Mike I have read a lot of what you have written but this piece is particularly good. I love the observation of Descartes!
It seems to me that what is practiced as “Christianity” in white evangelical churches is something categorically different from the Christ in the gospels. It is a blend of Calvin and white racism, that celebrates wealth as “god given” and maintains followers are separate (and above) non-followers in the eyes of god.
This was much the same message presented on Sunday by Pope Leo when he cited actual words of scripture to forcefully state that God rejects the prayers of those who wage war, saying: "Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15)."
While the Pope did not mention any leaders by name, many have suggested it was a direct rebuttal to Hegseth offering a prayer that week for God to deliver great violence on America's enemies who deserve it, demonstrating exactly the sort of fake Christianity that is based solely on accepting Christ and then wait for Him to do the work. And if there is a fake Christian that embodies the evils of the fake Christianity more than Erickson (himself a fine choice), it is most certainly Pete Hegseth.
Amen. I agree that the derailment of Christianity is hard to watch as it is being molded into the opposite of what it says. Christianity, at its base - Sermon on the Mount - is very hard. It is not a "Get Out of Jail Free" kind of religion.
Thomas Jefferson thought that the philosophy of Jesus was important, but his enlightened self couldn’t get on board with all the miracles and other violations of physical laws reported in the Bible. So he took a razor blade and removed all the bits of the Bible that directly quoted Jesus. And binned the rest. He compiled those pages and it became The Jefferson Bible. A very compelling read if you want to truly understand what Jesus stood for. If you read it you’ll end up knowing more about what Christianity should be than most self professed Christians do.
As a scholar of Mr. Jefferson, I am of course familiar with the efforts of our Founder in this direction. I might suggest that I have taken my own eye to the Gospels and written my thoughts, not downstream but alongside that of our founding thinker.
The debate about the meaning of the life of Jesus goes back to antiquity and the debate between Augustine and Pelagius. Augustine invented the concept of original sin - that all of humanity inherits the sin of Adam and that human life in the flesh is utterly corrupt, needing the redeeming sacrifice of a Savior and the grace of God. Humanity cannot save itself through good works. Pelagius, reading the same Scriptures, did not accept this. He argued that everyone is born innocent and therefore, in principle, capable of leading a good and sinless life, however rare that might be, by following the teachings and example of Jesus. Pelagius was deemed the great heretic of the early Church. But your dive into the Gospels suggests that Pelagius may be right. Jesus was not a magical being but a demanding teacher, asking much of his followers. The version of Christianity ascendant today - salvation through believing the right things and the anticipation if grace, is, as Erickson says, rather simple and, in its way easy. But by de-emphasizing good works, it does create a problem that Pelagius foresaw. If all of humanity is
mired in sin and our salvation is through grace alone, why try to live a good life?
The well-meaning, god-fearing people holding "John 3:16" signs in the end zone of football games always struck me as the most American Americans. Kick a field goal, score a touchdown, and believe that Jesus was God, and you too shall be saved.
Salvation is simple, as long as you don't read the rest of the Bible.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
Erick Erickson is a fruit who is a descendent of a long line of fruits going back to the authors of the Gospels and to Jesus (or, perhaps, to the Pharisees). If you truly believe that by their fruits you shall know them, then why would you believe that what Erickson practices is not Christianity but that the thing that arose two millenia ago is, even as it evolved - with modification as these things do -- through the production of fruit.
Erickson undoubtedly believes that Mathew's Jesus was speaking to him in 5:10-12 (NIV):
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Undoubtedly, I'm cherry-picking (there's fruit again). But that's how I always feel when people true to prove a point by selective quotation from the Bible.
I am summarizing an article from Medium Daily Digest titled “Chain Reaction: 40-day countdown to a new Middle East.” The Middle East, as referred to here, includes six oil-producing countries: Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. For orientation, all are located along the Persian Gulf; one, Bahrain, is an island, and Qatar is a peninsula. Before oil was discovered, these were desert states known for their pearl industry. After oil was found in these countries in 1927, major oil companies from America, England, and Germany set up oil wells. Their wealth depends on their oil production and sales.
