Jamie Smith on Faith and Knowledge

James McGrath posted a short review today of a book I definitely need to read: What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious by Delwin Brown. As I noted in the comments, the book reminds me of James (or Jamie) K.A. Smith's interesting book The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, which argues that limited perspective and interpretation are inherent to the biblical picture of humanity as created by God (not just "since the fall"), and that this means faith is necessary to knowledge. Here are a few quotes:

There is always already interpretation in every relationship, which means that there is also room for plurality, or rather, plurality is the necessary result of irreducible difference.... But if interpretation is part of being human, then its analogue is a creational diversity: a multitude of ways to "read" the world. (pg. 156)

[I]n the end I would argue that every hermeneutic judgment is a kind of leap of faith, a certain trust or commitment, a belief that gropes beyond mere presence. Every interpretive judgment, then, should be accompanied by a corresponding hermeneutic humility or uncertainty. (pg. 157)

Before knowledge there is acknowledgement; before seeing there is blindness, before questioning there is a commitment; before knowing there is faith.

While blindness is the condition for the possibility of faith, there is also a sense in which faith is blinded because it sees too much, blinded by bedazzlement, "the very bedazzlement that, for example, knocks Paul on the ground on the road to Damascus." (pg. 183, quoting Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, pg. 112)

What Does It Mean to Trust the Bible?

I’m often asked how I can trust the Bible when it (particularly the “Old Testament”) includes so many harsh laws and horrific stories, many of which claim divine sanction. Am I not inconsistent to speak of a God of love and goodness when my own scripture includes such atrocities? In fact, too many Christians do seem to be inconsistent on this point, claiming that morality is “absolute” in our own context, but then becoming curiously relativistic when it comes to our own scriptures. They will happily accuse moral relativists of trivializing the holocaust, while simultaneously trivializing the genocides in the Bible itself (such as that described in Numbers 31, to name just one abhorrent example). Even the most horrific biblical commands are sometimes claimed to have been right and moral “back then,” by people who otherwise claim to reject moral relativism.

The problem, as I see it, is that texts like these are generally glossed over or ignored by those who seem to wish the Bible were a monolithic work of systematic theology. Ironically, the common insistence that the Bible is “literally true” on every point leads to some quite outlandish and improbably non-literal interpretations (like the claim that the conquest of Canaan is just a “metaphor” for spiritual warfare). It is little surprise then that many critics reject such obfuscations as ridiculous, and I must agree with them that such unquestioning trust in the Bible is misguided.

But the curious thing is that this view of the Bible is not actually biblical. Yes, there are passages which speak of the truth and inspiration of God’s word (and I agree with them—the Bible truly is inspired), but they certainly don’t require that Christians treat it as a collection of unquestionable propositions, as too many do. For instance, only one verse in the Bible makes any claims about the nature of “all scripture,” and it falls far short of claiming inerrancy: 2 Timothy 3:16 reads, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Whatever “breathed out by God” means (the Greek word is theopneustos, translated “inspired” in other versions, and occurs no where else in the Bible, but in the early church it was also used to describe both scripture and non-scriptural orthodox texts), this verse merely claims that scripture is “profitable” (ōphelimos; which could also be translated “useful,” “beneficial” or “valuable,” but certainly not “inerrant”) for teaching and moral correction. The goal of scripture, according to the following verse, is not that we would be provided with a perfectly accurate knowledge of science, history, or even theology, but that we would be “equipped for every good work.”

Though there are other texts which claim “God’s word” or “the law” is “perfect” or “unbreakable,” such can only be applied to the whole of what we now call scripture by inference (and of course it would be entirely circular to appeal to such texts to “prove” themselves. “The Bible claims it is inerrant, therefore it is inerrant” is not an argument; it’s a false tautology). Inerrancy, then, is a theological construct that is applied to the Bible, not a necessary conclusion from the Bible, and it too often obscures the fact that the Bible itself, upon inspection, is the product of a long process of writing and rewriting, debate and disagreement. The Bible is full of texts which take up previous biblical ideas and modify, extend, or call them into question. For instance, if you read Exodus through Deuteronomy as they now stand, you will find chapter after chapter of regulations concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices, all claimed to have been commanded by God shortly after Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Yet the prophet Jeremiah, writing several centuries later, attributes the following to God in 7:22, “in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (many modern translations, such as the NIV, add “just” after the highlighted terms, but there is no basis for this in the Hebrew).

