the harvard ichthus » Volume 4, Issue 1

When I first met Dietrich Bonhoeffer, through reading his books as a young seminarian, he explained the world of faith to me. This young German theologian who was executed by the Nazis for his opposition to Hitler helped me to understand the difficult religious experiences I had known in America.

I had just come back to Jesus after rejecting my childhood faith and joining the student movements of my generation when I discovered for the first time the Sermon on the Mount as the manifesto for a whole new order called the reign of God. I discovered Matthew 25: “As you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”

The evangelical Christian world I had grown up in talked incessantly about Christ but never paid any attention to the things that Jesus taught. Salvation became an intellectual assent to a concept. “Jesus died for your sins and if you accept that fact you will go to heaven,” said the evangelists of my childhood. When it came to the big issues that cropped up for me as a teenager – racism, poverty, and war – I was told explicitly that Christianity had nothing to do with them: they were political, and our faith was personal. On those great social issues, the Christians I knew believed and acted just like everybody else I knew – like white people on racism, like affluent people on poverty, and like patriotic Americans on war.

Then I read Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, which relied heavily on the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount and the idea that our treatment of the oppressed was a test of faith. Believing in Jesus was not enough, said Bonhoeffer. We were called to obey his words, to live by what Jesus said, to show our allegiance to the reign of God, which had broken into the world in Christ. Bonhoeffer warned of the “cheap grace” that promotes belief without obedience. He spoke of “costly discipleship” and asked how the grace that came at the tremendous cost of the cross could require so little of us. “Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship,” he said, “and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth.”

At the time, I had just experienced a secular student movement that had lost its way. Without any spiritual or moral depth, protest often turned to bitterness, cynicism, or despair. Finding Jesus again, after years of alienation from the churches, reenergized my young social conscience and provided a basis for both my personal life and my activist vision. Here again Bonhoeffer showed the way, by providing the deep connection between spirituality and moral leadership, religion and public life, faith and politics. Here was a man of prayer who became a man of action – precisely because of his faith.

Bonhoeffer will appeal today to all those who are hungry for spirituality. But his was not the soft New-Age variety that only focuses on inner feelings and personal enlightenment. Rather, it was Bonhoeffer’s spirituality that made him so politically subversive. And it was always his deepening spiritual journey that animated his struggle for justice.

Bonhoeffer will appeal today to all who are drawn to Jesus Christ, because at the heart of everything Bonhoeffer believed and did was the centrality of Christ. The liberal habit of diminishing the divinity of Christ or dismissing his incarnation, cross, and resurrection had no appeal for Bonhoeffer. But his orthodoxy has demanding implications for the believer’s life in the world. He refused to sentimentalize Jesus, presenting him as the fully human Son of God who brings about a new order of things.

During a stint at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Bonhoeffer’s response to theological liberalism was tepid, but he became inspired by his involvement with the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Meeting the black church in America showed the young Bonhoeffer again that a real Christ was critical of the majority culture.

Bonhoeffer will appeal today to all those who love the church and long for its renewal. But they won’t find in Bonhoeffer somebody who was primarily concerned with new techniques for more contemporary worship, management models for effective church growth, or culturally relevant ways to appeal to the suburban seekers. Bonhoeffer could not imagine the life of solitary discipleship apart from the community of believers. But he would not tolerate the communal life of the church being more conformed to the world than being a prophetic witness to it.

And, of course, Bonhoeffer appeals today to all those who seek to join religion and public life, faith and politics. Because he doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of left and right, and liberal and conservative, Bonhoeffer can speak to Democrats trying to get religion, to Republicans who want a broader approach than hot-button social issues, and to people who are unhappy with our contemporary political options. He was drawn to the nonviolence of Jesus and, like Martin Luther King Jr., was planning to visit Gandhi in India to learn more about nonviolent resistance. Like King, he was killed before he could make the trip. But Bonhoeffer’s pacifism gave way to what he saw as the overriding need to confront the massive evil of Nazism by participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Yet, according to F. Burton Nelson and Geffrey Kelly, in their book The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he believed that violence was “still a denial of the gospel teachings of Jesus,” and his decision to join the conspiracy against Hitler was accompanied by “ambiguity, sin, and guilt” that were only expiated by a reliance on Christ who “takes on the guilt of sinners, and extends the forgiveness of his Father God to those sinners.” That decision, which cost him his life, demonstrates Bonhoeffer’s profound wrestling with the always-difficult questions of how faith is to be applied to a world of often imperfect choices.

Jim Wallis is Editor-in-Chief of Soujourners magazine, and a Visiting Lecturer on Religion and Society at the Harvard Divinity School. He is most recently author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. The preceding selection is excerpted from his introduction to A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harper, 2005, with the permission of the author.

On an Authentic Christian “Worldview”

Jordan D. Teti — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:12:14 +0000

The Essays of Hilaire Belloc

A peculiar thrill of life is opening an old book that has hardly been read. What wisdom contained therein has found a home in so few readers? Why has fate chosen me for the discovery? On an early spring day, twenty-three years ago, the last Harvard student carried away Hilaire Belloc’s One Thing and Another from the shelf at Widener Library. The stamps in the inside back cover of the book disclose its sparse circulation since it arrived in 1956. Indeed, it has been checked out only once since the Johnson administration. I had the privilege of becoming the second soul at Harvard to discover Belloc in that time. Father James Schall recommended him to me, often calling Belloc the best essayist in the English language. If I have lived by one dictate in my extracurricular studies it is this: read Schall, and read what Schall reads.

This is indeed an adventure rarely practiced today. The democratic skeptic would try to deflate my exhilaration and insist that if a book isn’t being read, it isn’t worth reading. This is one of the egoistic heresies of our time. It reveals man’s swollen ignorance for the greatness of the past and nearsighted obsession with the mostly irrelevant minutiae of the near-past. Modern academics have most conspicuously tried to bury alive the great treasures of the Western Canon. Not nearly enough college students are aware of the erudition of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics because contemporary “business ethics” books seem more pertinent to graduates’ careers. Such a trend has been well documented. But in our fixation to timeliness we have also overlooked the hidden gems of authors left out of the now-deteriorating Canon. It may appear surprising that we can find great sentiments in works that history has not deemed “great,” but we should not let the pettiness of historical reputation become our master.

Few Belloc essays are explicitly about theology-even in his selections entitled “Immortality,” and “On Sacramental Things” he does not mention the Holy Sacraments or the promise of Heaven. He resists edifying his readers, even in the highest matters, choosing instead to entertain, perhaps if it is occasionally for his own amusement. But Belloc purposely informs us of how to realize that everything around us is a creation of God, that our lives have purpose beyond acquisition and survival, that there is glory in humanity that can only have come from a divine source. I am not sure what a “Christian worldview” is, and am often wary of using such a term. It seems excessively general-is it a doctrine or ideology? A particular theological perspective? A type of personality? Whatever it may be to contemporary theologians, I would like to suggest that we can find it in Belloc’s writing-that is, if we consider the term “Christian worldview” literally-discovering the joy of seeing the world with Christian, and particularly Catholic, eyes.

Cooking, sailing, and walking are among the seemingly humdrum aspects of life to which Belloc ascribes a certain sanctity. In “On Cooking,” he writes an entire essay on cook books, arguing that those which are successful identify a “trick” of preparing the dish in question. But then he goes on humorously to denounce cook books in his final paragraph, saying that if he ever was asked write a cook book he would “begin by telling [his] readers that the best meal in the world is bread, salt, wine, and an onion (which need no cooking).” At least, no one needs to tell us how to cook these basic foods, and thus we can avoid the irrelevance of consulting faux cooking expertise. Belloc self-deprecatingly concludes by drawing us back to the glory of preparing a meal: “Writing is a poor trade, but cooking is sacred. Any fool can write, but to cook…” The beauty is in the preparation of the food, not in the book which tells us how to do it. Belloc instructs us to find grandeur in cooking, but pettiness in the do’s and don’ts of instructions from a (likely) foolish human authority. The entirely human activity of writing may or may not relate to the glory of God, depending on the author. A greater authority, however, has given us food, and granted us the ability to create a meal. Cooking indeed is sacred.

Even the mundane exercise of walking is especially glorious for Belloc. In “On Walking,” he takes up an activity that everyone takes for granted, and explains how special it really is to walk. We are the only creatures which always ambulate on two feet despite the disadvantage that our center of gravity is maximized on four. Walking is natural to man, but only because we are not merely animals. In this sense, the very act of walking helps us address “the only important questions [man] can ask himself”- “what he is, whence he came, and whither he is going.” For the highest inquiries regarding our origin and our destiny can be symbolized in the walk, and Belloc takes up the way in which our nature and current existence prefigures our destiny: “What on earth persuaded the animal to go on like that? Or was it nothing on earth but something in heaven?”

Belloc’s perspective on walking-that it is a surprisingly natural activity for man-ultimately relates to our divinity as creations of God destined for eternal life. Our nature makes us who we are; we only have to discover it:

You certainly did not teach yourself to accomplish this marvel [of walking], nor did your nurse. There was a spirit within you that taught you and that brought you out; and as it is with walking, so it is with speech, and so at last with humour and with irony, and with affection, and with the sense of colour and of form, and even with honour, and at last with prayer.

The spirit within us-when we allow it to emerge-teaches us all that makes us human, and Belloc does not neglect to mention the distinctly human activity of prayer, which arises from that’s spirit’s divinity. However, these traits, “what man is,” in the questions with which Belloc begins the essay, are not ends in themselves:

By all this you may see that man is very remarkable, and this should make you humble, not proud; for you have been designed in spite of yourself for some astonishing fate, of which these mortal extravagances so accurately seized and so well moulded you to your being, are but the symbols.

Expect such eloquence in every Belloc essay. Our ability to walk, to speak, to laugh are not to be considered the ultimate goods for man. They are signs that we are “designed in spite of ourselves,” that we are divinely destined in spite of our mortality. However, we cannot be proudly content with our earthly actions. Belloc confirms this in the proceeding metaphorical discussion of walking with a purpose. He says that it “warps man’s soul” to walk without an object; walking for the sake of walking is detestable because it does not recognize an end above us which ought to be the motive in all of man’s actions. Belloc’s Christian mind rejects the materialism of those speed-walkers which we often see in today’s exercise-conscious world:

It has been so arranged that the moment we begin any minor and terrestrial thing as an object in itself, or with merely the furtherance of some other material thing, we hurt the inward part of us that governs all. But walk for glory or for adventure, or to see new sights, or to pay a bill or to escape the same, and you will very soon find how consonant is walking with your whole being.

Man’s mortal and immortal nature, symbolized in the surprise of our ability to walk, should not be considered a final good-our “whole being” is only satisfied if our nature serves a greater purpose, which is the true fulfillment of our nature. Belloc completes the analogy to our ultimate questions of existence by praising the act of walking away. The metaphor is delicate in this closing passage, as Belloc describes a place near the River Tyne where he remembers approaching the “wilderness into which you manfully turned the steps of your abandonment.” Only desolation is visible ahead as we must leave our memories behind us, but this is part of our destiny: “you are bound to forget, and it is your business to leave all that you have known altogether behind you, and no man has eyes at the back of his head-go forward!” This wilderness is, of course, the afterlife. Our purpose is indeed not in walking, but in walking away from earthly walking.

Belloc, an avid sailor, saw a similar destiny for himself in perhaps the most unexciting aspect of boating: dropping anchor. In “On Dropping Anchor,” Belloc compares the use of another man’s moorings with the surer conclusion of releasing one’s own anchor to arrive at the end of a journey. His description of heaven is in a picturesque cove, which is the most beautiful passage in Belloc’s essays:

I love to consider a place which I have never seen, but which I shall reach at last, full of repose and marking the end of those voyages, and security from the tumble of the sea. This place will be a cove set round with high hills on which there shall be no house or sign of men… The fairway into that haven shall lie behind a pleasant little beach of shingle, which shall run out aslant into the sea from the steep hill-side, and shall be a breakwater made by God… My anchor will go down into the clear salt water with a run…. And that will be the end of my sailing.

