Joseph Cao and Bart Stupak

I should really be writing a post in honor of All Saints' Day, and the beautiful reading that the lectionary devotes for it, from the Book of Revelation, describing the City of God. But it's late, and I want to go to bed. I will get to that soon.

But first, a word on last Saturday's passage of the Health care bill in the House of Representatives, and the Stupak-Pitts amendment that passed at the last minute, with support from 64 Democrats, banning public subsidies to any insurance plan that includes coverage for abortions except when the mother's life is at stake.

This was a great day, indeed. For those of us who believe in the right to life, for those of us who believe in socialised medicine (or at least steps towards that goal) and especially for those people like me who believe in both.

I'd like to praise especially all the 64 Democrats who voted for the anti-abortion amendment. Largely though not entirely Catholics, they included Democrats from some very liberal states- Neal and Lynch from Massachusetts, Langevin from Rhode Island- as well as Stupak himself and his Michigan fellow representative Kildee. They voted their conscience, not the party line, and they deserve our admiration for so doing. They cast votes for the protection of human life, and against the culture of death that's so prevalent in our society.

But most of all, I'd like to praise two people. Bart Stupak, D-MI, and Anh Joseph Cao, R-LA. Both crossed party lines: Cao to vote for a bill that would provide government subisidized health care to poor and struggling Americans, and Stupak to strip federal money from insuring abortions. Both of them resisted the pull of their party, and voted according to their conscience. Both, in other words, chose the way of Christ over the temptation of the World. And both of them did a great and honorable thing.

COngratulations to everyone who voted for this health care bill, but thanks especially to these two courageous and righteous men.

"A new name written, which no man knoweth": Reflections on the letter to Pergamos

"And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges; I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."

Our Lord says a number of interesting things in this passage. Most striking, of course, is the beautiful promise that He makes to "him that overcometh", i.e. those who overcome the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Note that phrase, "the hidden manna". We know, of course, what manna is. In the book of Exodus, it is the food that God sends down from heaven to feed the Israelites as they wander in the desert. Some people think that this was based on a legendary recollection of a real historical event, and that "manna" corresponds to an actual food source the Hebrews found in the desert- perhaps tamarisk, or honeydew (aphid secretions) or some kind of insects. In a deeper sense, of course, we know that the story of the manna is a figure of the Eucharist, and that the physical manna in the story of Exodus represents the real, spiritual Bread of Life which is the body of Christ. In the Eucharist, ordinary bread is transformed, in substance, into the body of Christ.

But here Christ isn't referring to the Eucharist, for he refers to something secret and obscure, "the hidden manna", not to the public sacrifice which is the Eucharist. He is referring to something equally mysterious, glorious, and powerful as the Eucharist, i.e. the mystical communion of Christ with the believer. Just as in the Eucharist we accept Christ into our body, so in mystical union we accept Him into our souls.

To those of us who do His will, and who hold fast to Him, the rewards of mystical union with Christ will be unfathomable. At other points in Scripture, and in various noncanonical writings, communion with Christ is talked about it terms of love, beauty, the fulfilment of desire, in terms of erotic desire or hunger or thirs, and other attributes. Here it's talked about in terms of knowledge (and perhaps the hunger for knowledge is a kind of desire in the same sense as the desires for food, water, sex, or love). Christ here promises that to those who overcome the world as he overcame, he will reveal hidden knowledge, secret knowledge, that will belong to that person alone and will not be evident to anyone else. That knowledge can and should be shared, and passed on, but it can't be fully understood, or fully experienced, except the one who has been graced with a personal vision and inspiration of God.

Most of us have seen beautiful rock crystals before, minerals into which you can look and see some of their internal faces, reflecting light with a beautiful radiance as you rotate them. They have naturally formed smooth and planed edges so neat and immaculate that it looks like they were artificially cut, but we know that they were never touched by the hand of man. All the beautiful, straight-line faces we see were formed by natural processes, with so much precision it's hard to believe. I remember walking over the limestone outcroppings in northern Madagascar once and marveling to my friend at how flat, clean and straight were the edges that had formed- she was a geologist and said it wasn't uncommon for that kind of rock to form in shapes like that. It's the same way with some crystals. We can turn them around and see the light reflecting off their faces, and we can look into them and see perfect order and beauty. Crystals occur in lots of different colors: reddish-orange carnelian, blue like tourmaline, green like jasper. But some of the most beautiful are white. Imagine the order and simplicity of a white quartz crystal. That is the image that Christ himself gives us for the joy, elation, and mystery of what personal experience of the divine will be like. When we experience Christ personally, like the Russian envoys did during Divine Liturgy at the Church of Holy Wisdom in the city of Constantine, we will not know whether we were in heaven or earth.

