2008 Elections

I don't normally put in anything on politics, but I think that this video shows clearly who ought to win the presidential election this year.

Assorted Thoughts on Damnation

I've been finding that with the whole study concerning universalism, I've had to face issues from two different angles: the philosophical, and the existential, and that I've had to resolve them in almost opposite fashions. One the one hand, I just can't philosophically hold to any sort of exclusivism (except perhaps, reluctantly, to an annihilationist account), while existentially I've had to face the question of the possibility that I myself would be one of the damned.

Philosophically, I cannot see what the necessary connection would be between accepting Christ and salvation; I just can't conceive of salvation which doesn't involve fundamentally an change in being, and there seem to be other ways in which this could be mediated than through an explicit acceptance of Christ's work. Now, it may be that Christ's work has been actually necessary for the possibility of salvation (or at least the most fitting way in which God could have accomplished His goals); however, what is the link which leads from explicit acceptance to sanctification? The whole business commonly heard in Evangelical circles concerning this seems to be that "You need to accept what's been given to you for it to do any good; leaving an inheritance in the bank doesn't help you any." But why must an explicit acceptance of Christ be the only way to get this inheritance?

The only answer that I can see is that God has contingently willed it. This is possible, but I am having issues understanding how this could be a just method; I can't escape from the idea that this is a "secret password" soteriology, a kind of gnosis which leads to an enlightenment. Alternatively, perhaps God is just pulling all the strings, and using the explicit acceptance as a fitting marker for those He has elected; but I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of this which does not lead to double predestination, and any way in which a double predestination (other than Barth's) does not make God into a being worse than the devil, or to introduce amorality into the foundation of the universe.

So, why would we be commanded to preach to gospel if others could be saved apart from it? I can think of three reasons. First, the whole notion that "we must preach the gospel because otherwise no one will be saved" I find to be too utilitarian; isn't there a dimension to preaching which is simply rejoicing in what God has done, without having to worry about results? Couldn't simply glorification of God in God's grace and goodness be reason enough to preach?

Second, an analogy which I have heard before in this regard is that there is a building on fire, and we are the ones warning everyone to get out. It seems to me that this warning is still perfectly effective and needed, even if some people with different knowledge (perhaps they know about a fire in a different room, or an impending earthquake) also are warning people, and if some are sauntering out the doors, naturally exiting even if they do not know about the problem. Of course, there are places where this analogy breaks down (it doesn't really provide for sin, most importantly), but the point is this: preaching the gospel could still be important even if God has sovereignly provided other ways in which people could accept his grace through Christ.

Third, even if other people could ultimately be saved (that is, "saved" as in participating in the new creation from the non-smoking section) apart from hearing the gospel, they would not necessarily experience the fullness of salvation in this life otherwise (where salvation here would be the sancitification and healing of our human natures). There would be a reason to preach what Jesus has done and how He has lived, a living icon of our God, for this would teach others to walk likewise.

So, on the one hand, there are these philosophical issues, which I have trouble getting around. On the other hand, I've been wrestling with the following: I can only trust God as much as other people can; in effect, we are all isomorphic before God. If others can hope for God's mercy and be denied, so can I; if others can seek God with all their heart and be frustrated, so can I. No reason seems solid enough, no argument complete enough to make my faith certain, and I must admit that I have no idea what the "witness of the Spirit" is supposed to be. On a personal level, then, I've had to ask myself the question: what if God really were to damn me? All arguments aside, I've had (to start) to accept that whoever God damns, God damns in a perfectly good and just manner in a way that glorifies Him. I can hope that this would be nobody, but even if it weren't, anger at God for this is incoherent. So, I guess I have to trust that God will make things plain to me if this is His will, and if He does not and so damns me for this, it will be just, even if I can't see how.

School Stuff

Today, I received notice that I have passed my comps, and I have successfully defended my thesis. My advisor has said that I should only have about a day's worth of revisions to make before turning in the final draft. Almost done with this program...