This quotation does not suffice: you really must read this entire essay. Belloc never lets go of the connection to the reality of his sailing, and this makes the metaphor all the more powerful: we can envision a lovely inlet on earth and yet recognize the divinity in its description.

The uproarious, quintessential Belloc essay is the prologue for a collection of his essays, entitled “On Nothing.” This is not a meditation on nihilism, as a postmodern mind might imagine. “Nothing” refers to something because it is the “tenuous stuff from which the world was made.” Yet he mocks the substance of Nothing, sarcastically saying: “Is it not that which Mankind, after the great effort of life, at last attains, and that which alone can satisfy Mankind’s desire?” Indeed, nothing on earth completely satisfies man, and with our mortal demise we are left with nothing. But Nothing-referring to the divine “stuff” of the universe-is actually our proper object which we hope to attain: “So excellent and final is it that I would here and now declare to you that Nothing was the gate of eternity, that by passing through Nothing we reached our every object as passionate and happy beings.” Belloc’s final word on Nothing is that men are not Nothing. Instead of relying on Genesis, Belloc insists on indirectly commenting on Christianity by discussing a thoroughly pagan interpretation of the creation of the world. For a Catholic to do this is indeed humorous, and we are supposed to laugh when he discusses the “Elder Elohim” and the “Makers of the World.” But his point is genuinely Christian. He says that the Elohim ran out of Nothing with which to make men, and settled on mud from which to create us. The earth and its animals may be “nothing,” but we are indeed something. Man is “nothing” in that our lives progress from ashes to ashes, but we ought not to disrespect our nature or purpose by believing it to be “nothing.” This is his criticism of the nihilists, describing them as “seeking for Truth in funny brown German Philosophies, Sham Religions, stinking bottles and identical equations.” The antithesis of the nihilist is someone who lies on his back in the Eynsham meadows thinking of Nothing, that is, in the sense that he is so enamored by the grandeur of the world, of music, of poetry, that the Nothing he contemplates is the very substance of the holiness that surrounds us.

Belloc mentions a great line of thinkers and Catholics to which tradition binds us, and relies on us to realize that he is speaking about the greatness of man in his discussion of “Nothing.” From the first man, “his descendants manfully continued to develop and to progress and to swell in everything, until from Homer we came to Euripides, and from Euripides to Seneca, and from Seneca to Boethius and his peers… and so upwards through James I of England… and on, on, to my Lord Macaulay, and in the very last reached YOU, the great summits of the human race and last perfection of the ages READERS OF THIS BOOK…” Including ourselves, these men and their legacies are not “nothing”-we should not fall into a historical abyss, just as Belloc should not do so.

Leave it to Belloc to consider “nothing” from a Christian perspective. He sees the hills, the English sky, the French terroir, the sea, and everything under the sun with his pious eyes, and, fortunately for us, avoids making “Christianity” a bombastic headline of each essay. We may learn from his humility. Perhaps he is the best Christian author for atheists to read.

Jordan D. Teti ’08, Editor-in-Chief, is a Government concentrator in Kirkland House.

The Latin Mass

Roger Waite — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:11:17 +0000

Progress Toward Unity of the Church

In junior year of high school, I enjoyed the peculiar but heartening experience of attending Mass with two friends early in the morning before our Advanced Placement calculus exam. One was Catholic, the other a Protestant of Calvinist temperament. We had a particularly incompetent math teacher that year and by then recognized that prayer would provide far more efficacious aid than study.

The Mass was simple. It was only a bit past dawn and the only lights on in the church were in the sanctuary. The priest came out of the sacristy in procession with a single server and turned toward the altar, his back toward the congregation and began the Mass in a relatively low voice.

Both my friends seemed genuinely moved by the Mass. My Protestant friend was unusually quiet and reverential afterward: he commented that the priest’s richly embroidered red vestments, the altar, and the veil in front of the tabernacle invoked images of worship at the Temple at Jerusalem. He had been to a Catholic Mass before, but I could tell that he now appreciated its symbolism, ritual, and meaning much more deeply. When one of our Protestant friends chastised him for kneeling, he shrugged off his complaints as though there was something fundamental our friend failed to understand.

My Catholic friend was even affected by it. He had been to Mass nearly every Sunday of his life, but had never attended one quite like that. “Was that a Mass?” he asked, not in contempt but in mere surprise. Despite its strangeness he appreciated it. Its silences, bows, elevations, and frequent genuflections had almost mathematical beauty, as he described it.

No doubt, my friend was so perplexed because the Mass we attended was celebrated in a form of the Roman Rite-the main liturgical rite of the Catholic Church-that had become rare in the last 38 years. This form, most commonly known as the Tridentine Mass or Traditional Latin Mass, had been the standard in the Church for nearly 400 years before the new, radically revised version, sometimes called the Novus Ordo, replaced it as the norm in 1969.

While many-some eagerly, others sadly-anticipated that the Tridentine Mass would become a historical artifact, a new papal document has given reason to hope for renewed interest in this traditional form. On July 7, Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum, an apostolic letter motu proprio-by the Pope’s own initiative-that reaffirmed the importance of the Tridentine Mass as a form of the Roman rite and removed restrictions on its celebration. While the Novus Ordo is now the ordinary form of the rite, he explains, the older form was never abrogated and remains available as an “Extraordinary Form.” Any priest may offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form privately as he pleases and pastors are obliged to permit its public celebration if a sufficient number of parishioners request it and it is feasible to do so.

Before the decree, public celebration of the Tridentine Mass required the permission of the local bishop. While a few bishops permitted its celebration rather freely, others were exceedingly reluctant. Many of the latter either disliked the old rite or feared that those who favored it questioned the legitimacy of the new one. Considering both the interests of the large minority of Catholics attached to Tridentine Mass and the need to temper the unintended excesses of modern liturgical reform, the Holy Father determined that the Extraordinary Form is not a cause of dissension but a means of enriching the life of the Church.

Non-Catholic, and even many Catholics, may not understand the degree of interest in the Extraordinary Form. Why, some may wonder, would anyone want to go a church service in which the minister turns his back on the congregants and chants or whispers in a language they do not understand? While such concerns highlight the most obvious differences between the new rite and the old, it fails to comprehend the source of the Extraordinary Form’s attraction.

The Extraordinary Form, through the wisdom of centuries of tradition, has a symbolic subtlety that has largely been lost in the rapid liturgical reform that took place after the Second Vatican Council. Every action, indeed nearly every gesture and word, has been imbued with deep meaning. The ceremonies of the older form maintain a precious heritage from the early church but also from generations of amplification grounded in reverence and prayerful reflection. In contrast, the Novus Ordo rubrics grant the priest and parish so much liberty that the average worshipper’s experience is often as much the result of caprice as design.

For example, while the Novus Ordo was consciously designed to increase emphasis on the Mass as a meal, the Tridentine Mass more conspicuously displays the Mass’s sacrificial nature, as my Protestant friend realized. In the Novus Ordo, the priest typically stands at a freestanding altar, which distressingly often looks rather like a common table, facing the congregation, often with his back to the tabernacle, where the Eucharist is reserved. In the Tridentine Mass, however, the priest faces the tabernacle together with the congregation, signifying that he is offering a sacrifice on behalf of the congregation in the presence of God, just as the Jewish priests offered the sacrifices before the presence of God in the Temple that prefigured the final and perfect sacrifice that Jesus offered on the cross. The Sacrifice of the Mass is bloodless participation in that sacrifice, so it fittingly recalls the outward appearance of the sacrifices by which God prepared men to understand this ultimate sacrifice. Hence this position is sometimes called versus Deum, toward God, as opposed to versus populum, toward the people. It is also called ad orientem, toward the east, since it is normally literally East, which represents both the Resurrection and the Second Coming. The Mass takes part in our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection, while anticipating His glorious return in judgment at the end of time.

Equally conspicuous are the use of Latin and the frequent silences. Latin reflects the timelessness of the Mass. Once the common tongue of much of the Western Christendom, and still the Church’s official language, Latin represents the Church’s universal mission and antiquity. The language also elevates the minds of the faithful above everyday affairs conducted in the vernacular. The periods of near silence, particularly during the Eucharistic Prayer, or Canon, allow the worshipper to participate in the Mass in the most meaningful sense, through fervent prayer of adoration, thanksgiving, and petition. The work of silence is often aided by other-worldly Gregorian chant, which elevates the soul to the sublime as it stretches every syllable of praise as though to end of ages. While many today understand active participation in the Mass in the most vulgar and meaningless sense-mere chattering-the traditional form of the Roman rite allows from participation in the deepest sense for the laity.

Although the language the priest speaks may be unfamiliar to many, his prayers abound with a dignity and poetic grace absent from those produced by the committees that drafted the new liturgical books. One need only compare the offertory prayers to see the marked difference. The Novus Ordo rather confusingly offers “bread” and “wine,” which will become “the bread of life” and “spiritual drink,” in prayers awkwardly adopted from ancient Jewish table blessings. The former two phrases fail to clarify that the offering made in the sacrifice of the Mass is not of bread and wine but of Jesus’ body and blood. The latter two, while entirely appropriate biblical terms for the Eucharist, fail to have the inspiring grandeur of “spotless host [sacrificial victim]” and “chalice of salvation” which ascends with “a savor of sweetness.” Similarly while in the old rite the priest recited Psalm 25 (numbered 26 in some Bibles), which wonderfully connects the hope under the Old Law for redemption to its fulfillment in the New, the new rite merely has the priest pray “Lord wash away my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.” Gone also from the Ordinary Form is the offertory Prayer to the Holy Trinity, which neatly summarizes the intention of the sacrifice, and thereby reminds both the priest and congregation of their proper focus.

But there is a final element to the Extraordinary Form’s attraction that is not immediately perceptible. It unites us to generations of Catholics, to a great multitude of saints, who were spiritually nourished by the ancient rite. It reminds us of the generation that, during the Council of Trent, saw the Roman Rite given its classic codification to protect it from any taint of the errors then abounding. It links us to the generations of missionaries thereafter who brought Christ’s word and His sacrifice not only to heathen nations but back to parts of Europe that rejected its fullness in favor of novel doctrines. The hundreds of priests and religious martyred in Spain by godless radicals during the Civil War centered their lives on the venerable rite. During all the upheavals of modernity the Tridentine Mass was a surety and solace for the faithful. The Church’s unwavering insistence not to compromise with the errors of this, or any, age, was made plain to Catholic and non-Catholic alike by its careful preservation of its ancient rites. In an age that strives for continual revolution and novelty and one that indiscriminately spurns the past, this reaffirmation of the Tridentine Mass is an important step for preservation of a Christian culture in an increasingly secularized world.

Roger Waite ’10 is a Classics concentrator in Winthrop House.

Demographic Winter

Peter Syski — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:10:42 +0000

“E-S-A-U-P-H-J-M-B-C, spells “family” in the Syski household. This odd 10-letter sequence does not sound like any word in the English language (or in any other, for that matter) that I’ve ever encountered, but it has important meaning for us: it stands for the names of my nine siblings and me-Emily, Stefan, Andrew, Ursula, Peter, Helen, Joseph, Mary, Barbara, and Charlie.

In my time at Harvard, I have only ever met one other student who comes from a double-digit household. That fact has often made me wonder how many Harvard students are only children. Even among the mostly Christian audience of The Ichthus, I wonder how often the one-child household is still the case.

Last May during reading period I attended the Fourth World Congress of Families (WCF IV) in Warsaw, Poland: a conference on family values, specifically intended last spring to address the current social phenomenon that experts are calling the “demographic winter.” Regardless of one’s opinion, nobody can deny that people are not having enough babies to sustain the world’s population at its current level. From a philosophical and Christian point of view, this is a problem; the WCF has diagnosed it as the result of the deterioration of real family values in today’s culture. The proposed solution pays homage to that time-honored maxim which my parents live by: “charity starts at home.” We need to clean up our personal and family lives in order to prevent the looming social and demographic disaster.

