The Titanic (April 15, 1912)

It is funny to me how much of my love of history actually was spawned by Heavy Metal music. I learned of Coleridge's great poem, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, from the Iron Maiden song of the same name. My interest in the Titanic actually came through a song by the band Metal Church who did a song called Rest in Pieces (April 15, 1912) about the Titanic.
Today marks the 96th anniversary of the sinking of the poor ship that was supposed to be unsinkable. I remember watching James Cameron's Marxist film about the boat and hating all the social commentary and the ridiculous love story, but loving the imagery of the ship and the collision and sinking of the boat.
I also listened relatively recently to George Grant's stunning lecture "Why the Scots?" from his Modernity lectures done by Gileskirk. In it he explained that the men who staffed the boat had a solid grounding in the legend and history of seamanship inherited from Scotland. The rule of the sea, "Women and children first" was a lived commitment to them. How utterly ridiculous such a notion would sound to us today. I teach young girls who are offended when chivalry rears its head in the school. They feel looked down upon, not elevated. How backwards we have become. Over 1,500 people died in the wee hours of the morning.
This post feels a little rambled to me, but I just wanted to commemorate the Titanic today. There are very few times in history where chivalry and Christian virtue are able to show themselves so objectively as on the deck of the Titanic as men watched their beloved wives and children float to safety while they sunk into the icy Atlantic ocean.

Recession, Depression, and our Stimulus Package.

I was listening to Dr. George Grant's Gileskirk lecture on the Great Depression the other day (the 2001 edition, available from WordMP3.com) and was struck by his list of the steps taken by the Federal government to avoid or stave off depression.
According to Grant, first the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply in the US 62 times from 1920 to 1929. When the inflation caused a downturn in the market, Hoover tried some interference strategies to hold off the stock market crash. This was designed to prop up the market. It resulted in a massive loss of confidence in the market and sped up the depression instead of thwarting it. In 1931 Hoover launched a massive spending program to try to "outspend" the depression. Finally, when all this caught up with the treasury, Hoover had to put a very large tax hike in place to stop the bleeding. This obviously did not help, as we all know from our parents, grandparents, and the history books.
I wonder how much inflation has been happening in the last decade. The reason this concerns me is that our current stimulus package reminds me an awful lot of Hoover's spending program to try to revitalize the economy in the 1930's.
We apparently learned nothing from the Great Depression. But then, when do we?

Liberty in Livy

Titus Livius (59 BC - AD 17), perhaps most famous for his history of Rome is a must-read for the student of ancient history. His treatment of the stories of the kings of Rome and the beginning of the republic is really entertaining reading. I teach it every year to Antiquity students.
At the beginning of book two, he has a short discourse on the nature of liberty that is invaluable to the modern mind. Livy exclaims that the preceding 244 years of Roman history (years spent under kings) were necessary to prepare men for liberty. Liberty, the essential freeness of men, is not to be understood as something that can granted by anyone, it must be earned. Livy understands that had the Romans achieved the liberty of self-government earlier, it would have been disastrous. Men need to learn how to be free before they can be free.
The root of liberty in the state, is liberty in the individual. However, the examples that Livy uses to showcase that prove that he understands liberty in the individual to refer to self-discipline rather than political freedom. A self-controlled man is a man in possession of liberty. Only a man who knows how to control himself is able to choose the right thing and avoid the wrong thing. Only such a man is truly free and at liberty.
Our nation was founded by self-disciplined men of great character. If we want to know what is wrong with our country today, we need only look at the level of self control in our elected officials. If our nation's leaders cannot control themselves, and do not place a high premium on such a virtue (by example), how can we expect the people to cultivate this virtue in themselves.? It does not appear to be the way to get ahead.
Livy understood better. May we cultivate self-discipline and liberty in our own lives that we may take back the culture that has ignored this basic Christian virtue for far too long.

