Column 12/02/2023: Sofia Coppola's Priscilla is a Disturbing Affirmation of Humanity

Sofia Coppola's Priscilla is a Disturbing Affirmation of Humanity

What do we want, and why do we want it? And what would happen if we got what we want?

These questions are, in one way or another, the heart of all of Sofia Coppola's films--as, indeed, of many films. What sets Sofia Coppola apart from practically all filmmakers of her (or any) generation is two things: (1) her almost exclusive focus on female desire and perspective, and (2) the honesty and empathy of her portrayal of desire and of the people caught in its spell.

From this perspective, Priscilla represents the peak of her career. This is, paradoxically, because it is by far her most restrained film, the film where she most lets go of typical auteur control and its accompanying obsessions and allows another person's perspective to fully take center stage. To take a small, but telling example, Sofia Coppola, like other auteur directors, has a stable of actors and actresses she uses repeatedly in her films; and Priscilla contains none of them. Yet Priscilla is at the same time a film that profoundly reflects, and fulfills, Sofia Coppola's prevailing style, aesthetics, and overriding obsessions. I honestly cannot think of any other director, any other artist, even, who could have created anything remotely like this film. And that is no small praise.

Poem: Good and Evil

 Good and Evil

I saw the Devil walking through the forest,

his hands bloodless, 

long fingers

extended

his face set 

in a glare of impotent hatred

fixed before the first tree grew on earth,

his eyes forward

searching, searching, searching

for one more victim

to destroy a little while, to curse, to

escape, to

deny

a little while

until caught in the blinding light

have I seen human faces like his?

has not my face been set also, in just this way,

have not my hands been extended?

but my face was not fixed, nor were my arms

set forever

when the light caught me, when it blinded me, when it

plunged me into darkness

it could heal, and not consume

there is little difference between he and I, except

that when the light came for me, when it blinded me, when it

took away all my power, made me forever weak, forever in the power

of another

I could turn my face towards the light, 

and hold it in the heart, and in the will, so that

it was mine forever

my hatred of the light

could be devoured by fire

and the desires of my heart

separated out, a bloody business,

great tearing, cutting, amputations,

one after another, until

my heart beat in the midst of everlasting flame

not defiant, obedient 

I was darkness, but

I could still become light

this is the only difference between he and I, the only difference

between me and all the damned

surely there are others like him, walking the streets, the narrow hallways, the

gilded boulevards, gliding

down the endless road

men with faces fixed in impotent rage, their hands extended

to destroy and to deny

for a little while

surely they are like me, and I am like them

surely we are like the devil

but

surely, they too can be saved

if you will plunge them into the darkness

at the heart of your light

and burn them until they become yours

if I can be saved, then surely

they also, however fixed their faces, however

broken their hearts, however full their hands

of empty efforts

surely you can save them also, my Lord

I am still in darkness, but surely your light is within my heart

I can extinguish it if I wish, I can fix my face

forever

in denial

but my Lord, I do not fear it, because I have seen your light

have mercy upon me, a miserable sinner

have mercy upon us all, do not permit us

to remain as we are

I saw the Lord walking through the forest,

his hands were bleeding, with unhealed wounds

stretching to embrace

his face fixed in the last agony of love

the last look of a dying man

his eyes emptied of tears, 

searching, searching, searching

for those whom he would save

you have so little time, my Lord,

to save us all

so little time

to suffer and die

lead me through the forest, let me follow close behind you,

the wounds in my hands bleeding, unhealed,

my eyes dropping tears, 

searching, searching, searching

for those whom you would save

Amen.

Column 11/04/2023: American Ghost Story: The Shining, The Jazz Singer, Invisible Man

American Ghost Story: 

The Shining, The Jazz Singer, Invisible Man 

I've been sick recently, and have thus had the time and lack of energy to do two things I rarely do: not think and watch movies. 

However, being me, and feeling better, these movies (and a novel I read at the same time) have inevitably sparked an enormous number of thoughts in me, which I will now inflict on you, dear reader. 

To be a Ghost

The Shining (1980) is a great horror movie that is centered on the rejection of almost everything that has made horror a popular genre. There are no jump scares in the movie--there is precious little gore--there is even little or no psychological horror in the conventional sense. And yet it is precisely when Kubrick does deploy such elements that the uniqueness of the film becomes most striking.

Column 10/21/2023: Pope Francis and the Third World War

Pope Francis and the Third World War

In the far-off year 2014, the sun shone, Barack Obama was President of the United States, The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was released, and the top-selling song of the year was named "Happy." And the Pope of the Catholic Church announced the beginning of the Third World War. 

Amid the ever-repeated excitement of such scintillating mass-media events that year, few people in America noted or marked the centenary of World War I. While in Britain and France, this war is still clearly remembered--if nothing else for its devastating toll on the population and landscape--in America it has always been a forgotten war, a mere footnote on the path to World War II and global dominance. Still, events were held, here and there, most in Europe and a few in America, and to one of them the recently-elected Pope Francis came. While a South American by birth, he is also the descendant of Italian immigrants, who no doubt passed on some of the legacy and legend of the Great War to him. And so, in September, he visited a cemetery where soldiers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that great rival of united Italy, were buried, and mourned the dead, and prayed for them, and said a few words in reflection on the conflict in which they died, as Popes have done for many decades now in regular succession.

In doing so, however, Francis, as he so often does, went off script, and began reflecting on contemporary events. "Perhaps," he mused, "one can speak of a third world war, one fought piecemeal."

This is, so far as can be told, the first time Francis mentioned the concept, only a little over a year after his election. He has since used the phrase and concept of "a third world war fought piecemeal" over and over again, dozens if not hundreds of times, mentioning it with greater and greater frequency as time has gone on and the world has grown more unstable.

Many things could be said about Pope Francis, for good and for ill, in many different dimensions. I hope to eventually write more about him and his significance.

The point of this essay, however, is to say that about this, at least, he is right, and has been since 2014. Something fundamental has changed, and the world has begun to look back to and recapitulate the horrors of the 20th century. And this must be understood, and stopped, while there is still time.

Poem: Harvest

 Harvest

“The harvest is great,

but the laborers are few.”

gather flowers while you can

before the night dawns

and the frost rises

out of the deep

the wind begins to whisper

down down

from the icy peak

in just a little while

it will blow inexorable

sweep the heads off the stalks of grain

carry them away 

into the endless distance

if you do not pluck them

gather them into the warm barn

to be dried

and laid beneath the blanket

eternal rest

and shelter

already the green of the leaves fades

the sunlight darkens

there is little time

run!

out through the fields

down into the valleys

the icy gorges

by which the smallest flower springs

pull it up

by the roots

whole and complete

carry it

to safety

in the house

the fire is burning

drying the air

warming

giving life

there

they will be preserved

forever

she will wear them in her hair

and place them in her crystal vases

about the hearth

thirsty, drinking up water

and light

the grain will be ground

hardened in the fiery furnace

and set in his presence

there to abide

forever

are you frightened?

do not let it stay you

do you not see the shadow at the window

the winged thing

whose breath is poison?

already they begin to wilt

the stalks lowering

the life draining

are you sorrowful?

then labor all the faster

do you not smell

the burning in the air?

they are coming

to kindle the fields

and the forests

salt the earth

reach down, down, down into its depths

pull out the little sprouted seeds

reserves of life

only beginning

bear them to the temple

do not grow weary

you have only a little while

to labor

for the night is coming

in which no man can work

then you will rejoice

Amen

Column 09/25/2023: Prudence, Wisdom, and the Contemporary Crisis in Catholic Ethics

Prudence, Wisdom, and the Contemporary Crisis in Catholic Ethics

I am going to attempt what I fully understand is both a very difficult and very presumptuous task: that is, to summarize what I see as a centrally important concept to ancient philosophical and Catholic ethical theories, and to indicate why lack of proper understanding of this concept wreaks havoc with attempts to understand and apply these concepts in the modern world. This is quite an obnoxious thing to do; if you are annoyed by it, please pray for me. If you like it, pray for me anyway. 

In contemporary Catholic ethical discourses and debates, especially on a popular level, but increasingly also in academic and even clerical circles, there are two terms that are thrown around more than any others. These terms, in fact, are thrown around with such frequency that one would think that there were more or less no other issues in Catholic ethics at all; and what is perhaps oddest of all, they are thrown around by both sides of virtually all contemporary Catholic ethical debates, and in highly similar terms.

