St. Nietzsche VI: Over the Overman's Head

In 1944 a book called "Plowman's Folly" took the United States by storm. Scandal of scandals, the book's author claimed that plowing the ground in preparation to plant crops was a bad idea. A blurb on the dust jacket, taken from Time Magazine, reads "The hottest farming argument since the tractor first challenged the horse..." That, by the way, was not a joke, and yes, the book's thesis was a hot topic nationally.

When my brother and sisters converged in Minot, ND, in 2007 to help my mother and step-father move out of there long time home into assisted living, my mother gave me Plowman's Folly with this note, dated December 10, 1993, inside:

"Lyle (my father) loved this book. I want one of my children to have it."

So "Folly" found its way to me, and I was delighted to find this note inside, which captured my father's passion for agriculture along with his personality very well:

"One of silliest and [most] cynical statements ever made in the history of our country is that "Anybody can farm." Devoid of truth. Good farmer has to know more about more things than any professional man. This belief has cost untold amounts of $. But nothing compared..."

These are shorthand talking points on a note card that was torn in half and used as a bookmark in "Folly."

What in the world does this have to do with Nietzsche's criticism of St. Paul? Everything, it turns out.

Gardening--which I will use as a metaphor for human interaction with the environment--is endlessly interesting. There is no sphere of human understanding that it does not enter. As Dad said, the good farmer "has to know more about more things than any professional man," who is ensconced in a particular area of expertise. As beings who continually learn more about how to manipulate our environment, rather than making the garden metaphor ever more remote as our agricultural roots fade in the distance, it becomes ever more germane. Gardening is explicit human interplay with the environment, but all human action is de facto human interplay with the environment. Conscious human manipulation of the environment began on a large scale with agriculture, but human activity in all "fields" entails interaction with our environment, whether we are mindful of it or not.

Furthermore, it would seem that agriculture was the progenitor of science. The particulars of what to plant where and when are rules of thumb analogous to scientific "laws" that followed on much experiment in the "garden," which is still the agronomist's "laboratory."

Here's the rub for Nietzsche's argument. He claimed that the will to power is fundamental making the moral law an impotent agent when it comes to changing human nature. On this, recall, Nietzsche and St. Paul agree. But Nietzsche goes on to point out that the moral law as Christians view it is contrary to nature, since it advocates for mercy and charity and humility, whereas nature always sides with the strong. Since nature is fundamental in making all living beings strive after the things they want--and Christian morals are no exception to this as they pervert nature by being a ploy to give "power" to the weak--to go against nature is to go against reality.

But, ironically, Nietzsche's view cannot survive a realistic view of human interaction with nature. Nietzsche sees wider nature as determining human nature. Our nature is subject to the will to power. But what determines the will to power? Does an organism do best by exploiting its niche, or by understanding its environment and doing best by way of its environment? An organism struggling to maximize its interests within a given environment will say the first. That organism will have a subjective view of good. "Good" means "good for it." An organism that can inpact the environment in a signifacant way must also consider its impact on the environment as part of its view of "good." That organism will have a subjective and an objective view of good, at least in the sense that its subjective "good" is tied to the good of its wider, "objective" environment. That means there are two points of view for a creature, like us, who sees good in a wider and more narrow frame of reference. For such a creature it seems that the wider frame should inform the narrower, making "Good" an objectve matter. But Nietzsche does not take note of this. He writes as if nature informs us that the strong whould dominate the weak. That makes "domination" the goal and hence the good. But is it good that mold overtakes--dominates--its host orange? By that analogy, it would be good for us to despoil our environment, the "orange" called earth.

But once we back away from a narrow frame of interest and admit the need to understand our environment in order to be good in relationship to it, we have a god's-eye view of the world. We are no longer just creatures reacting within an environment. We are creators making it.

Theologically this recasts my view of what it means to be makde in the image of God. For the writer of Genesis I think that the metaphor of the garden captured this very dilemma: we with God are makers of our world. Theologically, this metaphor, then, must hold the answer to our rejoinder to Nietzsche: We have a god's-eye view of nature that cannot be reduced to your narrow view of the will to power as determining our good. To be good, we must function within a wider, wholistic view of good. And that means that there is a moral law that is outside of us and should inform our sense of what we need to do. The moral law may not be fundamental--and with St. Paul you establish that in fact it is not. But the wider view says it SHOULD be. And the metaphor of the garden is precisely what brings that wider view into play in a way that converges with our very real human dilemma: We are creatures with two views of good, a god's-eye view and a creature's-eye view, and it is--in some sense to be sure--sin to capitulate to the creature's-eye view.