Now there are only a handful of possible explanations for such a text (other than positing, without evidence, a scribal error): 1. Jeremiah was unaware of the Mosaic legislation, and so was mistaken about what God commanded at the Exodus; 2. What we now call “the Law of Moses” was not yet (fully) written by the time Jeremiah was speaking and/or; 3. Jeremiah knew of sacrificial regulations that were attributed to Moses, but disputed their divine origin or wanted to make a point (perhaps through hyperbole) that such regulations were not (as) vital as some believed.

In all probability, the truth lies in some combination of all three. Jeremiah almost certainly was not aware of all that we call the Law of Moses, because not all of it had yet been written (though some of it had). More basically, in criticizing the corruption and injustice he saw amongst those in his own day who claimed loyalty to the sacrificial regulations of the Jerusalem Temple, it is very likely that Jeremiah was questioning whether such cultic practices deserved the divine approval claimed for them. In short, not only does this text provide direct evidence of the developmental nature of scripture, but it is also an instance of explicit disagreement between biblical authors.

But here’s the key point: Jeremiah’s purpose does not appear to have been to reject the Law of Moses as false (remember, it didn’t even exist in the form we now have it). His point, as the rest of the chapter makes clear, was to convince his contemporaries that injustice and oppression of the poor are far more serious matters than adherence to the Jerusalem Temple. In order to shock his contemporaries out of their self-destructive complacency, Jeremiah here proves himself so passionately committed to justice and faithfulness to God that he is willing to call into question the Temple and the Mosaic law themselves to make that point. And he was right to do so. At that time, Israelite society was corrupt and heading towards disaster. Within a few years, Jeremiah’s prophecies would come true and Jerusalem would be wiped off the map by the Babylonians, her Temple destroyed, and her people exiled.

Jeremiah was right, but to make his point—indeed to remain faithful to God—he was willing to question scripture itself. This, I must insist, gives us a picture not of a static and “eternal” Bible which must be accepted without question, but a text whose very tensions and “contradictions” challenge our complacency and pseudo-piety, forcing us ever and anew to face the God it claims to reveal. To trust the Bible then, means not to maintain a slavish conformity to an eternally unchangeable set of Truths, but to carry forward its calls to faith and justice into our own situations, with renewed creativity and passion.

Nor is this an isolated example. From Genesis to Revelation, scripture is constantly alluding to or citing previous scriptures to make new points, correct old ones, or extend them into new situations. For instance, during the Babylonian Exile, someone composed a rather unflattering history of the Israelite monarchy, which we now know as 1 and 2 Kings. After the return from exile, another group rewrote that history in a more positive (and Priestly) light, and that work is known as 1 and 2 Chronicles. Both works, presenting alternative (and often conflicting) interpretations of the very same history of Israel, were included in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, with no official attempt at harmonization. Clearly those who wrote and collected the Bible did not share our modern obsession with consistency, or at least they considered it less important than the truth they found in these texts, tensions and all.

Such examples could be extended ad nauseam, all of which suggests that Christian scripture presents something far more like an engaging debate about the nature of God and God’s activity in history than a settled and permanent record of True Propositions. Therefore when someone points out to me that scripture describes some terrible things, I don’t feel any need to defend those things as “right” in our or even their own time. Perhaps the people who committed them believed they were following God’s will, perhaps God even commanded them for reasons that I can’t begin to comprehend, but nothing in the Bible demands that I accept that. Rather, the Bible presents me with an authentic portrait of humanity, and humanity has committed some truly awful deeds, many in the name of God.

To trust the Bible, then, does not mean believing it without question, but interacting with it, questioning it, reflecting its claims off of each other and our continuing experience, but, ultimately, letting it transform us. For despite what some seem to think, the horrific parts of the Bible, like the horrific parts of life, are not given the last word. The Bible places far more emphasis on laws which promote love and community; it highlights prophets who bravely condemned God’s own people when they clung to dead rituals and pious platitudes while ignoring justice and mercy; it tells the story of a God who loves the unlovable and constantly takes us back when we rebel; it even incorporates psalms and wisdom literature which question God’s own justice and faithfulness. But above all, it points to Jesus Christ, who calls us to self-sacrificing love as the only true and final answer to the evil we find in both the world and in the Bible, and who himself demonstrated the power and divinity of self-sacrifice through his death. To trust the Bible is to trust that God, not without question, but in the midst of our questions.

