R.I.P. Truman, August 25, 1984

A lost kite that flew too soon toward heaven.

Truman on Wikipedia >

If you read only one book of his, read Music for Chameleons.

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86,326

Since I was a child, I’ve fancied myself one day a wizened old man whispering apothegms between halting steps and puffs on a pipe. And now that I am closer to that fancy than the time I began imagining it, I realize how little I know, or others want to know.

Plus I quit smoking a long time ago. So I guess it all went south then anyway.

My book is at 86,326 words.

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Ist, ist, ist! (My heart is in Rome but my feet are in Erie)

Many denominational tensions stem directly from the role tradition continues to play in doctrine and worship.

The Good News was for nearly 2,000 years an audible experience. For much of that, the church was the center of town, geographically and socially. You could see and hear it from miles away. You started life being baptized at the altar and ended it being buried in the churchyard. Of the few printed bibles available, the one in your church was probably chained to the dais. The lectionary, stained glass windows, and hymns connected you to others and to the faith.

Since we like to discard constraints that protect us, then go looking for them again when we realize how important they actually were, we might someday see something like the village parish again, after a devastating natural disaster, perhaps; an asteroid, say, or plague. And if it isn’t a church, it’ll function just like one, and people will go there to find hope and to cry and die.

The earliest churches read the Gospels, Epistles, and Apostolic Fathers aloud, like we might read letters from missionaries today. That’s becoming less common, but I recall as a child, before the Internet and photocopiers, hearing missionary letters read from the pulpit, so I know what that sounds like and can imagine one of those letters being from Paul or Clement or Ignatius.

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Sola Scriptura

Any doctrinal role of tradition is obviously incompatible with sola scriptura, one of Luther’s three solas and pillars of the Reformation still observed by most Protestants, though most Protestants probably don’t know what they are. (Learn more >)

But even Luther didn’t suggest that Church tradition was irrelevant. Quite the opposite:

“It is dangerous and terrible to hear or believe anything against the unanimous testimony of the entire holy Christian Church as held from the beginning for now over fifteen hundred years in all the world.” (Source >)

Luther also believed in the Real Presence, saying (apparently in exasperation), when questioned if he believed that the Host really truly was Jesus, "Ist, ist, ist!" (It is, it is, it is!). Lutherans use the term Sacramental Union and say Jesus is "in, with, and under" the Host, and though they treat the bread and wine as really Jesus, they don't believe the elements are converted, but rather coincide (I *think*; the issue is complicated by the fact that Lutherans themselves disagree on these matters and, indeed, you can see very different treatments of the elements among congregations).

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Real Presence

You can tell how sincerely Real Presence is believed by how the elements are treated after the words of institution (which in all mainstream Christian traditions are variations on Paul’s account, "Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me," etc.)

Catholic priests will consume leftover bread and wine or put it away in a tabernacle. Some is reserved for the homebound and hospitalized. Some churches preserve a wafer for what’s called Eucharistic adoration. (A place for you to pray or meditate in the presence of the uncovered Host.).

Lutherans will also consume leftovers (I saw my minister smile broadly one Sunday when he drank an obviously large amount), or discard it in a sacristy, which goes straight into the earth and isn't connected to church plumbing. Catholics also have a sacristy, but Lutheran’s have no tabernacle. And some is reserved for the homebound and hospitalized. As far as I know, Lutherans don’t practice Eucharistic adoration.

Baptists put leftovers back in the fridge or cupboard for later use.

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Either the elements are really Jesus or they’re really not.

As I’ve said elsewhere, Baptists and Catholics are much alike (extremes often are), even when they differ.

How so in this instance?

Either the elements are really Jesus or they’re really not. And both Catholics and Baptists comport themselves accordingly. It’s the in-between I don’t understand.

And FWIW, Catholics would agree with Baptists that Jesus isn’t in their communion service in the same way he’s in theirs, because Baptist ministers aren’t ordained by a bishop in apostolic succession.

And Baptists, for their part (if they were compelled to use the term), would regard apostolic succession as doctrinal continuity guided by the Holy Spirit and the Bible.

I like both ideas.

I'm currently ELCA Lutheran, but my heart is in Rome and my feet are in Erie, PA, in a little GARB church called Bethel Baptist, where I grew up and learned to love the Lord. It's hard to explain, but I am at home in all three, and I think that is because Jesus is in all three.

Imagine that.

[2016.08.03]

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"CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED by an ass"

One of the first criticisms leveled at old documents, especially ones held as authoritative, is that portions were added later, and are therefore not (as) reliable (eg, Mark 16:9-20).

This is fair if a few things are true:

1. There’s primary evidence (eg marginalia) that someone added it later; if we know who and when, we can often speculate why.

2. Those who had first-hand knowledge of the text and events were gone by the time the texts were altered. (Plutarch and those he wrote about and everyone that knew them are long gone.)