Sanders's God Who Risks

Time for another article from Universal Salvation: The Current Debate, and this one hopefully won't be quite as polemic (side note: I do want to make it clear that it was merely a particular style of Calvinism which I found offensive; even if Strange was correct in his points, the blindness of the God-centeredness of other traditions is a poison in any view). In context, Talbott has argued that no one could knowingly choose Hell; it is an essentially irrational option, one which no one could choose with full knowledge, and it is not right to make people choose without full knowledge (or at least, God would not love them if He made them do such). Sanders' critique is not the only one; Walls also makes his case, and from the essays which I've read so far in the book, I think that Walls has the strongest. However, Sanders' concern lies in different areas.

Sanders considers that God has made risks in creation; although he does not bring it up in this essay, this is part of his open theism position. Before getting to the criticisms, one might ask what is it that would make Sanders take such a position? His reasoning seems to be largely pastoral: telling people who have suffered horribly that all will work out in the end just doesn't cut it, for him. He points to people who have lost faith due to tragedies, with nothing really coming out of it spiritually or otherwise; evil and suffering seem to truly be pointless sometimes, and he thinks that Talbott (as well as Calvinists) too lightly downplay this with some sort of "soul-making" theodicy.

So, instead of saying that God has planned out this world in every respect, Sanders' thinks that God has taken risks. Presumably, this is supposed to be a virtue, and so something which God should have. However, is there any non-anthropomorphic reason why we should consider risk-taking to be a virtue? It would seem to me that risk-taking is fundamentally bad, a necessary evil brought on by disadvantageous situations and finitude. As it is a necessity for us, we ought to develop fortitude in order to meet these challenges. Foolhardiness (which, as far as I can see it, is what unnecessary risk-taking is) is a vice, and even more so when the ones who ultimately pay are others. God may suffer pain from our sinning (although again, sometimes Sander's account seems to be blatant anthropomorphism, with nary an argument or exegeted Scripture passage to back it up), but God's pain cannot come close to the pain which the damned will feel through all eternity.

Another point which Talbott uses to defend his argument is this: how will we be able to rejoice in Heaven, while our loved ones are in Hell? Talbott assumes that God would have to perform a kind of lobotomy to get us to forget the people, and this does not seem fitting; therefore, they must be saved as well.

Sanders brings up two rejoinders. The first is that even in this life, sometimes we have to get over bad things happening concerning loved ones; perhaps a death, or perhaps the person in question has committed a serious crime. However, people live on anyhow. To this, I would respond that people do continue, but hardly in a blessed condition. What sort of Heaven would it be if we must all carry our emotional scars through all eternity, without any hope of healing except maybe growing forgetfulness of other people (assuming that our resurrection bodies are forgetful)?

His other rejoinder to Talbott, though, seems on the mark: just as God would have to perform a "lobotomy" on us in order to get us to forget our loved ones, so too God would have to fundamentally alter us in order to give us the full knowledge which we would need in order to make an informed decision. This would not be just a couple extra facts, though, but a complete change in our characters (side note: I really can't see any way around the philosophical necessity of some sort of Purgatory, though I can't find any theological justification for it). God would have to do violence to our beings, whereas it seems at least possible that we could naturally deal with the fact that loved ones would be in Hell.

Is Mercy Possible for All?

I'd like to actually argue for one of the points in the last posts, one which I've seen come up even more often than the others and which I myself have felt the force of at one time. This is the point that mercy, in order to be mercy, cannot be obligated, that the definition of mercy is something that one shouldn't get but does (and, by extension, to something that some don't get, but that one does). I've already posted my questions concerning the parallel notion of justice.

First, let us imagine a world in which God does actually forgive all sinners. We can say for the time being that this is not a necessary world, but either (if one likes counterfactuals of creaturely freedom) that God would create such a world, or that (otherwise) that is simply how an actual world will turn out. Now, let us imagine a world in which God forgives all but one sinner. Has the status of God's action hanged at all towards the rest? How can God's refusal of one sinner affect whether or not God had mercy on others?

Now, if this is true in the actual world, then why should that forgiveness of God towards beings in this actual world be affected by what God could have possibly done had God created a different world? Has God been merciful toward us based on the fact that God could have not been such? There seems to be no reason to think that modality has any influence on the mercifulness of an action (though, how would this tie in to discussions of libertarian free will? Would the same apply? Or is any action for the good, such as mercy, is fine whether or not it is determined, but any evil action can only carry moral responsibility if libertarianly free?).