Good and Evil in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

I finally finished my latest Salvo article this morning, so hopefully I can get back to more regular posting now (but then again, my thesis is suffering from lack of attention, so we’ll see). In the mean time, here’s a reworked post on Star Wars Episode III, which I watched again today (I needed a break):

I can’t say if Revenge of the Sith is my favorite Star Wars film, but it ranks near the top. Yes, the acting and dialogue are pretty bad at times (in which Star Wars film aren’t they?), and yes the CGI was sometimes over-the-top (but much better than in Episodes I and II), but I love the glimpse it gives of the Old Republic in all its glory, the battle scenes are far and away the best of the series, and all around I think it gives good closure to the story.

But there are two particular aspects of the film that have left some people scratching their heads: The apparently superficial justification for Anakin Skywalker’s transformation into Darth Vader, and the conversation between Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi just before their climactic light-saber duel. In the first case, Anakin goes from learning that Palpatine is an evil Sith Master and wanting to kill him, to saving his life and killing in his name, only because he thinks it might save his wife Padmé’s life. In the second, Obi-Wan responds to Anakin’s insistence that he either support the Emperor or be seen as his enemy, by claiming “only the Sith deal in absolutes” - a strange thing to say considering Star Wars’ consistent emphasis on the choice between light and dark, good and evil. What’s going on here? Both of these oddities could simply be chalked up to George Lucas’ famously poor writing, but together I think they actually make an important point about the nature of good an evil.

It’s easy to think that evil is a power all its own, an equal and opposite alternative to good. Indeed, it seems possible to find such a view in Star Wars itself, with its emphasis on the light and dark sides of the Force. This, in fact, is what Palpatine himself affirms in enticing Anakin with powers supposedly unavailable to him among the Jedi. “The dark side is a path to many abilities that some consider unnatural,” he tells him, and implies that only through the dark side can Anakin save Padmé. Even Anakin’s destiny – “to bring balance to the Force” – could be understood in this way, as a balance of competing opposites. But Revenge of the Sith seems intent to deconstruct such a view. Palpatine, it turns out, has no real power that a true Jedi lacks – he doesn’t save Padmé, nor does he prove any stronger than Yoda in battle – he succeeds only by twisting the loyalty of others (itself a good thing), quietly turning the Republic into an Empire.

In the same way, Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side is not presented as an embrace of dark and unnatural powers particularly, but as a misguided and destructive crusade (ostensibly) to save his wife. Believing that only the Emperor can do this, he comes to see all disloyalty as evil, blinding himself to the much greater evils he is doing in the process. It is this, then, to which Obi-Wan is responding when he says “only the Sith deal in absolutes.” It is not the absolute of good verses evil to which he refers - as though Star Wars had suddenly embraced moral relativism - but the absolutizing of one good to the exclusion of all others.

One path to the dark side, Lucas seems to be saying, can lie in making any particular good so all-consuming that everything else becomes dispensable. Anakin has become so obsessed with “saving” Padmé that he is willing to destroy everything good in the universe to do so – even, it turns out, Padmé herself. By opposing him in this, Obi-Wan has become – to Anakin’s mind – an enemy, but that is only because Anakin has lost sight of the true line between good and evil. In rejecting such an “absolute,” Obi-Wan is trying to confront Anakin with the danger of this path, but Anakin can no longer understand such thinking. He now sees any and all disloyalty to himself or the emperor as enmity, the only evil he can still comprehend.

By presenting the central tragedy of the Star Wars saga in this way, Lucas has in fact dismantled the dualism (light balanced with dark) that many found in the original trilogy, replacing it with a much more Christian understanding of evil. In fact, he’s really echoing St. Augustine, who argued that evil is not a thing in itself – some alternative power standing over-against God and good – but merely the absence or distortion of good. So when in the end Anakin does fulfill his destiny and bring balance to the Force, it comes precisely by destroying evil - killing the emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi. Evil, it turns out, is not a balancing factor, but the source of unbalance, a parasite on the good, not its equal. Perhaps it is appropriate, then, that evil in the Star Wars universe is known as “the dark side” – for darkness is not a thing in itself; it is merely the absence of light.

