Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Teilhard De Chardin: “The Christic” & “The Heart of Matter” - Castalia Revisited by Ron Dart

Teilhard de Chardin

The publication in 1960 of Sheldon Wolin’s Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought re-established in many ways, the importance of epic and classical political philosophy contra the reigning tendency towards positivism and behaviorism (a shrinking of thought to the smallest scientistic circle turns). The republication of Politics and Vision in 2004 reminded thoughtful political theorists of a motherlode worth the mining. There can be no doubt that Wolin’s 1969 article, “Political Theory as a Vocation”, inspired a generation of idealists to realize that thinking in a political way could be a vocation and birthed, in some ways, the Berkeley School of Political Theory. The death of Wolin (1922-2015) ended an important era of substantive approaches to political thought, but Wolin’s notion of thinking in large, epic and historic ways lingers on in opposition to those who reduce thinking to micro issues.

Why have I begun and article on Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955) by referring to Sheldon Wolin? Both De Chardin and Wolin thought on a large canvass—they were the perennial foxes rather than the burrowing hedgehogs. Both men covered much terrain in their expansive thinking and interpretations. Needless to say, De Chardin was much more concerned and focussed on the relationship of spirituality and science than was Wolin, and it is to this important crossroads I now turn.

Should Those "In Christ" Identify As "Sinners"? - Derek Vreeland

DEREK VREELAND (DMin) is a pastor of WOLC in St Joseph, MO.

Under Reconstruction: Crazy Characters, Unreliable Narrators and the Divine Architect - Brad Jersak

This article originally appeared on AlwaysLoved.net

After Deconstruction

The last years have seen a grand deconstruction of Scripture reading and interpretation—some would say of Scripture itself. Of course, this has been an ongoing centuries-long project, but two unique elements dominate the past decade: first, the ‘New Atheists’ are actually reading the Bible—carefully and, unlike liberal scholars, they have read it literally with a view to destroying faith. “The Bible says it; I reject it; and that settles it.” And second, their dance partners in this deconstruction have been evangelicals who are finally questioning the modernist lingo of inerrancy and it’s narrow literalist interpretations. They’re ready to either toss Scripture (many have) or to reconstruct their reading on sturdier foundations.

For my part, the deconstruction has run along very specific lines. I have come to believe that Jesus Christ revealed the fullness of God in the Incarnation and thus, he—not the Bible—is the only divine Word and our final authority for theology, faith and Christian practice. His primacy as the revelation of God challenges doctrines like inerrancy when they elevate ‘every word of Scripture’ as the ‘infallible word of God.’ That latter phrase was reserved by the Church fathers for God the Son alone. And so while I do believe in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, I’m among a burgeoning crowd of quite conservative theologians who reject evangelical bibliolatry in favor of the Christ to whom Scripture faithfully points.

For those who’ve made that trek, the niggling question remains, ‘What now?’ How do we read the Bible, if at all, after the deconstruction? The answer to that will require many authors to contribute umpteen volumes, a task well on its way. What I’ll offer here is just one gesture toward reconstructed Bible-reading. Ironically, my suggestions were elementary standards in the early church, but were often marginalized by Protestant assumptions and the co-opting of Evangelicalism by modernity … and now by the fashionable cynicism of post-moderns. But anyway … you’ll see how a counter-intuitive reconstruction may be helpful.

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 11 - "The Serpent and the satan" (pt 2)

Editor's Note: Clarion is posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(11) The Serpent and the satan (Part 2)

Let me recall where we are going with this: we want to know how Paul made the connections between the satan, the law and the problem of interpreting Torah through the lens of zeal. This post will be just scratching the surface. Some have lamented (or complained) that my posts are already too long. But one cannot rethink 2,000 of Christian tradition without engaging a host of issues.

I sought to show that the use of the term ‘arum’ connects the serpent and the human in yesterday’s post. From a purely anthropological perspective, the serpent is (represents) that part of the human which responds to the prohibition in Genesis 2 not to eat of the tree of knowledge. We all know that when something is banned to us we want it all the more. There is something seductive about the forbidden. So we ought not to be surprised then when one part of the human reacts to the prohibition by questioning it.

