What's good for the Goose...

In a recent history book I'm reading on the global history of the concept of the City, Joel Kotkin complains that Christianity had an "antiurban perspective." (37) He argues that Jesus himself was a homeless nomad and had no use for the urban centers of society. He states that the principal concern of Christians was "faith in a single, transcendent god." (36) Fair enough. I think Kotkin is missing the bigger picture by ignoring the fact that up until 315 AD, Christianity was a persecuted religion throughout the Roman empire and had to hide to exist. I think antiurban is hardly the term I would use to describe Christianity after Constantine.

The problem for me is that a few pages later, when discussing Islam's development, Kotkin praises Islam for being an "profoundly urban faith." (44) Kotkin asserts that the "need to gather the community of believers was a critical aspect of Islam....Islam virtually demanded cities to serve as 'the places where men pray together.'" (44) Just two pages later, however, Kotkin argues that Islam fosters "a sophisticated urban culture" while managing to not worship the city for its own sake. The city becomes a vehicle for "the integration of the daily lives of men with a transcendent God." (46)

So somehow, Christianity's emphasis, as Kotkin sees it, on a transcendent deity is antiurban while Islam fosters "a sophisticated urban culture" by having an emphasis on "the integration of the daily lives of men with a transcendent God." (46)

Go figure...

*Quotes are from Joel Kotkin, The City: A Global History (New York: Random House, 2005).

FCS Welcome message from Dr. Grant

Study Guides

I am working on a new project while I am unemployed. I have been writing study guides for books I teach for years now for my students, but have never really had the opportunity to revise them at all. While I am trying to find a job, I am doing some revision of those guides and thinking of ways to earn a little money with them. I finished the Iliad yesterday and am almost done with the Odyssey as well.

They are pretty straightforward guides. They have author, date, and context introductions as well as a summary of the book, themes, and literary notes for things to watch for and understand while reading. Each have several multiple choice comprehension quizzes periodically throughout the book which have answer keys, but the most important thing is that I have included no answers to anything but the quizzes. I did this intentionally. Daily reading is accompanied by either review and recitation worksheets which are pretty straightforward or specific worldview discussion sessions which are a little more complicated. In either case, the ideal is that Mom and Dad, or the teacher/tutor are reading this book along with their kids and they can talk through the answers together. On the review and recitation pages, there isn't much to dig for. On the discussion sessions, I wanted to allow for honest discussion in a group or even amongst members of a family. So I didn't provide answers for questions like, What is pride? I think the family/classroom discussion is far more valuable than any answer I could provide would ever be.

If you are interested in one of the guides I've got ready, let me know and I'll send you a sample. I haven't worked out a price yet for the whole guide, but it'd be under $10.

Aristeia

Aristeia is a Greek word meaning excellence. When used in the Iliad, it refers to the best fighting a hero may accomplish. An excellent example of this is in book 21 when Achilleus almost single-handedly routs the entire Trojan army and succeeds in killing Hektor, the hero of the Trojans.

Pride in the Iliad

This theme of the Iliad is mentioned in the proem (the first several lines of the poem) and describes the most basic outline of the plot of the story. While the main theme of the work is widely recognized as “the wrath of Achilleus” it is obvious with the most cursory read-through that this wrath stems from Achilleus’ sense of pride. Pride is the most basic problem in Greek literature. Taken from the Greek term hubris which means an exaggerated self-pride or self-confidence, our conception of pride is very fitting. Pride is thinking too highly of oneself and acting like everyone else should think as highly of you as you do.
Both Achilleus and Agamemnon are guilty of pride (or hubris) in the Iliad. The argument that erupts between them over the war bride Briseis is a perfect example of this. Agamemnon feels that since he is the great king of the war fleet, he should have the best prizes. When Chriseis is taken from him to appease Chryse and Apollo, he demands that he get Achilleus’ war bride in return for his loss. This is an amazing amount of pride on Agamemnon’s part, but Achilleus’ response is no less prideful.
Achilleus responds to Agamemnon’s demand by retreating from the battle, sulking at his own ships, and begging his goddess mother to make Agamemnon pay for his rash behavior and dishonoring of her son. He insists that for the dishonor he has been shown he will no longer fight with the Achaians.
As Christians we know that pride is one of the greatest sins we can fall into. It was the very sin that cast Lucifer, that angel of light, from the presence of God in heaven and doomed him to spend eternity in hell. Therefore as we see pride writ large upon the characters of Homer’s Iliad, we must consider the worldview implications of such thinking. Homer, like most Greek writers, often condemned hubris, but also recognized that a certain amount was necessary for survival. In the Christian life, our greatest strength often becomes our most challenging weakness as well. Are you a gifted athlete? That can be a source of pride for you as well then. Do you do well in classes without much labor? That can also turn into a pride issue. Unlike the Greek heroes in the Iliad, we have the opportunity to lay our pride before God and recognize our own weakness. The Greeks, in some ways, felt their gods were simply stronger, immortal, people. There was no majesty involved. No holiness before which they could humble themselves. This represents one of the chief reasons so many Greek heroes get in trouble with the gods. They too often act like gods and take glory away from the gods themselves.