On Sin and Atonement

Last night my wife and I rented Atonement, starring Kiera Knightley and James McAvoy. It is well made and has generally been well received, nominated for seven Oscars and winning one. It wasn’t my favorite film in the world, but the acting was quite good, especially Knightley as Cecilia Tallis, McAvoy as Robbie Turner and Saoirse Ronan as the young Briony Tallis, Cecilia’s sister. The cinematography was excellent, including picturesque views of the Tallis family estate on the one hand and a devastating four minute shot of the British retreat from Dunkirk on the other. The score was just about perfect, particularly its haunting use of the sound of a typewriter, which underlined the tragic power of words which the film explores. But the real interest lies in the story Atonement tells, so that is where I will focus (minor spoiler warning; also note that this film is rated R for good reason, including some strong sexuality - though no nudity - and graphic images of the aftermath of war).

Jumping backwards and forwards in time and even repeating scenes from different perspectives, the film explores the lifelong impact of one day’s terrible events. In 1935, thirteen year old Briony witnesses a series of incidents involving her adult sister Cecilia, the family gardener’s grown son Robbie, and (separately) her cousin Lola Quincy (played by Juno Temple). First Briony sees a minor incident between Cecilia and Robbie – a vase was broken and fell into the fountain; Cecilia stripped to her underwear and retrieved it – which Briony mistakenly believed that Robbie had forced her to do. Latter, she reads a sexually explicit letter Robbie wrote to Cecilia but never intended to give to her. Then (after Cecilia has read the letter), Briony finds them having sex in the library – which she misinterprets as attempted rape. Finally, she stumbles upon her cousin Lola actually being raped by an unseen man in the garden. In a flurry of righteous indignation, she accuses Robbie of the crime and provides his lust-filled note as evidence. Robbie is sent to prison (and eventually, the army), and all of their lives are changed forever.

Without giving too much more of the plot away, the rest of the film explores Cecilia and Robbie’s longing for a future free of the shame that Briony’s lie has brought upon him, and her own attempts to find atonement for that sin. As the title implies, the second of these themes is central, and the film seems to emphasize the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of truly repaying one’s sins. For nothing Briony does can undo the damage she has caused. While she rightly seeks reconciliation, it is unclear that she is able to find it in any real sense. There is little redemption in this film – though at Dunkirk we do overhear a hymn referencing “the still small voice of God” – this story focuses on the consequences of sin.

Near the beginning of the film there is a scene at a formal dinner (watch it here), in which the misdeeds of several of the guests are hinted at, especially the infelicity of Cecilia and Robbie and an earlier attack by the soon-to-be rapist. As the story focuses on her sin particularly, only Briony is explicitly asked “what sins have you committed today?” and she denies that she has done anything wrong. Of course, she is mistaken, but I think the consequences of her lie can only be properly understood in light of the other misdeeds alluded to in this scene. These in fact provide an important subtext to the story, and help elucidate the corporate nature of evil:

Briony’s lie has terrible consequences, but it would not have had the impact it did if not for the sins of the others. Foremost among these, of course, is the rape itself. Briony was wrong to accuse Robbie, and worse for insisting she was certain when she was not, but she was not wrong that a rape had occurred. At the same time, Cecilia and Robbie’s own sins that day, while less patently evil than rape, were just as responsible for what followed as anything Briony did. For instance, she could never have misinterpreted the scene at the fountain the way she did if Cecilia had not decided to strip down in front of Robbie. The broken vase surely could have been retrieved in another way, and this immodesty was not purely innocent. Similarly, though Briony was wrong to open Robbie’s letter, she was not unjustified in finding its contents scandalous (even if he didn't mean to send it), nor were he and Cecilia innocent in how they responded to this - that is, the sex that Briony interpreted as attempted rape.

Immodesty, sexual innuendo, pre-marital sex, these things are not considered wrong by our culture, which treats rape and pedophilia (and perhaps infidelity) as the only real sexual sins. Indeed, the filmmakers themselves may well accept this common assumption, but even if so, the story they tell rightly implies that together, such lesser sins can have almost an tragic as effect as rape itself.

For as long as Briony’s sin is taken alone, it might seem surprising that she proves unable to atone for it herself, but once we realize that she is caught in a web of evil beyond her control, this becomes understandable, without excusing her own part in its outcome. Her sins combined with those of Cecilia, Robbie, the rapist and many others (enough to drive a World War, in fact) and all of them together led to the tragedy this film portrays. It is not just her one lie which needs atonement, but our whole world trapped in a cycle of evil beyond any of our control. What Atonement does best, then, is to show first the dire consequences of sin – consequences that can never be fully undone – and second to emphasize that humanly and individually, we can never atone for them ourselves.