3. Those remaining wouldn't question the addition. (Despite the enormous importance of Plutarch to our understanding of prominent Romans, most high school and even college students today don’t know who Plutarch was, or Dryden for that matter. You might tell them them that 2nd century Romans wore knit caps and drank craft brews at gladiator games, and they wouldn’t bat an eye.)

4. Circumstantial evidence. Eg, certain groups or people were in the historical vicinity.

(It’s more complicated than that. I’m not a scholar. These are the ones that interest me. BTW, Dryden was a prominent poet and critic who bridged English literary traditions between Milton and Pope. Whether or not he was a good translator, I don’t know. I’ve read Pope’s translations of Homer, and they are more Pope than Homer, as his contemporaries said, but I think they’re more interesting for that. Just me.)

But there's good reason not to discount later additions:

1. Even with a decent collection of contemporaneous texts, we don't know if the spurious ones are actually the exceptions.  

2. Unlike us moderns, ancient peoples transmitted traditions orally, and much of what was eventually written down had already existed for generations. (See my post here, My mother picked the very best one (why ancient knowledge may be just what you think it is.) >

"That was added later" may actually be good evidence that the substance of the text had been living in oral tradition for generations. If so, the addition represents consensus of the community that valued and copied the stories.

Changing a Gospel (for example adding to Mark 16) would be like adding an 11th amendment to the Bill of Rights and hoping no one would notice.

As Bishop Fulton Sheen reminded me recently (via a radio rebroadcast - in fact, that's what got me thinking about this in the first place): “The Gospels did not start the Church; the Church started the Gospels. The Church did not come out of the Gospels; the Gospels came out of the Church.” Source >

(As delighted as I’d be to debate this with my Baptists brothers and sisters, I think we all agree on the events and their order, but we appeal to a quality of biblical absoluteness and independence that the Bible doesn’t even claim for itself. Which simply means that a missing biblical proof text isn’t proof that an idea isn’t doctrinally sound. You won’t find the word “Trinity” in the Bible, or a prayer of salvation.)

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Caveat (anticipating objections):

There's no reason why oral traditions can't be manipulated too, but I suspect it’s nearly impossible to tell that story without surviving records.

There is a lot of work that can be done with modern languages to illuminate the past - we can, for example, identify word stems in proto-Indo European that remain to this day in English, German, Greek, Hindi, Russian and hundreds more, all descended from our linguistic ancestors who lived in a region that stretched across what is now Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan.

I recall from my Linguistics days that there are performers in Turkey who can, like the ancient Greek rhapsodes, recite an entire epic over the course of hours or days, or condense it into a short story, a la Reader’s Digest. Some believe Homer was one of these performers and not the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were doubtless orally transmitted long before they were written down.

More next time. Already written, but I shifted gears, and I’ve already overstayed my welcome.

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[2016.08.03]

Mr Trump, Hillary played you like a fiddle / Silly me.

Dear Mr Trump,

Mr Khizr Khan, who lost his son -- Cpt Humayun Khan -- in Iraq, challenged you about your knowledge of the Constitution.

You should have known that trying to gain political traction was in extremely poor taste, not to mention impossible. You simply should have thanked the Khans for their son's service, extended your condolences for their loss, and said, 'Yes, I've read the Constitution.'

(Though I’m beginning to think Mr Khan was right.)

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Today (2016.08.05) the news is discussing President Obama’s response to Trump’s charge that the fall election might be rigged. Obama is feigning bewilderment, but after the DNC debacle that gave Bernie all the chances of a snowball in hell, and in light of quadrennial Democrat accusations of polling station irregularities in swing states like Ohio, I believe if anyone can rig them, they will.

This year I lost what little faith I had in the American electoral system. I thought it was still -- despite some tarnish -- the last great hope of an overpopulating, polluting, writhing globe, a kinder, gentler Roman Republic if you will, with a real shot at a Pax Americana.

Silly me.

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me: It's all about you, isn't it?

me: Sure it is. I don't know what it's like to be anyone else.

me: Anchorite.

me: Takes one to know one.

[2016.08.02]

New Michael Crichton Novel Due out May 2017

Dragon Teeth is a New Michael Crichton novel discovered by his widow >

The new novel centers on the rivalry between two early paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. I listened to a lecture on these two and it was more interesting than you might expect.

I’m guessing, as with Pirate Latitudes and Micro, Crichton may not have considered Dragon Teeth to be his best work. But I'm eager to read it in any case.

Crichton is one of the few writers I will read slowly, deliberately, as though to school children. You only get one chance to read a book for the first time. Others in that category for me are Truman Capote, William Peter Blatty, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I’m still hoping that the lost chapters to Capote’s Answered Prayers will be found, but despite Capote’s claims, I’m not so sure they even exist. Unlike Crichton, Capote was known to destroy manuscripts he was unhappy with.

[2016.07.31]

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