Oedipus and his Sin

I love Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex (Tyrannus in Greek). It is the best constructed play I have ever read. It is like an steel trap. It suck you in to where you almost feel sorry for poor Oedipus for everything that he is going through in his life. Even though Sophocles expects us to know the backstory-that Oedipus did kill hsi father and marry his mother-we still feel like he is right to be mad at Tireseias and Creon (well, mayboe more Tireseias than Creon, but still). Then the whole edifice of the play begins to crumble and we are left near the end with the unmistakable conclusion that Oedipus has done everything he is said to have done. He even called down curses upon himself. We are left feeling that life just isn't fair. Poor Oedipus had no choice. He could not have foreseen this, not in a million years. He truly is the tragic hero. His punishment is way more than his pitiful little sin (hubris) deserves. At least that is what Sophocles wants us to be left with. Or does he?
At the point where Oedipus is left with no other conclusion than the inevitable admission of total guilt, he fails the test. He gouges his eyes out and inflicts a self-exile from Thebes. Now we are supposed to say to ourselves, "See how bad he feels about all of this. He can't bear to look at anythign beautiful again and refuses to allow his guilt to afflict the city he loves any longer. What a great guy. He has totally turned around and is no longer prideful." But the exact opposite is true. He has not repented of his sin, he has run from it. He has not dealt with his sin, he has blinded himself to it. He does not leave Thebes for Thebes' sake but for his. He does not blind himself for his children's sake, but for his. Compare Oedipus to two different Old Testament fiugures in slightly similar situations.
Take David. When David was shown his sin by Nathan his reaction was to decalre his own guilt and agree with God's judgment on his sin (2 Sam. 12:13). David does not gouge out his eyes or exile himself from his own people. Listen to the words of David as he contemplates his own sin. "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners shall be converted to You." (Psalm 51:12-13)
David longs to be restored to his place of leadership that he might teach and instruct others how to avoid sin. He does not want to run away from sin. He wants to deal with it at its root.
Another interesting comparison deals with the issue of Oedipus' complicity in his own downfall. Students and even authors sometimes argue that there was nothing Oedipus could have done to avoid the situation that happened. Really! Did he have to murder that man on the road to Thebes? Whether he knew it was his father or not, he still acted sinfully. In this way Oedipus walked headlong into the fulfillment of his own prophecy. Compare this to Abraham who also acted foolishly in trying to bring about the promise fo God. When God promised Abraham that he would have great blessing though his decendents, Abraham looked around and said to himself, "I have no children. I'd better help God out of this mess and get some children." So he had a child by Hagar. But God was not naive or misinformed about the situation. He intended Isaac to be the child of promise, not Abraham's substitute for God's blessing. Yet, Abaraham intercedes and procures blessing for Ishmael and submits to God's will in this as well, recognizing and repenting of his actions. Oedipus never really repents of his actions that brought about the fulfillment of prophecy. He blinds himself and exiles himself, rather than face his own penalty for the murder of his father.
It is fascinating to see how pagans deal with sin, even if they know it is sin. They do not deal with is, but set it aside and hope the best will come of a bad situation. It is not to be with us. We should be like David and rejoice in being shown our sin that we might deal with it and mortify it in ourselves.

The Ides of March

I can't believe I let the 15th of March slip by without a little tribute to Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was murdered by the Senate on the 15th of March in 44 BC so that he would not attain to the status of king or empoeror in the Roman State. This murder set off a chain of events that led directly to that very thing taking place. Octavius Caesar, Julius' adopted grand-nephew was made the sole ruler of the Roman world in 27 BC. Why did Julius Caesar die?
The whole saga has been so immortalized by Shakespeare that we can hardly think of the death without dear Brutus and Caesar's dying words "Et tu, Brute." Yet in all liklihood this phrase was never uttered (that's OK though, Washington never cut down a cherry tree either). The sentiment is the same. Caesar died because of what others were afraid of. Caesar was simply about twenty years ahead of his time. He was unable to grasp what his grand-nephew took hold of and weilded with expert skill, the people of Rome. Caesar thought he could man-handle the people. Augustus knew they had to be worked like clay. Caesar thought he could do whatever he wanted to and with the Senate. Augustus knew he had to make them think they needed him. In the end, Caesar died because he wanted too much, too fast.
Augustus was successful because he handled the situation with far more prudence and care.
We are all political playthings, at least it feels that way. As long as the leaders give us rebate stimulus packages, we won't revolt. Actually we would eb unlikely to revolt even if they didn't give us stimulus packages. We are way too lazy for anything as difficult and trying as a revolt.

Satire

Jonathan Swift defined satire as “a sort of glass [a mirror] wherein beholders do generally discover everyone’s face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so many are offended with it.”[1] The famous children’s story, The Emperor’s New Clothes, may well help illustrate what Swift meant. In the story, only the child who was not sucked in by the ruse of the traveling con artists was willing to admit that the emperor was naked. Swift’s definition of satire says that those who are part of the satire will likely not see it as satire and will find nothing offensive about it. The rest, like the child in the story, will find it utterly amusing that others have been so blinded as to believe that the emperor is wearing new clothes when he, in fact, is naked.