Interestingly enough, many of us grew up hearing about overpopulation sapping our green planet of its life. In fact, my mother has received some nasty comments about causing Earth’s early doom. But let’s look at the facts: logically, for every generation to replace itself fully with another generation, every woman must give birth to two kids. If we factor in the circumstances of reality, where child mortality takes a percentage of the population before it reaches maturity, then an average of 2.1 children per couple is commonly agreed upon as the necessary “replacement rate” for industrialized countries. But according to the CIA’s World Fact Book, every single country in the European Union has a birth rate below 2, with half sitting in the range between 1.2 and 1.4. At this rate, Western Europe’s population is on the verge of plunging; only a constant stream of immigrants (often with much larger families) can provide any hope of stabilization. Based on analysis of this and a similar trend in Asian countries, many experts, including Allan Carlson, International Secretary of the WCF IV, have made the case that this phenomenon will soon extend to other countries of the world, including our very own United States of America.

You might ask whether population decline is a problem. After all, nobody says that we need to reach a numerical population quota to secure happiness for humanity. The effects of the demographic winter, however, are far-reaching, and present important social, economic, political, and moral problems. Perhaps most simply, if most people limit themselves to one child-for example, as mandated by China’s infamous policy-there will be an inversion of the age structure, with most of the population being elderly. In practice, this has led to an increased need for social security, as members of the younger generation shy away from the increased responsibility of caring for their parents and grandparents, who, in developed countries, tend to live longer than ever before after ceasing to be economically productive. When increasing proportions of the population are seniors dependent on social security programs, the financial state of the system stagnates, followed most likely by political difficulties as foreign immigrants come to fill the labor void. Many of these issues are unprecedented in history. For example, imagine that, in a one-child society, most children have finally lost all first-hand experience of what a brother or an uncle might be.

Besides these practical difficulties, most worrisome is the moral crisis that would be exacerbated by such societies. The WCF IV duly recognized that the problem is not simply population decline; the demographic winter is just one especially noticeable effect of a distressing plunge in morality, particularly with regard to family values.

A natural family is the “fundamental social unit, inscribed in human nature, and centered on the voluntary union of a man and a woman in the lifelong covenant of marriage,” according to the mission statement of the World Congress. It is “defined by marriage, procreation and, in some cultures, adoption. Free, secure and stable families that welcome children are necessary for healthy society.” A society with a declining birthrate and population is not healthy; but to understand this crisis more fully, we must observe some of the problems affecting the traditional family today, and analyze their connection with the impending demographic predicament.

Carlson distinguishes two major drops in fertility rates in history. The first occurred during the 50-year period centered on the turn of the 20th century, when the fertility rates in developed countries worldwide dropped from 7.0 to slightly over 2.0. Often this is attributed to a shift from an agrarian family-based economy to a capitalist society where children became more of a burden. In such a new society, where infant-mortality rates declined due to modern medicine and children no longer represented economic resources-that is, extra hands on the farm-parents realized it would be advantageous for the child to have fewer siblings. As Carlson puts it, “this raised the amount of per-capita ‘altruism’ given each child.” This argument, however, does not fully explain real history. Apparently, no historical evidence shows declines in fertility correlated to rising standards of living and changing economies throughout history, until this particular phenomenon starting in the 19th century. John C. Caldwell, an Australian demographer, theorizes that the “family morality” system, where the father is the bread-winner and the mother and children engage in several productive activities to keep the household running, kept the birthrates intact until finally cheap mass-production, changing gender-roles, and state education undermined the traditional family ethos.

A second drop in fertility rates happened in about the year 1965, after several baby booms in various countries folllowing the Second World War. A Dutch expert named Dirk van de Kaa identified several identified several differences between this drop and the previous one. Whereas the children had still been the priority before, now the focus was on the two adults in the relationship. Couples lost sight of the commitment and procreative aspects that the relationship should involve: there was a shift from marriage to mere cohabitation or informal sexual arrangements, and couples began to use contraception not simply as a preventative measure to benefit the already-born children, but increasingly as a means for having irresponsible sex with no consequences. The new license for inconsequential pleasure made it much easier for men to “use her and lose her”-there was both no marriage bond and no child to seal the deal. In the ensuing cultural environment, many women found themselves single and pregnant, often leading to abortion rather than the difficult prospect of raising a child on a single income with nobody else’s help.

Contraception and abortion, the results of cohabitation, are obviously two major causes of declines in the fertility rate, simply by nature of what they are designed to do. Divorce is another factor: it initiates a cycle of infidelity by giving examples of irresponsibility to children, who then in turn lack a sense of proper commitment when they mature, and thus become the source of more aborted or illegitimate children. Finally, homosexual unions clearly constitute a rather poor team for the production of children.

The family is a microcosm of the state, as Aristotle wrote-it is the smallest unit of community, which is so necessary for human existence. In order for society to function properly, the family must remain intact. That means cleaning up our act: the evils of abortion, contraception, divorce, gay unions, and cohabitation must be eradicated so we can preserve the integrity of the natural family. Only then will the population stop its radical projected downturn, and only then can disaster be averted.

The World Congress of Families worked to establish political remedies to make it easier to raise a family in a healthy way. Ultimately, however, it is a personal commitment to integrity and fidelity that will provide the answer. Think about this the next time you fall in love: are you part of the problem or part of the solution? I know my parents were the latter, and I hope to be the same.

Peter Syski ’08 is a Computer Science concentrator in Lowell House.

The Christian Aesthetic

Christopher Lacaria — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:09:19 +0000

A Higher Inspiration for Art

Travelling to Europe is like travelling back in time: to a fairy-tale world of castles, cathedrals, and cobblestone. Unlike America, Europe has a long history, monuments of triumphs recently gained and ruins of glories long faded, and, as such, constant reminders of the way things used to be.

Americans have no such reminders, although we are painfully aware of our history. “Conservatives” extol the virtues of our founding fathers, stress the original intentions of the Constitution, and lament the historical illiteracy among the rising generations of the publicly-educated. “Liberals,” on the other hand, regularly remind us that ours is a history marred by slavery and oppression, discrimination and disenfranchisement, denying rights to women and exploiting Native Americans.

No doubt Europeans engage in similar debates about their past. But unlike Europe, America is not an ancient land, built on and around the ruins and remains of great civilizations past. No grand medieval civilization ever bestrode our shores and therefore no vestiges of it dot our cities. Antiquity in America means, if anything, the colonial days, which had sparse population and built few lasting monuments-the Old North Church, Mount Vernon, and a few farmhouses.

I finally arrived in Europe two summers ago, fully anticipating to explore the vast cultural patrimony unknown to the other side of the ocean. My favorite destination of the trip, Prague, seated at the veritable center of Europe, our tour guide informed us, was the New York of the 14th century. The continent’s most-populated city, its intellectual center, and the politically-important imperial capital, Prague enjoyed immense prosperity during the Middle Ages which extended deep into the following centuries. And nothing serves as a more constant reminder of this fact than the city’s innumerable splendid churches.

The mother church of Prague, the archdiocesan Cathedral of St. Vitus-officially, of Sts. Vitus, Wenceslaus, and Adalbert-looms prominently on the city’s highest point. The high Gothic edifice took over six centuries to complete, a living testimony to a faith that transcended generations. Standing in its shadow, I was left speechless-this enormous building, with its soaring steeples and intricately carved stonework, erected for the glory of God. And those responsible for this magnificent structure were not backward, superstitious rustics-these were the cosmopolitans of their age.

And all along the winding, medieval streets and arcades that led down from the Cathedral stood countless more houses of religion. Jesuit colleges with Baroque cupolas, Renaissance chapels, churches bedecked with priceless art and gilded statures, each one of them offering nightly concerts featuring the music of Mozart, Haydn, and the other luminaries who once entertained the emperors that intermittently kept court at Prague.

This city of churches, almost all as perfectly preserved as if in a museum, brought me back, ever so momentarily, to an age when God was king and faith not only inspired, but provided the crowning achievement to, the work in which each, great and small, were engaged. Even the New England townships with which I am so familiar, with their pristine whitewashed meetinghouses planted neatly on the village green, only feebly approximated this unmistakably Christian ethos. In colonial New England-in the old clapboard of Harvard, for example-we can discern a sense of an old order: but, yet, unlike the medieval center of Prague, there is no sense of glory, of triumph, of the sublime.

What adds to the poignancy of rediscovering the Christian triumph of a past age is modernity’s ambivalence about this heritage. Governments acutely sensitive to the demands of the profitable tourist industry, as well as community activists intent on preserving historical antiques, have fastidiously maintained and refurbished these great monuments of Christian culture. Yet at the same time, the principle on which these churches were built remains utterly alien to the contemporary inhabitants of Prague and the other historical centers of Europe.

The Czech Republic-the “nation-state” grafted from Bohemia, Moravia, and a German-speaking hinterland-is Europe’s statistically most atheistic country, a fact proudly cited by our tour guide as she stood opposite both a solemn statue of St. Wenceslaus, Prague’s patron, and a garish memorial to John Huss, the 15th-century fanatic ultimately burned at the stake. The irony of that proclamation was perhaps not clear to our tour guide, or the countless other Czech atheists who lived through the Nazis, the Communist terror, and the succeeding disruptions of this century. But it struck a sonorous note in my mind, a silent elegy to a civilization, which, in appearance, still existed, but, in spirit, had long since declined.

I realized most profoundly this disconnect between our age-our “museum culture” that values the past as something intriguing but so foreign as to be almost fictional-and that which these churches exemplified during my tour of St. Vitus Cathedral.

In a side chapel there stood a glorious memorial to St. John Nepomucene, a patron saint of Bohemia and 14th-century martyr. Legend has it that he earned his crown when, as vicar-general of the Archdiocese of Prague, he obeyed the Archbishop in defiance of the king, and was subsequently drowned by royal assassins. The memorial, erected in the early 18th century, contains the saint’s remains, including a special reliquary for his incorrupt tongue. Equally impressive, however, the memorial was crafted from over four thousand pounds of precious metals, primarily silver, and stands as a crowning achievement of late Baroque sculpture.

In today’s world, we could not imagine any work of art-private or public, religious or secular-made from over two tons of silver, even in an age when the psychological if not actual monetary value of the metal is comparatively lower. Yet such a magnificent display, now a proud cultural relic of the Czech Republic, was intended originally as a fitting honor to the holy man and patron who pleaded for the city before the celestial throne of God.

How odd that logic must sound to our modern ears! We could not likely fathom such an enormous expenditure, and certainly not for what would seem like a superfluous religious project. As a society, we have significantly vaster wealth than 18th-century Prague, and, relatively speaking, much fewer indigent and starving in our cities. Yet even as we fritter away our savings, without thinking, on gaudy electronics, consumer durables, and various other material goods, we would never consider spending money on something similarly showy, and especially not something for God.

Modernity sits awkwardly with respect to these cultural monuments from our past: we cannot resist the urge to admire them, to preserve them; but at the same time, their true meaning, that which endows them with the beauty and transcendence that speaks to us however unclearly, is obscured by the fog of time.

Even where religious faith persists today, the sentiment that inspired and empowered the artificers of Christian civilization remains somewhat incomprehensible. Our religion has become distinctly a private matter, and, aside from a few public holidays like Christmas effectively sanitized of any spiritual meaning, we are forced to practice it only in private.

Modernity has dealt religion in general and Christianity in particular a heavy blow. We have before us these visible symbols of past Christian triumph, more accessible than ever thanks to modern travel, yet remain devoid of any feeling or even desire to triumph ourselves. Truly, sincere faith does not require the awesome heft of a Gothic cathedral or radiant brilliance of a solid-gold reliquary. But in a society of unparalleled wealth and comfort, we should recognize with shame the fact the religion has so ignominiously receded and an ever-decreasing share of society’s bounty is offered up for the glory of God.

It is not surprising, then, that a society that places its greatest value on material comforts has little appreciation for beauty and the sublime-unless it is found in a museum. Setting our sights on quotidian concerns, we lose our perspective of the grand, the noble, and the glorious. We settle for mediocrity: we are too self-conscious to pursue anything better.

