Barring the small matter of an exam, I have now completed my first year of theological studies. I have only been studying one subject per semester this year (plus a mid-year two-week intensive subject) as I ease my way into the course program for the Bachelor of Theology degree; next year, I'll up the study load to two or three subjects per semester. But that will depend on what kind of part-time or casual work I can obtain, and will also necessitate me getting some guidance as to which subjects would be appropriate given I have now commenced my Period of Discernment (which will itself form the subject of another post).
But the fact that I've come to the end of first year unscathed (so far!) is a cause for reflection. What has happened to me this year? What do I know that I didn't know previously? What has been confirmed? What has been re-shaped or changed?
I think the process of discovery has, for me, emerged in the form of two broad categories. The first is that I have come to realise how much I don't actually know. Or, more correctly, I have come to understand (or, perhaps, more clearly perceive) the connections that unify the theological web into a single unity. I used to think of theological issues as distinct components, as specialised or discrete bits of knowledge. Now, however, I have come to understand that faith is built on a network of intermeshed contexts, without which, neither the singular nor the whole can be understood. Thus, for example, God cannot be approached outside the context of the Trinity, or apart from Biblical witness, or without reference to the philosophical underpinnings of early Christian theology, or the historical-social setting of the human experience of God, or, indeed, of the broken and inadequate power of human perception. These and many other factors interlink to produce a corporate understanding that underpins, broadens, and deepens the particular.
Personally, this realisation has, for me, been a source of especial excitement. The prospect that there is so much that I don't perceive or understand has not been at all daunting. On the contrary, it has given me a vision of huge vistas and possibilities; there is so much to explore, to learn, to know, a vast richness replete with opportunities for growth and understanding. Coming to realise one's ignorance - or, perhaps more benevolently, one's misguided thinking - is certainly a humbling experience. But this humility is never denigrating; on the contrary, it actually makes one more open, more ready and able to listen and to perceive. It's function is not to destroy confidence; rather, it serves the very purpose of whetting the appetite.
The second category of understanding which I have come to this year is the flip side of the first: not only have I realised how much I don't know, I have also come to understand how much I knew but either didn't know I knew or wasn't able to articulate. So many times during the year, as I've sat in lectures and tutorials listening to my teachers and fellow-students, I've thought to myself: of course! And the sudden light of understanding hasn't been that of revelation, but that of realisation: I had known all along, but hadn't been aware of the fact, or hadn't the means to provide that knowledge with expression. Nor was this simply a matter of appropriate technical language, although that certainly did apply in some cases. Rather, it was more a case of waking up to myself, of presenting to myself that which I already knew, but to which, for various reasons, I had blinded myself.
An example of this concerns sin, and in particular, the doctrine of original sin. This was a doctrine with which I had always had considerable difficulty, not least because I chose to adopt a strictly anthropological perspective and reject the notion of original sin on the basis that Adam and Eve never existed. Therefore, how could "original" humans have sinned, when there were never such persons, much less a Garden of Eden? Or, in the alternative, even if it could be supposed that such persons and such a time existed, how were the sins of my forebears my responsibility? This objection (among others) allowed me to turn away from Christianity for many years (although I never allowed it to turn me away from God and become an atheist); but some part of my mind knew this was semantic trickery, that I was actually being dishonest with myself. And, of course, my studies this year have revealed to me what I always knew to be true: that sin is not mere wrong doing, it is imagining that we can be self-sufficient, that we can exist on our own ground without God; and that original sin refers not to some imagined failure by imagined ancestors to obey God, but to the brokenness of humanity, to the fact that we sin because we are sinful, and not that we are sinful because (or when) we sin. Seen in this light (a light which had always been there, but against which I had turned the shutters of my mind), my objections immediately dissolved, and the knowledge that had for many years lurked in the back of my mind sprang to the forefront of my consciousness.
So, it has been in many ways a constructive and productive year; next year will be very busy, what with being married and the Period of Discernment, and the increased study load, but I hope and have confidence that the same growth, the same surprising discoveries, and the same developing awareness of self and God will continue.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: ...keep the body within bounds as much as you can...(and) whatever you do, return from body to mind very soon. Exercise it day and night. Only a moderate amount of work is needed for it to thrive and develop. It is a form of exercise to which cold and heat and even old age are no obstacle. Cultivate an asset which the passing of time itself improves. (Seneca)
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
History Repeated
One of the books that I'm reading at present is The Peloponnesian War: Athens and Sparta in Savage Conflict 431-404BC, by the historian Donald Kagan (Harper Perennial, London, 2005).
The Peloponnesian War was a series of disastrous conflicts between the rival city states of Sparta and Athens between 472 and 404BC. They had emerged from the Persian Wars of the previous century as the premier city-states of the Greek civilisation: Athens built up a maritime league which, over time, became a subject empire; Sparta became the dominant land power, famed for its military might and the militant rigidity of its society. Without going into details, the Peloponnesian War eventually drew in all the city states of Greece, exhausting both Sparta and Athens, and leaving the way open for the subsequent subjugation of Greece by Phillip of Macedon, and his son Alexander the Great.
I recently read a section of the book discussing the disastrous Athenian campaign in Sicily, which ended in the annihilation of the entire expedition, and came across the following remarkable passage:
Most historians agree with Thucydides in blaming the continuation of the Sicilian campaign on the greed, ignorance and foolishness of the direct Athenian democracy. But the behaviour of the Athenians on this occasion is the opposite of the flighty indecision that is usually imputed to their democracy. They showed constancy and determination to carry through what they had begun, in spite of the setbacks and disappointments. Their error, in fact, is one common to powerful states, regardless of their constitutions, when they are unexpectedly thwarted by an opponent they anticipated would be weak and easily defeated. Such states are likely to view retreat as a blow to their prestige, and while unwelcome in itself, it is also an option that puts into question their strength and determination and with it their security. Support for ventures such as the Sicilian campaign generally remains strong until the prospect of victory disappears. (p. 296)
Do I really need to spell out the parallels which this conclusion has with respect to the present damnable tragedy in Iraq? Who, upon reading this passage, could not help but conclude that the situation facing the Athenian republic in Sicily is the same which now faces the so-called "Coalition of the Willing"? Let's tease out the strands from Kagan's conclusions, and see what they hold for us today.