The satirist is an upholder of standards, moral and otherwise. He points to a given situation and then draws such an aberrant analogy that many will not even notice the comparison. In A Modest Proposal, Swift maintained that English landlords have already devoured the adults of Ireland, thus they might as well feed on the children as well. He was making a gross analogy between the economic exploitation of the Irish and the supposed remedy to the hunger that was rampant in Ireland at the time. To prove his point, many thought he was being serious and decried the work as “written in bad taste.”

Satire is thus called an attack on “social and moral evils by means of humor.”[2] Veith maintains, rightly, that all satire requires a presupposed standard for moral action. Whatever is held up against this standard is found lacking. In satire, humor is often used to draw attention to the fact that the standard has not been reached or has been transgressed in some obvious way. Swift’s picturing the politician’s of Lilliput dancing and jumping over colored ropes to gain positions in the government is a very humorous satire on the methods of choosing ministers based on party politics rather than on merits.

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[1] Quoted in The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, ed. J.A. Cuddon (New York: Penguin, 1999), 780.

[2] Gene Edward Veith, Jr, Reading Between the Lines (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), 111.

Virtue in Gawain

I am not that good at the verse version of Gawain. I like the prose version published by Dover. When I was reading this recently, I was struck by something interesting. When we look at the character of Gawain we are supposed to see virtue in his character. The problem is, we don't, at least not totally. Take the scene where the lord has gone hunting on the first day and left Gawain sleeping. Gawain wakes to find the wife of the lord, a woman, we are told in another place, that was “fairer even that Guinevere” (19) entering into his room. We are told that Gawain is “shamed” by the mere fact that the woman is entering his room while he is still in bed. Why is this the case? Because of his understanding of virtue.
We can spend countless hours looking up definitions for virtue. We can read many authors, including Marcus Aurelius and Augustine and still not come to a really helpful idea of virtue. That is because virtue, like faith and love, is primarily identified through actions. How does virtue look? This is the question that Gawain helps us with at this point in the story.
Gawain is shamed when the lady enters his room because he knows how it will look. It really doesn’t matter whether anything actually takes place between the two that is inappropriate. The very fact that she has come into his room is inappropriate. Gawain understands the nature of virtue to that extent. We would do well to learn this from him. There are situation and things that are simply inappropriate for us. The Bible warns us to “abstain from every kind of evil” (1 Thess. 5:22).
We put ourselves in and tolerate inappropriate situations all the time. Gentlemen should guard their speech around young ladies. There are things that may be appropriate for men to discuss in certain contexts by themselves, but should never be mentioned or discussed around young ladies. This is not being sexist; it is recognizing the biblical category of discretion; something we’ll address with the ladies as well.
Proverbs 2:10-12 tells us that “discretion will guard you ... from the man who speaks perverse things.” Here an antithesis is set between the man who has discretion and the man who speaks perverse things. The “perverse things” are things that should not be mentioned in mixed company. This can just as easily be said to the young ladies. There are things you should not mention in the company of young men either. Young ladies that lack discretion are likened to a pig with a gold ring in its snout in Proverbs 11:22.
Discretion is a sensitive issue but is very important for us culturally because our culture lacks so much discretion. The Greek concept of “obscene” (lit. off-scene) referred to an action that should not be witnessed. Oedipus gouges his eyes out and Jocasta hangs herself off scene because these actions are inappropriate for audiences. Our culture doesn’t think a film has been worth its ticket price if someone doesn’t die violently and as realistically as possible. And television is following the lead quickly. Series’ like CSI and House M.D. are doing their best to be gruesome with the death scenes. They and other series like Law and Order: SVU are crossing the line on inappropriate content for their stories all the time. Even the news programs are discussing this subject matter with regularity, although they tend to be more discrete in the details.
Returning to our text, we quickly see that Gawain’s shame does not keep him from getting entwined in further indiscretion with the lady. He asks her to give him a minute to get dressed before they talk, but does not hasten to avoid the situation when she refuses. He merely “jests” and pretends that nothing inappropriate is taking place. We may say that he stays in bed because he is not dressed and does not want to flee from her because she will see him in this state if he does. We can make immediate application here to the story of Joseph in Gen. 39:12. There we see that Joseph thought it more appropriate to flee naked than spend another moment with Potiphar’s wife. Here is where we get a sense of allowing one virtue to be elevated above another thus causing both to suffer. Gawain holds modesty as a virtue, as well he should, but not at the expense of propriety. He should not have remained in that room with the lady since she refused to leave and let him get dressed before talking.
We next see that a bad situation gets worse. Throughout the three days of hunting, Gawain allows her to kiss him each day. Gawain remains true to his covenant with the lord and gives the kisses each evening as he is bound to do, but never acknowledges where he received them from. Gawain knows that he has entertained indiscretion with the lady every day, talking about subjects such as love. It is interesting to note that as a guest, Gawain owed a certain amount of obedience to the lord and lady, as he acknowledges each day when she sits and talks with him. He is protecting his honor, in this sense. However, he is doing so in a way that elevates honor above truth and morality. This is similar to a situation we might find ourselves in. Your buddies dare you to throw a brick through an old ladies window. Knowing you should not, you refuse. Immediately they call you “chicken.” You decide that defending your bravery is more important than respecting another’s property and you launch the brick. You have just succeeded in throwing your worldview out of balance. Gawain has this problem and it is presented here for our instruction.
Virtues cannot contradict each other. If we elevate one virtue over the others we throw the balance out of our ethics.