And so it falls with religion as well. We not only cannot appreciate the monuments of Christian civilization for the same reasons as their founders, not only because society has lost the faith, but also because we have all lost the sense of the faith. Christianity has long upheld, as its exemplars, those of impressive and almost superhuman achievements: whether the supreme courage of the martyrs, the extreme erudition of the doctors, and the profound piety of the confessors. It often seems that today this sort of greatness-as far, at least, as mere men can achieve-no longer speaks to us. We are content without greatness, as long as we are don’t have to get up from the sofa.

Today’s Christians would be well served by rekindling the spirit of a past age: to acquire once again an appreciation for glory- ad majorem Dei gloriam.

Christopher B. Lacaria ’09 is a History concentrator in Kirkland House.

Caritas and Politics

Jordan D. Teti — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:08:14 +0000

The Philosophy of Friendship

“It is not in human nature to be indifferent to political power; and if the price men have to pay for it is the sacrifice of friendship, they think their treason will be thrown into the shade by the magnitude of the reward. A man, then, who has shown a firm, unshaken, and unvarying friendship…we must reckon as one of a class the rarest in the world, and all but superhuman.”
- Cicero, De Amicitia, Ch. 17

“God is supremely lovable in Himself, in as much as He is the object of happiness. But He is not supremely lovable to us in this way, on account of the inclination of our appetite towards visible goods. Hence it is evident that for us to love God above all things in this way, it is necessary that charity be infused into our hearts.”
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II Q. 24 A. 2.

While today the vague term “friendship” has been largely relegated to the confines of positive psychology, it was once a weighty subject considered by the most incisive and influential minds in history. Before sociologists invented the study of “interpersonal relations” and business gurus contrived the skill of “networking,” philosophers pondered the intrinsic significance of having friends. Aristotle, Cicero, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, for example, contemplated how friendships can exist to make life more pleasant, sometimes to serve our interests, and, most importantly, to nurture the soul. Even in our everyday lives, we can sense that friendship is more than a product of similar interests or common opinions. There is something special about our best friends, and our desire to find such trusting relationships is rooted in the profoundly social nature of the soul. Our real friends are sometimes those who provide the least material advantage to us; indeed, their fidelity and moral like-mindedness can produce the most enduring and satisfying friendships.

Our attitude towards friendship affects the culture and political environment in which we live-how do we choose our friends? Do we keep them for long? How loyal are we to them? These are all questions that ultimately shape our views regarding the aims of our public and private lives. Are we alone together, living for ourselves while building transient networks of contacts that can help us, quid pro quo, to get where we want to be as individuals? Or is there something inherently valuable about a friendship that makes a social life worth living for its own sake?

Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas meditate on such queries, and each proffers his own unique answer. The following essay provides an analysis of each thinker’s views on friendship, and how these theories on friendship have evolved. We will move from an examination of the concord in Aristotle, to the potentially insidious common friendship in Cicero, culminating in a discussion of the supreme friendship of caritas in Aquinas. My aim is not to treat exhaustively the issue of friendship, but to demonstrate the moral seriousness of discussing friendship, and how pursuing friends in virtue and infusing our friendships with caritas can profoundly affect political life.

Let us begin with Aristotle, who devoted more time on friendship in his Nicomachean Ethics than any other subject, and clearly influenced both Cicero and St. Thomas.

Aristotle and the Establishment of Friendship Through Justice

Aristotle extols the great value of friendship in society, arguing that it is “especially necessary for living” (1155a4-17) and is “the greatest of external goods” (1169b8-10). However, to facilitate our discussion of friendship in politics, we should recognize that Aristotle differentiates between “perfect friendship” founded on virtue (1156b8-9), and relatively inferior forms of friendship that more commonly exist. The latter include friendship for the sake of pleasure and friendship for the sake of utility (1157a30-1157b5). The objects of these types of friendship do not exactly involve the other individual, but rather the “incidental” (1156a10-19) pleasure or utility that that person can offer. This contrasts with the object of true friendship, which is loving the other person for “what he is” (1156a10-19); it is for the sake of his or her virtue (1157a30-1157b5). Therefore, utilitarian and pleasuring friendships are not friendships in an “absolute sense” (1157a30-1157b5). Yet they are still friendships for Aristotle because they “resemble” true friendship (1157a30-1157b5). As in the case of virtuous friendship, each party seeks what it believes to be a “good” from the other person. In addition, true friendship also possesses both utility and pleasure although they are derived from virtue in its case (1158b4-11).

These various forms of friendship manifest themselves in dramatically different ways, and each consequently has a unique effect on politics. We ought to focus first on utilitarian friendships, which most pertain to the daily operation of the state. According to Aristotle, friendships for utility exist between those who “seek what is to their advantage” (1156a26-30), and when the advantage ceases, so does the friendship. This makes utilitarian friendships capable of change and rapid disintegration. Such friendships are not destined to last long and are sometimes “easily dissolved’ (1156a19-24) because one does not have an infinite ability to offer one’s usefulness. Since the personal element is not a fixture of this friendship, companionship and even “agreeability” can be extracted from the relationship (1156a26-30). There is something distinctly callous about this form of friendship, since it does not require treating our fellow men with kindness, as long as mutual advantage is ensured. Indeed, utilitarian friendships do not require the virtue of amiability.
Despite its shortcomings, utilitarian friendship has much to offer politics. A political alliance between states, for example, is a fundamental part of international relations (1157a20-30). Politicians often ally to exchange votes, as well. For instance, a representative from Idaho might receive a yea vote for a potato farming subsidy from a California congressman who would receive a vote for his coastal environment bill in return. Such friendships may exist for a very brief time period, and can have little to do with a personal relationship. Friendliness between the congressmen may increase the likelihood of an alliance, but it is not necessary. If the California representative had to pass the environment bill for his constituents, and it required the Idaho congressman’s vote, the man from California would proffer a friendship of utility. The lack of a requirement for amiability allows for a utilitarian friendship between good and bad men (1157a16-20) who might not otherwise get along. Indeed, the object of the strictly useful relationship has little to do with the individuals themselves.

Political friendships for utility are not only possible between exchange-seekers, but they also exist between those who have an agreement of interests. In Aristotle’s theory, this is called concord (1167a26-29), which is an especially political classification of friendship. He says that the “citizens of a state are in concord when they agree on what is useful and vote for the same measures, and work together to achieve them” (1167a26-29). All of Aristotle’s examples of concord pertain to politics, such as the agreement of citizens that “public officials should be elected, or that they should become allies of the Spartans” (1167a29-1167b2). These cases do not regard the personal virtue of the Spartan leaders, and it is unclear how there is any personal involvement in the concord of support for popular election. Evidently, the utilitarian, political friendship of concord can still retain an impersonal character.

Even in the first chapter of Book VIII, Aristotle mentions the political significance of concord in one of the most important passages on friendship and politics in the Ethics. He argues that “states, it seems, are maintained by friendship; and legislators are more zealous about it than about justice” (1155a22-26). However, the friendship to which Aristotle is referring in the passage is not the perfect friendship of virtue (which is strikingly rare (1156b24-25)). Instead, it is concord, which can be encouraged and spread throughout the polity. He further confirms that “legislators most of all wish to encourage concord and to expel discord as an enemy of the state” (1155a22-26). Thus, concord is an important form of friendship that facilitates the operation of politics and “maintains” the polity.

Aristotle’s statement, cited earlier, about friendship’s relationship to justice is somewhat surprising, since friendship seems too personal a matter for a public government to support more strongly than justice. Yet as we have seen, concord and utilitarian friendship do not require a harmony of personal qualities or pleasantness, as virtuous friendship does (1157b33-1158a1). The state would simply be encouraging individuals to compromise and agree on matters useful to their existence. It is important to note that after abstracting friendship from personal considerations, Aristotle brings friendship under the purview of politics. We see this in the examples of utilitarian friendships of exchange (state alliances, political deals) and through concord-neither type needs companionship or even amiability. It is worth mentioning that if men sustained the non-essential virtue of amiability in utilitarian friendships, vicious discord would be less likely to emerge. A prior habit of agreeableness would be averse to great contention. In this manner, friendliness can assist politics. However, political matters alone do not appear to promote a lofty sort of friendship.

According to Aristotle, friendship requires politics because it cannot arise without the prior foundation of justice. At the beginning of his treatise on friendship, Aristotle directly addresses the relationship of justice to friendship. He argues that “if people are friends there is no need of justice” (1155a26-28). This indicates that justice precedes friendship- as long as friendship exists, justice does as well. This explains Aristotle’s next statement, in which he observes that “what is just seems to be especially favorable to friendship” (1155a26-28). Later in Book VIII Aristotle reinforces the argument that friendship is founded upon justice. He states that “to ask how…friends in general…ought to live together is the same as to ask how they ought to be just” (1162a29-33). Justice sustains friendship by advising the ways in which it is practiced. So in order to have friends, we must understand justice and how to establish it; otherwise, besides our emotions, we will not have a guide to how we should act as a friend. Therefore, justice is a prerequisite of friendship. This is why friendship cannot exist in tyrannies-”where there is little justice, so there is little friendship” (1161a30-31). Insofar as politics helps to establish justice, politics makes friendship (even the virtuous sort) possible.

Yet Aristotle still insists that justice alone is not enough to satisfy the needs of mankind. Indeed, “just men need friendship” (1155a26-28), which is the “greatest of external goods” (1169b8-10). Even men who are completely content with their virtue still require a friend. This need appears to derive from the social nature of mankind (1169b16-22), and the urge to share one’s “goods of fortune” with one’s friends (1155a4-17). This sort of friendship goes further than the mere need for justice in any friendship-it is for the sake of the virtue in each person and involves friendliness and mutual affection. This most excellent friendship may originate through justice, but it moves beyond politics in its existence. Aristotle also argues that the virtuous want to learn from other virtuous men to further perfect their own virtue (1169b28-1170a4). Aristotle applauds the value of a community of good men who can together satisfy the need for social interaction, virtue, justice, and friendship.

This is a way in which Aristotle’s “perfect friendship” can influence the polity. Virtuous individuals can congregate to improve one another’s virtue and this will not only provide for a more united virtuous state, but it will facilitate friendship. It certainly does not mean that each man will be friends with every other man or that they will hold things in common. Indeed, those “who have a host of friends… seem to be real friends of no one” (1171a13-17). But it means that more men of virtue will attain the greatest of goods, contributing to their happiness. This community of virtue and friendship acts as a model for the rest of society that observes the acquisition of such happiness and looks to have it for itself through virtue.

For our later comparison with Aquinas, we should note that Aristotle imposes a condition that even the most virtuous of men in this community cannot be friends with God. This is because friendship ought to be founded on a “kind of equality” (1157b33-1158a1). Although this equality can be proportional, friends cannot be so separated in virtue that they have little in common and do not come to love each other because one significantly lacks virtue (11589a33-36). Aristotle believes that man’s separation from God is too excessive for any friendship to exist between them-the gods “greatly exceed men in good things” (1158a36-1159a3). Even if men wanted to be friends with God, they would not even expect to do so; God would not want to be friends with them due to their “great difference in virtue” (1158a36-1159a3).

As a result of this analysis, we can see that Aristotle closely entwines the spread of justice with the acquisition of an even more important good: friendship. He considers common friendships, such as concord or utilitarian friendships, to be highly beneficial for the maintenance of the polity. However, they lack a standard of intimacy, as friendliness is not even required for political friendships. Nevertheless, amiability can contribute to more lasting concord and civic friendship. The ideal for Aristotle is virtuous friendship, which involves forces that transcend politics and justice, such as mutual affection. Aristotle also suggests that the virtuous learn from other virtuous men and perfect their own virtue by their friend’s example. Such a community of virtue can have a highly beneficial effect on the polity.

Cicero and The Problem of Politics for Friendship

In De Amicitia, Cicero describes two primary types of friendship-”common friendship,” and “true and complete friendship” (De Amicitia 6). Cicero begins his treatise by discussing true friendship, which he defines as between “good men” (5) who are in “complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual good will and affection” (6). This sort of harmony of interests may remind us of Aristotle’s concord, although for Cicero true friendship is a concord of virtue; it is not an agreement on a political agenda. Cicero comments on the importance of virtue, saying that without it, “friendship is impossible” (27). Thus, true friendship is similar to Aristotle’s description of perfect friendship, which exists between virtuous equals.