Re-read Genesis 1-3 and see if that children's story isn't a lot more sophistocated than it appears on first blush. IN fact, having read Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" again recently, there is no mention of this crucial level of consideration. As creators of our world, we need the god's-eye view. As creatures within it, we loath to take on that responsibility, along with the sacrifices it might ential...

The picture at the head of this post is of the corner plot at our home. My wife goes out and gazes at it and the other plots lon Saturday mornings wondering what will make it better. As you can see, at the center fot he plot there is an open area, and she has yet to decide what should go there. It's a big decision, for a serious gardener.

Well, gotta go... Please forgive my not proofing this; recall this is prep for a rewriting in the fall.

St. Nietzsche V: Parting Company with St. Paul

In the last Nietzsche post (numeral IV) I agreed with the third argument, that "it is the will to power, and not the moral law, that is fundamental to human motivation." And, "Accordingly, seeking to follow the moral law does not change human nature, fundamentally." Of course, the whole idea behind morals is that they really improve us and the world. So if they are but window dressing on a perspective which, if it is looked into deeply enough, shows us that we aren't really moral, we ought to be honest enough to face the fact. I agree with Nietzsche on that, completely. It happens that Paul agrees that, if we look deeply at ourselves, we aren't really moral: To quote Paul, "...sin has made its home in my nature." (Rom. 7:17, Phillips)

In addition to that, Nietzsche has the following complaint against Christianity and the Apostle Paul, whom he called "The First Christian" (an essay from "The Dawn" with that title explains Nietzsche's view): "The Christian conception of God [is of] God as god of the sick..." (The AntiChrist, tr. Kaufmann, section 18.) By teaching us to value compassion and humility and mercy and charity, etc., Christianity betrays our natural devotion to greatness and strength. My rejoinder to Nietzsche's view is that there is no human greatness or strength without long, loving, nurturing patience with human weakness and incompetence. Nietzsche's hyperbolic disparagement of Christian values is at least as naive and misguided as he takes the object of his scorn to be. But this impasse is hardly worth arriving at.

Fortunately, the disagreement can be followed to a deeper point. Both the Apostle Paul and the Great Atheist agree on the need to transcend the moral law: Nietzsche announces the "uber-mensch" and Paul "a new creature." (Gal. 6:15 KJV) The status quo is, to be sure, an impasse that is hardly worth arriving at.

But for Nietzsche,

"When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation..." (from "Homer's Contest" in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Kaufmann.)

The Apostle Paul agrees that,

"we [live] on the level of our lower nature." (Rom. 7:5, NEB)

The point of absolute departure for the two is precisely where it should be: grace, as understood in its primary, theological sense: divine assistance given to humanity in its state of helplessness apart for it. "For by grace you have been saved through faith..."

Before tracing the separation, let's note the astounding unity of the Apostle Paul and the Great Atheist on this point: we are estranged from the moral law by our very human nature. We are helpless in the face of the law, and here Nietzsche's view informs faith, precisely because it is unnatural; it is not in accord with who we fundamentally are. The "third argument" makes that case persuasively, and so we should be grateful to Nietzsche.

And since we are using the Great Atheist to make the point, why not bring in another to second it. ""There is really only one entity whose point of view matters in evolution, and that entity is the selfish gene." (Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) p. 137.) And, "Genes are selected for their ability to make the best use of the levers of power at their disposal..." (Ibid.) A better "fundamental" explanation of human nature in accord with Nietzsche's will to power would be impossible to find. Since Dawkins does not think that his view from 1976 is outmoded--see his "Introduction to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition"--it seems that Paul's point of view prior to grace accords with Nietzsche and Dawkins. And as a matter of fact, it is not a stretch to say that it is because his view accords with Dawkins and Nietzsche that he sees the need for grace. Paul was thoroughly up to date 2,000 years ago.

Of course, at that very point their views diverge in irreconcilable ways. But all this is to set up the following point: the way to transcend the impasse is encoded in the first biblical metaphors describing the relationship of divinity to humanity. And, I will contend, the view that Christianity set up--when understood at the necessary depth--offers a view of a truth that to too big for nature of science; a truth only faith can accept; but a truth none-the-less.