The human is the only animal that once its needs are satisfied, does not know what it wants. That is, humans experience a lack. This lack is the problem of desire. If you recall the emphasis I have placed in these (and other) posts about our interdividuality, that we are not isolated, but inner-connected as a species, and if you recall that I have said that desire does not arise from within us but from without (that is, in relation to the other) and that this has been shown scientifically in studies in Brain research (neurophysiology, neural networks and mirror neurons), then it will not come as a surprise when I say that the serpent’s engagement with the woman is a literary way of showing the true problem of the human condition: desire is easily corrupted. That corruption can first of all be seen in the serpent’s question “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” God did not say that. God prohibited only the one tree. The woman’s response is a further distortion for she adds to the command not to eat of the tree the further prohibition “nor touch it.” The serpent compounds the deceit of desire by adding that the human, by eating of the tree will become God-like, that is, that the human will have all ultimate desires met (we call this ‘the desire for the being of the other’ in mimetic theory).

The fact is that when the woman eats nothing happens, her eyes are not opened nor does she die. It is only after the man imitates the woman that consequences abound. This text connects desire and imitation. Desire is mediated through the other. We want what others want, we value what others value, we take what others have thinking that in so doing we shall find fulfillment. The text shows that this is not the case and all we are left with when we imitate each other’s desires is a sense of alienation. Note that the male is not absent from this scene of discourse between the serpent and the woman “for he was with her.” All of this literarily suggests that the man, the woman and serpent are one big figure of the process of mediated desire and its consequences. The origin of evil, the opening of the eyes to discriminate stems not from some fallen angel who is outside of us, but from within us. We are the satan. We humans create the satan. The satan is the problem of mimetic desire which grasps. This is not the end of the story though. Genesis 2-3 is connected to Genesis 4 and the problem of rivalry and violence in the story of Cain and Abel. It is only after the murder of Abel that Cain founds “civilization.” This is the same process Girard argues occurs in founding murder myths: mediated desire, rivalry, violence and the origin of human culture and religion. So the Genesis text is not really different than ancient mythology in its structure; it is very different in what it reveals in these connections. Myths occlude these connections; they have to, for they hide their victims. The revelatory component of the Genesis text is that the victim is no longer hidden; the victim has a voice (“your brother’s blood cries out from the ground for vengeance”). And this revelation of the victim’s voice makes all the difference. From Abel to Jesus to Stephen to Auschwitz and beyond, human history has, because of the biblical anthropology, been able to progressively hear the voice of the victim.

This is what makes the Genesis text so powerful and so exceedingly relevant for today. All the evil in the world does not come from God, but from us. It has a structural form (culture) and it has a spiritual form (religion). Just as we humans are both ‘adama’ (clay, soil, humus) and ‘ruach’ (spirit, wind, breath) so also this reality we have created called civilization, human history consists of both dimensions. There is a physical side to evil and there is a spiritual dimension to it as well. The Genesis story has more to teach us about the problem of humanity than we realize. If we insist on a ‘personal’ devil we will always be able to ultimately blame evil on God. When we accept that we humans are responsible for the horrors of our history, when we realize that the creation has been subjected to death so that we won’t exist in this state forever, when we accept that Jesus’ defeat of the satanic is the defeat of our grasping acquisitive ways, when we see him as the model for how to desire God alone, then, and only then, will we understand that we cannot but desire, and that Jesus has opened our eyes to desire the only ‘object’ in the universe that lacks nothing, that fills everything, that truly satisfies, namely the One Jesus called Abba. God alone meets our deepest needs, yearnings, longings and desires. And that, in a nutshell, is the point of the story of the man, the woman and the serpent in Genesis.

Next episode: (12) Paul on The satan

US War Crimes or Normalized Deviance - Nicolas Davies (via Wayne Northey)

Tuesday, 23 August 2016 09:22

By Nicolas J.S. Davies, Consortium News | Op-Ed

Photo: 1986 launch of the doomed spaceshuttle Challenger, with reference to the "normalization of deviance" in the NASA culture that led up to the disaster, an expression coined by sociologist Diane Vaughan

Wayne Northey: This is as succinct and compelling a statement about US Empire's voracious, murderous ways (of people and environment) around the world, as I have read. The US Empire does, as all past Empires have done: it pursues a doctrine of "Might is Right" to establish full-spectrum dominance over, now, the entire planet. Anyone/thing in its way is immediately doomed. This is the pursuit of a "1000 Year Reich" equally monstrous as its 20th century wannabee model.