1. The expectation of victory. Clearly, those who planned the invasion of Iraq expected a clear and decisive victory after only a relatively short period of combat. In part, this expectation was based on the experience from the First Gulf War, in which US-led forces routed the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Mostly, however, it seems clear that the leaders of the "Coalition" simply didn't expect the level of domestic opposition that has materialised in the years since "military operations" ended. Indeed, they expected to be welcomed as liberators, as saviours from the tyranny of the Hussein regime. And, in the beginning, it seemed as though these expectations were justified. The Iraqi forces were routed a second time, and the remnant militia resistance crushed after a further, although acceptable, period of fighting. Since that time, unfortunately, Iraq has become a cause celebre for jihadists - just as Afghanistan did during the Soviet occupation of that country. Moreover, militant Sunnis, who were in power during the Hussein regime, have coalesced into an effective resistance against the occupying forces, and the majority Shia and minority Kurdish populations. The expectations of victory have thus dissolved as the conflict in Iraq has morphed into a multi-faceted war - both an armed struggle for liberation and a civil war between competing ethnic and denominational groups - which the planners of the Iraqi invasions clearly didn't foresee.
2. The blow to prestige. As the situation in Iraq has steadily deteriorated, the leaders of the US, UK, and Australia have repeatedly urged that we "stay the course", that we not "cut and run", and thereby "hand victory" to the "terrorists". In recent times, these statements have taken the form of arguing that any withdrawal from Iraq before "the job is finished" would hand the jihadists a massive propaganda victory upon which they could recruit further adherents and thereby threaten the West directly. What are these arguments other than an appeal that we not, through withdrawal, allow a jihadist-inspired blow to our prestige? Leaving aside the fact that the Iraqi situation will now probably result in some humiliating withdrawal sooner or later - just as was the case in Somalia - it seems clear that the leaders of the "Coalition" realised some time ago what a foreign policy quagmire Iraq had become; thus, appeals to "stay the course" were really just attempts to mitigate their responsibility for the whole fiasco behind an appeal to populist patriotism. Moreover, it seems self-evident, even before any withdrawal has occurred, that the situation in Iraq has placed the West at greater risk of terrorist attack: as the bombings in Madrid, London, and Bali have so appallingly demonstrated. Thus, the appeal to national security is a furphy; that security has already been compromised by the invasion of Iraq itself. But the appeal to prestige is a powerful one, because it is essentially an appeal to national egotism; and it is through pandering to this egotism that popular support for the invasion has been sustained for so long.
3. Popular support. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, public opinion - at least, Australian public opinion - was decidedly against the intervention. However, this quickly swung around in the aftermath of the speedy "Coalition" victory over the conventional forces of the Hussein regime, and the subsequent nullification of the pro-Hussein militia. Moreover, there was a preparedness on the part of many citizens to believe - or, at least, to accept as a valid causus belli - the justifications for the war based on the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction by the Hussein regime, and of its supposed links to the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation. These factors combined to keep public support for the war in Iraq at high levels for a substantial period of time - long enough, indeed, to ensure the re-election of the Bush, Blair, and Howard governments in the US, UK, and Australia respectively. Now, however, that support has evaporated. In part, this is due to the fact that many people feel they have been lied to by their governments, especially in light of the fact that it has now been demonstrated that the Iraqis did not possess WMDs, nor were there any links between the Hussein regime and al-Qaeda. The reality, however, is that there was a substantial and vocal minority in the countries of the "Coalition" who were articulating these truths at the time of the invasion. In other words, public support for the Iraqi invasion has disappeared largely because the citizenry now recognise the conflict for the lost cause that it is, and feel both the embarrassment to national pride this occasions, as well as a sense of shared culpability for the disaster. Public opinion has shifted because a swift victory has not eventuated, a victory that might otherwise have enabled the public to salve its guilty conscience.
The upshot of all this is that the "Coalition of the Willing" now finds itself in precisely the same situation as the Athenian city-state: having over-extended its resources, it now faces a catastrophic military defeat, as well as the socio-political-economic consequences arising from that defeat. Indeed, it is not clear that the "Coalition" will be able to maintain itself in those spheres where its activities are universally acknowledged to be legitimate - such as Afghanistan, for example. And that will undoubtedly produce the kind of propaganda coup the jihadists are longing for: a coup they will be able to exploit for recruitment purposes. Thus, the security of the West has already been undermined on two fronts: by the short-sightedness and dishonesty of those who planned the invasion of Iraq; and by their stubbornness that has made a bad situation worse.
And the accessories in this whole melancholy affair are the public, who, for the sake of expediency over conscience, allowed themselves to be persuaded to both the justice of the invasion and the merits of the occupation.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided. (Konrad Adenauer)
The Peloponnesian War was a series of disastrous conflicts between the rival city states of Sparta and Athens between 472 and 404BC. They had emerged from the Persian Wars of the previous century as the premier city-states of the Greek civilisation: Athens built up a maritime league which, over time, became a subject empire; Sparta became the dominant land power, famed for its military might and the militant rigidity of its society. Without going into details, the Peloponnesian War eventually drew in all the city states of Greece, exhausting both Sparta and Athens, and leaving the way open for the subsequent subjugation of Greece by Phillip of Macedon, and his son Alexander the Great.
I recently read a section of the book discussing the disastrous Athenian campaign in Sicily, which ended in the annihilation of the entire expedition, and came across the following remarkable passage:
Most historians agree with Thucydides in blaming the continuation of the Sicilian campaign on the greed, ignorance and foolishness of the direct Athenian democracy. But the behaviour of the Athenians on this occasion is the opposite of the flighty indecision that is usually imputed to their democracy. They showed constancy and determination to carry through what they had begun, in spite of the setbacks and disappointments. Their error, in fact, is one common to powerful states, regardless of their constitutions, when they are unexpectedly thwarted by an opponent they anticipated would be weak and easily defeated. Such states are likely to view retreat as a blow to their prestige, and while unwelcome in itself, it is also an option that puts into question their strength and determination and with it their security. Support for ventures such as the Sicilian campaign generally remains strong until the prospect of victory disappears. (p. 296)
Do I really need to spell out the parallels which this conclusion has with respect to the present damnable tragedy in Iraq? Who, upon reading this passage, could not help but conclude that the situation facing the Athenian republic in Sicily is the same which now faces the so-called "Coalition of the Willing"? Let's tease out the strands from Kagan's conclusions, and see what they hold for us today.