Pessimism and the Twentieth Century

My modernity class is reading All Quiet on the Western Front. It is a great novel and there are lots of lessons to learn from it. However, what they have been struck by is the level of realism in dealing with war details. They noted how pessimistic Remarque was about the war and any possibility of a normal life afterwards. We quickly set Remarque side by side with other writers who lived through the war. Similar situations came out with respect to people like Hemingway. However we looked as well at authors who contrasted the pessimism of Remarque.
J.R.R. Tolkien, who fought in the war was able to come out of it and write stories of redemption with honor and duty as thematic elements. Rudyard Kipling wrote poetry and fiction that expresses a constant belief in the Christian Ideal rather than the postmodern vortex of chaos. C.S. Lewis also fought in the war and still wrote such passionate novels as the Chronicles of Narnia, which warn, but do not despise, the developments of the 20th century.
What separates these writes? What made the Lost Generation lost? I guided my students to understand that the difference was a fully rational Christian worldview and ethic that understood that all things happen to the glory of an almighty God and that there is no room for pessimism in His universe. Tolkien, Lewis, and Kipling (among others) had this confidence in God. Hemingway and Remarque (among scores of others) did not have this confidence.

The Cross and Classical Education

While the idea of the antithesis makes a Christian education possible, it is really the fact of the cross that makes a classical education meaningful. The content of a classical education is not a Christian phenomenon. It is something that has existed in some form since the 5^th century BC. The Greeks had classical educations in terms of the content that they studied. The Romans and Egyptians had classical educations in the same sense. What makes the content of a classical education meaningful in our lives is the cross.

One of the most important and interesting issues hit dead on by our approach to history and literature is the extent to which we show the complete and total folly of pagan antiquity. We call it a total and complete folly because the civilizations of pagan antiquity like Egypt, Greece, and to some extent Rome, were the only civilizations where it is possible to see a developed worldview completely void of God’s revelation. Peter Leithart says, “Reading Greek and Roman literature … highlights the difference between a world formed by polytheism and a world that worships the One Living God” (Leithart, 20). The best that the world can come up with without Christ and without God is presented for our amusement and instruction in these ancient civilizations. What do we find?

Ultimately we find chaos. Hesiod, the Greek poet of the seventh century before Christ describes the creation of the world in his work, Theogeny, by beginning with the principle of chaos. “Chaos was first of all” sings Hesiod (Hes. Theog.,116). Out of chaos came all the attempts at rationalization that the Greeks could muster. The Sumerians had a similar experience. When we look at the parallel flood narrative of The Epic of Gilgamesh we find that rather than an appeal to justice for sin committed by man, the reason for destroying the world by flood among the Sumerian gods is that “the uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel” (108). We find that everything that comes after is ultimately to be understood in terms of chaos. When the storm blows up on the sea and washes the boats of men away, it must be the result of Poseidon who was angry with someone for something. When the lightning crashes in the night, Zeus must be angry with someone for something. One of the legends preceding the Troy narratives tells that when encamped at Aulis, Agamemnon and his fleet were not allowed to leave. The goddess Artemis desired revenge on Agamemnon because he had hunted in a forest sacred to her and killed a sacred deer. The penalty was the death of his first-born daughter, Iphigenia. How and where Artemis had made the restriction of hunting clear is not expressed and one looks in vain for that kind of revelation in ancient literature. No one really knows what the gods expected or how to gain their favor. They have not revealed their will to anyone.