In watching these debates unfold, I have grown more and more and more certain that, put simply, these terms are being used all wrong--not just trivially or technically wrong, but in ways that, frankly, I can find no parallel in the tradition prior to the 20th century, and which taken together threaten the very edifice of Catholic ethics. This is a strong claim; but it is strong precisely because these terms refer, however increasingly remotely, to base assumptions of Catholic and ancient philosophical ethics without which the whole edifice of Catholic ethics simply makes no sense, and simply cannot be lived out or applied.

I refer, of course, to the two terms intrinsically wrong and prudential. 

Poem: Blood

Blood 

The leaves on the trees are wet with blood

From the heart of the dying sun.

***********************************************************************

Jesu, do you really know what it is like

To be created?

To be nothing?

How could you have done this to us?

How could you have created us, and left us alone

In this dark of which you made us

With only each other’s faces

To reflect the light from heaven

And make us be a little while?

In the end, we are thrown on the garbage dump

In Gehenna, where the worm does not die

Nor is the fire quenched:

Darkness devoured into light

And life

And feeling

It is better to be damned

Than not to exist

Than never to have existed.

But oh, what sorrow, whether in hell

Or in heaven

To be only darkness

Forever

Are you really inside of me?

No, I don’t care about that now:

Are you really with me?

Do I face you, exist to you,

And you to me?

Do I have a face?

I know that you have a face,

And that your Father is with you,

And that you face him for all eternity,

And for all eternity he is with you

And you with him.

How happy you must be!

To never be alone.

To be all light

With no darkness at all.

But Lord, do you really know

What it is like to be created?

Column 09/11/2023: The Trial of Donald J. Trump

The Trial of Donald J. Trump

[Given the strong interest in the media right now about the possibility of a trial of former President Donald J. Trump, I thought people would be interested in the contents of a holographic tape recently uncovered by archeologists digging in the future ruins of Philadelphia. As you can see, it purports to be a record of Trump's upcoming trial. Given the oddities of the events portrayed, however, it is likely that it in fact contains a later reproduction or dramatization of the original event, dating from as late as a century afterward--perhaps in the form of a school play, or some sort of fertility ritual. While the accuracy of this record and its meaning cannot be deduced with accuracy, it undoubtedly was considered an important document by the future culture that produced it, and is thus relevant to scholars for that reason alone.

Please note that the below written transcript of the original holographic record was created by AI, and may contain errors and other artifacts. Viewer discretion is advised.]

A room, completely dark. Suddenly, a single shaft of red light rises, piercing the darkness, revealing a dais on which three draped figures sit.

Judges (in unison): When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?

A red light goes up under the face of the first judge. It is LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA, in full costume as Alexander Hamilton.

Judge Miranda: How do a bastard, an orphan, and the son of a whore grow up to be judges?

The light goes up under the face of the second judge. It is Hollywood Actor ROBERT DOWNEY, JR, dressed in his Iron Man suit.

Judge Downey, Jr: We're sort of like a team.

The third judge is revealed as OPRAH WINFREY; she is the only one of the three wearing judicial robes, and a powdered wig.

Judge Winfrey: Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher.

Small yellow lights like stars come up overhead, revealing that the trial is being held in a massive theater with an arched gothic ceiling and red velvet seats. Most of the stage is still dark, but a red curtain can just be made out at the back. The audience goes wild, cheering and applauding and screaming, encouraged by the judges, who wave their hands wildly in answer.

Judge Miranda (enthusiastically): Look around, look around!

Judge Downey, Jr (firmly): It’s not about how much we lost, it’s about how much we have left. We’re the Avengers. We gotta finish this.

Judge Winfrey silences the two men with a wave of her hand. She stands.

Judge Winfrey (severely): Youth, with its enthusiasms, which rebels against any accepted norm because it must: we sympathise. It may wear flowers in its hair, bells on its toes. But when the common good is threatened, when the function of society is endangered, such revolts must cease. They are non-productive...and must be abolished!

Advocate for the prosecution, please make your opening argument.

Poem: Who Jesus is to Me

Who Jesus is to Me

“He said to them: 'But you, who do you say that I am?'”

The Father said: tell others

tell the flock

who Jesus is to you

who is Jesus to me?

he is the terror in the night

that puts the terrors to flight

the stranger more strange

than the strangeness of the world

the monster more monstrous

from which the monsters flee

he is that broken, twisted body

hanging on the pole

the pierced flesh

all pierced flesh

bleeding

rotting

the curse

blasphemy

horror

in the sunlight

foulness offensiveness

obscenity

of the body

emptiness

of the heart

the pause, cessation, caesura

of the mind

and the soul

rest

respite

fulfillment

Column 08/26: Homo Vanus Patiens: On The Interpretation of Seven American Nights and A Modest Primer on How to Read Gene Wolfe

Homo Vanus Patiens 

On the Interpretation of Seven American Nights and A Modest Primer on How to Read Gene Wolfe

The passing of Gene Wolfe in 2019 went, like much of his literary career, mostly unnoticed by the world at large. As before, plaudits were published by his admirers--a piratic crew of literary critics, academics, fellow science fiction authors, Catholics, and nobodies--declaring him, for the umpteenth time, the greatest [blank] of his generation--with the blank to be filled in, depending on one's personal preferences, with "literary sci-fi writer," "sci-fi writer," or even just "writer." These praises make for odd reading, and I imagine would be odder for anyone who had not read him before: as they consist usually of writers struggling to find the right adjectives and express just what about this guy was so good. And usually failing.

Gene Wolfe, it must be said, is hard to describe. He is also, at least for some, hard to read. As I write this, the top prompts for "Gene Wolfe" on google include the plaintive cry, "How do I read Gene Wolfe?" 

How do I read Gene Wolfe? This is very emphatically the right question to ask. Most classic works of literature are, at heart, exceedingly simple in content--love story, adventure, horror, relationship drama, novel--even if frequently daunting in execution. For most such books and authors, the right advice is exactly the opposite of what we were taught in high-school English class: relax, forget all about symbolism and subtext and social and cultural context, and try to enjoy the book exactly as you would Animorphs. The paradox of Gene Wolfe, however, over which many literary critics and random forumgoers have struggled in the decades since he began his career, is that despite writing for a "pulp" genre shared with Animorphs, he is the rare author who does, in fact, demand to be read carefully, thoughtfully, analytically, considerately. 

Column 8/19/2023: Death of the Son, Episode Four: At the Court of the King

Death of the Son, Episode Four: At the Court of the King 

[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three]

Day had dawned before he was even aware he had been asleep, and when he awoke the priest Apollon was waiting by his cot, his old face drawn and worn, as if he had slept even less than Theodotus. Such hours suit me; the soldier and the deacon alike. Less sleep means less time for dreams.

Surely the old confessor must have similar dreams? For a moment, as the sleep cleared from his mind, he toyed with the idea of asking him about them. I saw so many like you, old man. Do you dream of the walls and the chains that held you? Or the men in fine robes who questioned you, day after day, always the same question, over and over again? Or the soldiers who held you by the arms and struck you on command? Or do you merely dream of the day they put out your eye? But the first words he spoke were more to the point: 

"My investigation of the palace is proceeding well. Today I must interview the clerics of the court."

Column 08/01/2023: Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a Crime Against Humanity

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a Crime Against Humanity 

Movies are back.

This, it seems, is what everyone is taking away from the unprecedented Barbenheimer phenomenon, which out of nowhere rocketed ticket sales from post-pandemic lows back to blockbuster levels. Two bizarre and bizarrely ill-matched movies released on the same weekend that somehow, instead of undercutting each other, ended up boosting each other, entirely through the power of Internet memes. 

What a strange time to be alive.

There is, really, nothing quite like modern Internet culture, a culture where incongruity and bizarreness and the power of a single ephemeral joke are valued, literally, above all else--and are powerful enough to get millions of Americans out of their homes and into movie theaters. Chesterton in the 1910s said that there had never been a power like the modern press: and he was right. But he hadn't seen nothing yet.

This is supposed to be an essay about the movie Oppenheimer, but discussing Internet memes is not a bad place to start. For what makes Oppenheimer so horrifying, at least for me, is the degree to which it associates and intertwines and simply and precisely treats as the same thing the power of mass media and the power of mass destruction.

Let me start over. I saw the movie Oppenheimer recently, and hated it as I have never hated any work of art produced by human persons before. It is the only film I have ever watched that made me absolutely livid with rage and sick to my stomach and unable to speak coherently for hours thereafter. I am still mad about it.

This is not precisely because it is a bad movie. In matter of fact, it is a clumsily made movie in many obvious repects--but rehearsing these would be largely besides the point. This is very much a film that does what it sets out to do, that makes the point it wants to make, that conveys what it wants to convey, to such a degree as to almost qualify as a genuine revelation. 