This complete friendship is extremely rare and is sparked by a “natural impulse,” or an “inclination of the heart combined with a certain instinctive feeling of love” (8). This appears to be a more powerful version of Aristotle’s “goodwill,” which he considers to be the “beginning of friendship,” although not friendship itself (1167a3-12). The natural inclination does not derive from a utilitarian calculation about the goods which one can receive from one’s friend. Indeed, the hidden gift of friendship is that if one does not desire the innumerable benefits accrued through friendship, and simply loves the friend for his own sake, he will attain the greatest good in the friendship itself and in its incidental advantages. Like Aristotle, Cicero observes that friendships founded on utility do not last long, since the end of that benefit would dissolve them.

Cicero makes no mention of justice in the initial formation of true friendship. It is more of a “natural” tie of virtue between two individuals that is mutually recognized. However, Cicero introduces a “preliminary trial” (17) stage in the formation of a friendship. While friendship originates with a natural impulse, it must be sealed by judging the virtue in one’s friend. This judgment is obtained by testing a friend’s “firmness, stability, and constancy” (17) of virtue. While we may see virtue in them, it may not last for very long and so we must establish a “tentative friendship” (17). It seems almost contradictory that Cicero states later in De Amicitia that we “must satisfy [our] judgment before engaging [our] affections” (22). What happened to the natural ties of affection that create friendships? Cicero stipulates that while the natural impulse should begin a friendship, we can only fully commit our affection and become friends when the trial period is complete. It is important to note that this stage is not meant to be a calculation of virtue in the other person. It is instead a confirmation of virtue. This means that in the natural impulse stage we can instinctively love at least some virtues in another person. Cicero beautifully describes this process: “when Virtue has reared her head and shown the light of her countenance, and seen and recognized the same light in another, she gravitates towards it, and in turn welcomes that which the other has to show” (27). Again, despite some striking similarities in De Amicitia to Aristotle’s Ethics, justice is not first calculated to determine what is due to a friend. We are instead intuitively drawn to the light of virtue in another person, without politics.

Although politics is not necessary for Cicero’s friendship, as it is in Aristotle’s theory, it still provides a useful test of virtue in the confirmation stage of friendship. Indeed, the effects of politics at least in part provoke Cicero’s doubts about complete friendship. He observes that “true and complete friendship… [has] existed between a select few who are known to fame” (6) and that “in all history there are scarcely three or four pairs of friends on record” (4). The greatest temptation to disintegrate a friendship is likely responsible for the rarity of true friendship: the desire for political office. Cicero recognizes the deep hunger for power that lies within each individual:

It is not in human nature to be indifferent to political power; and if the price men have to pay for it is the sacrifice of friendship, they think their treason will be thrown into the shade by the magnitude of the reward. This is why true friendship is very difficult to find among those who engage in politics and the contest for office (17).

Cicero mentions earlier that men undergo a transformation upon entry to political office-they “despise their old friends: devote themselves to new” (15). Friendships disappear and new ones are made for the sake of the advantage they give the politician. Party politics, to take another example, produces an “alienation of feeling” and tends to break down friendship (21). In the “best men” the most “fatal blow to friendship… was a rivalry for office and reputation” (10). Politics simply tends to produce animosity between individuals. The rarity of those who can avoid this is evident in Cicero’s question: “where can you find the man to prefer his friend’s advancement to his own?” (17). A person who can do so is “one of a class the rarest in the world, and all but superhuman” (17). Clearly Cicero does not consider politics to facilitate friendship; instead, it tends to ruin them.

Even some of the friendships that exist in politics are harmful to the state. These sort of friendships fall under the heading of “common friendship,” which can be a source of “pleasure and profit” (6). They are not founded on virtue, as this classification is similar to a combination of Aristotle’s types of friendship for utility and pleasure. Indeed, as in Aristotle’s description of utilitarian friendship, bad men can be commonplace friends (12). Good men can certainly participate in “ordinary friendships” (21), but politics threatens the stability of them, as well. Common friendship is not sustainable and can even come to harm the polity. Indeed, friends are necessary in order for conspiracies or any other wicked scheme to be put in motion (12). In this sense, friendship in the form of collusion can be a vehicle of evil that brings down the republic.

This analysis illustrates the importance of true friendship, which is founded beyond politics and through virtue. If a virtuous friendship is to survive, it must be superior to the deleterious effects of politics and so strong in its virtuous foundations that no quest for power can destroy it. In other words, the finest form of friendship must reside independent of political forces, and remain free from its vicissitudes. Of course, virtuous friends can still engage in the affairs of the state and impress their union of virtue upon the polity. They can also act as a guiding example of virtue for others. But politics does not produce this friendship, virtue does.

Cicero is clear that friendship is consequent to virtue. He mentions this several times, including twice in his conclusion: “it is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship…Make up your minds to this: Virtue (without which friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is Friendship” (27). The failure of virtue allows politics to corrupt friendships. Virtue is not vibrant enough when conspiracies are able to doom the life of the republic. When virtue survives, friendship survives. The virtuous respond so well to seeing virtue in one another that according to Cicero they are naturally attracted. Thus virtue is the last best hope for mankind in politics, and in Cicero’s words, “next to it, and to it alone,” is friendship.

Aquinas and Caritas: The Answer to Cicero and Aristotle

Aquinas develops three primary types of friendship in his theory-affabilitas, virtuous friendship, and caritas. Virtuous friendship receives a conspicuously scant treatment in Aquinas’ writing, especially if we compare it to the treatises of Aristotle and Cicero. This is likely due to Aquinas’ discovery of the even greater friendship of man for God. Unlike any other form of friendship, charity acts as a central influence upon friendship, politics, and virtue.

In Cicero’s estimation, the predicaments of politics made virtuous friendship extremely tenuous and rare. We concluded in our analysis of De Amicitia that for such true friendship to exist, the virtue established between friends must transcend politics in order to be insusceptible to its temptations. But Cicero does give us an example of such transcendent virtue, he merely encourages “firmness, stability, constancy” of virtue in general (17). His comment that true friendship can only survive if friends are “all but superhuman” appears to be an admission that he cannot provide the complete formula for maintaining true friendship. This need for an “almost divine” friend appears to presage Aquinas’ caritas as a solution for the fragility of friendship. Indeed, caritas is distinctly above politics in its origin, as it is a “friendship of man for God” (23.1). This powerful relationship unites us to His happiness (23.1, 23.3) and is the most excellent of all the virtues (23.6). As we will discover, caritas provides the missing element of Cicero’s virtuous friendship.

Through addressing Cicero’s concerns with caritas, Aquinas also solves one of Aristotle’s prevailing uncertainties. As James V. Schall argues, Aristotle was unsatisfied with the conclusion that gods cannot have friends. Schall explains that “if friendship is in fact the highest perfection of the rational creature, then it makes the First Mover something less exalted if it cannot have this perfection” (Schall 1989). He observes that Aristotle leaves “the question unresolved, thinking the problem insoluble” (Schall 1989). But Aquinas enables the friendship of man for God with the Thomistic conception of grace. Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that friendship with God “surpasses our natural faculties” (24.2) as humans. Indeed, men possess a natural limitation on their ability to love God “on account of the inclination of our appetite towards visible goods” (24.2). This is not due to our “perfect nature” as created by God, but “corrupted nature,” by which man tends to follow his “private good” rather than to love God (I-II 109.3). Aquinas maintains his consistency with Aristotle’s reasoning about our natural capacity: “it is evident that the act of charity surpasses the nature of the power of the will” (II-II 23.2). However, Christian theology gives us an opportunity to become friends with God. Thomas argues that a power “superadded to the natural power” is necessary for friendship (23.2). This additional force must derive from God because caritas brings us to the everlasting happiness that only God can give us. It is an “infinite effect” (23.2) and so must come from an infinite power. This is why Aquinas calls Him the “author of charity” (23.2).

The force that is “superadded” to our nature to give us caritas is the grace of God by the “infusion of the Holy Ghost” (24.2). Such an infusion is a “gratuitous gift” (24.2) from God, and so charity depends on the “will of the Holy Ghost” (24.3). However, the Holy Ghost is not able to simply make us love God (23.2). Charity is a voluntary action, which is partly what makes it so “meritorious” (23.2). We must choose caritas out of our own desire to love God. Thus, caritas requires the deliberate exercise of one’s will in conjunction with the infusion of the Holy Ghost to perfect the nature of one’s love for God.

Before discussing its relation to virtuous friendship, we should identify how the virtues relate to caritas. Aquinas considers charity itself to be “more excellent than all the other virtues” (23.6). It is even superior to faith and hope, which aim to receive something from God, rather than to actually “rest in Him” (23.6). Caritas gives us the “ultimate and principal good for man” (23.7)-the goodness of God and everlasting happiness (23.6). Since “virtue is ordered to the good,” for a virtue to be “true” it must be ordered to a “true” good, such as the “welfare of the state” (23.8). But even a “true virtue,” considered for only earthly objectives, is “imperfect” as it is not “referred to the final and perfect good” that is charity (23.8). This is the reason Aquinas calls caritas the form and the end of other virtues- it “directs all other virtues to its own end” (II-II 23.8). Thus the virtues become manifestations of the pursuit of charity, since they are directed to caritas.

Consequently, caritas is crucial for the pursuit of virtuous friendship. Unless one desires a friendship founded on “imperfect” virtue, one should have a friendship for God and order one’s virtues to that ultimate good. Virtues are indeed “informed” by caritas and “draw their sustenance and nourishment” from it (23.8). Therefore, a virtuous friendship is nurtured and strengthened by caritas, the greatest virtue that perfects all other virtues. Even justice must be considered with caritas as an end for it to be “true justice” (23.7). Thus virtuous friendship ought to be infused with caritas to bring it closer to “true” friendship.

Aquinas implicitly demonstrates this connection between virtuous friendship and caritas. In fact, he analogizes what was once perceived as the greatest friendship (by Aristotle and Cicero) to man’s friendship for God (23.1). He writes that friendship must be founded on a communication between the two friends. Since there is a communication between God and man, “inasmuch as he communicates His happiness to us,” we can be friends with God (23.1). The mere association of virtuous friendship with caritas implies Aquinas’ esteem for earthly friendship in virtue. Aquinas also analogizes the scope of both forms of friendship. He argues that just as someone ought to love all those belonging to his friend (23.1), that person also should love all those belonging to God, which is a feature of caritas. Perhaps these analogies demonstrate Aquinas’ understanding that the virtue of caritas already lies within that “perfect friendship” (114.1) between humans.

In turn, caritas endows a great benefit upon friendship, strengthening its bonds with the infusion of the Holy Spirit. As we have seen, corrupted nature gives man an “appetite towards visible goods” (24.2) and private interest (I-II 109.3). Cicero recognized that this problem was prevalent in politics and found no specific remedy to mend the friendships dissolved by it. But Aquinas provides the solution in caritas. The grace that enables the friendship of man for God “cures” the desire for private advantage (109.3). And when such caritas is “infused into our hearts,” our corrupted proclivity for visible goods fades away (II-II 24.2). When we experience the greatest good for man in the enjoyment of God we are not so desperate as to abandon it for inferior earthly gains. Charity perpetuates itself. Once we have it, out of our love for God we want others to have charity as well and experience a love and friendship for God (25.1-2). As long one still has caritas, it is difficult for a friendship to end. Thus, caritas purifies the virtue in virtuous friendship, and disables the political temptations that can provoke its destruction.

Caritas not only maintains friendships, but it also helps create them. Indeed, our love for God can manifest itself in our love for our neighbors, even sinners (25.1), who we love for God’s sake (23.2). In a significant change, Aquinas extends Aristotle’s definition of virtuous friendship to include all those who “belong” to our virtuous friend (23.1). This network of friendship was not a part of Cicero’s or Aristotle’s theory. It is apparently an effect of caritas’ example on our earthly relations. If we view our fellow-men, who “belong to God” (23.1) as friends for the sake of our friendship with God, we should love our personal friends’ associates, as well. It would be highly beneficial for society’s cultivation of virtuous friendship if men have this mentality. It not only spreads virtue in the polity, but it also increases the concentration of happiness as friendship proliferates.