The article presents the following reality: for the first time in history, Middle Eastern oil/gas production is being shut down because there is no place to store it. The GCC, the Gulf Co-Operative Council of these six countries, because of the war between Iran / Israel, and the USA, has closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. These countries have storage facilities for oil to be shipped to global markets. The GCC has an average of 30 or 60 days' worth of storage, and as of now, the closure has been 23 days. If these countries cannot sell the products that have sustained their economies, they will exert massive pressure to end this blockade. Maintaining this straight, being open to trade has a long history dating back to the signing of the Perpetual Maritime Truce in 1853.
Iran is exerting war pressure upon our country by closing this strait, and this, with the number of rockets and drones they have, is going to redefine war today. Combine this with the Yemeni Houthis’ entering this war by firing into Israel, and they could disrupt shipping in the Red Sea, adding complications to the war that have not been anticipated by Trump when he attacked Iran. Trump will lose this war and will have to bargain with Iran to end this war.
As envisioned by the most utopian thinkers, Christianity is a recipe for disaster — because we aren’t in a utopia but the real world. Slowly it’s being refined is the traditional view. But sometimes that’s hard to see given retrograde philosophs like the Ayatollahs or totalitarians in Russia and China. And closer by should it come to that, Heaven forfend. I think the Jewish philosophy makes more sense. Anyone who isn’t completely indigent should give 10% to communal concerns. The very wealthy may give up to half though the more averagely “well off” should limit themselves to 20-33%, lest they impoverish themselves. Maimonides said the priority for one’s beneficence should be the poor of one’s family and then of one’s town and so on down a hierarchy. This formula is practical and do-able and sensible. Even the golden rule — to love your neighbor as yourself (first formulated in Leviticus) was revised by Hillel to “what is hateful to you, don’t do to others.” Many tomes have been written on why the negative formulation — to oversimplify, because it’s practical and doable and sensible to the average understandings. However, there is another corollary not often discussed, perhaps because it is politically incorrect where everyone is striving for utopian kumbaya. Who is your neighbor? Someone trying to kill you is not a neighbor to whom you owe any duty of care. Not to turn the other cheek, not to send food aid. Nonetheless most went along with trying to distinguish the arguably neighborly civilians who needed aid from the terrorists who were hoarding it. Some more extreme “Calvinist” types (who are unfortunately found in every religion and community) take this ability to exclude those not measuring up to neighbor status to an extreme of hypothesizing an “elect” that even Mother Theresa could not do enough to become … if no grace… whatever, I was never initiated into the mysteries of Calvinism though descended from a few with that namesake. Alas and I was related to several millionaires who left me nothing, and helped very little before that!
Inevitable quibble (cause, well, I'm prone to it): Galen Strawson strongly disagrees with your reading of Descartes. Strawson's reading is that by 'cognito' Descartes meant pretty much what you say he should have meant -- being consciously aware in the broadest sense, not 'thinking' as calculation. With Strawson not merely a prominent Oxford-trained philosopher, reading docs in their original languages, but the son of a prominent Oxford philosopher, I kinda bet he's reading Descartes accurately.
I want to be clear — I am not indicting Descartes as a man. I think him wrong, not wicked. But we do not live inside his intentions. We live inside his sentences. And his sentences produced a tradition that has spent four centuries trying to recover the observer it accidentally expelled. If Strawson is right that Descartes meant something closer to conscious awareness than computation, then the most generous reading available is that he expressed himself so badly he founded a tradition that contradicts his own intentions. That is not a defense of Descartes. It is an additional charge against his precision.
Well, we can always try to play games of charity with all arguments. Including my own. But one must take accountability for how they are interpreted. That Decartes might have felt different than what he meant is his failing. I shall not argue on his behalf. He is dead.
Mike, Strawson's point is not one of charity. It's that Descartes, in context, did not mean by 'cognito' what the English word 'think' means to you. What he meant has been lost in translation. As Google's AI sums it up just now:
"To him, if you are conscious of it happening in your head, it counts as 'thinking.' He wasn't just saying 'I calculate, therefore I am,' but rather 'I am a conscious being, therefore I am.'"
So it's not just Strawson reading Descartes that way. None of the references the AI cites are Strawson. Word meaning drifts over centuries. It's not a responsibility of the writer to anticipate the drift and write for the future rather than use words with the meanings they have in his own time.
Mike I have read a lot of what you have written but this piece is particularly good. I love the observation of Descartes!