That being said, what it aims at, what it reveals, what it piously and intently worships, is, in my humble opinion, evil--and not just any evil, but precisely the evil of our time and place and society, the underlying belief and devotion and preoccupation behind all the most central and mainstream trends and all the most wasting moral and intellectual and social and political diseases of the world since 1945. And the movie loves this, and wants us to love it, too. And that is why I hate the movie.

Column 07/19/2023: Twin Peaks is America and David Lynch Needs Religion

Twin Peaks is America and David Lynch Needs Religion

[Warning: the following contains spoilers for the shows and movie Twin Peaks. I would highly advise watching it first, as it's quite good and very worth watching.]

There is something very strange about the human mind. 

One thing that, for me, makes Chesterton such a valuable thinker is that he is one of the very few authors I have ever read who actually seems to understand modernity--because he sees it, properly, not in terms of technology or mythical historical processes or even more mythical economic discoveries, but in terms of fundamental anthropology and human psychology, which is perhaps the only way to ever understand any human epoch or civilization. 

One of his more misunderstood quotes is the famous tag that the world is divided not between dogmatists and anti-dogmatists, but between conscious dogmatists and unconscious dogmatists. This is not merely, as it may seem, an ironically clever taunt, but a reflection of a much broader anthropological theme. Man, as Chesterton puts it, is defined by the making of dogmas; he is homo dogmaticus; which does not mean merely a creature that has beliefs or that codifies them, but first and foremost an entity whose mind, in some strange way, cannot think at all, cannot function at all, cannot even exist, without an entire universe to sustain it. Mind implies, desires, demands world: in his Thomas Aquinas he compares the meeting of the two to a marriage. As in a human marriage, in seeking the world, the mind becomes one flesh with it, incorporating it into itself and itself into it, relating to it as the defining context and atmosphere and background and content for all its own acts of thought and apprehension and speech. World in this sense is not merely a mechanical or abstract construct, an equation in physics: it is all those materials of reality and being and atmosphere and emotion and, in short, content, within and through which the mind moves and acts and exists.

A marriage between real world and mind is the ideal, the telos--but it is not always achieved. Even when the marriage fails, when the mind is cut off from the real world, it does not cease to dream dreams, see visions, and construct, out of its own desire and lack and disappointment, worlds of its own. The mind must exist in a world to exist at all--if only in a world of its own making. And yet, even in their deformities and absences, such universes reflect, inevitably, the shape of the one real world.

Column 06/26/2023: The AI Revolution Already Took Place

 The AI Revolution Already Took Place

The most interesting thing about modernity is the degree to which it depends, for its basic functioning, on generating a constant sense of novelty. 

On such novelty depends not only such trifles as human life and livelihood, but also "the economy," "politics," and, perhaps most importantly of all, the ever-growing Internet-conspiracist-Take-Worker sector of the global economy.

To easily grasp what defines "modernity," I often point out to students that in Latin, as in most ancient languages, the term "new" normally has negative connotations--and can be otherwise translated as "strange" "rash" and even "revolutionary." In itself, this is far closer to a sort of human baseline response to novelty as such. Most ancient societies realized that "new things" were almost by definition disruptive things, things that created complications for the social networks and institutions they valued so highly and thus hardship and suffering and conflict. Families and institutions and Empires alike run on the old, and are thus largely and inevitably run by the old--especially in Rome, but increasingly in America as well. And as the recent disgusting wall-to-wall press coverage of the anniversary of overturning Roe v Wade reminds us, for institutions and established powers of all kinds, new things, and new people, always cause problems.

Merely saying that contemporary societies are the opposite of this, and regard novelty and the new as positive, though, is insufficient and somewhat deceptive. Certainly, modernity features any number of "progressive" narratives and theories and philosophies and theologies whereby what is new is always and by definition good, no matter what. Many popular works of progressive narrative and theory are, in fact, nearly comical in the degree of religious and moral fervor which they openly show and glory in the enormous conflict, social and familial disruption, and even violence that result from a given new trend, while still dogmatically insisting on that trend's goodness and the absolute moral necessity of  embracing it and encouraging it and never questioning it at all. Yet even here, it would be easy to misunderstand the actual content and basis of the belief. 

To understand the history of the last few hundred years, one has to understand, first and foremost, that the negativity and conflict generated by modernity and modern trends is, in practically every case, not the result of "anti-modern" or "reactionary" or even "conservative" forces, but merely the inseparable twin and means of modernity itself. It is not, as one might expect, consistently and inevitably the progressive forces that advocate for novelty and portray it in positive terms, and the anti-progressive forces that portray it in negative terms. Rather, in almost every case, the novelty and its reaction are simultaneous and inseparable.

To give an obvious example, science-fiction taken as a whole is without a doubt a "progressive" and "modern" genre, yet the bread-and-butter of science fiction since its first days has been horror stories about technology and its negative consequences, demons and mad clones and evil androids and nuclear apocalypse and genetic engineering and Morlocks and erasing your family from the timeline. Frankenstein is the first modern science fiction novel precisely because it is nearly the first work of art to make extensive use of the terminology and concepts of modern science for primarily aesthetic purposes: and the aesthetic purposes to which it puts science are silence, distance, isolation, fear, and incalculable moral horror. 

Dystopia is not an opposite narrative mode to utopia, composed by different authors for contrary purposes. Nor is science horror opposite to science excitement. The Twilight Zone and Flash Gordon, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury, George Orwell and L. Ron Hubbard, Gene Wolfe and Gene Wolfe, Star Trek and Black Mirror...all accept the radically new in science and technology as powerful and inevitable and beyond any rational control or regulation; all use this assumed reality both for aesthetic strangeness and horror and for aesthetic excitement and novelty and positivity. The same society, the same genre, even the same people produce both modes.

And in just the same way, a conspiracist or alarmist narrative about how a new technology or social trend will destroy the world is not, in practice, the opposite of a progressive or "pro-science" narrative about how a technology or social trend is "cool," must be embraced at all costs, and/or will save us all. The two are in most cases sponsored and paid for by the same outlets, consumed by the same people, even at times created by the same people.

Again, there is a sense in which all this, both negative and positive modes of conceptualizing novelty, are distinctively modern, but also a sense in which this is simply a universal human reaction to the truly and radically new, which always offers powers and possibilities and experiences and threats we have no prior experience with and so do not understand and so are not morally and intellectually equipped to handle, and so always to some extent moves us into an aesthetic space of excitement and horror and distance and alienation and strangeness. 

This is not in itself what makes modernity modern. What makes modernity modern is that both the "goodness" or "positivity" assigned to new things, and the "badness" or "negativity" assigned to new things, do not follow the typical senses of those words, which in most human languages and contexts emerge from morality and/or human comfort and prosperity and aesthetic preference. What defines modernity, rather, is precisely the sense underlying both that these novelties have truly and permanentlyand almost definitionally eluded the grasp of any human understanding or reason.

Hence, the concepts of goodness and badness applicable to these novelties end up representing something much closer to a metaphysical or definitional claim. What is new is good not in the sense in which, say, food or drink or shelter are good, or Star Trek Generations is good, but more in the sense in which a metaphysical principle or a law of physics or an ancient Mesopotamian god is good. Likewise, what is new is bad not in the sense in which, say, being mean to your sister is bad, or Marvel Avengers Infinity War Endgame is bad, but more in the sense in which a metaphysical principle may be bad in its implications for your own life, or a law of physics may cause you to fall unexpectedly off a cliff, or an ancient Mesopotamian god may wipe out your city and your family in an excess of spleen. Or, in other words, and in both cases, because it is fundamental, because it is inevitable, and/or because it is powerful. 

At the heart of modernity, then, is a kind of worship of inevitability and power as such, derived ultimately from a sort of immanentization into history of a metaphysical divinity transcending human reason and morality and identified with novelties good and bad. 

Here, though, is the problem with the worship of novelty, power, and/or inevitability as such. Metaphysical principles and laws of nature and even Mesopotamian deities are things that, by their nature, tend to be transcendent, not just temporarily but permanently beyond our reach and comprehension. Novelty, power, and inevitability, on the other hand, are things that can inhere in anything and everything, and things that by their inmost nature do not have much of a shelf-life. Something is divine forever; it can only be novel for a few minutes or a few days or perhaps a few years at best.

Most new things are only new in one respect, and then not new for very long; most inevitable things are not really inevitable at all, only very probable, and in constant danger of becoming un-inevitable; powerful things are only powerful from one angle and in one context and to some limited degree. As aesthetic effects, all suffer enormously from the basic hedonic treadmill effect. Maintaining a sense of novelty or power or inevitability at the center of a personality or a culture, then, requires an enormous and constant expenditure of time and attention and resources to find these qualities, demonstrate them, and finally give up on the current entity and start the process all over again.