The motivation? There is ultimately only one: UNADULTERATED GREED.

In 1948, George Keennan, State Department Director of policy planning, noted that the United States then possessed "about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population." The challenge facing U.S. policy makers, he believed, was "to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security." [1. PPS 23, "Review of Current Trends, U.S. Foreign Policy" (February 24, 1948).] The overarching aim of American statecraft in other words, was to sustain the uniquely favorable situation to which the United States had ascended by the end of World War II. It's hard to imagine a statement of purpose more succinct, cogent, and to the point.

Judged by this standard, the stewards of U.S. foreign policy down to the present day have done more than passably well... (Andrew J. Bacevich, America's War For the Greater Middle East:  A Military History, New York, Random House, 2016, p. 358).

An excerpt:

But, as Eisenhower later warned, the Cold War soon gave rise to a "military-industrial complex" that may be the case par excellence of a highly complex tangle of institutions whose social culture is supremely prone to the normalization of deviance. Privately, Eisenhower lamented, "God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn't know the military as well as I do."

That describes everyone who has sat in that chair and tried to manage the US military-industrial complex since 1961, involving critical decisions on war and peace and an ever-growing military budget. Advising the President on these matters are the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, several generals and admirals and the chairs of powerful Congressional committees. Nearly all these officials' careers represent some version of the "revolving door" between the military and "intelligence" bureaucracy, the executive and legislative branches of government, and top jobs with military contractors and lobbying firms.

Each of the close advisers who have the President's ear on these most critical issues is in turn advised by others who are just as deeply embedded in the military-industrial complex, from think-tanks funded by weapons manufacturers to Members of Congress with military bases or missile plants in their districts to journalists and commentators who market fear, war and militarism to the public.

With the rise of sanctions and financial warfare as a tool of US power, Wall Street and the Treasury and Commerce Departments are also increasingly entangled in this web of military-industrial interests.

...

A Toxic Culture

Until the American public, our political representatives and our neighbors around the world can come to grips with the normalization of deviance that is corrupting the conduct of US foreign policy, the existential threats of nuclear war and escalating conventional war will persist and spread.

This deviant culture is toxic in its disregard for the value of human life and for the survival of human life on Earth. The only thing "normal" about it is that it pervades the powerful, entangled institutions that control US foreign policy, rendering them impervious to reason, public accountability or even catastrophic failure.

The normalization of deviance in US foreign policy is driving a self-fulfilling reduction of our miraculous multicultural world to a "battlefield" or testing-ground for the latest US weapons and geopolitical strategies. There is not yet any countervailing movement powerful or united enough to restore reason, humanity or the rule of law, domestically or internationally, although new political movements in many countries offer viable alternatives to the path we are on.

As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned when it advanced the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 3 minutes to midnight in 2015, we are living at one of the most dangerous times in human history. The normalization of deviance in US foreign policy lies at the very heart of our predicament.

Please click on: Normalized Deviance

Please also click on: US and Nuremberg

Please see further: American Holocaust

Please see again further: Arms Business

A Difficult Thought Experiment on Divine Judgement - Derek Vreeland

DEREK VREELAND (DMin) is a pastor at WOLC in St Joseph, MO.

Three Fact-Checking Sites of Note - Wayne Northey

“in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”

― Abraham Lincoln

“If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.” 

― Albert Einstein

Image on the right: from Politifact: I'll highlight the All Pants-On-Fire assertions by Donald Trump - there are of course so many such by other politicians too! But PolitiFact did award Trump "2015 Lie of the Year".

I’m sitting back not a little dumbfounded by a recent exchange I had about Obama and the US elections candidates. Several claims were repeated by this person in the exchange:

• Obama is not a “natural born” citizen despite overt statements to the contrary by Hawaii officialdom, etc. In fact, the Wikipedia article adduced goes on to describe the ad nauseum endless conspiracy theories circulating on the Internet and elsewhere to this day – and their many rebuttals.
• Obama founded, along with Hilary Clinton, ISIS. This, despite readily available, well researched, articles like this that one can access to the contrary. This person’s response?: Who’s checking the fact checkers?
• Sharia Law is invariably agitated for by diaspora Muslims around the world, once they reach about 20% of the population. There are in fact many examples in many countries of this. The reality is so much more complex and nuanced, as this scholarly article, for example, indicates. There is also no instance of this anywhere in North America or Europe, for example, as this fact-checking article indicates.
• Donald Trump (obviously an uncannily brilliant and scholarly researcher of “nothing but the facts”), is to be implicitly trusted as telling the truth in his many assertions and claims. The Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact begs rather seriously to differ.

