On Strength (Homily Magnus)

"Be thou exalted, Lord, in Thine own strength. So we will sing and praise Thy power." Ps. 21:13

The babe with the power!

The modern western world is obsessed with power. From our most intellectual blather to our most common jargon, we've got power on the brains. In literary circles, we're concerned with characters having "agency," the ability to make their own choices and choose their own destiny. In the world of pop psychology, we endlessly seek "empower- ment," an affirmation and enabling of our own self and desires. Popular culture regularly feeds into our need for self-actualization, and in the revolving-door insane asylum of social and political activism, power is the key agenda: who has it, how they're abusing it, and how we can acquire more for ourselves and others.

"Come at me, bro."

It feels cheap and easy to lay this particular mania at the feet of Nietzsche, but I cannot help it. He is too obvious a target, as he would prefer. No doubt he had his inspirations, and he has definitely inspired others who carried his ideas further and further, but if you observe all the assumptions of our postmodern society and reduce them back to their source, you get Nietzsche. He was the voice crying in the wilderness, the first step in a new direction. It is he who successfully reduced all of life to power, to dominance and submission, to masters and slaves, to supermen and sheep. It is he who declared (ironically) that all language is the myriad masks of power, and it is his postmodern disciples of the mid to late 20th century that stretched his ideas all the way into popular consciousness. Now there is no truth; there is only power, and all claims on truth are merely disguised plays at power. There is nothing left for us but the destruction of all the "truths" and then the mad scramble for power that pours out of them like candy from a sad, shattered pinata.

There can be only one.

It is no wonder that Nietzsche (and everyone poisoned by his epistemological children) hated Christianity. It is a great rebuke to his worldview of power, for not only will the meek inherit the earth, but also all-power already belongs to One. Forever and endlessly belongs to One. God has all the power, for He is all the power. He infinitely is it and has it and gives it to all without once diminishing His surplus. Before Him, the mad scramble for power and the mad cycle of dominance and submission end. There is only one Power, and it is God. Likewise, there is only one dominance, and that is His. And there is only one submission, and that is ours. The superman already exists, has always existed. He is God incomprehensible, the Father Almighty.

All of Him, all at once.

Yet it is not mere power that makes God incomprehensible, but rather all of His divine attributes at once. He brings all of Himself to bear on every action that He takes, and included in Himself is not only infinite power but also infinite love and justice and grace and wisdom and goodness. Perhaps the greatest rebuke to the Nietzschean ethic is God's irreducibility: His incomprehensible nature is not a complexion of parts but rather a single, harmonious whole with every attribute working in perfect interwoven tandem and solidarity. Thus, His all-power can only come prepackaged with His all-love and all-wisdom and all-goodness and everything else that He infinitely is.

Think of it this way. We know what it means to leave a part of ourselves behind when we make a decision. We leave a part of ourselves "at the door," so to speak. There are times when we make a solely emotional decision (with our children or loved ones), where we leave logic and reason and other factors behind. On the other hand, we can with effort make solely logical decisions, blocking out emotional elements and trying to make a cold, rational choice. In either case, something is left out. This is not necessarily the best or worst way to make decisions, but it is a way we are familiar with, because it is true to who we are: we are not like God. We are not a harmonious whole of attributes; He is. He never leaves any of Himself "at the door." He brings all that He is into every action He makes, for He cannot be reduced to any one part of Himself. That is what is meant by His "irreducibility."

Portrait of the superman.

Every heresy and error of man can be traced to a reduction of God (or the ultimate "thing"). Every crazed philosopher or good natured guru has made the same mistake, though they make it in a myriad of ways. Reduce all to peace, and you create a rabid pacifism that would allow horrific injustices to occur just to keep its hands clean. Reduce all to power, and you unleash a world of merciless narcissism, cruelty, and brutality. God is a slap in the face to all our nonsense, the spitting in the eye of our reductionistic insanities. He will not be reduced to our minimalist understanding. He will not be confined by our finite categories. He will be Himself and nothing less. His peace will not rest until it has broken every peace-breaker, and His power wrought its most awesome work in a poor carpenter from Nazareth who would not revile when He was reviled, and whose humiliating submission to death crushed the power of death forever, for the weakness of God is still stronger than the strength of supermen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Chief End of Man (is not Man)

"In Thy presence is fullness of joy. At Thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." Ps. 16:11

"O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name forever.... O taste and see that the Lord is good." Ps. 34:3, 8

Q: What is the chief end of man?

A: Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

(Question 1, Westminster Shorter Catechism)

It ain't paint by numbers.

Nobody makes themselves, and nobody is meant for themselves. These are two truths that are continually forgotten.