I'm not sure about the analogy to possible worlds; coming from a classical theist standpoint, I think that there would also be other reasons to deny God's necessary obligation (though not God's actual obligations). This runs into the problem of how God's acts relate to God's nature, though. Perhaps one could say that any specific obligation can have come about or not come about, but that whatever one did obtain would be indicative of God's nature (so, there would be certain obligations that could not have come about, such as damning all those God has promised to save). Also, God is infinite and creation can only be finite, so creation must always only reveal a finite portion of God's nature, thus affecting what obligations may or may not come about. Or, perhaps we can say that what we really care about is God's identity rather than God's nature, and so it doesn't matter what God could have done; we just don't live in those possible worlds.

At any rate, the first argument (about this world) seems to be much more compelling, and is all the universalist would need to challenge some dominant notions, like that of Strange's; God can have mercy on all without this having any bearing on the quality of the mercy. I don't see why the notion of grace should fare any differently.

So, that takes care of necessitation (or at least universalization) aspect, unless I can hear some good reasons otherwise. The other notion is that mercy is undeserved. Is this to say that when I come across a starving, homeless person on the street that I happen to be in a perfect position to help, and decide to care for her, that either (a) my action is not merciful, or (b) that (barring other possible conflicting commitments) I have no obligation whatsoever to help her? Perhaps I could say that I have no obligation toward any one person, but I must help someone. As I don't have the way out of saying that it is because I must show my nature (and so therefore am ultimately only obligated to myself in whatever way I please), this action would be obligatory and yet merciful.

This also shows how mercy and justice are compatible, and really two expressions of the same attribute. Which fits much better with divine simplicity (God doesn't have to worry within Himself over how to reconcile the two!), and also seems to fit the Biblical model better (What does the Lord require of you? To do justly, to love mercy, and the walk humbly with your God), which does not seem to see any problem with the two.

Thought--Stream on Strange's "Calvinist Response"

I've been working through the book Universal Salvation? The Current Debate, and I have some thoughts on the articles that I've been reading; however, this present one is starting to get my blood boiling and, combined with the presence of a computer, I figure that I'll actually get a response out. I've found all of these in many other places, and they are by and large part of the reason why I will no longer touch most works written by Calvinists. Please excuse the polemic, but I'm awfully tired of the smug assurance that certain theologians have when it comes to offering their views, and the way in which these statements are taken to be so self-evident to so many in the church.