Caritas also has a positive effect on the development of affabilitas. Indeed, the love for fellow-men is a reason for the friendliness exhibited in affability (114.2). Thomas credits Aristotle with the definition of “friendliness, which consists merely in outward words or deeds” (114.1). Aristotle in fact proposes a very similar version called “amiability,” which consists of “communicating with others in an amiable manner” (1126b28). Aristotle is careful to distinguish between actual friendship, which involves mutual love, and friendliness which can extend to those we do not love (1126b22-26). Aquinas, however, more closely associates friendliness with friendship because according to him “every man is naturally every man’s friend by a certain general love” (114.1). So friendliness is a manifestation of man’s love for fellow man. Here we see the effects of caritas on affability. The “general love” that produces friendliness is the love that comes from a friendship with God. Thus friendliness can be considered an outward expression of charity.

This caritas-influenced affability assists politics by promoting a pleasant environment that is conducive to enacting justice. It facilitates a stable order in society that is favorable to the transfer of goods to those who deserve them. Indeed, it is easier for someone to be sympathetic to giving a person his due if that person is already friendly towards him. Since friendliness is applicable to everyone, it also coordinates with justice’s objective of establishing equality amongst everyone (58.2). Thus, friendliness is advantageous for politics, in that politics pursues justice.

But in what way does politics promote friendship? In chapter seven of Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle compares the order of equality and excellence in justice and friendship (1158a29-33). Aquinas builds on this analysis in his Commentary on the Ethics by proposing a specific relationship between justice and friendship-justice makes friendship possible. Unlike friendliness, virtuous friendship cannot exist between “widely separated persons” (CE 1632). As a result, equality, namely of virtue, is the first condition necessary for friendship (CE 1631). How can we realize this equality so we can have friendship? Thomas’ answer is through justice. Indeed, friendship must “use an equality already uniformly established… When equality exists the work of justice is done” (CE 1632). Thus, in the tradition of Aristotle, Aquinas explicitly argues that justice promotes equality, facilitating friendship between equals. This is why Thomas writes: “equality is the goal of justice and starting point of friendship” (CE 1632). Thomas also states that “political science” pertains to the justice necessary for friendship (CE 1725). Even friendliness can be assisted by justice so that we know when friendliness is due. Indeed, Thomas mentions that there are situations when it is “necessary to displease [someone] for some good purpose” (114.2). Furthermore, friendliness should not be applied equally to all people, but to “all in a fitting manner” (114.2). Justice is able to determine what is “fitting.” As mentioned above, we should acknowledge that for this justice to be “true justice,” it must be for the end of caritas. In contrast to Cicero, Aquinas observes that politics exerts a nurturing influence on both friendship and friendliness.

Thus, Aquinas addresses the uncertainties of Aristotle and Cicero with caritas, which not only becomes the most important form of friendship, but also a central inspiration for all forms of friendship and virtue. According to Aquinas, politics helps establish friendship and friendship improves politics. This relationship is propelled by the friendship of man for God. Caritas is the end of true justice, and justice allows friendship to exist. In this manner, charity ultimately enables friendship. The friendship of caritas also directly affects the state by inspiring true justice. Charity arouses affabilitas’ “general love,” which facilitates justice and the beginning of true friendship. Through friendliness, charity indirectly promotes friendship and justice. Furthermore, caritas is the end of true virtue which comprises virtuous friendship. Charity solidifies and protects virtuous friendship by tempering the insidious political forces that Cicero describes. And by suppressing the temptations of political affairs and promoting true virtue, charity directly ameliorates politics itself.

Our friendship with God originates above politics and is a central force that sustains and elevates the best pursuits of virtue, friendship, and politics. Most importantly, caritas gives us eternal happiness so that we rest in God, which is the greatest good we could ever receive.

Jordan D. Teti ’08, Editor-in-Chief, is a Government concentrator in Kirkland House.

Just (Don’t) Do It

Eleanor Campisano — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:07:39 +0000

The Protestant Premarital Sex Debate Through Harvard Christians’ Eyes

Intersections of Sex and Faith at Harvard

In June 2006, an organization called “True Love Revolution” was founded at Harvard College, the first of its kind to “promote respectful and open-minded discussion of issues relating to abstinence, sex and marriage.” Though True Love Revolution is a non-sectarian organization, it was founded by two devoutly Catholic seniors at the College, both of whom wanted to provide a forum for discussing abstinence as a reasonable and healthy sexual choice for college students. To many students and individuals outside the College, the message of True Love Revolution seemed fairly benign: why not have an organization that advocates thoughtful discussion of many different sexual activity options? Other students were offended by the implicit messages of the organization, however, explaining that “the very name TLR essentially invalidates the relationships of sexually-active, non-married couples, as if to suggest that abstinence is the only way to find true love.” Indeed, in many conversations with Christian and non-Christian friends alike, individuals expressed similar concerns over what they perceived as the subtle judgment implicit and inherent in many of True Love Revolution’s slogans such as “Why Wait? Because you’re worth it,” feeling that “advocates of ‘true love’ overstep the mark when they preach the value of personal decisions to the everyone on campus.”

The ideological debate surrounding True Love Revolution’s founding and core values reflect the complex socio-religious dynamic at Harvard, especially in relation to issues surrounding religion and sexuality. There are no fewer than eight active Christian fellowships currently active at Harvard and at least as many student organizations related to sex and sexuality. However, despite the large number of students associated with either or both of these types of student organizations, there is little overlap or discussion between these groups. Though True Love Revolution is an officially non-sectarian group, many of its members are devoutly Christian. TLR is thus one of the only examples of a group representing an implicit connection between these two types of organizations at Harvard. And while TLR provides a forum for pro-abstinence people of all faiths to discuss the secular sociological, psychological, and relational effects of premarital sex, its non-sectarian nature limits it from deeply engaging with the theological underpinnings of the pro-abstinence argument to which many of its members ascribe.

The disconnect between Christian fellowships and sexuality-related groups on Harvard’s campus reflects a larger issue in the lives of many young Christians at Harvard struggling to find ways to relate their faith and beliefs to their opinions about and experiences with sex and sexuality. Indeed, for many Christians at Harvard, premarital sex is a very difficult topic to discuss with Christian friends, within their fellowships and churches, and especially with Christian leaders, because different Christians’ beliefs about the acceptability of premarital sex, as well as their adamancy about the rightness of their beliefs vary widely. Even when premarital sex and sexuality are discussed openly, many young Christians only seem comfortable discussing the issues in theoretical terms, fearing that their own personal practices and experiences may be judged harshly by peers and leaders.

This divide is certainly not unique to Harvard Christians–it is a debate that permeates virtually every Christian community in America, and one that is rooted in much larger theological disputes. Some Christians believe, as theologian L. William Countryman argues in his book Dirt, Sex, and Greed that, “the Bible takes sex more or less for granted and does not explicitly lay out a theological or philosophical understanding of it…sex, in other words, is not central.” Others, however, take the opposite view. As evangelical religious historian Lauren Winner explains, “the bottom line is this: God created sex for marriage, and within a Christian moral vocabulary, it is impossible to defend sex outside of marriage.” Though Winner herself takes a much more nuanced approach to the issue, Pat McLeod, one evangelical leader at Harvard explains that, “evangelicals have demonized this issue, because it’s one of the few issues that they feel like really can separate Christians from the world–that we have a different sexuality.”

McLeod and many other evangelicals at Harvard disagree with this prevalent evangelical approach arguing that, whatever their beliefs may be about the morality of premarital sex, it is not a uniquely grievous sin and should not be framed as such in evangelical communities; yet, many of them cite the tendency in many evangelical communities to make one’s sexual decisions the defining factor of what it means to be a Christian. Indeed, it is clear from the many arguments throughout American churches and courtrooms over issues such as same-sex marriage, abstinence-only education, and family planning that many Christian communities do believe sexual politics should be a priority. As a result, tensions generally run very high in Christian arguments about sex and sexuality.

In her article “Protestant Views of Sexuality,” religious sociologist Letha Scanzoni stresses the crucial denominational distinctions that exist in modern-day Christianity. In distinguishing mainline Protestant and evangelical sexual philosophies, Scanzoni explains that, “most evangelicals agree…that sex is not something evil, but is a good gift of God… that God has provided guidelines in Scripture for the use and expression of human sexuality, but warns of its abuse…[and] that Biblical norms do not support premarital sex.” In contrast to predominant evangelical sexual doctrines, Scanzoni explains that most mainline Protestants move beyond sex as either procreative or unitive (i.e. creating a permanent emotional bond): “Mainstream theologians, Biblical scholars, and ethicists are likelier than many evangelicals to rethink matters of sexuality…Some have concluded that ‘there is no biblical sex ethic…The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period’.”

Thus while evangelical sexual philosophies, for the most part, still do not approve of premarital sex, many mainline Protestant denominations have become very accepting of the practice. These denominational doctrines are, for many young Christians, one of the most influential factors in shaping their own sexual ethics. As a result, the challenge of facing differences in Christian doctrines can be a major source of tension in the spiritual, social, and personal lives of Christian young people.

The Debate Over the Bible

We can trace many of the disparities in sexual ethics back to foundational differences in hermeneutical analysis and disagreements about the proper role of the Bible in Christians’ lives today. In the particular arena of sexual ethics, the debate among Christians over how Scripture should be read into modern American Christianity has become increasingly bitter and divisive.

On the one hand, the predominant mainline Protestant perspective–supported by many mainline Protestants and some evangelicals–argues that the New Testament sexual strictures are written to a culture whose societal structures are extremely different from our own today. They argue that it therefore seems truly implausible that the same moral laws that applied to first century societies are meant to apply in the most literal sense to us in the twenty-first century. For example, slavery is condoned in the New Testament, yet we no longer believe it is acceptable simply because the Bible suggests that it is. Furthermore, in a more general sense many of these Christians argue, as Harvard Chaplain Countryman does, that:

Sexuality like every other important aspect of human life, should be clearly related to the center and goal of that life, the reign of God. The life of the world to come, characterized by a joyful reverence and love, is already the standard by which our growth in faith and hope is measured in this life…If the reign of God is central, to be sure, other things can no longer make that claim. Sex, in other words, is not central–nor is knowledge, wisdom, money, power, success, security, one’s job or family or marriage, even oneself. None of these things is wrong, in and of itself. They become wrong only at the moment when they become ultimate goals for us.

Countryman summarizes well the arguments of the many Christians who believe that premarital sex is really not a black and white issue for Christians. While they recognize and believe that the Bible lays down moral guidelines for how Christians are meant to treat one another, they also argue that the gospel liberates Christians from endlessly toiling after legalistic means of spiritual purity and cosmic worth. In light of the freedom the gospel provides, these Christians believe that it simply does not make sense to continue to read the Bible as a set of binding ethical laws. Therefore, while they believe that Christians should pursue Christian ideals of love, respect, equality, and mutuality in all of their relationships, they do not believe that the Bible’s literal moral stipulations on sex are the sole way Christians can genuinely pursue those relational ideals.

On the other hand, the predominant evangelical argument, supported by many evangelical and some mainline Protestants, claims God designed sex and sexuality in a specific way at the beginning of the Bible and that humanity’s ideal existence originates from the way in which God created humans in the first place. As evangelical pastor and Harvard Chaplain Russell Schlecht explains As evangelical pastor Schlecht explains:

We are built foundationally upon the pre-existent word of God…so this then sets the terms for God’s engagement with the world, and then our engagement with Him. He is the one who is initiating, and we are merely responders to the pre-existent word, so the creation comes out of that and all of the mandates come out of that as well…I quite obviously have a high view of scripture… So when God sets the terms for what relationship is between him and man and between man and man, that is our default. So God then has said that it is not good that man should be alone, and then he creates woman out of man, and the very first, not formalized necessarily, “marriage” exists, it is exclusive at that point. And essentially from that you have flesh added to the bones of what marriage looks like, what sacred order is, as God-law comes and essentially adds form for us to adhere to, in the fallen state of the world.