I haven't ever been blessed to experience Christ in my waking hours the same way that St. Joan of Arc, St. Therese of Avila, or William Blake did. The closest I've come to it- the closest many of us come- is in dreams. Perhaps this is today, we would be more likely to dismiss visions of Christ in the wakeful day as hallucinations: in dreams we are more innocent. I can't quite describe these experiences, for as St. Paul said of his trip to heaven, such things are indescribable. But I will say that my temperament and nature incline me to be an intellectual, more than a romantic or a mystic, and so for me my experiences of the supernatural took the form of knowledge. I was at once in the presence of perfect knowledge, like a book that held the answers to all questions that could be asked, like a book for each person of which a new chapter was written for each day of their lives. Scripture uses such a symbol for the presence of God, when it talks of the book of life. Such a book would hold the answer to every question we have ever asked, with our mouths or with our hearts. In those curious, strange, indescribable dreams I learned more than I ever could during my whole waking life, and delighted in experiencing knowledge the same way other people delight in a warm bath on a cold day. And then I awoke, and all that supernatural knowledge was lost to me, draining away as I emerged into consciousness like water drains from sand. But it left me with a longing, a thirst, to be back in the presence of the divine again, and to experience not simply perfect knowledge but perfect love, perfect kindness, perfect beauty. And it left me with no doubt that I had experienced something inexplicable by natural means.

Throughout Christian history, from the very beginning, there have been endless debates about some very interesting theological questions: the nature of the Incarnation, how God can be Three and One, the two natures of Christ, the origin of evil, the ontological status of the devil, the creation of the world, the miracles of Christ, the Last Things, and many more. Often the division over these questions has involved the question of authority. Who has authority to speak in the name of God? The bishop of Rome, as the Catholic church said? The Bible, as evangelicals say? The ecumenical councils and the national patriarchs in common, as the Orthodox say? Personally, I think it's a mixture. God speaks through living Tradition, and through his church: through the bishops, priests and laity. We owe deference to the universal church, in all its representations, for Christ promised that in some sense the Holy Spirit would guide the church and speak through it. But equally importantly, I think, He speaks through individuals, through personal experience and personal revelation, as He did with the three children of Fatima. Many times in history we have seen a heroic individual, or a heroic minority, standing firm in their faith against the authorities of their time, secular or religious. And sometimes, those individuals as we can see in retrospect, were right.

Bishop Athanasius was right when he stood against the Arian heresy that had swallowed up three quarters of the empire, that looked like the progressive, victorious ideology of the future, and that appeared it was going to swallow up Christendom and corrupt it. He was right, though he was excommunicated for his trouble. St. Joan of Arc was right when she stood against the villainous Bishop Cauchon and went to the fire for her troubles. The Quakers were right when they stood against slavery, as Galileo was right when he stood for the rotation of the earth. And those are just the cases we know about. How many other heroic martyrs for the truth have gone to their graves for protesting against the religious authorities of their time, but have seen their views swallowed up by history, and have seen the world forget about them and what they held? They will be vindicated eventually, for we know that in the long run, and in the fullness of time, Christ promised that His church would not embrace error. But 'the fullness of time' can be a long time.

I don't want to go into detail on which particular issues I think the church, or a majority thereof, has 'got it wrong' in the past. This isn't the time nor the place. But we should conclude from this haunting and beautiful passage, that Christ is not bound by His nature to speak only through kings or only through priests or poets. He can speak through whomever He likes, and often he speaks through individuals. "Whoever is not against us is for us". We have the obligation to listen closely to what He tells us, himself or through his agents, in the innermost stillness of our heart, and to proclaim it to the word. We need to test our experience against the collective wisdom of tradition and the church, but we also need, at the last, to be faithful to our conscience. For we know that conscience is ultimately a man's surest guide. And we also know the words of this promise: "For I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, that no one knows saving he that receives it."

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

A Crown of Life: Letters to the Seven Churches, part II

"And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death."