Everybody believes that they must make themselves. We are all blank slates or empty vessels who must substance ourselves with identity and purpose, becoming "self-begot, self-raised" by the end of our lives. We see no essential quality or purpose for us, no created meaning or given identity. We do not see ourselves as becoming something specific (like a child growing into their clothes, or an acorn growing into an oak). Instead, we see ourselves as nothing until we make ourselves something, anything. All this and more are the assumptions of the average person, and it is a great lie. No one made themselves, and no one makes themselves, and any attempt to make ourselves will fall short of the glory we are called to.

Respect the 'stache.

People also assume that we are meant for ourselves. The Nietzschean dream has been watered-down, but it is still alive: our chief happiness is to be found in our own aggrandizement, realization, and fulfillment. We are self-centered beings to the core, even in our finer moments. Everything boils down to our own happiness, our own flourishing. All our deeds, good or bad or neutral, are built around and building towards our own fulfillment, towards the identity and meaning that we plan for ourselves. Even God Himself (if we believe in such a thing) becomes subordinate to our own ends: religion becomes a means of social grace and standing, and worship becomes a means of emotional satisfaction. How many churches are there whose congregants come together in the name of God to worship themselves?

We are not meant for ourselves. We are meant for God, to exalt Him and delight in Him. This is the identity in which we were created. This is the purpose for which God made us. We were made for God, and you ought to be instantly suspicious of any doctrines or philosophies or fashionable thoughts that make you the chief end. They are wide off the mark precisely because they are so close to it. To exalt and delight in God, to glorify and enjoy Him, is where we are fulfilled and where we flourish. He is the soil we were made to be planted in, and we will sprout in no other. This is another one of those balances that seems to prove the truth of the Christian Faith: our happiness and fulfillment are all part of the picture, but they are not the point. They are involved in the end, but they are not the end, not the "chief end". We were made for joy and pleasure, but joy and pleasure belong to God alone, for He is Good (Matt. 19:17) and His Goodness alone creates gladness (Ps. 4:6-7).

If you're happy and you know it...

This is why it is wrong not only to make our own happiness the chief end but also to banish happiness altogether as something immoral or irrelevant. God is wedded to our happiness. He is our happiness. That is the point. There is no happiness or fulfillment outside of God. To put it another way, we will never find happiness as long as we are obsessed with finding it. As soon as we fling that obsession overboard and make God our obsession, our center, our one and only love, we will find to our pleasant surprise that we are happy. Happy in Him. He who loses self-obsession will be fulfilled. He who loses his life will find it, but only if you lose it in God. All else is sinking sand. All else is nothing, for outside of God is nothingness, and everything that does not seek Him reeks of nothingness.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Non-Transcendence Problem (A Philosophy of Potatoes, Part II)

My approach to philosophy (that consummate bogeyman) is to simplify things. I am not saying that I dumb things down so that their true meaning is lost. What I do mean is that I strive to cut through all the jargon and blather and find the most fundamental expression of an idea or issue. Personal experience has taught me that any philosophic position (no matter how monstrously opaque) can be boiled down by certain degrees to a single, simple statement that sums up what is really being said. Furthermore, personal experience has also taught me that once that single, simple statement has been reached, the rest of the jargon and blather (of both the original position and even its derivatives) takes on a sudden clarity. Thus, I've found the practice of simplifying things to be highly practical for reasons in addition to making philosophy less terrifying than it already is.

An example of this came to me recently while reading through Roger Scruton's Modern Philosophy. Despite its dull and formidable sounding name, the book reveals Scruton's penchant for making philosophic concepts (as best as can be) digestible for the man or woman on the street as well as acceptable to the academic. What I've learned so far has been exciting as well as enlightening, and I feel lead to share my recent discoveries.

Modern philosophy begins with Descartes, who (besides saying, "I think, therefore I am") created what has been the most perplexing issue for modern philosophy. It is an issue of epistemology (i.e., how we can have true knowledge), and it is rather disturbing. He postulated two scenarios that utterly questioned our ability to know anything at all. The first can be called "Descartes dream," i.e., the world that we know and see and feel is all an illusion created by our own minds, similar to a dream. An idea somewhat echoed recently in Inception, reality (the "waking" world) is beyond us, and we are so effectively wrapped up in the dream of our own making that we can never even know that the real world exists. If this scenario is true, then how can we ever have true knowledge?

The second scenario is even more disturbing. It is called "Descartes demon," i.e., the world that we know and see and feel is all an illusion created by a "demon" who whispers it in our ear and weaves it in our mind. Similar to The Matrix, this scenario is troubling to many because (unlike the "dream") there is no reality outside of the illusion except for the "demon". Thus, there is nothing to "wake up" to.