• I really don't like it when Calvinists (Augustinians?) co-opt divine sovereignty and the "Godness" of God; as if affirming those automatically meant that one had to agree with them!
• Tied to this, Strange posits that there one either has a God-centered theology or a man-centered one. Not only does this seem to me to plainly be a false dichotomy (what if God has eternally elected to be for us, to use Barth's phrase?), but "God-centered" theologies of any sort seem to me to be excuses for letting one's own preconceptions of God and God's word run wild with impunity, to resist letting one's theology be open to the Other and instead remaining in one's own little comfortable space, with answers to all of life's major questions.
• If, as Strange notes, all sin is ultimately against God, then why doesn't this count for the Arminian/Universalist case? If it is against God, then God could be free to forgive it. But all this is, of course, brushed away because Talbott does not "truly understand the sinfulness of sin." I still fail to see why God can't be big enough to overlook insults; it seems to me like this "God-centered" theology" is still reliant on human concerns. (Note: it could be that there would be other reasons for Hell and for eternal punishment, I just don't think that the whole honor thing or the "de-godding God" line work.) Considering that God does this for some, it doesn't seem like that big a step to say that He could (whether or not He does) do it for all. But, I guess I'm just not "counter-cultural" enough to appreciate God's nature.
• "My fear is that in rejecting the concept of retributive punishment, the cross loses much of its meaning and power, a fear shared by other Calvinist thinkers...." Granted, the problem of atonement is a sticky one, and Talbott (the main universalist in the collection of essays) may not really be able to provide for penal substitution (though this is not the only form of substitutionary atonement, and one must also wrestle with the extent to which the Biblical passages on the matter are literal descriptions of how are sins have been borne away, and the extent to which they are metaphors, analogies to help us to understand without nailing down a given system). However, is the cross the only part of Christ's life which is salvific? As one of my professors puts it, could Christ have come down at the beginning of Holy Week and simply gone through that in order to save us? Or does the Incarnation have a role to play as well, not to mention the Resurrection? Doesn't the cross gain much of its power from the larger narrative? If so, though, then there is no reason to assume that other emphases must take away from the message of the cross.
• Also, regarding the notion that "propitiation . . . is the most important concept because of its Godward reference.": Is this all it takes to be a "God-centered theology"? Wasn't the point of Christ's advent his becoming nothing? Isn't the nature of God shown in self-giving love as well, and so therefore in his being for humanity, despite having been sinned against? Peppering a theology with piety does not make it true, or even God-honoring.
• "What do we mean when we say that God is love? From the perspective of God's essential and necessary being, this must be referring to the intratrinitarian love the divine Persons share with each other." People can judge my likely state of mind from the previous comments. I would like to add that the Bible is not a book of metaphysics; and metaphysical entailments which it carries (aside from things like "God exists") generally must be pretty carefully exegeted. It would be perfectly fine to say that "God is love," in natural speech and to be affirming God's identity as He has willed Himself to be toward us, and not His essential being-in-Himself. To claim that God's love for Himself must be the only thing suggested by this passage as following from "soli Deo Gloria" is just mistaken, though I do agree that God's self-love is not narcissism.
• Strange quotes approvingly from Helm and Jenson: "A justice that could be unilaterally waived would not be justice, and a mercy which could not be unilaterally waived would not be mercy." On the contrary: if one steps away from the legalistic, externalist approach to justice and mercy, as if they are attributes that can only depending on what else has or has not been done and are instead intrinsic qualities of agents/actions, then justice and mercy have nothing to do with being waived or not. Justice is righting wrongs, and mercy is simply reaching down to help someone worse off (I can have mercy on people who have never wronged me as well as those who have, and I would think that my position in front of God obligates me to be merciful to all).
• On a related note, Strange mentions that universalism and attendant claims upon God's love would obligate God toward creation. Perhaps; but wouldn't the necessity of God's damning sinners do the same? But that's part of God's nature, the response would be. But what's the difference? Why is it so bad that God would act with love and graciousness toward all due to His nature, but good that God would be forced to condemn sinners (who are sinners due to His own choosing, on the compatibilist scheme) due to His nature? It seems that the former is more consistent with His self-revelation in Christ.
• Strange mentions three types of God's love: (1) Intratrinitarian, (2) Universal, providential, and non-salvific, and (3) Particular, effective, and salvific. (1) and (3) are fine. (2), as rendered by Strange, is hardly a type of love at all. What sort of love would I have for my wife if I told her that I would do the chores at home, support her, and generally not give her that bad a life, even though I would divorce her in a year no matter what? Maybe we could improve this, so that I divorce her for unfaithfulness, which in turn stems from my having controlled her mind to become unfaithful in the first place (but according to her desires!); however, she would be safe if she would repeat back to me in a year a password which I may or may not tell her, and which is undiscoverable otherwise. True, the situation could be worse, but this is scarcely to be called love, and unworthy of being called the love of God for humanity as shown throughout Scripture and in Christ. When one roasts for all eternity, one less experienced cool Spring breeze is scarcely relevant.

I really wish that Evangelical (and Reformed, for that matter) Calvinists of this particular sort (there are better sorts, I realize) would pick up someone outside reading. I can't imagine that anyone without such a small theological bubble could even begin to state that all of this is the necessary result of soli Deo Gloria and God-centered theology.

The Aesthetics of Mathematics

I've been trying to think of what it is that makes math seem beautiful (for those who disagree with this, it really is a fundamental truth on par with the law of non-contradiction. Just ask any pure math student). After all, I recoil from the thought of a deterministic universe, one which could be completely described with math. And I don't really see why the fact that mathematical laws govern things is all that spectacular - I'm sure that some mathematical figure could describe just about anything, even random chaos. The way in which math fits together really is a giant tautology.