This is the letter to Smyrna, that Christian city of the ancient world, the one that up until the early 20th century was predominantly Greek and Christian city within the Ottoman Empire, until the Greeks were expelled during the Greek-Turkish war in the 1920s.

Here we see Christ reminding us that this world is still, as it was from the beginning, under the domination of an evil power, and that those who dedicate themselves to His service can expect persecution and suffering. This was written during some of the first persecutions under Nero and Diocletian, but it foreshadows some of the great persecutions that were to arise under the Roman Empire, and then under Muslim Ottoman rule.

But he promises, too, that those who "overcome" those persecutions will be rewarded. Not only will he save his people from death, but also from the second death, i.e. hell.

COnsider that phrase, "the second death". What a powerful, and chilling, description of hell and damnation. One of the things we fear most, as human beings, is death. Even animals would fear death to the extent they could understand it. Most of all, we fear death because it represents the cessation of what we can see as the tangible and visible signs of life. For all we know, it really is the end of our existence, the entrance into pure nonbeing, and even if it isn't, it is a great mystery. We fear it as we fear darkness, because we can't see beyond it. It represents the great unknown.

Christ promises us, and we have good reason to believe, that there is life beyond the grave. And not a shadowy ghost-life, either, but a life fuller and richer than the lives we live on earth. But he warns us, too, that just as life in heaven is better than earthly life could ever be, so hell will be worse than death could ever be. As bad as physical death is, the death of the soul is so much worse.

Christ ends this letter, though, not on a warning but on his promise. He didn't come to condemn the world, but to save it, and he wishes not that anyone should choose the second death, but that we all might "have life, and have it abundantly". For he is "the first and the last", in that beautiful phrase which will be echoed again at the end of the book. He has always existed, as the Logos, second person of the trinity, the object of His Father's love, and He will exist forever. And he has triumphed over sin, hell, and death.

Blessed be His kingdom, now and forever. Amen.

""For you have fallen from your first love": Letters to the Seven Churches, part I

The next section of Revelation (though it's not technically in this week's lectionary) is one I've always found interesting: the Letters to the Seven Churches. I'm going to go through the Letters in order, at least the ones I find more interesting. This is, remember, the voice of Christ speaking to St. John. As you read the seven Letters one after the other, you see how poetic they are: each follows a formal pattern: with an epithet of Jesus, with his praise for the church, with a warning, and then a promise.


"Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God."

Ephesus was St. John's city, the city where he had gone after the fellowship of the Apostles went their separate ways, the city where he went to care for the Blessed Virgin, and from which he and the other apostles saw her body assumed into heaven. St. John was hearing the voice of Christ speaking to his church, and to his own people. Again, think about the power of that image: the holder of seven stars, surrounded by seven candles.

Christ condemns the people of the church of Ephesus for falling away from their "first love", i.e. from the charity and care for one another that they had had when they first came together as a community and decided to follow the way of Christ. It sounds as if they had gone through a conversion experience similar to those many of us go through. In the flush of their first conversion, loving and serving others, being immune to the temptations of the World, giving away one's possessions and spending one's time caring for the poor and the sick, must have seemed so exciting, so fulfilling, so deliciously counter-cultural: countercultural in the first century Roman Empire as it was countercultural now.

Most of us have experienced the 'honeymoon period' of something we do. Sometimes it can be a marriage or a relationship, sometimes it can be a religious conversion, sometimes it can be a job or a vocation. When I first arrived in Madagascar, and began my training as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I thought of that little village in the mountains as one of the most beautiful places imaginable. I loved the sight of the mountains across a valley full of rice paddies in the morning, I loved waking to the sound of chickens calling, I loved how each day I learned more of the language and culture then the last, such that I could start talking with people over dinner about how to hunt wild boars. It was the same when I moved to my village and started working there. I had something of the same feeling starting high school, starting college, starting a new job. In Madagascar, when I first got there, I felt that I had been called there, that fate had placed me there as surely as it had placed St. John on Ephesus, and I resolved to spend every day trying to be of use, and of service.