I thought of a joke, a story, and an oft-repeated assertion.

Joke: One day a man went to a doctor’s appointment indicating his firm conviction that he was dead. The doctor over the next while tried to dissuade him through various medical tests he ran, all to no avail.

Eventually, in exasperation, the doctor asked: “Do you believe that dead men bleed?” “No sir, I do not believe that!”, came the reply.

The doctor quickly took a large pin from his drawer, thrust it into the man’s arm, and as the blood spurted out, the man exclaimed: “Dead men do bleed after all!”

Story: Two men walking in the deep jungle come upon a clearing. One says to another: “Look! Someone has planted a natural garden here! Isn’t it beautiful?”

The other replies: “I see absolutely no evidence of this at all. It is all just natural to a jungle clearing.”

But the other keeps insisting. The contrarian suggests calling in some guard dogs to warn if there is such a gardener. When no alarm by the dogs is sounded, the man says the gardener obviously is without a scent that dogs pick up.

The other then suggests building a fence, and alarming it, to catch the unscented gardener trying to scale it. When no alarm bell sounds, the other suggests that the gardener no doubt digs under the fence, smooths out the evidence of the dig, does not touch the fence, and continues tending the garden.

And so it went, back and forth, the one suggesting time and again an explanation to the other about why all the proposed verification tests did not work.

Finally, in utter frustration, the contrarian cries: “But my friend, whatever became of your initial claim?! It has died the death of a thousand qualifications!”

(The obvious moral of the first two, if you missed it, is: never trust a man's opinion!)

Assertion: “My mind is made up. Don’t bother me with the facts!”

There is a Latin expression, petitio principii, that describes a move of “logic” thus: a fallacy in which a conclusion is taken for granted in the premises; otherwise known as “begging the question” or “circular reasoning”. If the premise is that each of the four bulletted assertions above is bottom-line truth, no amount of contrary evidence, challenging of the assertions, etc., will shake the person I know from believing in these "truths".

The three websites highlighted are worth checking out – for any whose minds hopefully are not already made up!

Please click on: Snopes

Please click on: FactCheck

Please click on: PolitiFact

 

 

How Jesus' Death Took Away Sin - Derek Vreeland

DEREK VREELAND (DMin) is a pastor at WOLC in St Joseph, MO.

The Great Humility that Redeems the Cosmos - Kenneth Tanner

The gospels upend every human (perhaps every rational) notion of strength.

The cosmos—superclusters of galaxies, delicate wildflowers on countless meadows, the waves of every ocean—thrives on one source of energy, a hidden force of charity that does not seek its own, a Person with an unremarkable face, who came not to be served by his creation but to serve.

When I talk about this personal force of love I often describe it as some of the first Christians did. They call his passion for everyone and everything an Extreme Humility.

The biggest challenge presented to humanity by his gospel is our mistaken bedrock belief that what drives the universe is an unbridled might that rules by fiat. This is after all the only form of power we humans recognize: brute force, cunning strategy, ruthless competition, and, above all else, "winning."

It goes against everything that man has built and everything that man has ventured to accept the idea that the real power that sustains all movement and all life, that binds all things together—from subatomic particles to intergalactic distances—is a self-sacrificial love without measure.

"If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it."

Jesus is not just talking about your life but is describing how *everything* works.

The losers in this scenario do not "win" but instead come to participate forever in the life of him who lays down his life for the life of the world and in so doing—by a great humility—redeems the cosmos and makes all things new, makes all things well.

This belief is not going to get you anywhere in the world that humanity has made but you can serve that world—this world that Christ loved before it loved him—by embracing this sacred path of humility and renouncing all the other ways and means and kinds of power.

All of them. Political. Military. Intellectual. Physical. All.

It is telling that almost every news story that compels the urgent attention of Christians these days can only do so because we have denied that we serve a Lord that rules by a mysterious humility that conquers all hearts by self-giving.

The North American High Tory Tradition - by Ron Dart

The official release of Professor Ron Dart’s new book, The North American High Tory Tradition, is scheduled for this Saturday, 20 August 2016.