And then, of course, even then most of the time finding actual genuine novelty power or inevitability is too hard, and in practice people simply settle for the aesthetic effects that suggest it.

Column 06/12/2023: Death of the Son, Episode Three: The Haunted Palace

Death of the Son, Episode Three: The Haunted Palace

[A continuation of my pulpish historical-fiction story on the deaths of Constantine's son Crispus and wife Fausta in AD 326. Part one may be found here, and part two here.]

"Theodotus."

In a heartbeat she had entered the room, her bare feet floating just above the marble floor. Moonlight surrounded her, but did not reflect off her or the jewels that covered her; it merely hung about her, illuminating and discoloring, turning rubies to sapphires and gold to silver. She was dressed as he had seen her statue in Antioch, in a long tunic with gems sewn in elaborate patterns down the front. Her hair, dark as the night air, was teased elaborately into rows of curls and bound just behind her head, exposing a long, slender neck wound about with gold chains, a neck too thin to hold up the ponderous diadem that bowed down the top of her head; but she stood erect and wore no veil. 

When he saw her, he made to get up from his bed, but his legs felt heavy, like lead; he managed to swing them to the floor, but there they sat, fixed in place, refusing to lift him. His arms too were like weights, pinned to the bed at his side. Another second more, and she had sat down beside him, with no weight, no presence, not even a whisper of breath; her face seen up close was hard and angular, with full lips and a long nose; her eyes, large and dark, looked intently into his.

"Theodotus." She said again.

"Yes, Empress."

"Theodotus. You must help me."

A wave of familiar emotions swept over him, sorrow, contempt, anger...for a second, his voice caught in his throat.

"I'm sorry. It is too late."

But her face only moved closer to his, and one of her hands, small but with long fingers, touched his arm; it was cold as ice. She was no longer dressed in her finery, but in the rags of the young woman in the arena; the wound he had made on her face, under her mouth, dripped blood. "No, Theodotus. Not for me. For my children. My children. My children. My children. My children. My..."

Her voice grew more shrill with each repetition, and the cold on his left arm grew more intense, spreading up his arm to his shoulder and across to his chest. He cried out; and in a second more, old instincts had taken over, and he had leapt up out of his bed, clutching at a non-existent spatha. 

Column 05/17/2023: Varieties of Leftism

Varieties of Leftism

I recently finished a book on the French Syndicalist movement; around the same time, I have been reading "Distributist" columns from G.K. Chesterton as well as newspaper columns from the founder of so-called "Guild Socialism," A.J. Penty. All of this reflects a longstanding interest in what I would call the "non-Marxist Left"--or rather more precisely the "non-Marxist-Leninist Left," or even more precisely the history of various labor and anti-capitalist movements in the 19th and early 20th century, especially those that either preceded or avoided the final reduction of Leftism into Fabian-style democratic socialism and Soviet state socialism.

There are a lot of reasons I find these movements interesting: but the main one is that I think that there are many useful things to be learned from them about modernity, modern economics and society, and where to go from here. If the tendency of the Cold War was to reduce political and economic issues into an ideological, militarist, institutional binary, the tendency of the contemporary Internet age is to reduce those same issues to an ever-proliferating array of binary, absolute symbolic conflicts. As Chesterton argued, this is the real danger of competition, war, and conflict in human life: that they tend to make human life far more uniform than its need to be. After all, as Rene Girard pointed out, most conflicts are created precisely because two people are aiming at the same end, seeking the same desirable object. Fundamentally, conflict or competition is always and inevitably destructive of alternatives and diversity and complexity and fundamentally difference itself.

There is hardly a better example of this than Soviet Communism and American Capitalism. Before the Cold War, before the World Wars, the Left or labor and anti-capitalist movement was a vast, complex, feuding array of different fundamental beliefs and tactics: anarchists and syndicalists and distributists and "non-political" unionists and positivists and guild socialists and Fabians arguing against each other and against capitalists alike. Likewise, the European radical Right was a large and feuding array of Catholics and Calvinists and aristocrats and anti-aristocrat populists and monarchists and radical democrats and Nietzscheans and localists and agrarians and anarchists that overlapped significantly with the Left. Thanks to the Cold War, however, practically all these groups were suppressed, not by force, but simply by pressure, subsumed into the single ideological alternatives of "Communism" and "Capitalism." 

When the Cold War ended, alas, and that simple binary itself faded into the mist, Western political life was left as a very limited and very shallow debate among a few different interest groups that agreed with each on other on more or less 99% of political and economic questions, at least 50% of which would been absolutely astounding and shocking to any other society in history. And then that consensus itself fell to pieces, and we find ourselves in our current uncertain times.

Here, though, is the fundamental lesson that historical conflicts about the shape and tenor society have to teach us. As Chesterton argued, human social, political, and economic arrangements are first and foremost a matter of collective human intellect and will and effort: works of ingenuity and craft and creativity that we shape to serve certain purposes and embody certain values. And the truth that human history demonstrates beyond all doubt is that a vast number of possible arrangements are possible and have been considered desirable by different groups of people throughout time--and many, many more are possible in theory, and could be enacted in practice given sufficient will and desire. We are not trapped into a tiny range of political or economic alternatives by "natural" "scientific" forces; we simply find ourselves, for a variety of reasons, in one highly particular social or economic arrangement among many; and if we wished, we could change it. If we have made our bed badly, we can make it over again. 

All of this is another unnecessarily long intro. What I really wanted to do in this post was to offer a sort of syllabus or personality test of Leftism, presenting the main divisions within the tradition over which anti-capitalists once feuded. As I said earlier, "Leftism" is here a terribly imprecise term: the original Left-Right binary was a division created by and centered on the French Revolution and defined with reference to a few particular French institutions. It has since given way to an American political spectrum that is largely a matter of memes on the Internet. As will become clear, many of the fundamental questions involved in historical "Leftism" are as related if not more to questions on the political "Right," and indeed it is extremely difficult to clearly rule out historical "Right-wing" groups from this discourse. I myself prefer the term "anti-capitalist" and/or "radical" for my own beliefs; I have used "Leftism" here simply because it is a more commonly-used and so straightforward term for most people today.

Fundamentally, all the social and intellectual movements of the historical Left were united by some sort of unhappiness with 19th-20th century Western society, and a desire to alter it "radically," that is, in its roots and foundations. They were also united by a discomfort with "capitalism," or that legal and social order in which absolute private ownership over the means of production--land and factories and machines and workers--is allotted largely or entirely on the basis of the possession and use of liquid capital, in such a manner that society is clearly divided between a tiny minority of "owners" and a large mass of "proletariat," workers who sell their labor in exchange for a wage and who labor with the capital-owner's tools and means of production for the profit of the capital-owner. Historically, the emergence of this social order, in tandem with rapid technological change and industrialization, caused over the 19th and 20th centuries without a doubt the largest series of social and communal disruptions in the history of the human race. As the result of these disruptions, numerous groups were brought to fundamentally question their society, its powers, rulers, and underlying principles. 

That being said, this system and society can and could be opposed from any number of angles. And that is what I would like to chronicle here.

In doing so, I have attempted to lay out these divisions deliberately in terms of conflicts between paired positions. It should be noted, however, that these represent not so much binaries as polarities, and do not involve absolute logical contradiction: in most cases, then, there are not simply two binary extremes, but a great deal of potential positions in the middle.

Column 05/10/2023: Why Star Trek Generations is the Best Next Generation Movie: Or, Against the Art of Simulation

Why Star Trek Generations is the Best Next Generation Movie: Or, Against the Art of Simulation

Before I begin this week's post, I would like to offer a formal apology to my Dear Reader for the fact that, of late, this blog has been decidedly academicish in character, featuring posts on such topics as academic theology, theoretical physics, and even (alas alas) identity. To reclaim my status as a Man of the People, therefore, I have decided to return to the thing that this is blog is actually about: Star Trek.

(I have written about Star Trek a lot before, including a whole long series of posts. To find them all, click here.) 

However unfortunately I have to then immediately destroy all my cred as both a populist and a critic by engaging in a spirited praise of the most generally disliked of the Star Trek The Next Generation films: Star Trek Generations.

I will confess: I have always liked this movie, despite or because of its critical and fan shellacking. When I watched it as a kid, I liked it without any particular critical discomfort. As a Youth, beginning to be educated in the narratives and techniques of filmmaking, I came to recognize both the many technical flaws with the film, and the fact that in the Grand Myth of Star Trek it was seen as a Lesser Film, a disappointing murder of the great Kirk leading into the actually Great Film Star Trek First Contact. Now, as a man, I have come full circle to the deep, profound truth underlying my original uncritical liking of the film, and now see it, with deepened sight and far more wisdom, as the best of the TNG films. 