St. Nietzsche IV: Arguments II and III

Is it really so easy to counter Nietzsche as to note that there is no human greatness--no "uber-mensch"--without the long patience with weakness and smallness on every level that form the crucial initial stages of every human beings history? Well, it was with the first of the three arguments. Let's look at the next two. (And just a reminder, I'm basically vamping on implications taken from one of Nietzsche's aphorisms, which you can read by looking back a couple of posts.)

ARGUMENT II:

This argument begins with the point that the first argument turned on (see last post): If the two main ideas connected to "justice" are getting what one deserves and delivering equality of opportunity, then justice is inherently elitist in that it should overturn any biases AGAINST the best--the greatest--among us from getting the lion's share of the goods sought for in competition with other lesser human beings. And stated in the abstract, it is undoubtedly true. The entailments of the two main senses of "justice" brought into conjunction auger in Nietzsche's favor. I am both surprised that Nietzsche never offered this argument directly and sincerely of the opinion that the simple and summary critique offered above--and in the last post--counters it effectively. Consequently, my best guess is that Nietzsche also saw that making the argument explicit was a dead end. But that suggests the question, if he saw that this argument was a dead end for the reason stated, what else did he presumably see in it (to account for the fact that he did not recant)? That brings us to the second argument.

The remaining rationale is, in fact, easy to locate: Nietzsche thought that it was bad for human society to corrupt the moral law in order to overturn the elitist bias natural to justice. It is bad precisely because it is against nature.

So here's the second argument, reduced to a sentence: to the extent that it's against nature, human beings should not value mercy and compassion, as Christianity teaches them/us to do.

Notice that this second argument--or this supplement to the first, if you like--does not fall by applying the critique of the first: Since human beings mature slowly and need much nurture, it is good to be patient with the weakness and smallness of human beings in development. And if the more talented often take longer to develop because they are in training for the more difficult disciplines, well then, we should indulge them fully with patience and good will as they take their time developing.

And so it seems that there is a simple and effective Nietzscheian rejoinder to the simple and effective anti-Nietzschian rejoinder offered in response to the first argument.

Critique of the SECOND ARGUMENT:

Much of the human society each of us keeps is weak and small. Should I not love and honor my 85 year old mother because she has become frail and weak? That would imply an inhuman smallness of a particularly repugnant sort, certainly not something to be credited to an "uber-mensch." It is healthy and and good BECAUSE NATURAL for human beings to cherish friendships and institutional connections just because our personal histories--if nothing else--are tied to them. Nietzsche's crude endorsement of "greatness" and "nature" simply offends human nature.

ARGUMENT III:

This is the argument I originally was going to critique, before discovering while forming its critique that there were three separate points or arguments that needed a response. (And as a reminder, I am working this out for putting together as a more considered monograph-length essay to complement "Into the World.") Here it is, again, modified in accordance with my evolving understanding of it:

Tautologically, everyone wants what they want, and if one really wants something, all things considered, one also wills the means. This is a rationale for Nietzsche's will to power: we all want what we want along with the means to get it; the will to power is a truism.

Accordingly, the moral law as something people want is subject to the will to power.

But then it is the will to power and not the moral law that is fundamental to human motivation.

Accordingly, seeking to follow the moral law does not change human nature, fundamentally.

In that case, any hope to bring real, fundamental change to humanity must be by way of addressing the will to power, not through the moral law.

This, by the way is the "Principle of Futility" that I announced as forthcoming in a post about three weeks ago--should have made that connection earlier. Oops! The futility is with respect to the moral laws ability to change human nature for the better. That is, fundamentally the moral law does not make us more moral. If you think of Paul's view of the law as presented in Galations and Romans, I'm pretty sure you can see how this can be developed.

Critique of the THIRD ARGUMENT:

I have no critique of this argument, narrowly considered. That is, I think that Nietzsche is correct. But here's the fun part. I think he is making the same point as the Apostle Paul! I'll make that connection explicit in the next post, along with how Christianity addresses the will to power with the gospel...

[Note: I'm trying to get a business off the ground, and one that must "make hay" in the summer. It just might be a couple weeks before I can post again. Sorry about that.]