1. The expectation of victory. Clearly, those who planned the invasion of Iraq expected a clear and decisive victory after only a relatively short period of combat. In part, this expectation was based on the experience from the First Gulf War, in which US-led forces routed the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Mostly, however, it seems clear that the leaders of the "Coalition" simply didn't expect the level of domestic opposition that has materialised in the years since "military operations" ended. Indeed, they expected to be welcomed as liberators, as saviours from the tyranny of the Hussein regime. And, in the beginning, it seemed as though these expectations were justified. The Iraqi forces were routed a second time, and the remnant militia resistance crushed after a further, although acceptable, period of fighting. Since that time, unfortunately, Iraq has become a cause celebre for jihadists - just as Afghanistan did during the Soviet occupation of that country. Moreover, militant Sunnis, who were in power during the Hussein regime, have coalesced into an effective resistance against the occupying forces, and the majority Shia and minority Kurdish populations. The expectations of victory have thus dissolved as the conflict in Iraq has morphed into a multi-faceted war - both an armed struggle for liberation and a civil war between competing ethnic and denominational groups - which the planners of the Iraqi invasions clearly didn't foresee.
2. The blow to prestige. As the situation in Iraq has steadily deteriorated, the leaders of the US, UK, and Australia have repeatedly urged that we "stay the course", that we not "cut and run", and thereby "hand victory" to the "terrorists". In recent times, these statements have taken the form of arguing that any withdrawal from Iraq before "the job is finished" would hand the jihadists a massive propaganda victory upon which they could recruit further adherents and thereby threaten the West directly. What are these arguments other than an appeal that we not, through withdrawal, allow a jihadist-inspired blow to our prestige? Leaving aside the fact that the Iraqi situation will now probably result in some humiliating withdrawal sooner or later - just as was the case in Somalia - it seems clear that the leaders of the "Coalition" realised some time ago what a foreign policy quagmire Iraq had become; thus, appeals to "stay the course" were really just attempts to mitigate their responsibility for the whole fiasco behind an appeal to populist patriotism. Moreover, it seems self-evident, even before any withdrawal has occurred, that the situation in Iraq has placed the West at greater risk of terrorist attack: as the bombings in Madrid, London, and Bali have so appallingly demonstrated. Thus, the appeal to national security is a furphy; that security has already been compromised by the invasion of Iraq itself. But the appeal to prestige is a powerful one, because it is essentially an appeal to national egotism; and it is through pandering to this egotism that popular support for the invasion has been sustained for so long.
3. Popular support. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, public opinion - at least, Australian public opinion - was decidedly against the intervention. However, this quickly swung around in the aftermath of the speedy "Coalition" victory over the conventional forces of the Hussein regime, and the subsequent nullification of the pro-Hussein militia. Moreover, there was a preparedness on the part of many citizens to believe - or, at least, to accept as a valid causus belli - the justifications for the war based on the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction by the Hussein regime, and of its supposed links to the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation. These factors combined to keep public support for the war in Iraq at high levels for a substantial period of time - long enough, indeed, to ensure the re-election of the Bush, Blair, and Howard governments in the US, UK, and Australia respectively. Now, however, that support has evaporated. In part, this is due to the fact that many people feel they have been lied to by their governments, especially in light of the fact that it has now been demonstrated that the Iraqis did not possess WMDs, nor were there any links between the Hussein regime and al-Qaeda. The reality, however, is that there was a substantial and vocal minority in the countries of the "Coalition" who were articulating these truths at the time of the invasion. In other words, public support for the Iraqi invasion has disappeared largely because the citizenry now recognise the conflict for the lost cause that it is, and feel both the embarrassment to national pride this occasions, as well as a sense of shared culpability for the disaster. Public opinion has shifted because a swift victory has not eventuated, a victory that might otherwise have enabled the public to salve its guilty conscience.
The upshot of all this is that the "Coalition of the Willing" now finds itself in precisely the same situation as the Athenian city-state: having over-extended its resources, it now faces a catastrophic military defeat, as well as the socio-political-economic consequences arising from that defeat. Indeed, it is not clear that the "Coalition" will be able to maintain itself in those spheres where its activities are universally acknowledged to be legitimate - such as Afghanistan, for example. And that will undoubtedly produce the kind of propaganda coup the jihadists are longing for: a coup they will be able to exploit for recruitment purposes. Thus, the security of the West has already been undermined on two fronts: by the short-sightedness and dishonesty of those who planned the invasion of Iraq; and by their stubbornness that has made a bad situation worse.
And the accessories in this whole melancholy affair are the public, who, for the sake of expediency over conscience, allowed themselves to be persuaded to both the justice of the invasion and the merits of the occupation.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided. (Konrad Adenauer)
Sunday, October 22, 2006
C S Lewis: Christian Stoic
A lot of triumphalist nonsense has been written and spoken about C S Lewis in certain circles since the release of the motion picture based on his novel The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Lewis is certainly the pin-up boy of the moment for "evangelical" Christians attempting to depict Lewis (especially in the context of his conversion experience) as an exemplar of the ecstatic, "born again" believer whose life was a cloud of conflict and doubt until he "saw the light".
This approach to Lewis is a nonsense, not least because it does a grave injustice to the man himself and the complexity of both his faith and life experience. Lewis was not an ecstatic Christian, much less an "evangelical" in the sense conveyed by those presently making the aforementioned triumphalist noises. Like most people, Lewis' Christian faith was a process, an ongoing and ever-developing evolution based on his experience of being, and the conclusions to which his reflections on that experience lead him. Nor did it become "fixed" after his conversion: the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, forced him to confront the meaning of his faith in the context of mortality, thereby stripping away the many comfortable assumptions and complacencies with which he had hitherto associated Christian belief and practice. It was an experience that rocked him, and redefined his understanding of faith.
This is a side to Lewis which those presently singing Lewis' praises conveniently ignore. And it is a side that is fully explored in the film Shadowlands, based on Lewis' relationship with Joy Davidman, and in Lewis' own book, The Problem of Pain. These reveal that, far from being the "ecstatic" Christian infected with a simplistic approach to faith and being, Lewis was in fact a powerful thinker and feeler of faith who explored the depths of his being and life experience in order to ensure the integrity of his relationship with God. This was frequently a painful process, and perhaps sums up why he once described himself as the most reluctant atheist, and the most incredulous Christian, in England.