I was confirmed in this belief by a recent visit to my brother and sister-in-law, both of whom are visual artists who have made short films and who together run a glossy art magazine. Neither, it should be said, are Star Trek fans in any conventional sense. My brother grew up with it, but generally views most of the Canon with disdain; my sister-in-law has seen relatively little of it. They are also people who value very much the weird, the bizarre, and the original in art. And they both absolutely loved Star Trek Generations.

I was also spurred to write this by my recent experience watching the modern generations of Star Trek, and in particular Strange New Worlds S1 and Star Trek Picard S3, both of which could be quite fairly characterized as "nostalgia" or "fanservice art" and both of which have been highly praised by both fans and critics--certainly more than poor Star Trek Generations. And in comparing my reactions and thoughts in watching all of these examples in short succession, I began to come to some more general theses on contemporary popular entertainment and why it often leaves me cold.

After all, popular American art has by general agreement reached something of a nadir. The latest Marvel movies have been badly reviewed and disliked by fans; even the Mandalorian S3 has met with a similar reception; Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was a grave disappointment; and so on and so forth. And Star Trek Generations is, truly, a major turning point in the history of franchise filmmaking. The lessons allegedly learned from the critical and fan dislike of this film fundamentally defined all later Star Trek films, and through them franchise filmmaking at large. And those lessons, I firmly believe, were all wrong.

To anyone interested in any of the above, then, I present a series of theses on Why Star Trek Generations is the Best TNG Movie and What We Can Learn From It About How to do Popular Franchise Entertainment and Why A Lot of Recent Stuff Sucks.

Column 05/03/2023: Birthday Reflections on Identity, Time, and God

Birthday Reflections on Identity, Time, and God

[My birthday was this past weekend. This got me thinking about life, time, God, identity, and other such things, which I have often thought about in the past. Here is a crystallization of those thoughts.] 

We live in an age when "identity" has become a sort of universal watchword. It has become so ubiquitous as to be virtually invisible. 

As with all terms that define an era, everyone uses it, and what is more, everyone uses it in the same way. It would be tempting to see the term as essentially defining a polarity or difference or societal conflict based on whether it is used positively or negatively. This is incorrect, however. Both the American Left and the American Right attack their enemies as promoting illegitimate "identity politics" or "identitarianism"; both the American Left and the American Right then turn on a dime to asserting the sacred nature of their own and their allies' "identity." For every left-wing institution emphasizing racial or sexual identity, there is a right-wing institution promoting cultural or national or religious identity. There are even entire media operations dedicated to promoting something called (shudder) "Catholic identity." 

Identity is certainly a fascinating and fundamental concept, and one I've spent a lot of my life grappling with. Yet it strikes me that contemporary rarely touch on the questions of identity that are to me most interesting, or even really most challenging in themselves. 

Lurking behind most modern uses of the term is a concept of identity that I would call "voluntarist" "atomist" and/or "political-social-conflictual." Identity in this sense is most basically self-chosen or at least self-discovered, an essentially internal relationship with oneself that in some mysterious way constitutes that self. It is for this reason above all else that identity is normatively treated as beyond rational or moral criticism or analysis. 

While in itself unchallengeable, however, identity is seen as something that is necessarily asserted outwards towards others and society and the political realm, coming through will to constitute and determine all external relationships of the individual. In this act of assertion, identity is treated as static, pervasive, and absolute (in the sense of incapable of being resolved or analyzed), and is represented through symbols and images that in some mysterious way express or embody it. Given that such identities must be asserted but cannot be questioned or engaged with, people and society and the state are left with the urgent, binary moral choice of either accepting and affirming a particular identity of a particular person or group in its totality, or rejecting and disaffirming it. 

Despite common notions, this model is not necessarily "identitarian" in a positive sense: because it conceives of identity as individual and internal and beyond rational and moral critique, it can just as easily lead to a logic of rejection and disaffirmation as to one of acceptance and affirmation. Indeed, it is doing so now, as we speak.

In its early stages, there can be no doubt that this concept of identity did arise in large part out of a desire for social acceptance, peace, and harmony, and did lead in practice to growth in attitudes of acceptance and affirmation--at least among the relatively comfortable Americans and similar people at whom it was aimed. As always with aristocratic systems, the existentially and materially comfortable correctly perceived the practical impositions of reason and morality, and in particular the moral and practical demands and challenges of other people and other groups, as the main potential threat to their status and way of life. By entirely removing all moral and rational logics of all identity groups "off-stage" into a hermetically sealed internal-individual space, however, the new identitarian system was able to defuse all such challenges in utero. 

In this, it was very much an offspring of the liberal-secular treatments of religion and economics, two areas of apparent conflict similarly "defused" by shoving all related topics helpfully off-stage into the merely "private" or "individual" realm. And once again, in the short term, it appears to have worked: unable to perceive the moral and rational or even historical or cultural challenges of other identity groups, comfortable Americans relapsed to their natural state of ease, in the process accepting these groups in at least a minimum, largely indifferentist way.

However, for non-aristocratic groups more threatened or more needy, this system presaged, as it usually does, not peace, but conflict. If the highest goal is merely indifferent affirmation, all is well and good; but if you require or desire more than that, competition and conflict sets in quite quickly, and in a manner even more difficult to deal with or defuse than before. Identity groups, after all, as Marx would have it, simply possess different interests. They also possess different desires and goals in the external world, and operate according to extremely different internal moral and rational logics. This naturally leads to conflicts of varying degrees of intrinsic or extrinsic irreconcilability, which have to be resolved or at least dealt with according to some logic or diplomacy or strategy or social or political structure. Identitarianism, however, by its very nature entirely forbids all such attempts to deal with difference and conflict.

While for comfortable Americans pushing identity into a purely internal realm free from reason and calculation served to defuse conflict, for virtually everyone else it has served rather to increase conflict: since by this logic there is little or no common ground of justice or reason or morality by which groups can be reconciled with each other or even practically ally with each other or even practically co-exist. Indeed, even to negotiate over matters of external desires and interests virtually always in practice involves intruding on the sacred internal realm of the identity itself--and hence provoking violent conflict. 

And then, of course, the oasis of ordinary, comfortable middle- and upper-class Americans has itself been nearly entirely transformed by the events of the past ten years, and in particular by the pandemic, into a world not of material and existential comfort, but of existential and moral panic.

Hence, in the last few years one might argue that we have reached a new stage in the identitarian system, or at least added a new dogma to it. This dictum is that certain identities are by their very nature opposed to each other, not only in practical interests or external relations, but in fundamental, internal essence. Hence, each act of affirmation of a particular identity becomes at the same time and necessarily also a rejection and disaffirmation of all opposed identities. 

Indeed, in the last few years, and especially in the context of the Internet and social media, it is quite clear that a societal ethos and logic of affirmation and acceptance has been largely replaced by one of disaffirmation and rejection--not only for the reasons discussed above, but also because of the basic nature of the Internet as a chaotic homogenized realm of symbols where in practice nearly everything is defined through symbolic opposition or negation. In such a realm affirmation of or membership in a particular identity category is practically expressed largely through acts of rejection or disaffirmation of that group's enemies.

As I said, though, this is not really what I wanted to talk about in this post--because it does not really, for me at least, have very much to do with the problem of human and personal identity. I want to talk about it in more fundamental terms.

Column 04/25/2023: Apophaticism, Incarnation, Bythos: A Response to Timothy Troutner's "Five Theses on Apophaticism"

Apophaticism, Incarnation, Bythos: A Response to Timothy Troutner's "Five Theses on Apophaticism"

Once upon a time, there was a bottomless abyss of unformed, undefined, unrelated infinity.

Once upon a time, there was a single, absolutely solitary, absolutely unrelated, and so absolutely sovereign will.

Once upon a time, there was a Father and his Son.

What is God? 

Is God something?

Is God nothing?

An acquaintance of mine, Timothy Troutner, a theology graduate student at Notre Dame, has recently published "Five Theses on Apophaticism," a distillation of his dissertation in which he issues a public challenge to what he sees as a troubling trend in modern theology by which a kind of apophaticism has come to assume a "systematic, total, and regulative" governance of Christian theological doctrine. I could not possibly hope to do justice to his overall thesis, particularly in its treatment of various specific modern academic-theological trends and actors. I am not familiar with or embedded in the world of modern academic theology; I am, I think, quite familiar with the world of ancient philosophy and theology in general and Trinitarian controversy in particular, about which I am in the process of publishing a monograph. It is from this perspective, then, that I write, and which will shape my focus in responding to Troutner's theses.