Is Morality Relative, Absolute or Neither?

In an interesting post at Exploring Our Matrix, James McGrath offers his thoughts on a recent debate between a moral relativist and a moral absolutist. In particular, he raises several objections to the common Christian attempt to ground moral absolutes in the existence of God. First, he mentions the Euthyphro Dilemma, a very old argument which can be boiled down to the following conundrum: If right and wrong depend on God’s choice, then they seem to be arbitrary (and thus not absolute), whereas if they do not depend on God’s choice, then God’s existence does not seem to be necessary to morality. James notes that a frequent rebuttal is that moral absolutes correspond to God’s character, and responds:

That doesn't seem to me to solve the problem. In fact, it seems to create a problem akin to the "fine tuning" of the laws of physics: then we have a Creator of our universe whose morality is fine tuned to the cosmic moral absolutes...

I’m not sure this is a valid response. If morality is absolute, then it would be the “cosmic moral absolutes” that were fined tuned according to God’s character, not the other way around. But more fundamentally, I think we need to distinguish between moral “absolutism” and moral “objectivity.” To say that morality is “absolute” seems to mean that certain actions (like killing babies) are always wrong, no matter what the circumstances. But to say that morality is “objective” means only that for any given circumstance, there is always a right choice.

I think it is much more helpful to think of morality as objective than to think of it as absolute. In that case, God’s character can serve as the ultimate standard for right and wrong, not because it is “fine-tuned” to an ideal set of absolute moral principles (which could then be affirmed without God), but because what is right is determined by what choice God himself would make if he were in this situation. This assumes that moral truths are not primarily “facts” which “exist” in the usual sense, but rather inherent attributes of certain choices. In that case, no fine-tuning is necessary (of God or the cosmos) for morality to be objective, all that matters is that a correct choice is possible in each case.

The value of such an approach can be seen by considering James’ second objection, which draws on a scene from the old TV show M*A*S*H. In the series finale of that show, a woman is described who smothered her child to save the lives of a bus full of people. Since “killing babies is wrong” would seem to be about as uncontroversial a moral “absolute” as you could imagine, yet it is unclear that the woman’s action would be wrong in this case, the notion of moral absolutism seems rather problematic. Indeed, even if one responds that the woman was wrong to kill her child, would that not make Abraham’s intent to sacrifice Isaac (in Genesis 22) all the more immoral? Yet that case was commanded by God, according to the Bible.

Here I fully agree with James, but must insist that while such examples make the concept of moral absolutes difficult, they actually strengthen the viability of moral objectivity. For if there is any sense in which the woman can be said to have made the right or the wrong choice – even if different circumstances would certainly result in a different answer – then morality is objective, though it is not absolute. And if this is true of difficult cases like that, how much more of less contestable cases? If it can ever be said that “killing this baby would be evil,” then morality is objective, and it is worth asking how this can be so. If the world (including every baby) is the creation of God, then the character of that God does provide a sound basis for such a view.

The difficulty that remains is in determining what choice the character of God would demand in each circumstance. For James is right that we do not have unmediated access to God’s character, nor any consistent picture of it, even in the Bible. Indeed, it is ironic how often Christians seeking to defend absolute morality are forced to defend a form of relativism in dealing with the seemingly immoral divine commands in the Old Testament. This is a serious challenge and I’ve yet to see a truly satisfying answer to it, but again, it is a greater problem for moral absolutism than for moral objectivism. If the situation today is very different than that in which God was commanding, then his character and choices might be consistent, even if his commands vary with the circumstance. More fundamentally, the Bible itself need not be a perfect reflection of God’s will for God to have a perfect will.

For ultimately, the claim that morality is objective must not be seen as the end of the debate on the nature of morality, but rather its beginning: Only if we assume that there is a right answer, can we even discuss what that answer might be.

Saved from What?

USA Today has an excellent piece about our culture's diminished concept of sin and its significance for the church (HT: Between Two Worlds). Here are a few excerpts:

Is sin dead? No, not by a long shot. Yet as Easter approaches, some pastors and theologians worry: How can Christians celebrate Jesus' atonement for their sins and the promise of eternal life in his resurrection if they don't recognize themselves as sinners?...

A new survey by Ellison Research in Phoenix finds 87% of U.S. adults believe in the existence of sin, which is defined as "something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective."

Topping the list are adultery (81%) and racism (74%).