Both Shadowlands and The Problem of Pain explore a very simple, yet exquisitely profound, question: if God were good, why do humans suffer? Shouldn't the goodness of God ensure that God's creation is free from pain and misfortune? Isn't saying that God is good just wishful thinking? Indeed, doesn't the existence of pain and suffering and evil point to the fact that God is not good - indeed, that God doesn't exist at all?
Shadowlands responds to this question by suggesting that, in placing human happiness at the centre of creation, human beings are in fact making a grave mistake. The point being that it's not actually a question of whether God wants us to be happy; God doesn't want us to be unhappy, either, it's just that our happiness is not the issue. What God wants is for people to grow up, to leave the nursery of existence so that we can respond to God as fully rounded creatures; so that we can be who God desires us to be, instead of one-dimensional beings lacking the substance of creation. In this context, suffering is the vehicle through which God calls us to wake up to ourselves. Humans are like blocks of stone being shaped by a sculptor's chisel; the blows of the chisel cause us inestimable pain, but they are also what make us whole and complete. In other words, suffering is not a thief, robbing us of equanimity and innocence; rather, it is the agency through which we are stripped of our life-denying delusions.
The Problem of Pain tackles the issue from a slightly different perspective. It doesn't attempt to describe the nature of suffering; rather, the book seeks to elucidate why suffering occurs. Lewis argues that humans suffer because they exist in a condition - the created universe - that is other than God. Lewis affirms that the universe is God's creation, and the creation is good since it represents an articulation of God's loving will. However, being other than God, creation cannot share in the perfection that is God; creation can only aspire to communion with God, and since this aspiration naturally arises from a self-awareness of imperfection, suffering is implicit in existence.
However, Lewis proposes three consolations that mitigate against what might be a rather gloomy conclusion about the nature of being:
This approach to Lewis is a nonsense, not least because it does a grave injustice to the man himself and the complexity of both his faith and life experience. Lewis was not an ecstatic Christian, much less an "evangelical" in the sense conveyed by those presently making the aforementioned triumphalist noises. Like most people, Lewis' Christian faith was a process, an ongoing and ever-developing evolution based on his experience of being, and the conclusions to which his reflections on that experience lead him. Nor did it become "fixed" after his conversion: the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, forced him to confront the meaning of his faith in the context of mortality, thereby stripping away the many comfortable assumptions and complacencies with which he had hitherto associated Christian belief and practice. It was an experience that rocked him, and redefined his understanding of faith.
This is a side to Lewis which those presently singing Lewis' praises conveniently ignore. And it is a side that is fully explored in the film Shadowlands, based on Lewis' relationship with Joy Davidman, and in Lewis' own book, The Problem of Pain. These reveal that, far from being the "ecstatic" Christian infected with a simplistic approach to faith and being, Lewis was in fact a powerful thinker and feeler of faith who explored the depths of his being and life experience in order to ensure the integrity of his relationship with God. This was frequently a painful process, and perhaps sums up why he once described himself as the most reluctant atheist, and the most incredulous Christian, in England.
Both Shadowlands and The Problem of Pain explore a very simple, yet exquisitely profound, question: if God were good, why do humans suffer? Shouldn't the goodness of God ensure that God's creation is free from pain and misfortune? Isn't saying that God is good just wishful thinking? Indeed, doesn't the existence of pain and suffering and evil point to the fact that God is not good - indeed, that God doesn't exist at all?
Shadowlands responds to this question by suggesting that, in placing human happiness at the centre of creation, human beings are in fact making a grave mistake. The point being that it's not actually a question of whether God wants us to be happy; God doesn't want us to be unhappy, either, it's just that our happiness is not the issue. What God wants is for people to grow up, to leave the nursery of existence so that we can respond to God as fully rounded creatures; so that we can be who God desires us to be, instead of one-dimensional beings lacking the substance of creation. In this context, suffering is the vehicle through which God calls us to wake up to ourselves. Humans are like blocks of stone being shaped by a sculptor's chisel; the blows of the chisel cause us inestimable pain, but they are also what make us whole and complete. In other words, suffering is not a thief, robbing us of equanimity and innocence; rather, it is the agency through which we are stripped of our life-denying delusions.
The Problem of Pain tackles the issue from a slightly different perspective. It doesn't attempt to describe the nature of suffering; rather, the book seeks to elucidate why suffering occurs. Lewis argues that humans suffer because they exist in a condition - the created universe - that is other than God. Lewis affirms that the universe is God's creation, and the creation is good since it represents an articulation of God's loving will. However, being other than God, creation cannot share in the perfection that is God; creation can only aspire to communion with God, and since this aspiration naturally arises from a self-awareness of imperfection, suffering is implicit in existence.
However, Lewis proposes three consolations that mitigate against what might be a rather gloomy conclusion about the nature of being:
- This condition of otherness is necessary in order for created beings to enter into relation with God. Humans are self-aware, and a necessary corollary of self-awareness is an awareness of others as individuals differentiated from our own Self. The awareness that arises from this differentiated otherness is the mechanism that enables us to enter into relationships. Likewise, our awareness of Self as created, and thus as other than God, enables humans to enter into relationship with the divine. The absence of this self-awareness would prevent us from having an awareness of God; we therefore could not enter into relation with God. Thus, the suffering that is implicit in existence arises from the same condition that enables us to come into relation with God.
- The physical conditions which often cause suffering are also necessary for the physical existence of our species. That is, humans could not exist in a world in which the weather conditions and geological structures did not result in tornadoes and earthquakes. This is evidenced by the fact that earthquakes are caused by plate tectonics; plate tectonics arise from the fact that the ground on which we walk is a thin crust that floats over a vast substructure of molten rock that is constantly in motion; and this molten rock is constantly in motion because at its core is a sphere of spinning metal, composed mostly of iron. This spinning core creates the tides in the molten rock that produce the plate tectonics that end in earthquakes. But this spinning core also produces a vast magnetic field about the earth that deflects most of the harmful gamma and ultra-violet rays from the Sun that would otherwise irradiate the planet and make life impossible. In other words, earthquakes are the price we pay for having a planet that can support life.
- A universe in which God was constantly intervening and altering reality in order to prevent suffering would, in fact, be unlivable on two grounds. Firstly, the alteration to reality would have disastrous consequences for anyone in the immediate vicinity of the alteration; it would most likely cause their own destruction, and thus the alteration would be inherently self-contradictory in its effect (and thus itself require altering). Secondly, constant intervention by God in reality would render the individual will impotent; humans might have free will, but it would be irrelevant because it would be liable to immediate contradiction. The result would be an existential ennui that would do more to destroy life than the events such as accidents and natural disasters that periodically cause suffering and hardship.