I fell away from that, of course, just as the Ephesians fell away from the spirit of mutual love, service, and self-emptying that had characterized them at first. We all do. It's the nature of living in a fallen world, of being vulnerable to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Whenever we stay in our house and read a novel rather than help our neighbor dig an irrigation ditch, whenever we conserve our water on a long bike ride rather than lend it to a passersby to have a drink, whenevre we spend money on luxuries that we should be giving away, whenever we spend an extra day in the big city, in the company of other Americans, rather than going back to our village, into the hot sun, and living off rice and a bit of smoked tilapia while you schedule one meeting after another to talk to people about growing moringa, knowing that only half a dozen people will show up, even after you buy coffee and peanuts to make it more enticing. I tried to be a good Peace Corps Volunteer, and I think I was one, with plenty of good things to my credit, but I wasn't a perfect one. None of us are. All of us start out what we do- when we start a new job, a new relationship, a new calling- with such high hopes, and sooner or later most of us- save for a brave, saintly few- end up falling away from "the love we had at first".

Every day we do this, we lose opportunities to help one another, and to love one another. These opportunities can't be brought back, as C.S. Lewis was fond of saying, no one is ever told "what would have happened". But they can be transcended, and when we fall away from our first loves and then realize that we could be doing so much better, we often return with even more fervor than before. Sometimes the regret over opportunities to help and to serve that we have missed, spurs us to work even harder to love and serve our neighbors in future. And when this happens, this is Christ and His grace working through us, just as He worked through the people at Ephesus.

Christ uses the word 'caritas', or "charity", where the English bible says "love". He is talking about brotherly love, the kind of love that seeks the good of the other precisely because they are other, that seeks to give without hope of return, the kind of love that as St. Augustine says, multiplies when it is divided. But I suspect he meant other kinds of love as well. No doubt he meant to use the imagery of romantic love as a kind of subtext to what he said, for it lends itself so easily to the image of a romantic relationship. I was hearing a radio program last night where it was talking about people who reunite with their first high school sweethearts, ten or twenty years later, often over Facebook or other internet sites. One story was about a girl who met a boy at summer camp at the age of fifteen, dated for a few weeks that summer, and then years later found him over FB. They're married today, and apparently such marriages have a lower divorce rate than the American average. There is something special about first loves, because they capture us at our most innocent and inexperienced, and because they have in them the childlike wonder at something new, before life and experience are able to harden us and corrode us.

I'm not a believer that premarital sex is always wrong, and I think some premarital relationships- in the modern age of birth control- can be healthy, loving, and spiritually fulfilling things that image the kind of love that Christ has for us. A relationship need not be the kind of permanent, lifelong relationship that marriage is, in order to be good or acceptable: I don't think that sexual relationships which are truly characterized by love and commitment, even if they don't last, are wrong or inferior. But for anyone who does want to embrace chastity before marriage- not as a requirement but as a kind of special discipline and special sacrifice, like vegetarianism- here's the key to why such a sacrifice can be admirable and beautiful. Because there's something special about the first person with whom one has a sexual experience. We bring to that experience innocence, curiosity, and faith: a faith that this will be the person that we can be with, now and forever. And how great would it be if that faith could be rewarded, and could turn out to be true? A first love is special, in a way that no other subsequent relationship can ever be, and for those people who want to bind themselves forever to the first person they ever sleep with, and to never fall away from their first love, I think that's a beautiful and compelling sacrifice. It may not be for everyone, but it is absolutely what some people are called to, and those who choose that path need to be respected.

Let's remember, last of all, the beautiful promise with which Christ ends this address. To those who conquer- to those who overcome the temptations of the world, to those who overcome despair, inadequacy, ennui, to those who are able to keep their zeal for loving God and loving one's neighbor, for serving the hungry, the sick and the poor- Christ promises us to eat of the tree of life. In the book of Genesis, God expels the first man and woman from paradise "lest they eat of the tree of life, and live for ever". But this time, Christ offers us the tree of life: as a gift, not as the spoils of illicit theft. Original sin consisted in preferring our own will to that of God, in choosing good things to pursue at the wrong time and in the wrong way. But in Christ all wishes will have their fulfilment: we will enter heaven by the gate, not like a thief, and we shall finally get to eat of the tree for which our species, for all of its long history, has been craving.

"Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end."

"As a Flame of Fire": Reflections on Revelation 1:4-20

"....And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength....... And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." Revelation 1:13-18.