Because of our relationship to God, Schlecht argues, Christians must understand all human interactions including sexual relationships, in light of how God initially created humanity and human sexuality. Furthermore, Schlecht and similar Christians argue that the Bible, and traditionally orthodox interpretations of the Bible, areis really the only connections humanity has to an understanding of God’s divine intentions for the world. Even if those intentions seem foreign to our present society’s belief systems or our personal experiences, Christians must prioritize what the Bible implies is the most ethical way of handling life’s situations. The underlying question in determining personal ethics thus becomes whether Christians are going to contextualize away all biblical dictates that do not agree with their personal reasoning, desires, and current understandings of the world. Evangelicals like Schlecht contend that Christians should contextualize passages, but not at the expense of dismissing literal meaning within the Bible’s sometimes confounding moral direction. Therefore, while they do not generally argue that properly ordering one’s sex life is the most crucial aspect of a Christian’s existence, it is an arena in which they believe God lays out a clear, if complex, picture of His intentions for humanity over the course of the Bible. Thus, if Christians desire to follow God wholly, they should bring all aspects of their lives in line with biblical norms.

Christians agree that the Bible provides a vision of humanity’s relationship to God and shows the moral and spiritual purpose of humanity’s temporal existence. Yet mainline Protestants argue that the Bible is still a profoundly historical document and Christians must re-evaluate many of the literal rules and guidelines put forth within the context of modern understandings of science, psychology, and personal autonomy. Meanwhile, evangelical Protestants argue that Christians cannot pick and choose which guidelines to follow on the mere basis of our current understandings of the world, as they believe the Bible presents an over-arching truth that is applicable regardless of which era we are living in. Thus, while both of these Christian groups claim to believe in the moral authority of the Bible in modern society, they have very different conceptions of how the moral and ethical structures present in the Bible should interact with the modern world.

The Relationship of Theological Differences and Moral Debates

This theological divide over the moral authority of the Bible is problematic for Christians on both philosophical and practical levels, and is certainly a worthy topic of discussion. Yet, one glance across the headlines of many American newspapers announces clearly that these are not the issues currently gripping America’s Christian communities. As theologian Miguel De La Torre argues in Lily Among the Thorns,

Believers are no longer divided over issues of doctrine, but rather over issues concerning sex. Once upon a time, questions about issues such as transubstantiation…tore the church apart, spawning new denominations. Today, such doctrinal issues have been replaced by questions concerning women’s autonomy and the type of sex one can engage in. Few sitting in the pews properly know their denomination’s Christological doctrines, but they do know where their church stands on premarital sex, homosexuality, and the ordination of women.

While I argue that the debate among Christians about the morality of premarital sex is a microcosm of a much larger theological and hermeneutical divide over the correct relationship between Scripture and modern society, these key differences are not what most Christians are debating. In fact, the arguments that are taking place in modern Christianity have almost nothing to do with these important theological divides–instead, many Christians focus on relentlessly arguing about specific sexual practices and politics. And the debate is bitter indeed.

Perhaps by virtue of Harvard’s liberal intellectual environment in which students and leaders alike must learn to respond to a myriad of different perspectives, the extreme factions of this argument become somewhat more muted at Harvard. For example, evangelical leaders at Harvard tend to adopt gentler pastoral techniques in discussing sexuality, and are careful to emphasize that while premarital chastity is important it is also theologically unsound and unwise to suggest that chastity determines a Christian’s moral or spiritual goodness any more than any other ideal. Yet interviews with students at Harvard suggest that outside of Harvard’s ivy walls other evangelicals continue to demonize sex as a dangerous force that must be reigned in and limited by strict puritanical dictates in order to “protect society from the destructive nature of an unchecked sexuality.”

Despite their comparatively moderate views, Harvard’s evangelical leaders and students alike recognize the fractures within their Christian communities resulting from black-and-white messages presented by some members. They lament the fact that throughout much of evangelical Protestantism the spiritual significance of sexual purity is so overblown that few people feel that they can talk openly about struggles they may be having with sex and sexuality. In many evangelical communities, almost no other moral issue is discussed as exhaustively and negatively as sexual ethics.

Thus, while many of the evangelical leaders and students at Harvard strive to explain their pro-abstinence in terms of pursuing love, respect, and relationship in the way they believe God intended, they recognize that many evangelical communities legalistically focus on avoiding sin and keeping oneself pure, implicitly ostracizing those in their communities who do not live up to the unbearably high standards.

On the other side of the spectrum, while the mainline Protestant leaders at Harvard are accepting or even encouraging of premarital sex, they ground their beliefs squarely in biblical conceptions of love, equality, and grace, and encourage students that they lead to take decisions about sex seriously and pursue those ideals in every realm of their relationships. Yet, mainline leaders and students express concern about young Christians in their communities whose questions and concerns about the Bible’s role in their sexual and relational decisions may go unanswered. Some mainline churches, Rev. KingHarvard Episcopal Chaplain Reverend Ben King explains, are so invested in giving individuals freedom and choice that they do not recognize that many young Christians today may actually want specific moral direction from their religious communities on matters of sex and relationships. As a result, in some mainline Protestant communities, young Christians receive very little specific moral direction and have a very limited conception of the ways in which their leaders argue the Bible is meant to guide them in their moral decisions. As one student interview demonstrates to a less extreme degree, for some mainline Protestants, personal reason and experience become at least as influential as anything the Bible has to say. Thus, for some mainline Protestants, the Bible is only considered authoritative when it agrees with one’s pre-conceived moral norms, and any moral direction the Bible could provide is almost entirely mitigated by one’s own personal choices.

While the interviews I conducted with individuals at Harvard make clear that very different socio-religious and relational problems result from the imbalanced theological arguments touted by some members from both evangelical and mainline Protestant communities, the underlying cause behind these community ruptures is the same: by focusing on surface level disputes about what sexual behaviors should be allowed, Christian communities have allowed much of the theological basis for their beliefs to become extremely oversimplified or fall away entirely. While both groups claim that they know the “correct” approach to determining God’s will for today’s world, neither faction’s position is theologically-grounded enough to make that claim. As a result, neither group is adequately recognizing or addressing the social, relational, and cultural problems that result from their arguments.

Finding the Common Denominator

In spite of underlying theological and sociological divides, the Harvard Christian community has the potential for these debates to take on a very different character than they have in much of Christian America. First of all, all the evangelical and mainline Protestant Harvard leaders, and even many of the students, express well-developed theologies in support of their arguments about premarital sex. Even more interestingly, despite their different conclusions about whether premarital sex is acceptable for Christians or not, virtually all of these Christians explained that their beliefs are rooted in the same two basic theological concept: pursuing love, respect, and equality in their relationships with others, and attempting to demonstrate God’s love to the world. Therefore, although their ultimate decisions about premarital sex are different, many of the philosophical and theological bases of their beliefs lend themselves to common social projects.

Indeed, while most of the interviews began by discussing the social, spiritual, and theological reasons behind their differing beliefs about premarital sex, by the end of the interviews, virtually all of the Christians from both evangelical and mainline backgrounds were in agreement on the ways in which this and other social issues have taken on undue importance in American Christian communities. As one student explains, in words representative of many of his peers,:

If you were to make a list of doctrines and teachings and ideas that are central to Christianity and that are as nearly universal among Christians as you can think of. And then if you were to make a list of the ideas and issues that get the most attention within the Christian community–that are most debated, most spoken about–I think you would find not a lot of overlap…[For example] compare [the number of scriptures condemning homosexuality] to the number of scriptures about love, or about forgiveness, or about social justice, or about attending to the needs of others, or any number of things. How many things get much more mention within the Bible than homosexuality? A lot. How many things are mentioned by Jesus more? All of them–anything that Jesus ever said got mentioned by Jesus more in the Bible than homosexuality. The same is true of premarital sex…I think it’s an issue that gets way too much attention when we’ve got bigger work to do.

Though this student’s beliefs about premarital sex deviate from those of some of his peers, many Christians of divergent views nonetheless agree that the Christian community’s inordinate focus on sexual politics issues is not right. Reflecting on prevalent evangelical perspectives, Pat McLeod explains that, “We’ve made this one of the distinguishing things…But we don’t want to go to things like pride…Or our consumerism. Or any of these other things which are perhaps more deathly than our sexual promiscuity…so I think that’s problematic too.” Schlecht also agreed that, while he believes there is a need to discuss sexual issues more in the Christian community, it has to happen in a way that accepts and loves people rather than ostracizing them, regardless of their beliefs or practices. Throughout the interviews, Christians at Harvard emphasized the importance of prioritizing the unifying Christian theologies of love and justice, rather than focusing so much attention on the physical practices that distinguish Christians from one another.

Certainly, the divergences of opinion about premarital sex represent genuine and important theological and hermeneutical divides between different branches of Christianity. Indeed, Christian communities would serve their aims well by discussing those theological differences, as Christians should know why they believe what they claim to advocate and because those differences are at the heart of many divides in current denominational and political debates. Yet, there is a theological common denominator–prioritizing the importance of following Jesus’s two main commandments: love God and love thy neighbor. If Christians at Harvard are able to remember these common goals, perhaps they will be able to honestly discuss the theological divides separating American Christianity, while still working together to achieve greater goals in the world.

Eleanor Campisano ’08 is a Religion concentrator in Currier House.

The Knocked Up Family

timreckart — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:06:13 +0000

Knocked Up. Dir. Judd Apatow. Universal, 2006.

Knocked Up, writer/director Judd Apatow’s follow-up to 2005′s wildly popular The 40 Year Old Virgin, was no disappointment. It opened this summer to box office success and, like its predecessor, delighted critics as much as fans. The success of both films can be attributed to Apatow’s fresh combination of the raunchy sex comedy with a delicate honesty that charms as often as it offends. Furthermore, both movies are culturally relevant. Apatow tackled the American debate over premarital sex in The 40 Year Old Virgin, defending virginity while making fun of the eponymous virgin, and tempering the burlesque of promiscuity with moments of chaste intimacy.

Knocked Up approaches abortion, pregnancy, and marriage just as fearlessly. The central plot point is the encounter between Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), an unemployed, overweight stoner, and Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl), a fit, blonde career woman, which begins over two bottles of Corona at a nightclub and ends in drunken intercourse that unexpectedly leaves Alison pregnant. Alison decides not to have an abortion, and she and Ben try to overcome their differences to prepare to raise their baby.

In any modern film about unexpected pregnancy, the question of abortion would be almost inevitable, yet Apatow settles the point fairly quickly and moves on. The obvious advantage to this approach is that too much material about such an emotionally charged issue could fatally ruin the comic mood. Moreover, the story relies completely on the baby and the developing pregnancy, so abortion is not really an option for Apatow’s characters.

Nevertheless, Apatow takes the time to frame the issue within the context of the cultural debate, giving each side a representative (and caricatured) spokesperson. Alison’s mother, who advises an abortion, is appallingly callous. Calling the pregnancy “a mistake,” she refuses to support Alison’s decision to carry the baby, a position that pushes her past pro-choice to being decidedly pro-abortion. In her most outrageous moment, she reminds Alison of her step-sister, who aborted her first pregnancy, and “now she has a real baby.” Ben’s father, who represents the pro-life side, is decidedly less extreme. His immediate reaction is paternal love and pride: “I’m gonna be a grandfather. I’m delighted…. This is a blessing.” However, his philosophy is perhaps too blithe and his love, effusive. When he tells Ben, “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Ben quips, “Now I just feel bad for you.”

Apatow’s presentation of the abortion question is two-sided, if not even-handed, and although Alison’s mother is unsympathetic, the film avoids identifying itself as pro-life. It certainly affirms the pregnancy as a blessing: although problems arise from it, the ultimate good of the baby’s birth vindicates such a view. However, the film doesn’t overextend its project into arguing against abortion in general. It chooses instead to tell a very specific story in which abortion would have been a mistake. In this way, it avoids being preachy, striking a balance between accessibility for a wide audience and an edgy engagement with hot-button issues.