The point of these consolations is that suffering is never pointless, nor is it the product either of an indifferent universe or a cruel and capricious deity. Rather, suffering is a necessary fact of existence because it arises from precisely the same conditions which make life itself possible, and which facilitate a relationship between God and the created order. In essence, therefore, life is not an either/or proposition, it is an and/both dynamic; as the character of C S Lewis says in the film Shadowlands, "The suffering we experience later is the price we pay for the happiness we have today; that's the deal".
What all this means is that Lewis was not the kind of superficial "ecstatic" Christian which many "evangelicals" would have you believe. Nor was he a Christian propagandist, or even a Christian apologist in the proper sense of that term. His faith was not the product of a "born again" experience, but the result of a considered and lived meditation on the experience of being. Beneath the jingoistic triumphalism of the publicity surrounding the release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the consequent claims that are being made about Lewis, lies the profound, resilient, and evolving faith of a Christian Stoic who lived, thought through, and suffered for his relationship with the divine.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future. (Boethius)
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
I Told You I Wasn't A Cynic!
One of the banes of my life is that people have always thought I was a cynic. I always used to respond by saying that a cynic is what an optimist calls a realist. But aside from that, I rejected the notion that I am a cynic with the counter-view that I am, in fact, one of the most optimistic people I know...it's just that people don't understand the nature of my optimism.
By optimist, I don't mean one of those people who think that "everything will turn out for the best", or who think that being optimistic is the same as being "happy" or cheerful. Indeed, my optimism is summed up in the quote attributed to Adlai Stevenson: Cheer up - the worst is yet to come.
In other words, I am a realist. Life is frequently difficult, and harsh things often happen. However, this doesn't mean we need take a sackcloth and ashes approach to existence; on the contrary, we should adopt the Stoic virtue of being honest enough to feel our emotions, and corageous enough to not be overwhelmed by them. For me, this is real optimism: understanding that suffering and hardship is just a fact of life, it doesn't mean anything (in the sense of being a comment on our worth as human beings), and even as a fact of life, it is not the most important or even the biggest fact of life. Accordingly, we need not descend into cynicism and despair; simply recognise realities for what they are and, within the limits and frailties of our humanity, hold our own against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as best we can.
But enough of the philosophy! Thanks to my good buddy Caro I now have the objective proof. See below...
| You Are 52% Cynical |
 Yes, you are cynical, but more than anything, you're a realist. You see what's screwed up in the world, but you also take time to remember what's right. |
So there! I knew it was a case of me being right and the rest of the world being screwed in the head!
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: A cynic is a blackguard who sees things not as they are, but as they ought to be. (Ambrose Bierce)
Monday, October 16, 2006
Eureka Street Article
I have had an article published in Eureka Street, an online magazine about current affairs, issues, and theology published by Jesuit Publications. I can certainly recommend this e-mag if you're looking for a quality, thoughtful read to which to subscribe.
Click here for the link.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Click here for the link.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Autumn: A Reflection On Spring
Now that Spring has made an appearance in the Southern Hemisphere, I thought I'd tell you about my favourite season: Autumn.
There is much about Autumn that makes it my favourite time of year. The softness of the weather, the calm quietude of the evenings, the lingering twilights, the crisp mornings scented with dew. There's a freshness about Autumn, a real lightness of being after the enervating heat of Summer that just makes you glad to be alive.
But there's one thing in particular about Autumn that moves me deeply and makes it my favourite time of year. As a season, it has a profoundness that touches the deepest chords of our humanity: it speaks to our mortality, to our transience: and yet at the same time it is heart-rendingly stirring, touching on the terrible beauty of being in such a way as to fill the soul with a deeply-rooted hope and serenity.
It happens on a particular kind of day in Autumn. The kind of day in which the sky is clear and so brightly blue it makes the eyes ache; a day filled with a softly luminescent light, the kind of glassy light you get when you're swimming in a clear pool or a river and you look up and see the sun. Yet at the same time, there's a crisp edge to the air, a faint chill that is at once refreshing and a harbinger of approaching Winter. You feel invigorated; and yet you are also reminded of the cold that is just around the corner.
On days like this, in the central business district, as the long afternoons drift languidly by, the tops of skyscrapers are picked out by the slanting shafts of light, shards of glistening radiance sparking off the windows. The buildings look like starships made of light, like luminous alien vessels, their noses pointed skyward toward the stars. Yet, at ground level, all is in shadow: the streets are caverns; canyons and arroyos of shadows and creeping darkness. And it is cold in those shadows; the warmth of the setting sun doesn't reach down to where the people are making their way home at the end of another working day.
I think of this phenomenon as a kind of metaphor for life. Augustine of Hippo, one of the great Fathers of the early church, wrote: You made us for Yourself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their ease in You. Two thousand years later, Bruce Springsteen sang: Everybody needs a place to rest, everybody needs a place called home; don't make no difference what nobody says, ain't nobody likes to be alone. Similarly, Carson McCullers wrote a book titled The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It is one of the verities of being that humans are born with Springsteen's Hungry Heart, with the desire to find a meaning and purpose to our lives, to somehow cheat death by becoming more than the sum (and limitation) of our mortality. We live in the shadows, and stretch our hands out toward the sunlight; of course, we don't get there, but I think it one of the genii of our species that we are endlessly inventive in the ways in which we try to achieve the objective. That, and our persistence.
And that's why Autumn is so moving and special and poignant for me; because it speaks to our mortality, to the sadness of the universe, and to the hope and joy that are the surprising gifts of the bitter-sweetness of being. We walk the shadowed canyons of our existence; but we can look up and see the sunlight glinting off the tops of life's skyscrapers, and know there is warmth and light, even if not necessarily for us, in this mode of being. By association, we take heart and know peace. From the pathos comes the purpose - and the hope that the light we perceive but cannot attain is merely the precursor to a greater Light whose radiance encompasses us all.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Autumn is a second Spring where every leaf is a flower. (Albert Camus)
There is much about Autumn that makes it my favourite time of year. The softness of the weather, the calm quietude of the evenings, the lingering twilights, the crisp mornings scented with dew. There's a freshness about Autumn, a real lightness of being after the enervating heat of Summer that just makes you glad to be alive.