There are a number of things I'd like to write a blog post about, and I was thinking of writing one today. But then I realized this week has an interesting cycle of readings coming up, in preperation for All Saints' Day, drawn from the Revelation to St. John. This last book of the New Testament is one I really like- though I don't pretend to understand it. As St. Augustine once said, no one undestands the Last Things except God, not even the angels in heaven: it passes their understanding as it passes ours. That's why the Book of Revelation is written in such mystical, symbolical language.

Tomorrow's reading starts with the vision of Christ to St. John, on the island of Patmos. It's not certain when it took place, but sometime between the reign of Nero and the reign of Domitian, under both of which the Christians were savagely persecuted.

We are told that "no one has seen God at any time" (1 John 4:12) and further, St. Paul describes in heaven seeing "indescribable things, which no man may utter" (2 Corinthians 12:4). St. John is of course describing, here, God in human form, the Word Incarnate. But even still, he finds it hard to describe the vision of Christ in normal terms. When Jesus lived on earth he took the form of a normal man, as we are told, not particularly handsome or striking: "He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53:2). In his ascended, resurrected body, He is so beautiful and awe-inspiring that John can only describe him in the most symbolic, figurative terms. His feet are like shining brass, his girdle like gold, his hair like white wool, his eyes like a flame of fire.

Here we see, most clearly, the difference between the way things are on earth, and the way things are in heaven. On earth we see each other, and plants and animals and natural things, in normal, physical form, with all our infirmities, injuries, and imperfections. But what we see on this earth are simply shadows and copies of the ideal, perfect natures of things that we will see in the world to come. St. Paul tells us, "It is sown corruptible, it is raised incorruptible" (1 Corinthians 15:42), and so it is with all things: what Christ shows us in the vision to St. John is what will happen to all things in the world to come. Everything beautiful we see around us- trees, deer, fish, flowers, birds, other people- will be more beautiful in the world to come. Tertullian said, in refutation of Marcion who claimed a lesser, corrupt deity had created the world, "Look at a wildflower: thus do I refute Marcion." But even the prettiest flower in this earth is short lived, and will be surpassed in beauty and longevity by the flowers of the world to come.

Christ tells us, "I hold the keys of hell and death", and alludes to His return from death, from which no one, or hardly anyone, was believed to ever have returned. In Christ we see that death is once and for all conquered. We still die of course, but we have the hope, and the faith, that death ultimately has no power over us, that it simply leads to a gate, opened by Christ, through which we can enter into paradise. No more does hell have power over us, for hell is the kingdom of the power of evil, and Christ has once and for all confronted evil and conquered it.

White wool, shining metal, fire all strike us as beautiful because they reflect or produce light. In the same way Christ reflects the light of the Father, and he is Light in his own right as well, as it's said, "God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God" in the creed. We can't fully understand what light is, or how it can be both a wave and a particle at the same time. Neither can we understand the nature of God, how He can be three Persons and one Being. But the beginning of the vision to St. John shows us that maybe we were not meant to understand, that perhaps sometimes all we can do, and all we are asked to do, is to kneel and lose ourselves in the beauty and mystery of God.

More to follow....

Hartshorne's ontological proof of the existence of God

Of all the various arguments that have been proffered over the centuries for why God exists, I find some more interesting and compelling than others. I am not such a big fan, in general, of arguments like, "Look at the hippopotamus. Such a beautiful thing could only have been created by God", although Tertullian did use such an argument to refute Marcion's claim that the devil had created the world. Such 'arguments from design' leave me cold, not least because we now know just how hippopotamuses and other living things came to be: they evolved from the first living organisms, and it was by the long, bloody, and brutal process known as natural selection, hardly something one associates with a loving God.

The arguments I find most convicing are the argument from causality (the cosmological), the argument from mystical visions and miracles (the experiential) and finally, the argument from the concept of perfection itself (the ontological). The ontological proof is, I think, the most interesting and the most powerful, since it purports to establish, not just the existence of a First Cause or a Prime Mover, but the existence of a Perfect Being (i.e. God). Also because it relies on logic alone. It was first developed by St. Anselm in the twelfth century, a great stalwart of the English Church, and in the twentieth century was revived by the philosopher Charles Hartshorne. Hartshorne was a theologically liberal Unitarian, and so of course I disagree with most of his theological viewpoints, but I think he made a powerful modification of the ontological argument, updating it for the twentieth century, and turned it into an argument that, it seems to me, is very hard to refute. I recently looked it up- though it's couched in the language of highly technical philosophy, here's the gist of the proof as I understand it.