The two-sided, comparative model that is so apparent in Knocked Up’s approach to abortion prevails in the rest of the film as it deals with the topic of married life. Here, the two sides are not different arguments, but different social worlds. The cross-cutting editing pattern that introduces Ben and Alison sharply contrasts their backgrounds. While Alison works at a high-pressure TV studio, Ben smokes marijuana and watches pornography with his housemates. In terms of social interactions, the differences are gendered. Alison and her married sister Debbie gossip about Pete, Debbie’s husband, fulfilling stereotypical expectations of female interaction. Ben is equally stereotypical, telling a buddy at the nightclub, “I just wanna get shitfaced. I’ll jerk it later.”

This contrast between Alison’s world and Ben’s world is inherent to the film’s “odd couple” premise. The action following their meeting is largely concerned with how they attempt to cross that border. One strategy is to ignore it, which is only possible in a purely physical encounter. This is what happens on their first meeting. Aside from small talk, there is almost no conversation. When a friend of Ben’s leaves them alone to “let you two get to know each other,” Apatow immediately cuts to a sequence of Alison and Ben bumping, grinding, and drinking. The purely physical encounter continues into the subsequent sex scene, in which Alison tells Ben to “just stop talking.” The limitations of this kind of encounter are obvious; most emphasized in the film is regret, which Alison expresses the next morning when she surveys Ben’s fat, naked body in her bed, and which Ben admits at a later dinner.

The opposite tack, similarly limited, is to talk with complete and limitless candor, which is Ben’s strategy the morning after at breakfast. Returning from the restroom, he tells Alison, “I just yacked something nasty.” Not only is this an example of Ben’s crude honesty, but it is also an elegant metaphor for the strategy itself: “Better out than in,” Ben might say. He continues to disgorge excessive information about movie nudity, oral sex, and other “guy” topics throughout much of the relationship. Although this is apparently intended to bring Alison closer by opening the door to Ben’s world, Alison is usually mortified by what Ben tells her, and eventually she explicitly asks him not to “talk like that… for the sake of getting to know one another.”

Alison and Ben also attempt to make their relationship work by entering each into the other’s world. Ben plays with Debbie’s kids in the backyard and in the pool and eats breakfast with the family. Debbie even drafts him to help her find out if Pete is cheating on her, an enterprise reminiscent of Debbie’s gossip, thus incorporating Ben into the stereotypical femininity presented at the beginning. Similarly, Alison tries to enter Ben’s male world, to the point of helping his housemates find scenes of movie nudity. However, they discover the limitations of this strategy as well: in exposing themselves to the other’s world they discover qualities they can’t tolerate. Alison can’t be comfortable with the idea of Ben taking care of the baby “if [he's] always getting high,” while Ben considers Debbie a “pain in the ass” and sees her scheming as a betrayal of Pete.

The ultimate solution to the problem of incompatible backgrounds is the development of a third, independent social structure, which is the family. Ben and Alison do much of the family formation through shopping. Holding hands, they go out to buy baby books, clothes, a crib, and various other new objects which redefine who they are. Ben eventually moves out of his house and rents an apartment, which he stocks with these objects, setting up a literal space for the family. The scene that most intensely illustrates the independence of the new family is the birthing scene. When Debbie arrives in the delivery room, she pushes Ben out of the way to kiss Alison and tries to kick him out, but Ben refuses to leave, telling Debbie that it ‘s “my room” and the waiting room is “your area.” Similarly, when one of Ben’s housemates bumbles into the delivery room to help, Alison shrieks, “GET OUT!” Ben’s housemates join Debbie and Pete in the waiting room, demonstrating that the new family excludes the two other worlds.

However, the family structure does not eliminate conflict, and Knocked Up’s admission of this fact is one of its virtues, both in its honesty about married life and its promotion of healthy human relationships. Throughout the film, Pete and Debbie’s example proves that marriage isn’t a walk in the park. It’s imperfect from a sexualized, “male” perspective – when Pete asks Debbie if she wants to have sex, she groans, “Sounds awful…. I’m just really constipated” – and from a sentimental, “female” perspective – Debbie cries because Pete wants time away from her. The couple is constantly bickering in front of Ben and Alison, so that Alison is well aware toward the end that family life is “a daily struggle.” This is poignantly illustrated in the same scene when Ben angrily blames his fight with Alison on Pete’s poor example, calling him a “shitty husband.” Pete watches speechless as Ben storms away, then turns around and walks to the backyard with a cake in his hands, singing “Happy Birthday” to his daughter.

By displaying the inevitable struggle in maintaining a functional family life, Knocked Up avoids a sentimental view of marriage, aiming instead for Ben’s brand of brutal honesty. It also highlights the virtue of perseverance in spite of difficulty, which is daring in an American cultural context that subjugates all other concerns to the evasion of pain. The film valorizes sacrifice, not only in Ben’s abandonment of his stoner lifestyle and Alison’s surrender of a perfect body, but also as a perennial necessity of marriage. Ben and Alison’s acceptance of this continual self-abandonment is expressed in the final lines of the movie. Driving back from the hospital, Ben jokes that the rent for the apartment is so low, they have to decide whether they’ll be Bloods or Crips. Alison says, “Well, I look good in red,” and Ben counters, “I look good in blue.” The compromise: to dress in gold “and become Latin Kings.”

Tim Reckart ’09 is a History and Literature concentrator in Eliot House.

The Indie Bible

Jim Shirey — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:05:13 +0000

Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. Merge, 2007.

I must confess that I had absolutely no intention of liking Neon Bible. Indie rock, that non-genre with which the Montreal-based Arcade Fire is usually affiliated, often strikes me as self-important and musically uninteresting, and as such I was beyond skeptical of their critically acclaimed sophomore release. To make an indie rock album is to indulge oneself musically at the risk of alienating (Interpol), boring (Franz Ferdinand), or simply irritating (Bloc Party) the listener, and to make an indie rock album about religion, I thought, would be to heap pretense upon pretense. That said, I have another confession to make about Neon Bible: I loved it.

It took me, admittedly, quite awhile to get to that point. My first time through the album left me exhausted from what I can only call its aural assault and hopelessly adrift in its sea of allusion and metaphor. Unlike so much indie rock, however, Neon Bible was compelling enough to bring me back for another listen, and another after that. The more I listened, the more I realized how musically and lyrically subtle the album is. And the more I came to appreciate that subtlety, the more I came to appreciate the album itself. I sadly have not the space for its extraordinary musical nuance. But Arcade Fire’s lyrical subtleties are fascinating in their own right, in no small part because they are, at once fundamental and profound, unmistakably Christian.

As its title might suggest, Neon Bible teems with allusions, both occult and overt, to Christianity, quite a few of which are vehicles for criticism. The surprisingly gentle title track, which unfortunately stoops to cliché in adding a heartstring-tugging children’s choir beneath its chorus, references a risible golden calf, perhaps the perversion of religion practiced by those to whom singer Win Butler addresses the lines “You lost it but you don’t know how” and “It was wrong but you said it was right.” Who exactly these hypocrites are Butler does not say, but he is wary of their influence: “What I know,” he sings, “is what you know is right.” The song’s final lines are a glum appraisal of fire-and-brimstone Christianity: “Not much chance for survival / if the Neon Bible is true.”

The succeeding track, “Intervention,” offers an even more severe critique of Christianity, driven with ironic intent by churchly organ chords. Its second line, “The useless seed is sown,” is a bitter jab at Jesus’ parable of the Sower and the Seed (Mt. 13). Enraged like Jesus at those who would condemn others, the singer asks “Who’s gonna throw the very first stone?” Lines like “Working for the Church while your family dies” and “Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home” throw understatement to the wind in a direct attack on blind fanaticism. More unsettling by far is “Singing Halleluiah with the fear in your heart,” a line that exposes the hypocritical paradox of a theology requiring both love and terror.

But in the midst of all the song’s bile, Butler pleads with God to “Lift me up and take me out of here.” God is still present, even among the hypocrites who worship Him in vain. Like Job, the singer never doubts God’s existence, though he questions much about Him. He may distrust His forgiveness in the lines “The curse is never broken” from the opening track “Black Mirror” and “Some debts you’ll never pay” from “Intervention;” he may be tired of His so-called servants, prompting the line “I don’t want to live in my father’s house no more” in “Windowsill.” But he never forsakes God, or believes that God has forsaken him.

This basic faith imbues all of Neon Bible with a quiet hope, a hope found even in “Ocean of Noise,” which might be the lament of a soul in Hell. The song’s vision of damnation owes much to C.S. Lewis – its title is reminiscent of Screwtape’s cacophonous pit while another of its phrases, “this city of empty streets,” recalls the Hell of The Great Divorce, an ever-expanding city whose inhabitants move farther and farther apart – and the allusions seem appropriate. Lewis offered a hopeful vision of Christianity indeed, one that would allow a soul to admit, “All of the reasons I gave were just lies / to buy myself some time,” and still believe that “I’m gonna work it out.” Whether this belief is tragic or not is for others to debate, and Butler’s tone makes no comment, but the line keeps the album’s subtle hope alive.

That hope is first iterated in the album’s second track, “Keep The Car Running,” a mandolin-driven piece that is both an anticipatory vision of Heaven and a call to vigilance, the metaphor of its title reinforced by the line “they don’t know where and they don’t know when,” an allusion perhaps to Christ’s statement that “not even the angels in Heaven” know the hour of the Last Judgment (Mt. 24:36). It reaches its joyful climax in three songs in the album’s second half, the first of which, “The Well and the Lighthouse,” begins with no hope in sight. Based on a French fable about a wolf who, tempted by a fox, jumps down into a well thinking that the moon reflected in it is a wheel of cheese, the song is stark both musically and lyrically, building to the bleak statement “You always fall / for what you desire / or what you fear.” Its message is simple, and at its core Christian: our short-term actions have long-term consequences, and decisions made out of selfishness or led to by lies can be fatal.

But then, abruptly, “The Well and the Lighthouse” undergoes a dramatic shift. Suddenly it is a waltz, the only waltz on the album. All at once it is Neon Bible’s most upbeat piece by far. And, just as quickly, its lyrics become a joyful affirmation of the risen Christ:

Resurrected,
Living in a lighthouse.
If you leave, them ships are gonna wreck.
Resurrected,
Living in a lighthouse
The lions and the lambs ain’t sleeping yet.

Here at last is resolution: the hope that was once barely audible is now shouted from the rooftops. God is alive and at work, and though the lion has not yet lain down with the lamb, Christ, without whom we are lost, has not left his post as our guide on the way. The battle between love and fear, so painfully apparent in “Intervention,” has been decided. Love is the victor, and in its triumph triumphs joy.
This joy carries through to the album’s penultimate track, “No Cars Go.” Almost a postmodern spiritual, “No Cars Go” is punctuated by shouts and culminates in the call, “Little babies . . . women and children . . . old folks / Let’s go!” Its most powerful line is “Us kids know,” perhaps an invocation of the Christ who said, “Unless you become like little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 18:2). The joy of love is no longer passive. We are no longer waiting – we are going where no cars or planes or subs or spaceships go.

Neon Bible‘s final track, “My Body Is A Cage,” with its muted, vaguely industrial beat, is one of its most complex and one of its best, providing a sobering but hopeful coda to the joy of “No Cars Go.” Its first verse, which begins “I’m standing on a stage / of fear and self-doubt,” recalls Macbeth’s “poor player / who struts and frets his hour upon the stage / and then is heard no more,” hardly a hopeful or a joyous image. Another verse, beginning “I’m living in an age / that calls darkness light,” seems an invitation to despair. The song’s refrain, “My body is a cage / that keeps me from dancing with the one I love / but my mind holds the key,” rings of Gnosticism, the heretical philosophy that considers all good to be in the spirit and all evil to be in the flesh. Beset by confusion from without and within, the singer offers one final plea to God: “Set my spirit free,” to which he adds at last, “Set my body free.” In the face of his wicked world and his own limitations, he refuses to surrender his hope: there is, despite it all, a God before whom he can stand in supplication. With this reassurance Neon Bible, attacker of Christianity and affirmer of Christ, comes to its close, having ultimately and definitively found God.

Jim Shirey ’11 is a first-year student in Pennypacker.