Some quotes from Abolition of Man

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. (27)

ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it. (28-29)

Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. (29, Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1104B)

The heart never takes the place of the head, but it can, and should, obey it.

In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism ... about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. (35)

Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values: about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough. (43)

I will not insist on the point that Instinct is a name for we know not what (to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way), for I think it is here being used in a fairly definite sense, to mean an unreflective or spontaneous impulse widely felt by the members of a given species. (46-47)

If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. (55)

if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all. (55)

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery. (81)

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead. (83-84)

Herodotus and Homer

Having taught Herodotus several times, I can tell you that students either love him or hate him. Most come in on the latter, primarily because it is so long and full of material that really doesn't seem relevant. If he is writing about the Persian Wars, they reason, why does it take him until book 5 (of 9) to get to the Battle of Marathon? Why does he have to go off on so many rabbit trails (the mark of a great teacher, IMHO)? I think the answers to these questions lie in his reliance upon the Homeric tradition, in part, and his understanding of the task of history.

I have written elsewhere of Herodotus' understanding of the nature of history, and I don't think reflection has made much difference in my mind yet. Specifically that Herodotus is not just concerned with events in-and-of-themselves, but with the causes of events. This is why after making his opening statement he immediately goes into a discussion of mythological abductions and explains that they were really just part of a long-standing war between East and West, of which the Persian Wars is but the most recent episode.

In terms of his reliance upon the Homeric tradition, this is why Herodotus is so long-winded about such seemingly trivial things as the history of Egypt. In Homer, especially the Iliad, when two warriors come together, they must often have a interview, of sorts, to determine who they are and what their history is. In that culture, Olympian curses have been meted out for less than justly slaying an enemy in a war that your great, great grandfather had made a pact with a hundred years ago. Such is the case for Glaucus and Diomedes (Il. vi.119-236). Upon coming together in battle in book six of the Iliad, Glaucus and Diomedes are smart enough to ask each other's parentage and history before they fight. When it is determined that their grandparents had been friends, they decide not to fight each other (though they turn a blind eye to the killing of their friends). They even exchange gifts to seal the deal.

This exchanging of ancestry is what Herodotus picks up on in his Histories. As he is going through the history of Persia, for example, he comes to the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses. Realizing that his hearers (readers) have little or no knowledge of Egypt, he proceeds to share the history of that great nation before allowing Cambyses to summarily dispense with it. This is simply Homeric in its literary style. Two warriors (this time on the national level) come together to fight. They share their ancestry (but, of course, Herodotus's audience knows their own history) and then proceed to fight.

Knowing this may not make Herodotus any easier to wade through, but it should give comfort that he wasn't just a rambling storyteller (as Thucydides accused). He did it on purpose.

Ebenezer and Ozymandias

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far the Lord has helped up." (1 Samuel 7:12)

Samuel takes the above action in the presence of the army of Israel immediately after the Lord has acted for his people. The people are worshiping their covenant God when the Philistines come to attack and God thunders from the sky and confuses the Philistine army. At that moment Samuel decides it is appropriate to mark the place with a special stone. This stone, called Ebenezer, marks the place that the Lord helped. It is a constant reminder for all generations of the power of God to save to the uttermost. But, like the sacraments, it is not just a reminder of what has happened, it is a testament to what will be done as well. Thus far the Lord has helped us does not imply that he will help no longer. Driving from Greenville to Asheville one changes from I-85 to I-26. One might remark upon changing roads that thus far the interstate road system has helped us get to our destination. It would be foolish to suggest that the roads will fail to continue their helpfulness. It is not the nature of the roads. In like manner, Samuel makes a testament to how God's faithfulness will continue and the monument is meant to show that faithfulness in the past with a view toward the future.

One might compare this with Shelley's famous poem, Ozymandias. In Ozymandias a monument is also present, yet this monument is to the power of man and pride. The traveller tells of "two vast and trunkless legs of stone" standing in the desert with "a shattered visage" lying nearby. The pedestal proclaimed, in the fashion of Near Eastern kings of old, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" The traveller then describes "nothing beside remains" and "The lone and level sands stretch far away."

How different are these two monuments and markers? One points to human power and human pride the other to the power and fidelity of the triune God. One is still standing, if not in fact, in the hearts of those who read and understand the Scriptures. One stands only as a shattered testament to the lack of human power and the worthlessness of human pride.