Before I begin, I would direct my readers to two recent pieces I have written that lay some of the foundations for this discussion: my argument about Trinitarian theology and its relationship with ancient Platonic debates, and my attempt to summarize Hilary of Poitier's doctrine of divine equality. As will become clear, I think these articles are related to Troutner's points in several ways. For the broader points made here, I would ask readers to consult Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Zlatko Plese's excellent scholarship on Gnosticism, and eventually my forthcoming monograph.

To quickly sum up my responses to Troutner below: while Troutner does appear to be in certain ways unfair to Patristic and Scholastic treatments of apophaticism, I think his argument does highlight a perennial danger for Christian theology, which to a large extent modern academic theology has not avoided, and helps us in setting some limits for apophaticism as a concept. My main critique, as will become clear, is that he seems to concede far too much to his modern apophaticists even in conceptualizing an escape from them, and thus produces a construal of the Trinity that I find very hard to accept.

Column 04/16/2023: Easter Ironies

Easter Ironies

One day, someone should make a book that simply goes through and lists all the jokes in the Bible. There are many of them, from the subtle to the gross, the large-scale to the fine-grained, the architectonic and metaphysical to the literally obscene. And they are sadly neglected.

I once read the story of a filmmaker who said that when approaching a story, the first thing he looked for was the jokes. This strikes me as fundamentally sound. After all, the main function of humor is to highlight the connections and relationships among things, events, characters; and it is in these relationships that a story most essentially consists. 

In the case of the Bible, the relationships are manifold and nearly infinite: for what are the Scriptures if not a written record of the act of Divine Revelation, by which God enters into relation with the totality of created and human reality, and then reconfigures that totality based on this new relation? 

As I write this, it is again the Easter season, and I have once more taken part in the central rites of the Church: the Triduum culminating in the great Easter Vigil. The Easter Vigil especially serves deliberately as a kind of summum of the whole liturgical year and hence of the history of Revelation, beginning with Genesis through Abraham and Moses to the Resurrection, a narrative encapsulated both in the long sequence of readings and in the rite of the Paschal Candle, as a new light is kindled in and out of the detritus of created being and spreads and illuminates and transforms all things.

This is without a doubt my favorite rite of the Church, and not merely because I entered the Church at such a vigil. It simply is the Revelation of God, arising in darkness to herald new life, the washing away of sins in Baptism, the anointing with Chrism in Confirmation, and the fulfillment of all mysteries in the Eucharist. Every year, and with every reenactment, I learn something new about this revelation, and it takes on new aspects, as I bring my own life and all that it contains, it's narratives and victories and defeats, once more within this one great Narrative.

Column 04/05/2023: Why Donald Trump Won in 2016, Why He Could Very Likely Win Again in 2024, and How to Keep That From Happening

Why Donald Trump Won in 2016, Why He Could Very Likely Win Again in 2024, and How to Keep That From Happening

In the past week, I did something I have not done since the winter of 2015: I watched a Donald Trump rally in its entirety. 

This would seem to require some kind of explanation, so let me say: I am a registered independent and currently a card-carrying member of the American Solidarity Party. I have never voted for Donald Trump. I never will vote for Donald Trump. I like to think I have a coherent, principled approach to politics--which is another way of saying that I am a registered independent signed up with a third party who has not strongly supported a candidate for public office in the last ten years. Even from that standpoint, however, the kind of politics Donald Trump, indeed the kind of public life, the kind of mass media, the kind of America Donald Trump represents is entirely anathema to me. 

However: in the Year of Our Lord 2015, I was one of those foolish ones who believed that Donald Trump was, more or less, a sideshow clown: that he had no hope of actually winning the primary, and even less hope of actually winning the Presidency. I continued to believe this up to the day Leonard Cohen died: that is, Election Day. This makes me like most people who predicted such things.

Nonetheless, looking back on that heady time, the one nagging thing that clung to me throughout the campaign season, and made me question my own reason and better judgment, was the actual experience of watching a Donald Trump campaign rally. I was frankly taken aback by the experience; as a hostile outsider, I was surprised, shocked by how compelling I found it, and how much even I was drawn in, against my better judgment, to the narrative it presented. In contrast, when I watched Hillary Clinton's DNC speech, I was taken aback by how obviously foolish her approach was and how totally uncompelling it was. Nonetheless, I continued to follow the political circus, waiting for conventional wisdom to be vindicated, and stuck with my own better judgment to the bitter end.

Next year, we will have another election day; where Donald Trump will once again be running for Presidency, and will most likely be running against Joe Biden. Conventional wisdom is once again that he stands no chance; especially with his recent indictment. De Santis is the future of the Republic Party; Trump is the past. The Republicans did poorly in the midterms; the RNC and most Republican politicians blame him for this, and have always hated him anyway. 

However, to discharge my conscience and peace of mind, I decided to make one last test: to watch another rally all the way through. If it was at all like the 2016 rally, I would then mentally prepare myself for Donald Trump winning again; and I would then totally check out of electoral politics for the next 12 months. After all, I am in no way conflicted about my vote; the only reason to follow primary and electoral events closely would be out of doubt and fear over the outcome. This time around, I could escape that unpleasant process.

So: what was my conclusion? As stated in the title, after watching the rally, I think it overwhelmingly likely that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President; I think it quite likely that he will be President again. So I am done with election season.

Before I completely check out, though, I thought I would discharge my conscience about what has always been staringly obvious to me about Trump, his appeal to voters, and how to beat him. Articles on these topics have been, since 2015, a cottage industry; and every one I have seen has been, to me, not only wrong but directly counterproductive. Indeed, I am frankly shocked by how little anyone, anywhere seems to have learned from Trump and his political success, across the board. It is this, above all else, that makes me think he will likely win again in 2024. 

Before I leave America to its fate, I will do my Civic Duty by explaining what is actually responsible for Trump's remarkable political success, and how it might be possible to avoid making the same mistakes as 2016, and actually beat him this time.

04/03/2023 Column: Death of the Son, Episode Two: In Via

Death of the Son, Episode Two: In Via

[This continues my earlier post beginning a serial-style detective story about the death of Constantine's son Crispus in 326 AD. See here for episode one.]

They boarded the carriage at the Imperial cursus post at the outskirts of the City, a few stadia from the Imperial palace and near but not precisely in the army camp. Eustathius had by this time dressed himself in the white-and-gold assembly of the bishop of Antioch, surmounted by a small, black and gold pileus of the sort worn by minor Imperial officials and, increasingly, by lower clerics.

Theodotus wondered at that, a little: It is not like him to follow court fashion. He glanced around him once again, at the other clerics accompanying them, and after a second nodded quietly to himself. When it had assembled, he had thought it merely the typical public retinue that always accompanied the bishop while walking the streets of the city: a handful of priests from the chancery, perhaps a suffragan bishop visiting the capital, and (most importantly) the half-dozen or so deacons in black that for most bishops acted in the same role for which wealthier citizens used their slaves and clients: to remind them of names, faces, accounts, situations, make note of their decisions and requests, and serve as bodyguards against the dangers of the Great City. 

Yet, as he examined the faces surrounding him again, he saw the small, but important, differences. There were no bishops, not even Euphronius, who had been staying in the episcopal residence for the past week; and the priests who accompanied Eustathius, dressed in tunics of any and every color, were not senior chancery officials, but members of that small, informal party, spread throughout the City, who had helped bring Eustathius to power, faces he had seen only rarely, coming and going from the episcopal residence or deep in private conversation with the bishop. Then, perhaps most significantly, the number of deacons had all but doubled, and Theodotus noted with amusement the mixed expressions of his fellow deacons of the episcopal court. Martinus' grizzled face looked furious to have been dragged out of bed and made to frog-march through the City like a common cleric; but young Deodatus was positively glowing with the excitement of the journey and presence of the bishop in his splendor. 

Theodotus smiled to himself, more pleased than disturbed by Eustathius' cheek. He does not have permission to use the Imperial cursus, and hopes to overawe the soldiers into putting me onto the carriage regardless. With recent developments at court, it would probably work, too. His smile faded. To live in days when soldiers feel compelled to respect bishops... 

Column 03/25/2023: The Trouble with (Modern) Physics: Lee Smolin's Time Reborn

In my last essay, I decided that I understood ancient Platonism. In this post, though, I will not pretend to understand modern physics. I will, however, say some things about a recent book from an eminent theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Lee Smolin (who also happens to be my uncle), that I recently read: Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe. 

Many of my posts on here are notable for their sheer cheek in tackling topics, but this one, as they say, takes the cake. If you happen to know about this topic, then please accept this humble disclaimer that I emphatically not a physicist, and take this as what it is: some hopefully interesting comments from a non-expert.