Beyond this is the character and actions of the gods and goddesses in ancient literature. The gods are not gods in the sense that we think of them. They are not all-powerful beings who can do whatever they want. They are bound in certain areas. For instance, even Zeus cannot transgress the decree of Fate when the wall of the Achaians is penetrated by the Trojans (cf. Hom. Il. xiv.52 – 4). Nor is Zeus free to change the fate of Patroclus in the Iliad (cf. Hom. Il., xvi.250-52). The gods bicker and fight among each other (cf. Hom. Il. xx.54-5), they deceive each other (cf. Hom. Il. xiv.159 – 360), they are petty and arbitrary. There is no sense of justice among them. One day they may say one thing, and the next it is forgotten. Achilles puts the pagan worldview most bluntly when he declares:

Such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate mortals,

that we live in unhappiness, but the gods themselves have no sorrows.

There are two urns that stand on the door-sill of Zeus. They are unlike

for the gifts they bestow: an urn of evils, an urn of blessings.

If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows them

on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil, again in good fortune.

But when Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows, he makes a failure

of man, and the evil hunger drives him over the shining

earth, and he wanders respected neither of gods nor mortals.

Il. xxiv.525-33

There is never goodness alone from the pagan worldview, only evil or, at best, evil mixed with blessings. This is the worldview of the ancient world. This shows us just a little of what Christ came to change on the cross.

The cross is a marker in history. From that point forward, in time and space, the pagan cultures were no longer held in bondage to Satan and paganism. John expresses this function of the cross in the book of Revelation when he speaks of Satan being bound “so that he should deceive the nations no more” (Rev. 20:3). The cross makes it so that the God of Scripture can no longer be ignored by human history. When Paul is speaking before the philosophers in Athens he tells them that they have been living in “times of ignorance” that God has “overlooked” but “now commands all men everywhere to repent” because of the cross (Acts. 17:30).

Ignorance and superstition must give way to worship of the true God. This is also Paul’s point in Athens. It is as he sees the Greek monuments of worship that he is compelled to address them concerning their paganism and ignorance. He does not deny their religiosity or sincerity in what they conceive to be objects of worship, he merely tells them they are seriously mistaken about the nature of the universe and their place in it. He redirects their pagan conceptions of god and begins to set them aright. “God, who made the world and everything in it … does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is he worshipped with men’s hands…. And he has made from one blood every nation of men … so that they should seek the Lord” (Acts. 17:25-27).

The cross points us to God just as the Law points us to Christ. The cross invades our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of the world around us. It forces us to confront our most treasured presuppositions and demands that we justify them by the cross. The cross makes possible classical education because it demands that all history, all facts, all knowledge be seen through the giver and maker of all things. In the ancient world, education was a method of getting ahead, learning a skill that would provide work. In the shadow of the cross education, classical education, is instruction in the proper worship of the living God of creation.

Nostalgia Stinks

I was a victim of nostalgia Sunday evening. I was raised in a slightly more innocent time regarding televisiol (which is to say the writers of TV and film wanted to say things but were prevented at that time, so they used more innuendo than I remember) and remember the TV show Knight Rider with David Hasselhoff. Well, somebody decided to recreate that episode of Americana and emotionally ensnare many people like myself. I saw commercials for the show and thought, "Wow, I wonder what new techniques they will use to make it even better." Boy was I a sucker!
In the first few moments of the show, a female FBI agent (who becomes crucial to the show a little later on) is seen leaving an overnight encounter with another woman (the lesbianism does not become crucial to the plot in any way) and the new driver of KITT (the car) is seen waking up to multiple female partners in his bed (also not incredibly crucial to the plot of the show). Why was this necessary? It wasn't. Why was it done? Because it can be.
I won't even get started on how we can't come up with our own shows anymore, we have to rob from the seventies, eightes, and even some fo the nineties to cme up with deent sitcoms or television dramas. Sure we pump it up with effects and sex and violence, but that doesn't make it any better.
Nostalgia is an emotion that ties us to a past event. It is stronger than mere memory. I think it is memory with excessive good feelings. All this is very technical, I know. I think we are getting to the point where nostalgia is under regular attack by advetisers and media groups. They want us to feel the way we felt when we were 14 or 21 so we will take this vacation or buy this toy for our kids. It has worked on me to some extent. I buy transformers for my kids even though they aren't as well made as when I got the (there are even some of mine from childhood stilla round and they still outlast the new ones). And, of course, I wasted time Sunday evening watching the new and improved Knight Rider.
We have to fight against this kind of attack and it is hard. I think I'll pick up a Chesterton book next Sunday evening instead.