Ron Dart of the University of the Fraser Valley is a leading authority on the subject of Canadian High–Red Toryism, and some of its most significant thinkers, including Stephen Leacock and George Grant. His new book is joined by a foreword from Jonathan M. Paquette of the University of St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History.

The launch of the book will be celebrated with a public event sponsored by American Anglican Press and the George Grant Society (http://www.georgegrantsociety.org/) in Ottawa, 20 August 2016, details for which may be found by following this link: https://www.facebook.com/events/617078621789912/

For more information on the book, please visit our online webstore, https://anglicanism.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=281, which is to begin taking sales, along with other online outlets, this Saturday.

Review of Bill Corbett's "The 11,000ers of the Canadian Rockies" by Ron Dart

Many are the fine peaks worth the summiting, but the 11,000ers of the Canadian Rockies are the crème de menthe beauties in western Canada. Bill Corbett was the 3^rd to bag 54 of the 11,000ers, and his 2^nd edition is, like the 1^st edition, pure gold. Each of the peaks are discussed well and wisely (history and varied routes to the peaks) and the colour photos enrich the mountain tome and make it a superb reference for those keen on doing the 11,000ers.

I have managed to do both Mount Athabasca (11,385) and Mount Hector (11,135)—both fine glacier climbs in the icefields and the much longer Wapta Traverse (glacier high route in Canada)—such treks are good for the soul and sanity. The Introduction to this well wrought keeper covers all sorts of must know information and the Maps are a hand and glove fit with the Introduction. But, the real core and centre of the book is a detailed description and discussion of each of the 11,000ers and a combination of visual and textual overview of treks to the roofs of each of these rock giants, laden as they are with slabs, snow and ice.

There are, of course, many mountains much higher than the 11,000ers, but rare are the mountains that combine such close knit beauty, glacier challenges and technical climbs that can be nail biters. Each of the 11,000ers have, at times, been the delights of mountaineers in different seasons of the year. The chapters on each of the 11,000ers is compact, short but telling—many a reread draws the curious into high mountain challenges that test both body and soul at various levels.

There is a valuable bibliography that brings the book to a fit and fine end and a needful Index, also.

Do purchase, read and inwardly digest this 2^nd edition of The 11,000ers of the Canadian Rockies—those who do not feel the tug, draw and pull of such ancient cathedrals will, at least, be inspired to see more of life outside the safe and secure environs of urban life in which, sadly so, much can shrink to the smallest circle turns.

Berg Heil

Ron Dart

Mercy in a Mean Time - Brian Zahnd

My father was a political man; a lawyer and a judge. He was an ideological conservative. He was also known for his kindness and mercy. My dad died in 2009. At his funeral a man approached me and said, “Your father sent me to prison for armed robbery. I came to his funeral today to honor him. He always treated me with respect and dignity, and he dealt with me as mercifully as the law would allow.” I don’t know how often a felon attends the funeral of a judge who sent him to prison in order to pay his respects, but I would guess it’s not too often. My point is that my father was a political conservative who never felt his conservatism was in conflict with his Christian commitment to kindness and mercy.

Which is why I am so baffled and grieved by what seems to be a turn toward meanness in the name of conservatism. I’m also quite sure that my father, were he alive today, would be just as baffled and grieved.

But as a pastor my real concern is for Christians who embrace meanness simply because they see it modeled by culture war celebrities like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. This is a tragedy. Philosophically I have no intrinsic objection to ideological conservatism. (Personally, I don’t bother to place myself anywhere on the Left/Right political grid.) But for followers of Jesus the manner in which we hold our politics must be compatible with the spirit of Jesus. And, yes, I know very well that ideological liberalism can be just as mean and intolerant. But my concern is for the community of evangelicals with whom I have been deeply associated for more than forty years. Many American evangelicals now seem to be infected with a meanness contracted from their uncritical commitment to contemporary conservatism — a meanness that is incompatible with Christianity.

 

CLICK HERE to continue

Jesus Is Nothing Like Superman - Kenneth Tanner

"Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head."

     It’s tempting for contemporary Americans to think of Jesus along the mythos of Superman: an alien humanoid capable of extraordinary feats of strength, impervious to earthly elements, and virtually indestructible.