Set up Ebenezers in your life to remember that the Lord has protected till now and will protect henceforth.

Harry Potter and the Rules

"Yes, but ... they wouldn't do anything against the law to get gold."
"Wouldn't they?" said Ron, looking skeptical. "I dunno .. they don't exactly mind breaking rule, do they?"
"Yes, but this is the law," said Hermione, looking scared. "This isn't some silly school rule .... They'll get a lot more than detention for blackmail! Ron ... maybe you'd better tell Percy...."
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 568-569.
I find it very interesting that the antithesis being set up here is between rules which count (the law) and rules which don't (silly school rules). Rather than pointing out that rules like school rules and house rules are to prepare children to accept the legitimacy and authority of state rules, we have accepted a dichotomy that says rules at home and school are OK to break, so long as sometime, somewhere, children learn the difference between the ones that matter and the ones that don't. But where are children supposed to learn this difference, as if it existed, if not at home and at school. Why are we surprised when students who break rules at home and school continue their rule breaking after they have left home and school? We have never taught them not to!

Good Vampires, Twilight, and Metaphor Morphing

Can there be such a thing as a good vampire? I am not sure I have an answer to this but Doug Wilson is convinced that there cannot be a good vampire. To him it is a clear example of metaphor morphing "trying to overturn the meaning of symbols that have served our people well for centuries" (Vampires with Self-Control). This is, itself an example of "moving the ancient landmarks" which is warned against in Deuteronomy 19:14. To prove this, Wilson embarked on a commitment to read Twilight and blog his way through the book. His entries can be found at the Credenda/Agenda site, here. I have really enjoyed them. They have been eye-opening in a number of ways. I have decided, partly because of Wilson's decision to read some of the literature my students are reading and that my own kids will soon want to read. I read the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books not long ago and am in year four of Harry Potter. I had watched the movies, but not read the books. I had impressions of the stories and their dangers, but nothing hard to back it up with. I realized that the instant I said "Well I haven't actually read the books, but..." my credibility to critique the books would be gone. I don't think we necessarily have to read to watch everything to critique it (Prov. 24:30-34) but sometimes it can be useful to critique with hard facts. I felt that to be the case here.

Some observations on Percy Jackson

I will be brief. While waiting for my wife to finish The Chestnut King, I buzzed my way through the five volumes of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The movie had recently been released and I though I'd like to know the story before going to see it. Needless to say, I needn't have bothered. The movie was only barely related to the book. But I digress.
Rick Riordan is very clever. He has a fun way of bringing Greek myths into modernity and maintaining some of their unity. Medusa shows up as the owner of a yard statue emporium and greasy spoon diner outside of New York City. The gods have traded their togas for clothing that befits their personalities in the modern world. Poseidon, for example, is wearing Bermuda shorts, flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt while Zeus is in a business suit.
The story, through all five books, is fun. But that doesn't make it good. The writing lacks character and quality. I had a hard time deciding if I was reading bad writing or if Riordan was trying extra hard to make it sound like the first-person narrative of a twelve-sixteen year old boy.
I have a host of other observations, but no time to write them. This will have to do for now.

The Death of Books and the Continuity of Stories in Modernity

I have been turning something over in my mind recently. From creation until around 400 BC (different date for different regions) stories took the form of oral tradition. Think about the Epic of Gilgamesh or The Iliad. I know that oral tradition left the culture earlier in some places (Babylon) and later in others (Britain), but the gist is sound I think. There is always overlap in a paradigm shift. Thomas Kuhn and Neil Postman have discussed this in science and technology. I am combining their discussions in a cultural way.
From 400 BC until AD 1940, stories took the form of written documents. From scrolls to books, written stories were the way people got their stories. From Herodotus to Rudyard Kipling, the written narrative was the place to find stories. But another paradigm shift took place around the 1940's that unseated the written narrative as the dominant means of story communication. I mean film, of course, the visual narrative.
From the 1940's onward, we have been increasingly getting our cultural stories from visual narratives. It is no longer the norm for people to rush to the bookstore when a new novel is published, unless that new novel is a J.K. Rowling fantasy narrative or a Stephanie Meyer vampire bit. But it is quickly becoming the norm for the season premier of Lost to unseat even the President's State of the Union Address. The competition is over. Visual narratives have won.
We are still in the vast overlap of this shift, so you can still get written narratives of stories. You can even get written forms of movies and television programs. But this will eventually happen less and less, I think. The more dominant trend is for written narratives to be transformed into visual narratives.
So what does this mean for those of us who want to know the stories of our generation? Well, it depends on whether those stories are worth knowing. I found the overall story of the X-Files to be very good. thoroughly enjoyed Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. I have liked most of the stories of the Star Trek manifestations. I was captivated by Alias, until it self-destructed (same problem with the Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean movies). I am currently following Lost and sometimes the Mentalist.
Like literature, we go with what intrigues us and we pick up trivia about the rest. The commercials and previews are about all I need to know about Desperate Housewives, probably more than I need to know. Just like you pick up a book and read its dust jacket, or over time get to have a feel for certain genres, we determine what we watch as well. Just because it is a book, doesn't mean you have to read it. Just because it in the theaters doesn't mean you have to watch it.