You may ask why someone would postulate such a scenario and scare the rest of us to death. The answer is that he is trying to figure out how we can have true knowledge, i.e., how can we breach the dream, defeat the demon, and arrive at truth. Modern philosophy can be seen as continual attempts to do just that.

There are the Realists, those old-fashioned followers of Plato, who assert that truth/reality is in another realm beyond us that we can reach through our reasoning powers. If you want to know what is true justice or true love (or whatever else), then spend your time contemplating the idea of justice or love, devoid of the distracting particulars of this realm.

The problem, however, is that our reasoning powers (being a part of us) seems incapable of rising above "this realm" in order to get to "that realm" of truth/reality. In the end, the demon laughs in the face of our futile reason.

Then there are the Idealists, those inscrutable followers of Kant, who assert that if we would objectively analyze thought itself, then we could discover which kinds of arguments and modes of thinking are the best for arriving at truth/reality.

The problem, however, is that we must use thinking in order to do this, and how exactly does one use thinking to transcend thinking in order to study thinking? Our very apparatus of flight is the very anchor that weighs us down.

Then there are the Phenomenologist, those mystical followers of Husserl, who assert that if we would only objectively study consciousness itself (i.e., the act of perceiving and attaching meaning), then we would unlock the secrets to truth/reality.

The problem, however, is that we must use consciousness in order to do this, and how exactly does one objectively study consciousness with their own consciousness? It is like the wings of Icarus: the closer we get to the sun, the more the wax melts away.

Finally, there are the Nominalists, those dastardly followers of Nietzsche (and his bastard philosophic children of the 20th century), who assent to the reality of the "demon" but choose to localize it in societal institutions (family, religion, tradition, custom, government, etc.) and internalize it in the self. Life is an illusion controlled by others, and the only thing to do is to wrest control from them and give it to ourselves, so that we may make our "real" self according to our own liking and in our own image.

The problem, however, is twofold: (1) We cannot (for whatever reason) function in an illusion, even one of our own making. We yearn for truth/reality, for "the real". (2) We know (though perhaps we lack the words to express it) that Nominalism is simply not true; there are realities that are real and truths that are true in spite of either us or our institutions. We will not submit to becoming the demon, nor will we admit that he is all that there is "outside".

Every single one of these rebuttals to the demon and the dream all hit the same problem (except for Nominalism, which simply accepts the demon/dream). I call it the "non-transcendence problem," and it goes something like this: (1) We know (in some way) that truth/reality exists. (2) We know (in some way) that truth/reality is beyond us. (3) We know (in some way) that we are incapable of reaching it. All of our attempts (and there have been some fantastic and terrifying attempts) to breach the glass ceiling between us and truth/reality seems to fail, and thus we are left here on our silent plant, haunted by inklings and vague apparitions that point us to a place that we can never reach. What, then, do we do?

There are typically two responses to this. First is the nihilistic surrender to life without truth/reality, a position that few take seriously. The other is far more common, and it is the position of heroic existentialism, with its rather pretentious slogan, "Have the courage to be." As odd as that sounds, most people fall into that category. They admit (perhaps subconsciously) that truth/reality is beyond them, but they are still going to strive to approximate it as best as they can. By a lifelong series of efforts, they will be as moral, factual, and authentic as they can (though without truth/reality to measure themselves by, they will never truly know how moral, factual, and authentic they are). This is the default mindset of the average secular person, even if they have never thought about it or found adequate words to express it.

I would like to posit (if I may) a third, wholly different response to the demon/dream, far more radical and essentially Christian in its essence. It goes something like this: (1) We know that truth/reality exists. (2) We know that it is beyond us. (3) We know that we cannot reach it. (4) If we cannot go to it, then our only hope is if it comes to us. The Christian Faith has a term for when truth/reality "comes to us"; it is called incarnation:

"In the beginning was the Word [logos: truth, reality; the primal voice that speaks all else into existence]...and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14).

In one simple, solely Christian phrase, the solution is found and declared: "the Word became flesh," truth/reality has come down to us. This is what theologian Oswald Chambers called the "personality of truth" (131). If truth/reality is merely a coalition of abstract maxims (profound yet dead), then it is all on us to reach them, which cannot be done. However, if truth/reality is a person, with their own powers of activity and volition, then they can reach back to us; and according to the Christian Faith, He has.

"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in this last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, and by whom He also made the worlds" (Heb. 1:1-2).

Bibliography/References:

Scruton, Roger. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1994.

Chambers, Oswald. Biblical Ethics / The Moral Foundations of Life / The Philosophy of Sin. Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 1998.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011