     Yet Jesus is nothing like that. When the Son of God humbled himself, a quiet, wondrous mystery took shape in the womb of a Judaean teenager. God took on our shatterable humanity “in every respect.”

     This means Jesus was vulnerable to all the frailties of a clay vessel, as fragile as anyone with a skeleton, brain, lungs, heart, skin, and spinal cord.

     He could be crushed by stoning, burned by fire, weakened by a lack of water, food, or sleep; he was susceptible to cuts, bruises, bacteria, radiation, or gravity. His cause of death was likely exsanguination, or bleeding out.

     He swallowed up death forever by dying, in agony and in utter disgrace, as a criminal, without resistance or appeal to a violent defense.

     All the “superhuman” things Jesus did he did as a mere human. Revealing the "weakness of God" he was strong in an unanticipated, self-sacrificial way. Jesus demonstrated divine power (when he did so) for the purpose of reconciling all flesh and all things to himself, always from a motive of love and never the will to power. His victory over the Powers is won by a horrendous defeat.

     Jesus gave his life for the life of the world, not as a kind of demigod like Superman but as Emmanuel, God in clay...with us and for us.

     We contemporary humans fashion gods all of the time. In the Ancient Near East we used to make them of clay. The brilliance of a God who possesses the humility to make himself earthen in order to redeem us miserable makers of earthen idols drives me to my knees.

     Instead Jesus gets on his knees and washes my feet, because this God always makes himself lower than us to raise the human race he loves above anything else in his creation to life without end.

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 10 - "The Serpent and the satan" (pt 1)

Editor's Note: Clarion will be posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(10) The Serpent and the satan (Part 1)

If we are willing to acknowledge that the fallen angel myth of I Enoch is not part of the Old Testament idea of the origin of evil, then it is possible to read Genesis 2-4 in a different light. The reading I am proposing is an anthropological one. Let me explain what I mean. Rather than come to this text burdened with a host of assumptions about how the text was formed or who wrote it, or how it was inspired or if it is inspired, I will interpret this text for what insight it may offer about the human condition. What it says about God or spiritual matters is an irrelevance to me (in the opening stages of my work, later they will become important), I seek to discern how the text ‘reads me’ as a human being. One further note: I come at this text as though the concept of “The Fall” had never entered my mind, as though Plato, Augustine, Calvin and almost two millennia of the (Western) Christian doctrine of original sin had never existed. I want to read this text pretending I have never read it before and there is no such thing as a God. This is not blasphemy but it may be the only way some have of learning how to see this text in a new and liberating light.

First, things first. There are no such things as talking snakes, so I know I am dealing with something metaphorical, something symbolic. The talking snake is the clue that this text cannot be read literally. Second, I can immediately recognize that it is an “originary myth”, that is a story about the origins of the world and the human being, similar to other types of stories/myths found all over the planet. So now I know how to classify it and what it is seeking to communicate. Third, I see that it is the second of two creation myths, the first being Genesis 1:1-2:4. I may notice many of the subtle differences between the tales. I may notice that in the first creation story the male and female are created together (androgynously) while in the second creation myth they are created hierarchically; typically the woman is taken from the male and seen as subservient, I, and others, see the woman created last as the crown of creation.

As I read Genesis 2-4 I notice that several words get repeated. Words like man, woman, eat, fruit, tree, Lord God, God, and of course serpent. There is another word that appears once at the end of chapter 2 and twice in the first seven verses of chapter 3, or in other words, three times in eight verses; that word is ‘arum.’ The first time ‘arum’ appears is in 2:25 where the “the man and his wife were both ‘arum’”, the second in 3:1 where the “serpent was more ‘arum’ than any other wild animal” and the last in 3:8 where after having eaten of the fruit of the tree “then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were ‘arum.’” So what is this ‘arum’ business and why is this word used of both the human and the serpent? How can a word mean ‘naked’ and ‘shrewd or clever?’