But other sins no longer draw majority condemnation. Premarital sex? Only 45% call it sin. Gambling? Just 30% say it's sinful.

"A lot of this is relative. We tend to view sin not as God views it, but how we view it," says Ellison president Ron Sellers.

David Kinnaman, president of Barna Research, a company in Ventura, Calif., that tracks Christian trends, draws a similar conclusion: "People are quick to toe the line on traditional thinking" that there is sin "but interpret that reality in a very personal and self-congratulatory manner" — I have to do what's best for me; I am not as sinful as most.

Indeed, 65% of U.S. adults say they will go to heaven, and only 0.05% believe they'll go to hell, according to a 2003 Barna telephone survey of 1,024 adults.

"They give intellectual assent to the story about Jesus rising on Easter Sunday: 75% say they believe the biblical account of Jesus' death and resurrection is literally true, not a story meant to illustrate a principle. But they don't have any personal application of this Monday through Saturday," Kinnaman says.

The article continues with some good commentary by a diverse assortment of Christian leaders – from the Pope to Mark Driscoll (and an example of the problem in Joel Osteen!) – but I wonder if this disconnect is really new. Have not people always been quicker to see sin in others than in themselves? Was it any different during the first Holy Week, when the leaders of God’s people saw themselves as the righteous even while calling for Jesus’ crucifixion, when Jesus' own disciples were fleeing and denying him? We are the same, and this week of all weeks we would do well to remember it.

If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

Newbigin on The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society:

The Christian believer is using the same faculty of reason as his unbelieving neighbor and he is using it in dealing with the same realities, which are those which every human being has to deal. But he is seeing them in a new light, in a new perspective. They fall for him into a different pattern. He cannot justify the new pattern in terms of the old; he can only say to his unbelieving neighbor, stand here with me and see if you don’t see the same pattern as I do. (pg. 11)

Hell Abolished, God Adopts Gold Sticker System

Since we're on the subject, there's a humorous article at The Wittenburg Door that relates to the previous post… well, sort of. Here's an excerpt:

HEAVEN—One week after beginning His new Self-Esteem Initiative, God reports mixed responses to the biggest change in Human-Divine interaction since the Incarnation.

“We’ve seen gains in both behavior and morale,” the Almighty said during a press conference in Chattanooga, Tenn., “but it’s not conclusive whether these trends will hold.”

Last week’s policy change came as a surprise to many. “It took a few days to get used to receiving a sticker whenever I did a good deed,” said Roberta Davenport of New York City, showing off three stickers on her coat that say “Good Job,” “Well Done,” and “You’re A Star!”

As reported at last week’s press conference, after reading a book on self-esteem in children, the Lord realized that all “Children of God” could benefit from immediate positive reinforcement.

“As it turned out,” the Lord said, “tossing sinners into Hell was seriously damaging their self-esteem.”

Don’t we all feel better now.

Christian Carnival 210

Christian Carnival 210 is up at Imago Dei, and includes my post on Hope, Sacrifice and Moral Discourse. It also includes several other posts on the same subject, the best of which are:

Frank on Moral Perspectives: Meaning and Free Will.
Jason on Goodness.

Even Good Vampires are Bad?

An interesting discussion has sprung up over at Boundless Line, considering whether traditionally evil characters - vampires, dragons, witches and wizards - can be legitimately portrayed as heroes, or whether this inevitably blurs the line between good and evil. As you might expect, I tend to think they can, if redeemed (for aren't we ourselves "good monsters"?), but the whole discussion is interesting, and Ethan Cordray in particular makes some important points for the opposite view:

The trouble with this is that even modern vampires are defined by an essentially evil quality: the need to consume the blood of others to sustain an artificial immortality. That is what makes them vampires, and that is what links them to the old folklore figures. No matter what their personalities or appearances might be, vampires still drink blood and live forever. That's what makes them vampires.

To imagine a "good vampire," then, is really an impossibility. Vampirism is essentially evil, and one who engages in it is thus a doer of evil. If being a vampire is the essence of a character -- that is, if it's what defines the character's personality and behavior -- then that character is essentially evil, and I think we can rightly demand that it be portrayed as such.

On the other hand, I think it's possible to portray a vampiric character that contains goodness, or even one that is morally transformed within a story. This would require, however, that the "redeemed vampire" character give up vampirism, just as we would expect a redeemed criminal to give up crime.

HT: Evangelical Outpost