This morning, though, it hit me. Mathematics is the hope of a fundamental peace in the universe, that beneath the dizzying complexity, there is a clean-fitting unity. Math is music, a vast harmony which subsumes the discordance and disorder of the concrete. Math is a gaze at the infinite through the finite, and the presence of stately structures of the whole within every individual. It is the recognition that there can be a skillful composition underlying the chaos, and that even from the simple things of life magnificent melodies can be produced.

Would this give some meaning to math being the thoughts of God?

The Meaning of Life

After looking at this cartoon, my whole life has been changed. I now have the answers to all of life's most perplexing questions.

Disagreement with Arabic Grammar

When do terms get stretched beyond an acceptable range?

Take the word "agreement," as it tends to be used in grammar (subject/verb, noun/adjective). One would think that it would be rather straightforward. So when my Arabic book tells me that adjectives always agree with their nouns, this is no big deal, right?

So, sometimes this agreement is what is called "strict agreement;" as I would be used to calling it, this is real agreement. The adjective is the same case, gender, and number as the noun. However, the case endings also denote definiteness, and sometimes the adjective agrees with the noun in this, and sometimes not. Not a huge deal.

But wait - now we have "deferred agreement." This means that sometimes, we just decide to treat things as if they were feminine singular (used with groups of inanimate objects). In Qu'ranic Arabic, there is a further exception to this, since feminine plural things that form their plural in a particular way can have strict agreement with their adjectives.

And then there is "chiastic concord." When dealing with numbers 3-10 (a friend reminded me that Hebrew is the same way), one takes the opposite gender from the singular of the noun in order for the two to "agree."

And all of this isn't getting into the fact that the verb does not always agree with its subject in number if the subject follows the verb.

Supervenience and Levels of Reality

In ethics and the philosophy of mind, there is a notion called supervenience. Basically, this is a way to try to get around the problem in the last post: if something is entirely determined by something else, how does it exist? The epiphenomenalist in philosophy of mind would say that there are mental events, but these events a) are completely and regularly correlated to physical events, and b) have no causal power of their own. So, if physical state P1 gives rise to mental state M1, and P2 to M2, then if P1 causes P2, M2 will follow M1. However, M1 does not cause M2, and in some versions P1 and P2 do not cause their respective mental states; in any case, though, the existence of P1 would guarantee the existence of M1.

I'm not the biggest fan of this application to mind (indeed, in a moment I will try to reverse it), but I think that there is a logical structure here which would be helpful. In order to bring it out, let me call attention to Scotus' notion of accidental and essential causes. If A, B, and C, are in a chain of accidental causes, then A causes B and B causes C, but B's causing C is independent of A. So, a grandfather might beget a father, and the father a son, and the father's begetting of the son can take place even if the grandfather were dead.

Essential causation, however, is transitive. If I hit a ball with a bat, we can both say that I hit the ball and also that the bat hit the ball while I swung the bat. Also, due to this feature, all the members of an essential chain of causation are simultaneous.

This appears then to be a good way of parsing out the notion of hierarchical levels of reality, within submitting on to an other. Let us take causal classes C(n), where for every member x,y in C(n) for a given n, x and y can causally interact (they have accidental causation). Further, for x in C(n) and y in C(n+1), x can be a member of an essential chain of causation with y (we could expand this to y from C(m) where m > n), though the two do not interact in the typical fashion. This would seem to explain the supervenience relation: we have two types of causation which hierarchically relate to each other. Unlike supervenience, mental events would interact with each other if they are in the same causal category, but as that appears to be the most unattractive part of epiphenomenalism, I don't see the problem.

Finally, we could say that if x from C(n), y from C(m), and z from C(o) (where o < m < n) are in a causal chain, then it is an essential chain in which it could be said that y causes z and that x causes z. This is not in supervenience theories, but it seems inescapable if supervenience were to apply to multiple levels of reality.