What is the Trouble?

Lee Smolin's task over the last decade or so has been to argue that (1) modern physics and cosmology has reached a crisis point that threatens the bases of the entire field, and (2) only a radical paradigm shift can save it. The former point was argued at most length in his previous book The Trouble with Physics, while Time Reborn attempts to provide a way forward and a sketch of the necessary paradigm shift: an effort that he has more recently followed up on with several other volumes along the same lines. 

This, I think, is the best sort of book to gain some measure of understanding of a field: not a textbook or popularization, both of which typically present caricatured versions of research from decades ago without interpretation or explanation, but a interpretation of a field by an acknowledged master with a clear and obvious angle. 

Of course, such interpretation of a whole field, especially a field as abstract and analytical as theoretical cosmology, cannot help but be philosophy.

I won't defend this claim, which would drive many physicists crazy, but I will, as stated above, comment on the book's conclusions and arguments from the perspective of someone well-versed in ancient and medieval philosophy.

Column 03/11/2023: The Trinitarian Controversy as the Culmination of Ancient Platonism

The Trinitarian Controversy as the Culmination of Ancient Platonism

Recently, while engaged in scholarly work, I suddenly had a moment of revelation where I felt, for the first time, that I understood ancient Platonism and how Christian Trinitarianism both arose out of and resolved the conflicts within it. It was frankly an incredible high, which has since faded into the common light of day, but I am now attempting to relive it by trying in labored fashion to express what I saw then.

What follows is best understood as "pseudo-scholarship": arising out of my academic research, but written quickly in a slapdash fashion without references, to sum up my own reflections on many, many hours of reading and research on these topics.

So: here goes.

Column 03/08/2023: Intimate Portraits of Madness: American Psycho, Uncut Gems, Remains of the Day

Intimate Portraits of Madness: American Psycho, Uncut Gems, Remains of the Day

[In this column, I will again return to the mini-art-criticism format by discussing three works of art which I have read/watched over the last several months, which I believe are extremely connected to each other. Obviously there are lots of spoilers.]

American Psycho (2000)

"I can't believe Bryce prefers Van Patten's card to mine..."

My story parallels those of many other men of my generation. I finally watched American Psycho recently after years of seeing business card memes on the Internet. 

American Psycho is what is known as a "cult classic."

Like many other critics to write about American Psycho, I am haunted by the fear that I may sound as nonsensically bullshitting as its protagonist, stereo aficionado Patrick Bateman, does in the key scene in which he energetically monologues meaningless critical jargon about Huey Lewis and the News while dancing around with an ax. 

This cult-classic critical indie darling...*axe noises*

Column 02/25/2023: Benedict XVI, 1927-2022

 Benedict XVI, 1927-2022

I have been meaning to write this essay since the death of Benedict XVI. I am just now getting to it.

Lots of light and heat have been released into the world by reactions to his death. Many people, inspired in most cases with much more genuine and personal emotion than my own, have written and spoken many things. With few exceptions, these have followed the trajectory of the generally-accepted understandings (and misunderstandings) of his life, and reactions thereto. 

I don't wish to add to these reactions. This is for a few reasons, mostly coming down to my own lack of personal stake. Benedict was the Pope when I became Catholic; but only for about a year and a half. I have a lot of respect and a certain degree of affection for this paralyzingly shy academic lover of classical music, cats, and Orange Fanta, but nothing like the personal devotion or hatred that inspire many others. Likewise, as a convert and a historian, my investment in the internal mass-media and ideological and cultural conflicts within contemporary Western Catholicism is more remote than most. 

I wanted to write something about Benedict XVI after his death, then, not to prove any particular ideological point or express any profound emotion, but simply to note and express my own recognition and cognizance of an enormous, epochal figure in the history of the Catholic Church.

Altercatio Heracliani (AD 366)

[I will be trying to get back into the swing of regular writing. In lieu of something original, here is a quick and simple translation of a fun 4th century text I haven't been able to find in translation online. It purports to be the record of a debate between the homoian Germinius of Sirmium and a Nicene layman in the mid-4th century. While clearly written from a Nicene perspective (and so not an official transcript from the diocesan chancery), the content seems highly locally specific and faithfully reflects mid-4th century Trinitarian debates. There is in my judgment little reason to doubt its basic authenticity as a picture of the theological debate within Sirmium at this period.

Also it's a lot of fun I think.]

The debate of Heraclianus the layman with Germinius, the bishop of Sirmium, about the Faith of the Council of Nicaea and the Faith of the Council of Ariminium of the Arians. This occurred in the city of Sirmium before all the people, on Friday, January 13, AD 366.

They led out Heraclianus and Firmianus and Aurelianus before all the people, with the bishop seated on his cathedra with all the clergy before all the people, at least those who were of age of the people. 

Germinius said to Heraclianus: "Why did you see fit to persuade people to support the homoousios, which vain men cobbled together?"

Heraclianus said: "And so three hundred and more bishops were 'vain'?"

Germinius: "What does he want the homoousios to mean?"

Heraclianus: "You, you preach among this people as a stumbling-block, and you learned to speak in Greek."

Germinius: "Eusebius [of Vercelli], that condemned exile, taught you this, and Hilary, who now has come back from exile."

Heraclianus: "I speak by the right and authority of the Divine Scriptures. Why do you dish up these things to me, to drive me out of the way of truth? We are contending about the divine laws! The possibility of speaking and debating is right here."

Germinius: "You as who, wicked slave? Are you a priest, or a deacon?"

Heraclianus: "I am neither a priest nor a deacon, but although I am the least of all Christians, I speak in defense of my life."

Germinius: "See how much he talks! Will no one draw his teeth?"

Then Iovinianus the deacon and Marinus the lector struck him.

Heraclianus: "This adds to my happiness and my glory."

Germinius: "Speak, Heraclianus! I baptized you: what did you receive from me?"

Heraclianus: "I received from you: 'in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.' I did not receive: 'in the greater god and in the lesser god and this created thing.' You also speak like this about the Holy Spirit."

Germinius: "If the Spirit was not created, Paul the Apostle lied, who said: 'All things were created through Christ in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible' [Colossians 1:16]. If, therefore, the Spirit was not created through him, therefore not all things were created through him."

Heraclianus: "If you command, I will speak."

Germinius: "Speak!"

Heraclianus: "It was written in Isaiah the Prophet: 'Hear me, Jacob, and Israel, whom I call. I am the First and I am for eternity: and my hand established the earth, my right hand solidified the sky. I will call them all, and they will come together, and all will be gathered together and listen. Who has announced these things to them? Because I love you, I have done your will against Babylon, that the seed of the Chaldeans be taken away. I have spoken, I have called, I have brought him and made his way prosperous. Come to me and hear these things. I have not spoken in secret from the beginning, nor in a shadowy part of the earth: when these things happened, I was there. And now the Lord has sent me and his Spirit. Thus says the Lord, who freed you, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord, who have shown you the way in which you should walk. And if you had listened to my commandments, your peace would have become like the light, and your justice like the waves of the sea, and your seed like the sand' [Isaiah 48:12-18]. Speak, therefore, now, you, bishop: about whom were these things written?"

Germinius: "You speak yourself."

Heraclianus: "It is right for you to speak: it is fitting for me to listen."

Germinius: "These things were written about the Father."

Heraclianus: "And the Father, by whom was he sent?"

Germinius was silent for more than one hour.

Heraclianus: "Evidently they were spoken about the Son of God and the Spirit of the Living God. Look, you have the Trinity proven, its divinity declared through the mouth of the Holy Prophet Isaiah."

And when Heraclianus had said these things, Germinius began to praise him, saying: "You have a good heart and you are wellborn, and we have known you from your infancy; be converted to our Church. 

To which also many others were saying: "Lord bishop! He himself was the one who fought against the heretics of dark Photinus. How now has he himself become a heretic?"

Germinius said: "I myself explained my faith to Eusebius and demonstrated it and satisfied him. As the Son of God himself says, 'The Father, who sent me, is greater than I' [John 14:28]. And: 'I have not come to do my own will, but the will of the Father, who sent me' [John 6:38]. For also about the Holy Spirit it is written: 'Unless I go away to my Father, the Spirit, the Paraclete, will not come to you' [John 16:7]. And: 'He does not speak from himself. He will receive from me and will announce it to you' [John 16:13] (These words he was saying to the people.) I myself have the true Faith, which is like this: I say the Father is unborn, invisible, immortal, without beginning, without end. But the Son I say has a beginning before the ages from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, but I do not say that he is the same as the Father is. For he himself says, 'The Father who sent me is greater than I.' And: 'I have not come to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.' The Holy Spirit I say is the Prince of the Angels and Archangels. For as the Son is not similar to the Father in every respect, so neither is the Holy Spirit to the Son."