Rather than go into deep, dark technical places where horrendous etymological creatures wait to gobble up the weak and weary, I offer this simple example as a suggestion. The word ‘arum’ is used in Genesis 42:9 by Joseph who accuses his brothers of spying out “the nakedness of the land.” That is, places where the land may well be vulnerable or penetrable to enemy attack. Ah Ha! ‘Arum’ comes to refer to the human genitalia inasmuch as it is exposed or vulnerable. The snake has no defense mechanisms, no hands, feet or spine so it is vulnerable (although it may have a venomous tongue). ‘Arum’ is a word that connotes vulnerability. In the first use of the word, the male and the female had no idea that one could hurt the other, thus they were vulnerable and not existing in a place of shame (the feeling that would result from hurting the other who was vulnerable). The second time the word is used it is in regard to the snake that is also the most vulnerable of any of the wild creatures, thus making the connection between the snake and the humans: they are both ‘arum.’ The third time the word is used the couple have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are aware that they can hurt one another and be hurt by the other, thus they begin ‘clothing themselves’, that is making themselves less vulnerable. So before tomorrow’s post your homework is this to ask yourself this: to what are the couple and the snake both vulnerable? Why do we experience assault on our genitalia as shameful (e.g., rape or the cutting off of a male penis). How might this text be about core human identity (rather than sex, sexuality or gender)? Let’s get beyond Augustine and Freud into something new and insightful.

(11) The Serpent and the satan (Part 2)

Rachel Corrie: Palestinian Martyr - Ron Dart

An Israeli bulldozer was about to destroy a Palestinian home (an all too common reality) in Gaza on March 16^th 2003 when a young American woman stood in front of the machine.  I’m sure she assumed, as did the young Chinese student a few years earlier that stood in front of the tank, the bulldozer would stop the closer it came to her. But, the driver and military person in the bulldozer did not stop and Rachael Corrie made international headlines, when she was crushed to death under the metal wheels of the Israeli tank.

The story of Rachel Corrie’s short, intense and creative life was amply recorded, with an “introduction from the Corrie family” in Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie (2008). The play about her life, My Name is Rachel Corrie, is a must see drama that brings into poignant focus the vision and white heat life of Rachel Corrie. 

Phil Sherwood, Colter Louwerse and I visited Craig and Cindy Corrie (parents of Rachel) in Olympia Washington Saturday August 13, 2016. Craig and Cindy were most generous with their time (we spent most of the day together) talking about Rachel, the questionable trial in Israel that acquitted those in the bulldozer and the ongoing work of the Corrie Foundation.

We were taken to see, after a most informative and lengthy discussion in the Corrie Foundation office in Olympia, the large Mural that depicts the struggle of many of the oppressed in the world and in Palestine--it’s a city Mural one and all should definitely see. We then went to Traditions Café & World Folk Art Restaurant for lunch--many memories of Rachel and family built into the bricks and mortar of the place.

A few years ago faculty, staff and students (who knew Rachel when she studied at Evergreen) had a special sculpture dedication to both peace and justice and Rachel, so the five of us went to Evergreen to ponder the artistic beauty and significance of the dove atop the triangle. It was a most tender and gracious day as we sat with Craig and Cindy Corrie--their daughter now dead for more than thirteen years (she would now be in her late 30s if still alive). It would be too easy, as parents, to either become bitter/angry/vindictive or simply retreat from the pain and tragedy of the world given Rachel’s untimely death, but Craig and Cindy Corrie have, as a result of their daughter’s death, been at the forefront of facing into the reality and implications of the Israeli-Palestinian tale of two cities and the close relationship between the USA and Israel (of which Rachel was a victim).

Our drive home from Olympia was done under a generous blue canopy and warm weather---such a contrast to March 16 2003. The life and legacy of Rachel Corrie does ever live on, though, through the work of her family, the Corrie Foundation and Let Me Stand Alone and My Name is Rachel Corrie.

Ron Dart 

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 9 - "Once more: world views"

Editor's Note: Clarion will be posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(9) Once More: Worldviews

Worldviews are the presuppositions about reality that we bring to our understanding of what “is” without realizing that they inform all we think and even how we think. In that previous post I wrote “None of us come to Scripture as blank slates. We all come to Scripture informed by our worldviews. A worldview is the way we have been taught to see and interpret existence. All of us have been raised in different environments, with different educations, values and beliefs about reality. These all form our worldview. When we disagree about theological ideas it is usually not the things we are actually discussing but it is a clash of our underlying worldviews.”

As I have noted, our understanding of what constitutes a ‘person’ informs our understanding of the devil. I have (in summary form to be sure) argued that the devil is a concept with a history, not a being created by God, whether good or evil. When the biblical writers speak of the devil in ‘personal’ terms that is because this is part of their supernatural worldview; they had no other way or categories by which to describe evil. Evil, when done to us, feels very personal. Little wonder then that as the Old Testament sought to understand evil it would at times use personal categories.