Let's start by defining God as the most perfect being that can be conceived. Now, either He exists or He doesn't. But the important thing to realize about the nature of a perfect being is that he doesn't, and cannot, exist _contingently_. That is to say, God does not _owe_ his existence to anything outside Himself. If a perfect being were to be brought into existence, or depend for his existence, on some outside agent, He wouldn't be perfect. Because clearly it is better to be sufficient on one's own, and able to exist and spread one's goodness in any conceivable set of circumstances, then to only be able to exist if the right circumstances are met.

This is to say that God is a _necessarily existing_ being. Nothing- no agent, force, or set of circumstances- could allow God to come into existence if he doesn't right now. Conversely, no agent, force, or set of circumstances could result in God's _nonexistence_ if in fact he existed. Because again, a conceivable perfect being that exists self-sufficiently and eternally is more perfect, and more flawless, then a being who is perfect in every other way but has the flaw of not being able to exist except under the right conditions. The first God is greater with respect to power, and I'd argue also with respect to goodness, then the second, thus the second being is not the most perfect being conceivable.

We've established, then, that either A) a perfect being exists and nothing could stop him from existing- that is, he _necessarily_ exists, or B) a perfect being doesn't exist, and nothing could make him exist, that is it is impossible for him to exist. What cannot be the case is that God just 'happens' to exist, that He exists contingently on other circumstances, that if things were different He could exist or He could not exist. If the concept of a perfect being means anything, it means a being who is self-sufficient, eternal, and independent of anything else. Self-0sufficiency is a tricky thing here, as the Trinitarian conception of God involves three persons who in some sense 'depend on' each other, but let that pass for the moment. God cannot depend, for His existence, on anything outside Himself (as the existence of a tree depends on adequate rain, nutrients, and seeds in that place, or as the existence of an animal depends on its parents, or as the existence of the moon depends on the physical laws and processes that formed it).

So summing up, it is either NECESSARY that God exists, or it is IMPOSSIBLE that God exists. If it is possible that He exists, then He necessarily must exist= He cannot exist contingently.

The full power of Anselm's argument, as developed by Hartshorne, is evident here. We are suddenly brought to the brink, where one must fall off the fence to the left or right. There is no room left to say "Maybe God exists, or maybe He doesn't". Of course one can take that line, and many people do, but I think if we take the Anselm/Hartshorne argument seriously, it's logically insupportable to do so. We are required to make a leap of faith and decide whether we think it's fair to say that it is _impossible_ for God to exist. Naturally, I don't think so.

To say that it is _impossible_ for God to exist is to say that the concept of a perfect being is logically incoherent. People have tried to do that, of course, but I think such arguments fail. If perfect power and perfect knowledge are sufficiently qualified and rightly understood, such that God cannot do anything that detracts from His perfection, then there are no logical inconsistencies in the concept of God. Is it more likely that God doesn't exist, or that God does exist? One test of any theory over its rivals, say Theory A against Theory B, is that Theory A explains everything that Theory B does, and other things as well. In this light, a universe just like ours but including a God would account for everything we observe (if we assume that God allowed the universe to develop, for the most part, according to physical laws and life to evolve according to natural selection), but it would also explain some things that couldn't be explained otherwise (i.e. direct visionary experiences of God).

So there is at least some prima facie possibility that God exists. We have the concept in our minds, after all, and it is hard to find anything incoherent in the _concept_. But the moment we grant that the existence of God is a possibility, then we must also grant that it is a certainty. For God cannot exist contingently, as that would be inconcistent with the logical requirements of perfection.

Which leads me to conclude, as Anselm and Hartshorne did, that since it is logically _possible_ to conceive of the existence of a perfect being, such a perfect being, the most perfect being that the mind can conceive, must exist. "And this all men call God."

Indeed. Rest in peace, Charles Hartshorne: into Paradise may the angels lead you, may a choir of angels great you at your coming, and with Lazarus who once was poor, may you find eternal rest.

Rajoelina, The Man on Horseback

I may not yet have made it clear on this blog, but I'm a thorough supporter of the military-backed government of Andry "TGV" Rajoelina, who assumed power in Madagascar following a military mutiny and the flight of the "elected" president Marc Ravalomanana in March of this year. I abhorred the Ravalomanana government, which was nothing but a corrupt oligarchy, and its overthrow was long overdue. I am outraged that the EU and United States, as well as most African countries, are making simpering noises about "liberal democracy" and using that as an excuse to deny economic aid that the people of Madagascar direly need. Grow up, people. Liberal democracy is a means, not an end, and in February 2009 the only ends it served were those of a rapacious and greedy oligarchy.