Calling for Truth, again

I have been away for far too long and am just getting back into the swing of blogging. One thing I missed while I was away was another appearance on Dr. Paul Dean's Calling for Truth radio program. My thanks go out to another board member who set this up. I had a lot of fun doing it. I could imagine doing something like that professionally.
You can listen to / or download the program here.

On the Nightstand

The Landmark Thucydides


The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories


Christianity and Liberalism


Jesus: Made in America

The Man Who Would Be King

Just finished reading The Man Who Would Be King (hereafter, MWWBK), by Rudyard Kipling. I enjoy Kipling, though I know others do not. I get his imperialism, I think. MWWBK is a short story, though I didn't realize this at first. The volume I have, published by Oxford World Classics, gave me access to a lot of Kipling short stories in the genre.
MWWBK is about a journalist who, by chance, meets a man on the train. The man on the train asks the journalist to deliver a message for him to another man on another train. The journalist decides to do this and then promptly reports both men for con-artists (which they are). Some time later they both show up at the newspaper printer and ask the journalist to hear their plan for the domination of some mysterious kingdom in the hills of Afghanistan. He gives them some assistance and off they go. Two years later one of them shows up and tells the journalist their story. This is the real meat of the story.
The delivery is fun and energetic. I won't spoil the real story, but instead direct you to read it yourself. Enjoy!

Listening

Ludovico Einaudi - Nightbook












Sumner McKane - Night Blooming Cereus

100 Cupboards

About two years ago, while at the ACCS conference in Atlanta, I discovered that Doug Wilson's son, Nathan, had been doing some writing. He had published two cute books on Noah's flood and Adam's fall at that time and was prepping for his first big release (as in Random House), Leepike Ridge. I picked up the two small books and brought them home. We enjoyed them. The next year for Christmas I ordered Leepike Ridge from Amazon for my son. He read it and enjoyed it, so did my wife. Then I heard about 100 Cupboards. I ordered it too. My son read it, but got a little freaked out while reading it. My wife read it, and understood why James had been a little tense about it. I still didn't get around to it. I had too many other things to be reading and preparing for. So I went on about my merry way. Then I heard that there was a second volume to the 100 Cupboards, Dandelion Fire. And a third to be released eventually. I decided to read 100 Cupboards.
That was one of the best reads I have done in a long while. Over the summer, I had made it my mission to read what James would read this year, so I would be able to talk with him about it. So I had read some children's literature in the recent past. But Wilson's prose is fantastic. Far better than anything I had read recently.
The story is really good too. What happens when a twelve year old boy goes to live with his aunt and uncle in Kansas because his parents are taken hostage while on a South American bicycle expedition? Well, obviously he discovers that there are magic cupboards in the attic where he is sleeping and accidentally wakes up a witch. This is a story that was clearly the product of a mind steeped in some of the best writing of the world. Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, O'Connor all find voice here.
One of the most fun things about the book though is its relationship to modern fiction. At first glance, it seems very like Harry Potter or other similar books. However, there are differences that need to be noted. In Harry Potter, as in many books today, the protagonists make really bad decisions, deceive others and go against authority figures. Much of these things happen to Henry York as well. The difference is in modern fiction, this behavior is almost always praised implicity or explicitly. What I mean is, either the characters are victorious in their tasks because they lie, cheat, or otherwise break the rules (hence implicitly teaching that breaking the rules is often a good thing) or they are outright told that by someone else in the book ("If you hadn't stolen the thing no one is supposed to touch and gone where no is allowed to go and told these lies to us, the world would have ended. Way to go!"). In Wilson's hands, these actions take place. Henry and his cousin Henrietta deceive their authorities (uncle or dad), sneak around when they aren't supposed to, and hide information from others so they can do something cool. But this book makes it very clear that if they had told Uncle Frank what was going on, things could have been much better. Henry is not rewarded for doing bad. This is what makes Wilson's book different from other books I've seen recently.
I think this is a worldview difference. Wilson is a Christian and writes like a Christian. That doesn't mean someone is saved in the book or evangelized. It means that the events of the book take place in a world governed by biblical values and biblical reality.
I have read the second book too, and am beginning the third. More to come.