There are various understandings of the satan in the Jewish world. There is first of all God as the Creator of all that is good and all that is evil as we find in Isaiah 45. This is a rather deterministic worldview but its importance is only in contrast to the background of the dualism of Persian religion where good and evil are co-equal powers that struggle back and forth for eternity. By saying God is the Creator of evil Isaiah is also asserting God’s authority over evil. The Prologue of Job portrays the satan as part of the heavenly court; the function of the satan is to watch out for troublemakers who would bring dishonor to the heavenly King. The satanic function is a purely negative one and it is this figure’s “job” to test humans to see if they are worthy of divine favor. Evil in this experience can be attributed to life “tests” that we go through to test our fidelity.

With the advent of the apocalyptic worldview in the third century before Jesus, the split between this evil age and the good age to come, evil became a king in its own right. The satan in this way of thought was the ruler of a host of demonic forces that plagued the world, taught humans evil skills, wreaked havoc among the faithful. The function of the satanic was to lead people away from God’s holy Torah and thus God’s blessing. This worldview divided humanity into two groups, the in group which would be saved after much tribulation and the rest who would be doomed to perdition. Here, evil is a pervasive reality that must be constantly guarded against and the best way to guard against evil is to study Torah.

There is another viewpoint of the satan in the Bible: the satan was conceived of as the evil impulse (Hebrew: ha yetzer). The New Testament writer Paul is the one person who has done the most vigorous thinking on this subject. As we begin to work through Paul’s understanding of evil, we shall see that while Paul retains the apocalyptic worldview, he has altered its structure to bring it in line with the rabbinic anthropological view that evil is a purely human phenomenon. He does this in a surprising way and so this is fair warning that the next few posts will be a real challenge to those who would still retain the Henochic worldview as though this was taken over lock, stock and barrel in the New Testament. The question we must examine through several posts is how does Paul understand the relation of the satan, evil, corrupted desire and the Torah for they all belong together in his thinking. There is an internal logic to all this that is easily missed by us who read the Bible some 2,000 years later for we do not think like first century Jews. In preparation for these future posts I encourage you to read Genesis 2-4 and then Romans 7. We are about to see that Paul’s thinking on this subject will totally alter most contemporary Christian understanding and release us to see clearly just how it is that Jesus has defeated sin, the devil and death in his crucifixion and resurrection. If these posts can be compared to a roller coaster, then we are finally at the top of the beginning of the ride. Hold on tight, for that first big drop is coming.

Next episode: (10) The Serpent and the satan (Part 1)

Eat Me: The Cannabilistic Origins of State - David Gornoski

Why am I singing? To relieve my broken heart. Why should I spin yarn if in the end the yarn will be cut? Why should I remember if remembering only breaks my heart?

Joshua Oppenheimer's 2014 documentary masterpiece The Look of Silence opens with these lyrics sung by an elderly Indonesian man who partook in the 1965 Indonesian massacres that claimed over one million victims. The doting grandfather nonchalantly recalls of one particular victim, “I ripped him open. His intestines spilled out...I threw him, his head hit a rock.”

When asked by Adi, the brother of one of the massacre's victims, if his neighbors fear him, another retired killer declares, “They know they're powerless against me. Because I'm part of a mass movement... If we didn't drink human blood, we'd go crazy... Some killed so many people, they went crazy. One man climbed a palm tree each morning to do the call to prayer. He killed too many people. There's only one way to avoid it, drink your victims' blood, or go crazy. But if you drink blood, you can do anything!”

Later another local leader, M.Y. Basrun, speaker of his regional legislature since 1971, says the killings “were the spontaneous will of the people,” despite the fact that the army and police escorted the victims from prison to be killed at the river. “I'm setting the record straight...” “But a million people were killed,” Adi interjects. “That's politics,” the speaker retorts. “Politics is the process of achieving one's ideals. In various ways.”

CLICK HERE to continue

The Gospel Shaped Love of God - Robin Parry

FGC Robin Parry from The Sanctuary Denver on Vimeo.

Ron Dart & Brad Jersak (pt 2) - Macrina on Eternal Hope

Ron Dart & Brad Jersak (pt 1) - Augustine on Eternal Punishment