St. Nietzsche III: How does one get more life?

How do we get more life? In many ways the answer is likely very particular for each of us. The things that you want, beyond the basics, are not likely to overlap much with my wants. But even in the particulars where we are more at variance than alike, we share an abstract commonality: we want power. We all want the power to get the things we want. True, a person can want something, but not enough to do what it takes to get it, but in that case, all things considered, she doesn't really want it.

In the last couple posts we looked at an argument inspired by a comment of Nietzsche's that entails--on my interpretation at least--that the moral law can be a way for the "little man" who envy's "the great man" to gain power over him. This point of view is destabalizing for morality, since it means that it does not necessarily "right" anything when it protects the little man from the great. It just churns the wheels of power without making any real change in the character of the person wielding it. Of course, for Nietzsche, the problem is much worse: The moral law is counter to nature in its protecting the little man from the dominance of the great.

The surprising point in the last post is that Nietzsche and Christianity agree on this: The moral law does not make us better; it does not improve humanity when it turns the tables on a powerful person by subjecting her to its sanctions. The history of the Jewish nation, in Paul's writings, teach us that: it was our "tutor" to bring us to the understanding that "If a law had been given which had power to bestows life, then indeed righteousness would have come from keeping the law. But Scripture has declared the whole world to be prisoners in subjection to sin..." (Galations 3:21-2) In effect, Paul makes the underlying complaint of Nietzsche--that the law teaches us that human nature makes the law a sham--into a fundamental doctrine of the faith. It's interesting when Christ and Antichrist find a point of agreement. To me, that's a place where we just might learn something important.

Last week, I stated that I would critique Nietzsche's argument (or the argument implicit in my interpretation of him). In looking more closely, I found THREE. My approach is still informal and tentative, but the value of thinking this through can hardly be overstated: We are considering two very different views of how to approach life, and we have found a common point of departure. What we learn about these basic and antithetical approaches to life almost can't fail to be important. Today I will critique just the first of the three distinct arguments.

ARGUMENT 1:

Justice, as an end that many people want, entails wanting the power to achieve it.

But justice can be approached from two very different starting points: A. People should get what they earn or otherwise deserve, and B. People should all be given an equal opportunity to pursue the goods they want.

Crucially, if everyone is given an equal opportunity to pursue the goods they want, it will be the "great" who are successful.

Therefore, justice should not overturn the natural order in which the strong or "great" win and the weak or "small" lose. Let's just say it: Justice should be--and by nature is--elitist. In fact, if it really were, Nietzsche would have, I believe, endorsed it.

But under the spell of Christianity's transvaluation of values, we have unnaturally learned to love the weak and value mercy. Therefore "justice" has become unjust. The great of humanity should be above it: hence, the uber-mensch.


CRITIQUE OF ARGUMENT 1:

This will be short. Obviously no human greatness is achieved without great nurture. Greatness follows on a patience with weakness and smallness that takes decades and even scores of years to achieve. The idea that a "great man" like Nietzsche can look back at the people and tradition that raised him and scorn it for indulging weakness and smallness is not just bad manners, but ludicrous inconsistency. It is crucial to human greatness that we love the weak.

Nevertheless, there are also crucial lessons to be learned from Nietzsche's critique, lessons connected with the point of departure he shares with Paul. We will turn to lessons after considering the other two arguments. And remember; we are thinking about how to approach life to get what we want from it--to get the most out of it.

St. Nietzsche Part Two: Nietzsche and Paul on the Law's Futility

[Note to Readers: Before beginning this post I thought I'd share some self-criticism related to this blog and why my conclusion is that I should continue. There are plenty of people as bright, as informed about the Bible, philosophy, and theology, as able to form their thoughts in apt language, etc., as am I. In short, if eminence is the justification for continuing to blog, I should not. (It is a different matter that I get a lot out of the process: I could simply journal.) So why wouldn't I leave my kind readers in those many more eminent hands? The answer comes down to approach. I believe that I am modeling something that deserves--in fact needs--to catch on with religious intellectual leaders: faith that demonstrates its relevance and importance by taking on its greatest challenges. For too long a choice between conservative Christianity's anti-intellectualism and liberal Christianity's capitulation to Modernism/Post-Modernism/Whatever-Comes-Next has gutted faith of its integrity, its relevance, and its power. To those of us who see faith as the most important aspect of life--and there are different ways of framing why--that is a travesty. Anti-intellectualism or capitulation--either way Christians feed the view that faith lacks relevance, integrity and power. So what's special about my approach? It moves against the "avoid or capitulate" dynamic, because it engages the toughest questions it can find. And oddly enough, there are answers, even for a less-than-eminent thinker such as I. That's precisely what needs to be modeled, and though I'm certainly not unique in this. That's why I will continue to blog, despite the fact that I have very little time to devote to it. And who better than Nietzsche to be our friend in this important project of engaging the tough questions?]