But there's one thing in particular about Autumn that moves me deeply and makes it my favourite time of year. As a season, it has a profoundness that touches the deepest chords of our humanity: it speaks to our mortality, to our transience: and yet at the same time it is heart-rendingly stirring, touching on the terrible beauty of being in such a way as to fill the soul with a deeply-rooted hope and serenity.
It happens on a particular kind of day in Autumn. The kind of day in which the sky is clear and so brightly blue it makes the eyes ache; a day filled with a softly luminescent light, the kind of glassy light you get when you're swimming in a clear pool or a river and you look up and see the sun. Yet at the same time, there's a crisp edge to the air, a faint chill that is at once refreshing and a harbinger of approaching Winter. You feel invigorated; and yet you are also reminded of the cold that is just around the corner.
On days like this, in the central business district, as the long afternoons drift languidly by, the tops of skyscrapers are picked out by the slanting shafts of light, shards of glistening radiance sparking off the windows. The buildings look like starships made of light, like luminous alien vessels, their noses pointed skyward toward the stars. Yet, at ground level, all is in shadow: the streets are caverns; canyons and arroyos of shadows and creeping darkness. And it is cold in those shadows; the warmth of the setting sun doesn't reach down to where the people are making their way home at the end of another working day.
I think of this phenomenon as a kind of metaphor for life. Augustine of Hippo, one of the great Fathers of the early church, wrote: You made us for Yourself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their ease in You. Two thousand years later, Bruce Springsteen sang: Everybody needs a place to rest, everybody needs a place called home; don't make no difference what nobody says, ain't nobody likes to be alone. Similarly, Carson McCullers wrote a book titled The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It is one of the verities of being that humans are born with Springsteen's Hungry Heart, with the desire to find a meaning and purpose to our lives, to somehow cheat death by becoming more than the sum (and limitation) of our mortality. We live in the shadows, and stretch our hands out toward the sunlight; of course, we don't get there, but I think it one of the genii of our species that we are endlessly inventive in the ways in which we try to achieve the objective. That, and our persistence.
And that's why Autumn is so moving and special and poignant for me; because it speaks to our mortality, to the sadness of the universe, and to the hope and joy that are the surprising gifts of the bitter-sweetness of being. We walk the shadowed canyons of our existence; but we can look up and see the sunlight glinting off the tops of life's skyscrapers, and know there is warmth and light, even if not necessarily for us, in this mode of being. By association, we take heart and know peace. From the pathos comes the purpose - and the hope that the light we perceive but cannot attain is merely the precursor to a greater Light whose radiance encompasses us all.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Autumn is a second Spring where every leaf is a flower. (Albert Camus)
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Wrestlemania
Last week, I completed my theology assignment for the current semester.
It was a wrestle, I can tell you. Not because I struggled with the subject, but because I was so into the subject - there was so much I wanted to say - that I had to: 1) work out a way to coherently order the material in order to properly articulate myself; and 2) work out a way to cram everything I wanted to say into the limited space available.
I know those of you who have struggled with assignments are going to want to hit me, but 2,000 words just isn't nearly enough. Not for me, at any rate. Being naturally verbose (that is, when I put fingers to keyboard) I at least have no difficulties filling up the space. It's just that I have more words than available storage room. As the deadline approaches, I generally find myself tearing out my hair trying to reduce what I've written to something approximating the word limit, and which yet retains its internal coherence.
Now, I'm not bragging, you understand. I appreciate how fortunate I am in having a natural aptitude for writing. But that doesn't mean assignments come any easier; indeed, the process for me is just as frustrating - dare I suggest more so? - as it is for the less lexicographically inclined. And just to prove how difficult, let me tell you now that I re-wrote this particular assignment three times! I'd get about half way through and realise either that I wasn't going to be able incorporate everything I wanted to say in the limited space available, or that my attempts at doing so were preventing me from properly articulating my ideas. So I'd tear up what I'd written (read: select the whole document and press "delete") and start again. And never mind that I'm studying theology: the process was accompanied by many a purple expression that would have scandalised the pious theologian about whom I was writing!
Of course, I realise that things could have been worse. I could, for example, be studying full-time, and face the prospect of having to hand in multiple assignments around the same date. I am accutely conscious of the luxury I have in being able to focus all my time and attention on this one subject. I'm just saying it didn't make this one particular assignment any easier. In fact, it was a struggle: a rip-roaring, knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out, arm-wrestle of an experience. And at the end, I still wasn't happy with what I'd produced; frankly, I reckon I'll be lucky to get a credit for this effort - actually, I'm expecting to merely receive a bare passing grade.
Oh well, at least I finished. Just the exams left for this semester, and then I can not worry about study for about a fortnight (until it comes time to select my subjects for next year). Seven months of agony for two weeks of paradise; it seems a fair deal, especially if it gets me to where I want to go.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: No-one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his mistakes deserves to be called a scholar. (Anon.)
It was a wrestle, I can tell you. Not because I struggled with the subject, but because I was so into the subject - there was so much I wanted to say - that I had to: 1) work out a way to coherently order the material in order to properly articulate myself; and 2) work out a way to cram everything I wanted to say into the limited space available.
I know those of you who have struggled with assignments are going to want to hit me, but 2,000 words just isn't nearly enough. Not for me, at any rate. Being naturally verbose (that is, when I put fingers to keyboard) I at least have no difficulties filling up the space. It's just that I have more words than available storage room. As the deadline approaches, I generally find myself tearing out my hair trying to reduce what I've written to something approximating the word limit, and which yet retains its internal coherence.
Now, I'm not bragging, you understand. I appreciate how fortunate I am in having a natural aptitude for writing. But that doesn't mean assignments come any easier; indeed, the process for me is just as frustrating - dare I suggest more so? - as it is for the less lexicographically inclined. And just to prove how difficult, let me tell you now that I re-wrote this particular assignment three times! I'd get about half way through and realise either that I wasn't going to be able incorporate everything I wanted to say in the limited space available, or that my attempts at doing so were preventing me from properly articulating my ideas. So I'd tear up what I'd written (read: select the whole document and press "delete") and start again. And never mind that I'm studying theology: the process was accompanied by many a purple expression that would have scandalised the pious theologian about whom I was writing!