I was in Madagascar when Marc Ravalomanana (henceforth 'R8') was elected for his second term in late 2006. That election was a farce if I've ever seen one. The number-two candidate, Lahiniriko, a Socialist with ties to Cuba and Iran, had his campiagn funds frozen (along with all other opposition candidates) until a couple weeks before the election. Lahiniriko was also accused of treason. A military officer staged an unsuccessful coup, seizing the Tana airport, in protest of the blatantly unfair conduct of the election. Now, I don't think that alone made R8 illegitimate. Madagascar isn't an especially political country and I don't think that many people cared that much that the election was unfair. Much worse, in my book, was the fact that R8 cared nothing for the poor and the rural areas, and worked almost entirely to enrich is own businesses, his ethnic group, and his class to the detriment of everyone else.

Consider these things that Ravalomanana did:
- He was planning to sell large chunks of land to Korean investors to grow corn, which would have thrown Malagasy farmers off their land and deprived them of their livelihood.
- He had encouraged the privatization of commonly held village land, and promoted the development of a capitalist economy in the countryside that would have benefited the richer farmers and hurt the poor.
-His privatization efforts would have destroyed the traditional modes of land ownership and uprooted communities.
- He poured foreign aid money into his own dairy and yogurt empires.
- He passed discriminatory citizenship laws that discriminated against people with French last names (disproportionately the poorer and less developed peoples of the coastal areas).
- According to one of my closest friends in my neighboring village, his party cadres would have investigated and maybe even arrested my friend for complaining about the government.
- He dissolved the traditional Provinces, in an effort to centralize power in the capital.
- He shut down Andry TGV's radio station, and cut off trash collection for weeks in the capital city, as a pure gesture of spite after TGV won the election.
- He ordered police to fire on demonstrations allied with TGV.
- He did almost nothing to address one of the worst hurricanes in recent memory, that devastated the part of the country where I lived in 2004- most of the (few) charity and relief efforts that i observed were run by the Catholic, Adventist, or other churches.
- Again, he did almost nothing to address a famine in early 2007 in the far south, caused by drought the previous year. Virtually the only efforts to deal with the hunger and starvation in the south were run by churches, and even they were inadequate to the scale of the problem (I almost had the opportunity to work for one of those efforts, and I heard from the person who got the job that it was heartbreaking to see that they couldn't help everyone). At the same time that people in Androy were starving to death, Ravalomanana was pouring foreign money into his cattle farms and attending parties in the capital.
- In general, Ravalomanana talked a good game, but he cared very little for the poor, for the rural areas, and for non-Merina ethnic groups. The natural resources of Madagascar were squandered on his watch and he barely lifted a finger to address severe hunger and poverty in the South and West. At least previous governments had handed out free rice- Ravalomanana didn't do that, and left relief efforts to the Catholic and other churches.

There are moments in history that call for revolutions, in which a government loses its mandate to govern by ignoring the needs of its people. Ravalomanana was one of those despicable oligarch leaders, and the coup of March 2009 was a very necessary and long overdue thing. Andry Rajoelina, President of the High Transitional Authority of Madagascar, doesn't deserve the opprobrium of the international community. Most of the other world leaders who tut-tut that he isn't 'elected', are not a tenth of the man that he is, and lack his vision, his passion for justice, his courage, and his boldness. They shouldn't criticize him, they should applaud him as a hero. Rajoelina did what had to be done, and he gave the nation of Madagascar a leader they could respect and love. If the rest of the world doesn't like that, then that is just too f*cking bad.

Rajoelina is not planning on staying in power forever. He is planning elections for 2011, and plans to only stay in power for two years. That should be proof enough that he didn't assume power for his own sake, but for the country's. Rajoelina's duty is not to some soft bureaucrats in Brussels or Washington, who have never seen real poverty or real suffering in their lives, but to the natural moral law, and to his people. Above the law of a people or a nation is the law of God and the law of nature. Let's all grant him our respects, our hopes and our prayers at this critical moment in the history of his nation.

'Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.'