It seems to me that what is practiced as “Christianity” in white evangelical churches is something categorically different from the Christ in the gospels. It is a blend of Calvin and white racism, that celebrates wealth as “god given” and maintains followers are separate (and above) non-followers in the eyes of god.
Yes, me too!
What " Descartes needed was not I think but I notice that I am thinking"
This was much the same message presented on Sunday by Pope Leo when he cited actual words of scripture to forcefully state that God rejects the prayers of those who wage war, saying: "Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15)."
While the Pope did not mention any leaders by name, many have suggested it was a direct rebuttal to Hegseth offering a prayer that week for God to deliver great violence on America's enemies who deserve it, demonstrating exactly the sort of fake Christianity that is based solely on accepting Christ and then wait for Him to do the work. And if there is a fake Christian that embodies the evils of the fake Christianity more than Erickson (himself a fine choice), it is most certainly Pete Hegseth.
Yes. I always bring up Matthew, specifically the Sermon on the Mount to the pro-forma anti-christ christians. They have completely lost the plot.
Amen. I agree that the derailment of Christianity is hard to watch as it is being molded into the opposite of what it says. Christianity, at its base - Sermon on the Mount - is very hard. It is not a "Get Out of Jail Free" kind of religion.
Thomas Jefferson thought that the philosophy of Jesus was important, but his enlightened self couldn’t get on board with all the miracles and other violations of physical laws reported in the Bible. So he took a razor blade and removed all the bits of the Bible that directly quoted Jesus. And binned the rest. He compiled those pages and it became The Jefferson Bible. A very compelling read if you want to truly understand what Jesus stood for. If you read it you’ll end up knowing more about what Christianity should be than most self professed Christians do.
As a scholar of Mr. Jefferson, I am of course familiar with the efforts of our Founder in this direction. I might suggest that I have taken my own eye to the Gospels and written my thoughts, not downstream but alongside that of our founding thinker.
Founding Thinker is a terrific turn of phrase.
The debate about the meaning of the life of Jesus goes back to antiquity and the debate between Augustine and Pelagius. Augustine invented the concept of original sin - that all of humanity inherits the sin of Adam and that human life in the flesh is utterly corrupt, needing the redeeming sacrifice of a Savior and the grace of God. Humanity cannot save itself through good works. Pelagius, reading the same Scriptures, did not accept this. He argued that everyone is born innocent and therefore, in principle, capable of leading a good and sinless life, however rare that might be, by following the teachings and example of Jesus. Pelagius was deemed the great heretic of the early Church. But your dive into the Gospels suggests that Pelagius may be right. Jesus was not a magical being but a demanding teacher, asking much of his followers. The version of Christianity ascendant today - salvation through believing the right things and the anticipation if grace, is, as Erickson says, rather simple and, in its way easy. But by de-emphasizing good works, it does create a problem that Pelagius foresaw. If all of humanity is
mired in sin and our salvation is through grace alone, why try to live a good life?
The well-meaning, god-fearing people holding "John 3:16" signs in the end zone of football games always struck me as the most American Americans. Kick a field goal, score a touchdown, and believe that Jesus was God, and you too shall be saved.
Salvation is simple, as long as you don't read the rest of the Bible.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
Erick Erickson is a fruit who is a descendent of a long line of fruits going back to the authors of the Gospels and to Jesus (or, perhaps, to the Pharisees). If you truly believe that by their fruits you shall know them, then why would you believe that what Erickson practices is not Christianity but that the thing that arose two millenia ago is, even as it evolved - with modification as these things do -- through the production of fruit.
Erickson undoubtedly believes that Mathew's Jesus was speaking to him in 5:10-12 (NIV):
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Undoubtedly, I'm cherry-picking (there's fruit again). But that's how I always feel when people true to prove a point by selective quotation from the Bible.
Why has this never been mentioned?
I am summarizing an article from Medium Daily Digest titled “Chain Reaction: 40-day countdown to a new Middle East.” The Middle East, as referred to here, includes six oil-producing countries: Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. For orientation, all are located along the Persian Gulf; one, Bahrain, is an island, and Qatar is a peninsula. Before oil was discovered, these were desert states known for their pearl industry. After oil was found in these countries in 1927, major oil companies from America, England, and Germany set up oil wells. Their wealth depends on their oil production and sales.