Of course, I realise that things could have been worse. I could, for example, be studying full-time, and face the prospect of having to hand in multiple assignments around the same date. I am accutely conscious of the luxury I have in being able to focus all my time and attention on this one subject. I'm just saying it didn't make this one particular assignment any easier. In fact, it was a struggle: a rip-roaring, knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out, arm-wrestle of an experience. And at the end, I still wasn't happy with what I'd produced; frankly, I reckon I'll be lucky to get a credit for this effort - actually, I'm expecting to merely receive a bare passing grade.
Oh well, at least I finished. Just the exams left for this semester, and then I can not worry about study for about a fortnight (until it comes time to select my subjects for next year). Seven months of agony for two weeks of paradise; it seems a fair deal, especially if it gets me to where I want to go.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: No-one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his mistakes deserves to be called a scholar. (Anon.)
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
No More Visitations!
I recently saw a road sign that said "signalised intersection ahead". I thought to myself: signalised? In what sense signalised? What could an intersection signal?
Of course, what the sign meant to say was that signals were being inserted at the intersection. And while I agree that the signwriters couldn't reasonably be expected to put all that on a road sign, I am frankly getting sick of this use of nouns as verbs.
I could list a whole phalanx of examples, but I'll provide just one - and, from my experience, the worst.
Visitation. I don't know about you, but this one really annoys the crap out of me. Everything - and I mean everything - is a "visitation". For example, at the union, we have occassional "visitation" programs. What they really mean is that they have visiting programs, when we go and conduct visits of various workplaces. And nor is this mere pedantry, or semantics. Because there are two things wrong with the use of "visitation": one, it's definitionally incorrect; two, it's grammatically incorrect.
Regarding the definition, a visitation is something that happens when you see lights from heaven and hear angelic choirs and suddenly some otherwordly being is standing before you. As in when Mary received a visitation from the Archangel Gabriel to tell her that she was pregnant with Jesus. Or when Paul had his "road to Damascus" experience. Some people even claim to have had visitation experiences from creatures descending from UFOs. Either way, a visitation involves an experience in which you are the subject of an encounter with something (or someone) inexplicable.
And that last fact points to the grammatical error: a visitation is something that happens to you - it is not something you do you other people. You go and visit other people - you don't impose a visitation upon them, you just go and see them. A visit, nothing more. There's nothing otherwordly about it, regardless of what our own egos might like to think. And it's what we do to them, not what they do to us. In a visit, the other is the subject; in a visitation, we are the subject.
Thus, at the union, we might go on a visiting program, but I don't think any of us, even in our most hubristic moments, are kidding ourselves that we're impressing anyone with bolts of blinding light out of the sky. Usually, it takes something much more sinister to happen before people appreciate the benefits of union membership.
Anyhoo, you see my point. People are using words incorrectly in order to express themselves, usually because it's easier to do so than actually think about correct grammatical use. Not that I expect this to change despite my fulminations. Indeed, and paradoxically, it's probably a good thing that it doesn't stop: it marks one more point upon the history of the evolution of the English language, a flexibility that has enabled it to grow from an obscure Germanic dialect into the global language of our planet.
It just wrankles to be on the losing side of an evolutionary battle!
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. (John Locke)
Of course, what the sign meant to say was that signals were being inserted at the intersection. And while I agree that the signwriters couldn't reasonably be expected to put all that on a road sign, I am frankly getting sick of this use of nouns as verbs.
I could list a whole phalanx of examples, but I'll provide just one - and, from my experience, the worst.
Visitation. I don't know about you, but this one really annoys the crap out of me. Everything - and I mean everything - is a "visitation". For example, at the union, we have occassional "visitation" programs. What they really mean is that they have visiting programs, when we go and conduct visits of various workplaces. And nor is this mere pedantry, or semantics. Because there are two things wrong with the use of "visitation": one, it's definitionally incorrect; two, it's grammatically incorrect.
Regarding the definition, a visitation is something that happens when you see lights from heaven and hear angelic choirs and suddenly some otherwordly being is standing before you. As in when Mary received a visitation from the Archangel Gabriel to tell her that she was pregnant with Jesus. Or when Paul had his "road to Damascus" experience. Some people even claim to have had visitation experiences from creatures descending from UFOs. Either way, a visitation involves an experience in which you are the subject of an encounter with something (or someone) inexplicable.
And that last fact points to the grammatical error: a visitation is something that happens to you - it is not something you do you other people. You go and visit other people - you don't impose a visitation upon them, you just go and see them. A visit, nothing more. There's nothing otherwordly about it, regardless of what our own egos might like to think. And it's what we do to them, not what they do to us. In a visit, the other is the subject; in a visitation, we are the subject.
Thus, at the union, we might go on a visiting program, but I don't think any of us, even in our most hubristic moments, are kidding ourselves that we're impressing anyone with bolts of blinding light out of the sky. Usually, it takes something much more sinister to happen before people appreciate the benefits of union membership.
Anyhoo, you see my point. People are using words incorrectly in order to express themselves, usually because it's easier to do so than actually think about correct grammatical use. Not that I expect this to change despite my fulminations. Indeed, and paradoxically, it's probably a good thing that it doesn't stop: it marks one more point upon the history of the evolution of the English language, a flexibility that has enabled it to grow from an obscure Germanic dialect into the global language of our planet.
It just wrankles to be on the losing side of an evolutionary battle!
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. (John Locke)
Sunday, October 08, 2006
The Age of Miracles
I recently read an article in Crosslight, the newspaper of the Uniting Church in Australia (Synod of Tasmania and Victoria), on the subject of miracles, in which one of my theology lecturers was quoted. This lead to a conversation between myself and said lecturer that has got me thinking a lot about miracles and what we might call the miraculous.
As my lecturer rightly pointed out, it is a common tendency to think of miracles in terms of something happening which is especially unexpected; unexpected because, while we may want the event to occur, we either believe that it won't occur, or expect a different outcome altogether. This is particularly when we are in moments of great distress or suffering, when we are hoping against hope of being delivered from our torment; the miraculous in this context we often regard as the unexpected or unlooked for arrival of that very deliverance (or, at least, avoidance of that which we dread).
The other context which we often think of as miraculous concerns what we imagine to be God's operation in the world, especially in the working of "miracles" such as when Christ is said to have turned water into wine, or various prophets or saints suspended or overrode the operations of nature. These are the "miracle" stories, the narration of events which are inexplicable, or contrary to, the scientific understanding of the cosmos.