So, we could say that God is in C(0) by himself. Everything that occurs in any other layer of causation is due to God, and so we can say that God is more real than creation. There is a fundamental difference between God's causative actions and ours. However, I do not see that this must entail that God's actions completely determine ours; I'm still working on what both the affirmation and negation of this would entail. We could place agents on C(1), and finally non-volitional aspects of creation of C(2) (of course, this could be modified as need be; maybe animals do not qualify as agents, but still have a level of causative reality higher than plants). Therefore, it could be said that God causes everything. It could also be said that minds cause everything (where "mind" refers to God and the non-divine agents). It, finally, could also be said that there is causation in the physical world.

Determinism and Ontology

Can something exist which is not either a) an irreducible component of the explanation of how things are in terms of causation, or b) an abstract object (or, possibly only a)? What I mean is this: if A and B jointly cause C, and are both necessary and sufficient for C's existence and everything that it does, does C exist? More specifically, let us assume (perhaps problematically) that if F and G necessarily/sufficiently cause H which necessarily/sufficiently causes I, then I can be explained without reference to H. So, why talk about H, except as a shorthand, a practical tool for accounting for a particular aggregate of the effects of F and G?

Where am I going with this is the following: if determinism is true, do we exist? If for every action X which I perform, X occurs due to a set of necessary and sufficient conditions which do not need to include me, then could actually be considered a being?

If I am not a being at all, let alone an agent, let alone a moral agent, could I be held responsible for my actions? Would it be just for God to simply create pain states for their own sake in hell? I think that I could make some sense of our being in heaven: we don't exist per se, but God loves our particular aggregates, and so God's action toward us differentiates us even though we would have no intrinsic existence. So, I could be a universalistic/annihilationistic determinist. However, punishing an aggregate just makes no sense to me.

The Importance of Criticism

I've been wrestling for some time now, over issues like the church (which I've been blogging about) and about various political and ethical issues, especially related to the presence of systematic sin. I reject the individualistic notion that I can be holy simply by focusing on my own actions; my actions affect others, and my deliberations are important in that process. So, when I consider that some system is corrupt, what is the best course of action?

The knee-jerk response is to say that we ought to replace the system. If capitalism is bad, then let us try socialism. If democracy is bad, maybe we should be more authoritarian. If this were the case, then the best action would be to overthrow the current system (in line with moral standards). The other possible response is to say, perhaps democracy is bad, but it's not as bad as everything else, so we should stop complaining and deal with it. Why criticize if we cannot also be constructive?

The reason why is that all human systems are corrupt. So, on the one hand, democracy as run by us will always be corrupt; there will always be large blocs of voters who vote accord to mob opinion with no understanding of the issues (we academics, of course, would never do such a thing; we merely happen to have converged onto similar ideas through our enlightened intellects). But, what do we do? Any other system that we put in its place will be similarly corrupt. Maybe some systems are in the end worse than others, but simply changing the problem does not fix it.

So, if the current system is in error, but so are other possible replacements, should we simply let things be and ignore the problem? This seems to me to be the response of the person asking for a constructive response. There isn't any single response to give. What can be given, though, is the criticism of the system in which we live; we can point out the flaws, and struggle to deal with them and bring about justice in a small way. We can raise red flags and keep people from becoming complacent. In short, we can press the point that our citizenship is not in our present lives by keeping things from becoming too settled, either in the present system or in ideal changes.

Questions of Retribution

Can there be just retributive punishment in any situation? Or is all punishment corrective? Is it ever justified to simply harm someone with no remedial possibilites, even ones which they will not accept?

If we do not freely choose our actions, could there be any just retribution? How could it be just for us to suffer harm for something we were compelled to do by another, no matter how much our phenomenology suggests otherwise?

Could there be just retributive punishment in which neither the punishee nor the punisher gains? God would not need anything which the punishment of the unjust would provide, so what would retribution for its own sake avail?

Could there be justice without an eye toward a given result in which someone at least benefits? Is there some abstract honor or justice of which God needs to keep track, even if this is one with God's nature? What does justice mean without reference to concrete states of affairs and the results for persons of one sort or another?

