency in music. Of course, any translation-heavy language course would give this result; but since most modern language classes are focused on safely functioning in that language’s society, they tend to avoid the impact Latin can have. “Where’s the bathroom?” only becomes a valuable piece of information to the brain if you actually happen to need to find one in a foreign language. But figuring out the beautiful variety of ways to say quod scis, nihil prodest; quod nescis, multum obest in English (and comparing them with classmates’) is a challenge far more like a group puzzle than a boring question, and therefore ultimately more memorable. [4] So the mental agility mastering it can create is a valuable contribution of learning Latin in our day and age.

On a charitable reading, this is what is actually meant by some other proponents when they state that Latin is “a mental workout” or “intellectual discipline” and is therefore valuable solely on that account. [5] This approach is usually advanced against the “boring” argument noted earlier—even if students do not manage to learn much of the language, the mere effort involved is beneficial. To put it another way, Latin offers all the benefits of sustained brain teasers, but with the added advantage that you might get an additional language to throw on your resume, too (if you’re lucky). The problem with stating the issue like this is that Latin seems to become the classical equivalent of hauling rocks from one side of the yard to the other—sure, it’s boring and useless, but look at the muscles students develop! This particularly becomes the case when the teacher is using the grammar-translation method of memorizing bare rules and endings and charts. All the students come out the other side with fast mental muscles (they’ll remember amo, amas, amat until the day they die) but no ability in Latin itself. Students have a right to complain if this is actually what is being done to them—they are being asked to devote a significant portion of their short lives to something (mental agility) that can be developed in far more entertaining ways; say, the daily New York Times crossword. So by itself, the brain argument seems to be insufficient to drive the study of Latin, though it is a great supplement to the next argument of fluency.

The Third Claim: Latin is worth studying in order to access the original sources. 

This is the strongest and most obvious of the three, and the whole reason the language was part of the original “classical” (that is, medieval and Renaissance) education in the first place. European scholars long needed to be able to do two things: access the wisdom of Cicero, Boethius, or Livy in their own words, and communicate what they uncovered there to other scholars. In the days long before television and mass media largely standardized language, the amount and variety of dialect scattered over Europe must have been bewildering. Latin provided the answer: a universal tongue of learning that joined the educated across the continent. Even after the rise of the vernaculars it remained important; Francis Bacon insisted on having his Essays and other works translated and published in Latin as late as 1625, “for these modern languages will, at one time or another, play the bankrupt with books” and he wanted them preserved for posterity! [6] Though English fulfils the universal language role for us, there is still something to the argument of reading so many great works in their original format. The objection that there are many excellent translations is the objection of someone who has never learned enough of two different languages to realize what a yawning gap there is between them. A translation is an excellent telescope to look at the other side, but it is no substitute for walking there yourself. And for the effort involved, Latin probably unlocks far more original works than any other language, since it was the tongue of the educated of an entire continent for over a thousand years (including a multitude of ecclesiastical tomes for the Christian). When the ad fontes argument is combined with the other two reasons for studying Latin, it becomes nearly unbeatable.

The great objection to this third reason is, of course, that very few students emerge from a Latin program able to actually read a primary text, which would render the third point moot and the other two points suspect. How can all that time studying be vindicated if only one or two ever manages to actually pick up and enjoy the Aeneid? My response is twofold. First, the normal alternative (modern languages) has a track record just as bad—how many students of high school Spanish or French remember more than a few oddball phrases a decade later? Second, this is looking at the problem through the wrong lens. Think back to basketball again. No one brings up this problem about the school sports team, though the odds that someone will be a star basketball player are far lower than someone learning to read Virgil! The key point is to give the students the opportunity to bounce a ball, and then see if they have the skills and the wish to chase that dream even further. It is true that out of any given class, only about 75% may have the capability to master any subject, and only 25% have the drive to be able to do so. But that is no excuse for not giving the top quarter the tools needed to grasp Latin, since the benefits (as above) are so great. It is no more elitist than the NBA. The lower part of the class will develop due to the first two reasons: language competence and brain work. The higher will achieve all three, and be able to revel in primary texts. We should do all we can to increase the latter percentage, but in the same way short people will never be basketball stars, it is unrealistic to expect every single student to achieve fluency, since many lack either desire or capability.

The problem is also artificially magnified by the paucity and quality of instruction. We must recall that the educational goal of reading Latin has been neglected long enough to die out of living memory—no one already knows how to do it well anymore. Most current Latin students learn from a teacher who can barely read primary texts himself, if at all. How do they expect him to take them where he cannot go? Latin has only been a newly-desirable school subject for about thirty or forty years—about three possible generations of teachers. The first generation knew very little Latin and admitted it, the second benefitted from their mistakes and has created some much better resources and techniques than existed when they were students. It is to the third generation, as they enter the educational world, that we should look to truly start producing aptitude. Until then, griping about lack of competence is merely noticing where we are in the recovery process.

In Conclusio  

So rather than being boring, useless, or impractical, Latin has a number of advantages. It is a tangible link to the past, opening innumerable pages of material from the West and Christendom. It is a scholastic exercise that, pound for pound, produces more mental agility than most other subjects, particularly if it is taught well. And even if neither of these occurs, it will still produce a marked improvement in cognition and comprehension of English, which is certainly practical, useful, and interesting (at least until a politician starts using it). Why should you study Latin in our modern, 21st century schools? Because if you don’t bother, Cicero said it best: quod scis, nihil prodest; quod nescis, multum obest.


NOTES

[1] At least, not in classical Latin, which is the version most schools are worrying about in the 21st century. Throwing in medieval and ecclesiastical Latin might give some bumps here.

[2] See, for instance, Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Education (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003) 141-44, or Cheryl Lowe, “Top 10 Reasons for Studying Latin” at https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/top-10-reasons-studying-latin (accessed 8/26/2022) where it forms the substance of half of her ten points, with “mental discipline” covering the other five! This argument seems to be advanced most often by those who came to Latin late in life and never learned it in depth; the fact that it was helpful for their vocabulary (and a lot of hard work) does not mean that Latin is worthy of study on those grounds alone. There are better ways to do either.

[3] Jonathan Roberts, “Classical Schools are Not Really Classical” at https://ancientlanguage.com/classical-schools-not-classical/ as well as various personal conversations.

[4] Cicero, Orator xlix. Roughly, “That which you know does not help; that which you do not know is an obstacle.” This says nothing of all the possible historical and philosophical tie-ins that can accompany the study of Latin—icing on the cake one might say.

[5] Wilson, The Case for Classical Education 139-40 and Lowe, Top Ten Reasons.

[6] Francis Bacon, Essays (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1884) xviii.

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.