The article presents the following reality: for the first time in history, Middle Eastern oil/gas production is being shut down because there is no place to store it. The GCC, the Gulf Co-Operative Council of these six countries, because of the war between Iran / Israel, and the USA, has closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. These countries have storage facilities for oil to be shipped to global markets. The GCC has an average of 30 or 60 days' worth of storage, and as of now, the closure has been 23 days. If these countries cannot sell the products that have sustained their economies, they will exert massive pressure to end this blockade. Maintaining this straight, being open to trade has a long history dating back to the signing of the Perpetual Maritime Truce in 1853.
Iran is exerting war pressure upon our country by closing this strait, and this, with the number of rockets and drones they have, is going to redefine war today. Combine this with the Yemeni Houthis’ entering this war by firing into Israel, and they could disrupt shipping in the Red Sea, adding complications to the war that have not been anticipated by Trump when he attacked Iran. Trump will lose this war and will have to bargain with Iran to end this war.
As envisioned by the most utopian thinkers, Christianity is a recipe for disaster — because we aren’t in a utopia but the real world. Slowly it’s being refined is the traditional view. But sometimes that’s hard to see given retrograde philosophs like the Ayatollahs or totalitarians in Russia and China. And closer by should it come to that, Heaven forfend. I think the Jewish philosophy makes more sense. Anyone who isn’t completely indigent should give 10% to communal concerns. The very wealthy may give up to half though the more averagely “well off” should limit themselves to 20-33%, lest they impoverish themselves. Maimonides said the priority for one’s beneficence should be the poor of one’s family and then of one’s town and so on down a hierarchy. This formula is practical and do-able and sensible. Even the golden rule — to love your neighbor as yourself (first formulated in Leviticus) was revised by Hillel to “what is hateful to you, don’t do to others.” Many tomes have been written on why the negative formulation — to oversimplify, because it’s practical and doable and sensible to the average understandings. However, there is another corollary not often discussed, perhaps because it is politically incorrect where everyone is striving for utopian kumbaya. Who is your neighbor? Someone trying to kill you is not a neighbor to whom you owe any duty of care. Not to turn the other cheek, not to send food aid. Nonetheless most went along with trying to distinguish the arguably neighborly civilians who needed aid from the terrorists who were hoarding it. Some more extreme “Calvinist” types (who are unfortunately found in every religion and community) take this ability to exclude those not measuring up to neighbor status to an extreme of hypothesizing an “elect” that even Mother Theresa could not do enough to become … if no grace… whatever, I was never initiated into the mysteries of Calvinism though descended from a few with that namesake. Alas and I was related to several millionaires who left me nothing, and helped very little before that!
Nice analysis.
Inevitable quibble (cause, well, I'm prone to it): Galen Strawson strongly disagrees with your reading of Descartes. Strawson's reading is that by 'cognito' Descartes meant pretty much what you say he should have meant -- being consciously aware in the broadest sense, not 'thinking' as calculation. With Strawson not merely a prominent Oxford-trained philosopher, reading docs in their original languages, but the son of a prominent Oxford philosopher, I kinda bet he's reading Descartes accurately.
I want to be clear — I am not indicting Descartes as a man. I think him wrong, not wicked. But we do not live inside his intentions. We live inside his sentences. And his sentences produced a tradition that has spent four centuries trying to recover the observer it accidentally expelled. If Strawson is right that Descartes meant something closer to conscious awareness than computation, then the most generous reading available is that he expressed himself so badly he founded a tradition that contradicts his own intentions. That is not a defense of Descartes. It is an additional charge against his precision.
Well, we can always try to play games of charity with all arguments. Including my own. But one must take accountability for how they are interpreted. That Decartes might have felt different than what he meant is his failing. I shall not argue on his behalf. He is dead.
Mike, Strawson's point is not one of charity. It's that Descartes, in context, did not mean by 'cognito' what the English word 'think' means to you. What he meant has been lost in translation. As Google's AI sums it up just now:
"To him, if you are conscious of it happening in your head, it counts as 'thinking.' He wasn't just saying 'I calculate, therefore I am,' but rather 'I am a conscious being, therefore I am.'"
So it's not just Strawson reading Descartes that way. None of the references the AI cites are Strawson. Word meaning drifts over centuries. It's not a responsibility of the writer to anticipate the drift and write for the future rather than use words with the meanings they have in his own time.
I suppose you and I have a different perspective on what it is that should be emphasized here in the discourse.