Procrastination

I figure that I'll post an update here, since I'm getting tired of studying and I haven't said much about what's been going on here recently. I'm currently working on language proficiency, as I am in no classes and have been told by my adviser that I don't need to do any more work on my thesis until after comps. So, I took up Greek (again) for fun, and when I finished the grammar for that, I started on Arabic; there may be some opportunities for me to do work in Arab-Christian interactions during the middle ages, which is the closest I will be able to get to combining medieval philosophy with other religions within a single program in the Chicago area. Latin and Greek suddenly seem easy, and I can't quite pinpoint the reason (though the unvoweled texts and the strange vocabulary certainly don't help).

As far as doctoral programs go, I'm basically sitting and waiting. I've been turned down at Northwestern, haven't heard back at Notre Dame, and have been waitlisted at Marquette. I've also realized that I really can't make the commute to Notre Dame (all the trains seem to be more interested in coming to Chicago early in the morning; odd thing, that), which basically means that I'm left hoping that I'm high up on the list at Marquette (I know I'm in the top 12 applicants, so I have a fighting chance, but I may not know anything definite until April). It seems to be a crazy year for applicants; almost twice as many applied to Marquette than the average, and I got a letter from Northwestern back in January saying that they had so many applications that they could only even look at the top few.

In addition, I'm currently waiting for my old car to be picked up for a charity. It's been sad; this was my first car, after all, almost like a sort of pet. It even miraculously started up for me for the first time in 3 weeks this morning, as if it were giving me a last drive to say goodbye.... Ah, Shadow, who will I get lost with now?

Ok, that's enough procrastinating. Back to filling my head with language information which I'll forget tomorrow, or if I'm really good, in 5 mintues.

Update: After going downstairs to check my mail, I found that I have yet another reason to cross ND off my list. Actually, two reasons, one for each program to which I had applied. Maybe I should start looking for a second masters program....

Invididual vs. Corporate Ethics

I just got back from a trip down to South Carolina for a graduation at Parris Island. My younger brother James is now officially a Marine. I must say that I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, before joining he was making money just to spend it on computer games, which he would spend most of his free time playing. Now, he's putting aside his own desires and freedom for what he sees to be the greater good, and has willingly put himself through three months of hell in order to do this. On the other hand, if I have not been fully persuaded of pacifism, I'm at least getting pretty close to it; I would only count WWII as a legitimate war within US history, and I'm not even sure that we entered it for just reasons (I'm sure that we often did not do just acts during it). Even besides this, there was an aura of patriotism at the base which without exaggeration came close to religious. I'm all for my ability to speak my voice in public, but to say that the flag is watching over me wherever I go? To cultivate feelings of, more or less, ultimate concern for my nation?

What is best to do in such a circumstance? What happens when the growth of virtue in an individual (or in individuals) conflicts with the overall good of society and the spread of peace, especially when any other likely choice from the individual would likely have continued the old habits? Tied to this is the epistemological problem: am I ever sure enough of my position to denounce that of another, when the position in question would lead to at least some moral improvement?

After this comes the relation between the roles of intellectual and of prophet. As an intellectual, I consider the cases concerning the way in which our faith should work in our lives, in our churches, in our nations, more than the average person. I have the practice and the leisure time to do so. I can spend more time pondering the ways in which the worldviews of many are formed by contingent historical factors taken to be immutable moral laws. It would seem from this that I have the responsibility to share these thoughts with the community, since I have the provisions to partake in intellectual exercise. However, in academia I am cut off from the life of the average person. My daily life simply is not that of the common member of the church, and my solutions are indicative of my own preoccupations rather than the concerns of Joe Steelmiller. It is similar to the problem in economic politics, where the poor know their concerns, but not how to fix them, while the rich would have a better idea of how to fix them but don't have the same concerns (indeed, they have interests which lie in the direction of not listening to the poor).

So, what does one do when one sees a truth, but too dimly to be quite sure of it? What does one do when the proclamation of this truth will hurt many? How does one proclaim the message in a way in which it would be heard (after all, telling my mother and brother that the American church is often idolatrously patriotic, or at least ties its own end far too much to that of the nation would be an exercise in futility), or should one really care about this?