Apparently Nietzsche thought so little--I speak literally here, though the same is certainly true figuratively--of Christian morality that he failed to see the powerful argument against it embedded in his anti-Christian stance: favoring the weak empowers them, thereby unnaturally frustrating the strong. His "overman" would see through this and have nothing to do with the herd that follows its unnatural, even sick, point of view. We looked at the argument embedded in this perspective in the last post. The argument is implicit in the quote, "When the great man screams, the small man comes running with his tongue hanging out form lasciviousness." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. Kaufmann, Third Part.)

From the Christian point of view Nietzsche's comment is potentially devastating. In essence he is saying, "By envying the strong, the herd shows that its claim to equality under the law is just a way of turning the tables on the natural order without changing it for the better: The law empowers the weak without changing the fact that it is the will to power--the desire to be the one wielding power--that is in play. He called this "...the self-deception of the moral concepts..." (The Anti-Christ, tr. Kaufmann, section 20.)

Let's frame the argument Nietzsche might have made--provisionally and informally for now:

Christians want to do good. We define "good" morally, and claim that biblical law prescribes it, at least more-or-less. But the de facto good for all people is what they in fact want, and all people want power, even if that want comes in the form of a purported desire for moral good to prevail. Therefore, the moral good is not a species apart from the will to power. Moreover, if particular goods always inform the content regulated by the moral law, the moral law does not change the nature of goodness in the sense of changing what is wanted, but only adds a regulative dimension which--when enforced--prevents the stronger individual from taking advantage of the weaker by taking a proportionately greater amount of the good. But one measure of justice and goodness is that people get what they deserve. If we then define "deserve" as a product of what a person can do, we derive the conclusion that the stronger should get the lion's share of the goods that people seek: the domination of the weak by the strong is natural. The moral law does not change the fact that the strong can get more goods by dint of their strength. Hence, it does not change the fact that it is better to be strong. But if it's better to be strong, then the moral law stultifies the good by preventing the stronger individual from taking advantage of the weaker by taking a larger proportion--even the lion's portion--of the good. From the standpoint of nature, the moral law is a self-inflicted sham, a self-deception, perpetrated on society by which the weaker individual (or nation or culture, etc.) overthrows the natural order without offering a good of its own to justify the overthrowing of the natural order, in which the strong dominate the weak.

For now it is enough to note that this argument depends on the strong and the weak both wanting the same thing--the goods of nature. And if human nature cannot be--has not been--transcended, Nietzsche's point of view, which I hope to have used fairly to construct this "argument," prevails. But a critique from a meta-Nietzschian Christian point of view will wait for another post. Today, it is the congruence of the Apostle Paul's point of view with Nietzsche's that we will observe.

For Paul, the moral law was/is "our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ" (Gal. 3:24, KJV) or "the law was like a strict governess in charge of us until we went to the school of Christ..." (Phillips) or "...the law was a kind of tutor..." (NEB).

Paul's point is that we should have learned from our tutor and graduated to something better: "Christ set us free, to be free men. Stand firm, then, and refuse to be tied to the yoke of slavery again." (Gal. 5:1, NEB) We, as Christians, should live for something higher. In that we agree with Nietzsche and his call for the "ubermensch": "Man...is something that must be overcome." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. Kaufmann, Fourth Part.) In fact, Paul is every bit as emphatic--and that is a euphemism--as Nietzsche: "You stupid Galations!" (Gal. 3:1, NEB) Why? They were returning to the law, which could not provide authentic "life" or produce "righteousness." (Gal. 3:31)

On this level of abstraction, Paul and Nietzsche are in complete agreement. Humanity needs a higher kind of life than that made possible by the law. In fact, we would have to be stupid--Paul's words--not to see it. And it is my contention that by taking Nietzsche seriously, we get a better view of Christianity and the good that it proposes.