What are we to make of this understanding of the miraculous? For myself, I don't think we need take miracle stories literally. Which is not to say they aren't true, only that the truth they point to is allegorical and deeper than we think. I think that what the miracle stories point to is an attempt by the writers and editors of both the Old and New Testaments to respond to the possibility of God through the limited media of human understanding and communication. Miracles in this context are therefore to be seen as a kind of parable, a concise depiction of both the transcendence and immanence of God.
Nor is this a modernist or revisionist approach. I was surprised to learn in a recent lecture that one of the earliest Christian writers, Origen of Alexandria - who was also one of the first Christian theologians to conduct detailed exegeses of Scripture - argued that Biblical truth was allegorical, that it was a vehicle through which humans could express the inexpressible mystery of God and the human relationship with the divine. For example, the creation story in the book of Genesis, and the story of the Fall and humanity's exile from the Garden of Eden, represent not historical events, but are allegorical depictions of a time when all things were united in God, but which were subsequently alienated from God because of their imperfections. Thus, the creation of the world and the exile from Eden represent metaphysical events that happened before the advent of the physical universe.
On a less exalted plane, I think if anyone wants to think about the miraculous, they should contemplate the sheer unlikeliness of life, never mind intelligent life. Some people find doing so nihilistic, or even atheistic, a denial of God and the goodness of "God's plan"; but contemplating it actually brings you face to face with the truly miraculous. If you want to understand just how miraculous, I suggest you read the opening chapters of Bill Bryson's wonderful book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson explains that our little planet in its insignificant solar system not only moves in and out of the spiral arm of the Milky Way in which it is located, it also moves through the galactic arm. That is, it moves up and down through the galactic arm, which is actually quite dangerous: in the more densely packed regions, the gravitational pull of all the bodies within the solar system (as well as the gravitational tides of the other solar systems) cause various objects such as comets and meteors to drop out of their normal orbits. Some of these inevitably plunge toward, and strike, the earth.
If you want an idea of the consequences of this, consider that a meteor strike on the earth 65 million years ago (which created the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucutan peninsular) not only wiped out the dinosaurs but 75% of life on Earth. Likewise, scientists have discovered an enormous impact crater under the Antarctic ice-sheet that corresponds to a mass extinction 365 million years ago, in which 90% of life forms were wiped out. In other words, there have been at least two occasions in the earth's history in which life on this planet was nearly wiped out - in other words, in which human beings came close to extinction millions of years before they evolved! And yet, conversely, had these extinctions not occurred, human beings might never have evolved, because their niche in the evolutionary process might have been occupied by some other species.
So here is the real miracle: that we live in a cosmos so subtle and complex and extraordinary that, despite all the factors militating against it, our species, with its unique self awareness and awareness of God, has evolved and (somehow) survived. If that doesn't talk to the miraculous power of God, I frankly don't know what will.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. (C S Lewis)
As my lecturer rightly pointed out, it is a common tendency to think of miracles in terms of something happening which is especially unexpected; unexpected because, while we may want the event to occur, we either believe that it won't occur, or expect a different outcome altogether. This is particularly when we are in moments of great distress or suffering, when we are hoping against hope of being delivered from our torment; the miraculous in this context we often regard as the unexpected or unlooked for arrival of that very deliverance (or, at least, avoidance of that which we dread).
The other context which we often think of as miraculous concerns what we imagine to be God's operation in the world, especially in the working of "miracles" such as when Christ is said to have turned water into wine, or various prophets or saints suspended or overrode the operations of nature. These are the "miracle" stories, the narration of events which are inexplicable, or contrary to, the scientific understanding of the cosmos.
What are we to make of this understanding of the miraculous? For myself, I don't think we need take miracle stories literally. Which is not to say they aren't true, only that the truth they point to is allegorical and deeper than we think. I think that what the miracle stories point to is an attempt by the writers and editors of both the Old and New Testaments to respond to the possibility of God through the limited media of human understanding and communication. Miracles in this context are therefore to be seen as a kind of parable, a concise depiction of both the transcendence and immanence of God.
Nor is this a modernist or revisionist approach. I was surprised to learn in a recent lecture that one of the earliest Christian writers, Origen of Alexandria - who was also one of the first Christian theologians to conduct detailed exegeses of Scripture - argued that Biblical truth was allegorical, that it was a vehicle through which humans could express the inexpressible mystery of God and the human relationship with the divine. For example, the creation story in the book of Genesis, and the story of the Fall and humanity's exile from the Garden of Eden, represent not historical events, but are allegorical depictions of a time when all things were united in God, but which were subsequently alienated from God because of their imperfections. Thus, the creation of the world and the exile from Eden represent metaphysical events that happened before the advent of the physical universe.
On a less exalted plane, I think if anyone wants to think about the miraculous, they should contemplate the sheer unlikeliness of life, never mind intelligent life. Some people find doing so nihilistic, or even atheistic, a denial of God and the goodness of "God's plan"; but contemplating it actually brings you face to face with the truly miraculous. If you want to understand just how miraculous, I suggest you read the opening chapters of Bill Bryson's wonderful book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson explains that our little planet in its insignificant solar system not only moves in and out of the spiral arm of the Milky Way in which it is located, it also moves through the galactic arm. That is, it moves up and down through the galactic arm, which is actually quite dangerous: in the more densely packed regions, the gravitational pull of all the bodies within the solar system (as well as the gravitational tides of the other solar systems) cause various objects such as comets and meteors to drop out of their normal orbits. Some of these inevitably plunge toward, and strike, the earth.
If you want an idea of the consequences of this, consider that a meteor strike on the earth 65 million years ago (which created the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucutan peninsular) not only wiped out the dinosaurs but 75% of life on Earth. Likewise, scientists have discovered an enormous impact crater under the Antarctic ice-sheet that corresponds to a mass extinction 365 million years ago, in which 90% of life forms were wiped out. In other words, there have been at least two occasions in the earth's history in which life on this planet was nearly wiped out - in other words, in which human beings came close to extinction millions of years before they evolved! And yet, conversely, had these extinctions not occurred, human beings might never have evolved, because their niche in the evolutionary process might have been occupied by some other species.
So here is the real miracle: that we live in a cosmos so subtle and complex and extraordinary that, despite all the factors militating against it, our species, with its unique self awareness and awareness of God, has evolved and (somehow) survived. If that doesn't talk to the miraculous power of God, I frankly don't know what will.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. (C S Lewis)
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