Heraclianus: "The Father is greater, but in name only. For Paul the Apostle says: 'Christ is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God' [1 Corinthians 1:24]. Do you not believe that the particular Power of God is both the Son of God and True God? For this Power is also the whole of God, and through this same power we know that all powers were made. For it is written: 'By the Word of God the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power' [Psalm 33:6] Understood, therefore, that through one power are all the powers in the heavens and on the earth and under the earth: through one power they came forth out of nothing." 

Germinius: "Therefore do you say that the Son is the same as the Father is?"

Heraclianus: "Thus it is written in the Gospel of John. When Philip the Apostle said, 'Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us,' Jesus responded, 'So much time I am with you, and you have not known me, Philip? Whoever sees me, sees also my Father, and I and the Father are one. How do you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?' [John 14:8-9]. Understand, therefore, that the Son is the same as the Father."

And Germinius was silent. But Theodorus the priest spoke up and said: "It is written where the Son of God says that 'concerning the day and the hour no one knows, neither the Angels, nor the Archangels, nor the Son, but the Father has set it in his own power' [Matthew 24:36]. How, therefore, do you say that the Son is the same as the Father?"

Heraclianus: "What sort of God do you preach, who is ignorant about day and hour?"

Theodorus said in confusion: "Thus it is written."

Heraclianus: "Have you not read that 'the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive?' [2 Corinthians 3:6]

But when this one was silent, confounded and humiliated, Agrippinus said: "It is written in the Apostle Paul: 'When he has handed over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has made vain every principality and every power and virtue. It is right for him to reign until he has put all enemies under his feet; for he puts everything under his feet. Last of all the enemy death will be destroyed. When, however, he says, that all things have been put under him, manifestly this is besides the one who put all things under him. When, however, all things have been put under him, then also the Son himself will be put under him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all' [1 Corinthians 15:24-28]. 

Heraclianus: "If it must be understood like that, as you say, therefore God has a being belonging to a future time, for the end, because it does not now exist. For if thus it is written: 'That God may be all in all'... Therefore your faith is empty, you presume in vain to preach a God before time. How is that? I ask you: Is there one divinity, or two?"

Agrippinus: "There is one."

Heraclianus: "You spoke well. Therefore, the divinity which is subjected is no longer the paternal divinity."

But he said: "You deny that the Son is subject to the Father?"

Heraclianus: "By will, not by necessity. For so that you may know, that it was by will also that he washed the feet of his own disciples. For also in another place it is written: 'The Spirit of the Prophets has been made subject to the prophets' [1 Corinthians 14:32]. Therefore, because it is written, are the prophets greater than the Divine Spirit of God? For also in another place Paul the Apostle writes to Timothy: 'Every divinely-inspired writing is useful for teaching, for correction.' How, therefore, do you say that the Son of God is created, and also say that he speaks through the prophets, and the Paraclete speaks through the Apostles, who is called the Advocate? If therefore the Son has been established as God before the ages, as you say, and the Holy Spirit was created through him, now therefore every Scripture is not divinely inspired. And what will we do about about the multitude of such great testimonies? First Isaiah the Prophet, who says, 'Who will declare his ancestry?' [Isaiah 53:8] For also John the Evangelist says, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' [John 1:1]. Is the Word of God able to be created? If he is a Word, whose Word is he? For also, concerning the Holy Spirit, Paul the Apostle says: 'No one sees the things which are in God except for the Spirit of God, who even discerns the depths of God' [1 Corinthians 2:11]. Who therefore is this Spirit, who knows the things which are in God? Is he not with God? Also it is written in Isaiah: 'Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?' [Isaiah 40:13]. If the Spirit of God is created, then he himself was at one time without spirit, although it is written in the Apostle Paul: 'We have not received a spirit of this world, but a spirit who is from God' [1 Corinthians 2:12]. And again he says, 'You are the letter of God, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God' [2 Corinthians 3:3]. And again he says: 'The Lord is Spirit; where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, there is God' [2 Corinthians 3:17]."

At this Agrippinus did not speak any more.

Germinius: "See how he blasphemes in calling the Holy Spirit God, although it is written: 'That no one is able to say that Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit' [1 Corinthians 12:3]. For also David says: 'The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make all your enemies your footstool' [Psalm 110:1].

Heraclianus: "I already said a little before that this was by will, not by necessity. For also concerning the Son of God it is written: 'I am going to my God and to your God, to my Father and to your Father' [John 20:17]. And in another place he says: 'I praise you, Lord, Father of Heaven and Earth' [Matthew 11:25]. Therefore is the Son of God not Lord and God, because he calls the Father Lord and God? Therefore, although these things are written, you do not blush to call him Lord and God. Why therefore were you ashamed to say that the Holy Spirit is God, although it is written, 'God is Spirit' [John 4:24]? And if anything human person has blasphemed against him, he will be forgiven neither here, nor in the future. It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha than for those who sin against the Holy Spirit. For also Peter the Apostle said that the Holy Spirit is God, saying to Ananias and Saphira, his wife, who had committed fraud about the price of their field which they had sold. Then Blessed Peter said to Ananias: 'Who has persuaded you to lie to the Holy Spirit? You did not lie to a man, but to God' [Acts 5:3]. And immediately he fell down onto the ground and died."

Germinius: "How is the Holy Spirit God when it is written in Jeremiah: 'This is our God, and no other will be esteemed beside him. He has discovered the whole way of discipline and has given it to his own child, Jacob, and Israel, his own beloved. After these things he was seen on the earth and lived with men' [Baruch 3:35-36]. 

Heraclianus: Through ignorance you spoke well, showing that he prophesied that the Son is truly God, that God has lived among men. For so that you know that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father together with the Holy Spirit, understand that besides this Trinity no god is to be feared, worshiped, or honored."

Germinius: "Therefore Christ is brother to the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit?"

Heraclianus: "We do not believe that. For as the Father is one, one also are the Son and the Holy Spirit, one strength. For also the three are one."

Germinius: "How do you prove this?"

Heraclianus: "Through the Apostle Paul."

Germinius: "Where is this written?"

Heraclianus: "In his Letter to the Ephesians."

Germinius: "Read."

Heraclianus: "'You are one body and one spirit, as you also have been called in your hope of one calling. One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God the Father of all, who is above all and in all for us' [Ephesians 4:4-6]."

Germinius: "Heraclianus, how do you arrange these things about the Faith?"

Heraclianus: "For when a ray proceeds from the sun, it is a portion from the whole; but the sun will be in the ray, because it is the ray of the sun, nor is the substance separated, but extended, as light is kindled from light. The material remains whole, undiminished; even if you draw even more portions from it you will have made them share its qualities. In the same way also, because this has been accomplished concerning God, also the Son of God is God, and both are one. In the same way also concerning the Holy Spirit and concerning God as a measure. Therefore he made another step, not a status; he did not divide, but proceeded. Therefore that Son of God, as was always preached before, descended into a certain virgin and in her womb was formed as flesh, is born as a human being mixed with God. Flesh ordered by spirit is born, grows up, speaks, and is Christ. This is my Faith."

When Heraclianus had said these things, Germinius was filled with anger and indignation and began to shout and to say: "He is a heretic, because he says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are the whole of God. He is a homoousian; do not hold his Faith." 

And he demanded of the people, saying: "Let no one, no servant or handmaiden of God, meet with him, breathe upon him, because now he is dead." And he was swearing with an oath that he would banish him into exile. 

Heraclianus said: "The God who freed Israel from the hand of the King of the Amorites and the King of Basan, and who freed Paul from the hand of the Samaritans, he himself will free me from your hands."

And when he said these things, all the priests and deacons further said: "Let him not go out from here unless he has anathematized those bishops whom he named, whose Faith he said he holds." 

For this was said to Heraclianus and Firmanus with all the brothers. But they did not do this thing. 

Germinius said: <...> "It is not written."

And thus they dismissed them. And when they had dismissed them, a part of those comrades were shouting: "Let them be handed over to the governor and let them be killed, because they have made a sedition, and from one people have made two!" 

And they were trying to compel them to subscribe to the Faith of the heretics. And they were repeating this at the top of their lungs, saying: "Let them be handed over to the governor and let them be killed!"

Then Germinius said: "Do not do this, brothers! They do not know what they are saying. If bishops have been led astray, how much more men like this?"

And others were trying to compel them to humiliate themselves under their power. And this is what they did. And they escaped from their hands even to the present day.