[A second note to Readers: I have come to see that a second monograph length essay derived from Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity is in order. The first was, for those who did not read it, "Into the World," an answer to Nietzsche's view that Pilate's famous question is the annihilation of faith. This summer I will examine facets of this challenge and prepare for a more considered response in the fall, when I have more time...]

St. Nietzsche Part One: On "the most corrupt kind of corruption"

Our conclusion from last week, that the resurrection turns the tables on the tables that keep turning in human history answers Nietzsche's uber-complaint against Christianity, that it engenders "the most corrupt kind of corruption." (The Antichrist, tr. Kaufmann, section 58.)

A fuller statement is found earlier in The Antichrist (section 18): "The Christian concept of God--God as god of the sick...is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever attained on earth. It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of the divine types. God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live." I contend that Nietzsche's point, when unpacked, does not threaten the Christian position, but rather makes it clear why it is needed.

Speaking entirely in the abstract, if a weaker, aggrieved party uses legal or moral sanction to overthrow a stronger, aggrieving party, though justice will presumably be served, but is it necessarily the case that good has been served in addition? Nietzsche helps us see that the presumption is false.

He, of course, opposed moral and legal sanction against the stronger party on behalf of the weaker on the grounds that it is natural for the strong to dominate the weak. That is what nature sanctions, he would say, so we should too.

But there is a much more interesting aspect of this charge that he brings against Christianity: that its transvaluation (its unnatural love of weakness instead of strength: cf "the beatitudes") is born out of envy: "'When the great man screams, the small man comes running with his tongue hanging from lasciviousness.'" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. Kaufmann, Third Part.) If Nietzsche is correct here, it is the end of a moral justification of justice: we may support justice out of social necessity, but the idea that it serves good has been burlesqued. From this perspective the Apostle Paul and Nietzsche agree: Humanity is "a slave to the law of sin." (Romans 7:25--of course Nietzsche would not call it "sin.")

The tablative justice that we considered last week, then, turns on the power that the law gives to the aggrieved. But the power of the aggrieved is just another form of power, and a form that Nietzsche hates because it overturns the natural order and that Christianity critiques--or at least ought to--as spinning the wheels of justice without making any progress toward good. Nature will not be transcended in Nietzsche's view: So justice is a sham. He was correct in this, at least, a justice that does nothing more than turn the tables on the natural order without implementing a clear good in its place is, in fact, the most corrupt kind of corruption." And that is not possible without a change of heart that redefines the human nature. We ought to thank him for that crucial point and take it to heart.

To make progress toward good, it is necessary that the one who takes power does so with the intent of benefiting others with that power. That is the ostensible goal of the Christian view of Agape love. The question, of course, is whether Christianity really turns the tables on the turning of the tables. More on that next time, as we examine a related and further critique of Nietzsche's, for which we should be grateful.

As relief to the abstract point of view given here, it's worth noting that as Talk of the Nation ended yesterday (5/21/09, NPR) the parting comment following a discussion of the ongoing debate between our President and the former Vice president was that--and I paraphrase--projecting strength (Cheney) or projecting values (Obama) is a classic dilemma. If this post is on target, it is only by using strength to promote the welfare of others that the dilemma can be resolved.

Christianity Overturns the Thaumaturgical Urge

I think that my dad dreaded long drives alone with me, which happened from time to time, since he was a rancher who sold registered cattle to commercial ranchers and would offer to deliver the cattle as a means to close the sale. I'd go along at my mother's urging (which might be telling about me in some way, especially since my brother and sisters didn't). Why the dread on my dad's part? My endless string of musings about whether cows or horses, trucks to tractors, bears or lions, and so on ad nauseum, would win in a fight. I might think that I was a strange little boy, if Pokemon, X-Men, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, etc., hadn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt that little boys are typically oriented toward such questions. In the days before commercial exploitation of this fighting fixation, my special reverie was imagining one variety of dinosaur pitted against another, which is now played out on the Discovery Channel in the name of science. Life is good.

So what does this have to do with "Christianity" and "the Thaumaturgical Urge"? Let's begin with "thaumaturgy." It's a contest between wonder workers or miracle workers. A very special sort of fight. And the fight of fights would be between gods.

One need not be a polytheist to have the fun, though a monotheist's version of a divine thaumaturgy will have a very predictable outcome. Obviously the false god can't beat the One True God. (There is something odd in even making these statements as a Christian: To have such a contest God would have to act on the plane where gods act--which is to say, on Olympus or Valhalla--OK they're not exactly planes, let alone plains, but you get the point: God would have to be a non-God, i.e., a creature to be in such a contest directly.) Nevertheless, thaumaturgical contests are played out in the Bible, albeit with the help of God's representatives, to avoid the prohibited representation of God. I suppose the most famous one is where Moses throws down his staff, which turns into a serpent and eats Pharoah's magicians' serpents.

But there is a much more explicit version: ""'How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Ba'al, then follow him." (I Kings 18:21, RSV) Eli'jah's thaumaturgical challenge follows. Both Ba'al's prophets--450 of them--and the Lord's prophet (Eli'jah was the one remaining faithful prophet of the Lord)were to set out sacrifices on an alter and ask their god/God to send down fire to consume it. Ba'al's 450 prophets "...cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out... And as midday passed, they raved on..." (18:28-9) You get the picture. Lots of drama out of Ba'al's 450 prophets, but no action from Ba'al.

Then it's Eli'jah's turn. He made an alter of twelve large stones; built a trench around it; laid out the sacrifice; doused the alter with water; and filled the trench. Then he douses the alter two more times. "Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench." (18:37-8) Moreover, after God wins, Ba'al's prophets, all 450 of them, are killed. (Ironically, it's in the next chapter that the famous phrase describing God as speaking in "a still small voice" is found.)

If there is something a bit embarrassing here for Christians, you're already getting the point that I am about to make: we haven't really understood the point of Christianity unless we understand that it overturns the thaumaturgical urge--that little-boy preoccupation with "My God can beat up your God!"

For, after all, Caesar was thought of as a god incarnate by the Ancient Romans. And Jesus was thought of as God incarnate by Christians. Jesus walked into Jerusalem to the cheers of a capital city that hoped he would become a king to overthrow Rome, and implicitly to defeat Rome's incarnate god. He declined. Jesus declined to take on Rome. Instead, he accepted the cross (which he spent three years aiming at, as is clear from the narrative structure of Mark, but that's for another post). And in doing so he should have made it clear to us that the little boy's view of life must be left behind. Whose god can beat up whose god, whose culture can beat up whose culture--even whose team can beat whose team,oops, that's just for fun!--are all questions that bespeak spiritual immaturity.

I'm not sure why you haven't read this elsewhere. It's the gestalt narrative that can only be seen against the backdrop of the 1st Century Jewish peoples subjugation to Rome and its imperial claim to incarnate divinity at the helm. Tablative justice would have the Lord God turn the tables on Rome's puny human "god." Jesus did not enter that contest. Instead he turned the tables on the thaumaturgical urge to have one's god defeat one's enemies. He offered a better way: Love your enemies.

The narrative goes on to say, after the crucifixion, that Jesus rose from the grave. Now doubt is a good thing, if you understand what you doubt. Hume made a good point when he noted that nature's laws are know as laws precisely because they tell us what always happens. Hence, no resurrection. But it precisely the contention of Christianity that it describes something completely unique: God showing us a better way that we can accept by faith.

Reality makes us we accept what we cannot change. That makes might the ultimate right, and it means that little boys understand the real game when they play at their imaginary thaumaturges. Wolf and bear cubs play at their appropriate life and death contests. For little boys the imaginations stand in, as the human mind is the battleground where victory is gained or not with our species. (I don't want to leave out little girls, it's just that I can speak for little boys much more confidently...)

In asking us to mature beyond a little boys' view of the world, Christianity also asks us to move beyond a cynical view of the world in which might is right. In doubting the resurrection one doubts the reality of the view that that tables have been turned on the tables that keep turning in human history. It asks us to believe that something outside history has offered us an answer to the trouble with human history--something that really counters the might is right view of reality.

If you want to doubt that that was ever vouched to us through the token of the resurrection, I join you. But then you can't understand faith unless you begin with doubt. It's the backdrop of doubt that tells us the content of faith. And as much as I doubt, I can't help but believe that Jesus showed us a better way... And that's faith. A faith that's only meaningful because I doubt.

Next week we'll look at "The Principle of Futility" as a backdrop for faith.