I have to wonder if one of the warriors ignored a couple hits on him, but it’s good to see longer matches. Most of them are over in twenty seconds.
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Thinking online…
I dislike inconsistency, especially in myself. It occurred to me that I have embraced two apparently inconsistent philosophical positions.
So I gave the matter some thought. Here’s the problem, and my synthesis.
The other day I linked to what I consider an outstanding article by historian Tom Holland. In it he explains how he gradually came to realize, though his research, that modern ideas of cultural relativism are false. It’s not true that all societies are pretty much the same. The Christian West espouses (though often fails to practice) the highest level of morality we know of, superior in every way to civilizations of the past that scholars love to praise. The Greeks and the Romans, for instance, from whom Enlightenment thinkers thought they derived their ideas, knew nothing of human equality and never contemplated ending slavery. It’s only the Christian West that has even striven for these things.
That’s one position I embrace.
But I also embrace what C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Abolition of Man, calls “the Tao.” The Tao (as Lewis used it here) is a universal set of moral precepts that appear to be inborn. They are reiterated in cultures all over the world, across racial divisions and epochs of time alike. “Don’t steal.” “Don’t murder.” “Keep your promises.” “Honor your parents.”
Does that contradict the Western exceptionalism I praise in Mr. Holland’s article? Continue reading Thinking online…
Rotten Day (Part One)
Yesterday was an awful day.
It started out with the aftermath of several terrorist incidents, one as close to me as St. Cloud, Minnesota. I was troubled enough to abstain entirely from “Talk Like a Pirate Day.”
Then I got personal bad news.
My friend Steve died Sunday night. I won’t give his full name because I don’t know his family’s wishes. But I will sing his glory nonetheless.
I only met Steve in the flesh two or three times. Once at a Scottish Fair in St. Paul, and once more (or twice, I’m not sure) at the L’Abri Center in Rochester, Minn. But we communicated much online. He was considerably younger than me – surely too young to die suddenly.
He was a musician and a connoisseur of music. He was a fan of fantasy literature. And he was a devout, evangelical Christian.
According to reports, he spent Sunday at his parents’ home, enjoying time with them at an antique engine show, and playing games in the evening. He went to bed, and the next morning his father found him lying there still dressed, a smile on his face.
Pretty much the way every one of us hopes we’ll die. But few are actually blessed to pass like that.
He was one of the foremost fans of my novels, boosting my books all the time. I feel as if I’ve lost one of the chief props of my literary career. And I’m the least of those mourning him.
Sometimes I have the feeling that the Lord is taking the best of us now, before dropping the hammer for good on this worm-eaten culture.
Rejoice in the presence of your Lord, Steve. I’ll see you in the morning.
‘Death of a Dissident’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky
The doznaniye or inquiry is based on the frequently stated assumption that “every person who commits a crime is punished justly, and not a single innocent person subjected to criminal proceedings is convicted.” This is repeated so frequently by judges, procurators, and police that almost everyone in Moscow is sure it cannot be true.
I felt a sudden longing for an old favorite author, so I thought I’d tackle Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Inspector Porphiry Rostnikov books. I’ve generally avoided this series, because the one I did read was so grim. It’s not that the writing’s bad. It’s great (as witness the dry-humored passage above), and Kaminsky’s always perceptive and humane characters are as good here as anywhere else. I just don’t like the Soviet Union. The ugliness of the architecture, the scarcity and hunger, the deadening regulations, the fear of surveillance, even the cold of Moscow – it tends to wear me down. Even when the stories are good and the characters fascinating. As they are here.
Author Kaminsky decided to challenge himself to write a police procedural like Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct books, but set it in Moscow. The result is, I think, very successful (when you adjust for my prejudices). Porphiry Rostnikov, hero of Death of a Dissident, is a wounded World War II veteran (the time is the 1980s), disabled by an old leg injury, which doesn’t stop him working. In fact, he’s a weight lifter, contemplating entering an amateur competition. His subordinates are Karpo (a dedicated Marxist who looks like a vampire), and Tkatch (a young detective recently married).
When a prominent dissident is murdered in his apartment two days before his scheduled trial, a suspect is quickly identified and arrested. Word comes down from above that this will do for an investigation. No further inquiry will be required. However, a seemingly connected murder that follows shortly after has Rostnikov walking a dangerous line, trying to stop a serial killer while not upsetting the political cart. A man of lesser strategic intelligence would wreck his career and perhaps lose his freedom, but Rostnikov knows his business.
Good book, and people less prejudiced toward the Soviet Union than I will probably enjoy it even more than I did. There’s nothing pro-Soviet here; the anti-Communism is subtextual but ubiquitous. Nothing much in the way of objectionable material either.
Friday Fight: In Indiana Land
Impersonating somebody who knows something
I did my first seminary lecture today. It went OK, I think. My talk wasn’t as long as I thought it would be. But we had a good discussion time to fill it in.
I’ll bet you think I couldn’t work the Vikings into a lecture on pastoral theology, don’t you?
Well, I managed it.
Pre-Lecture jitters
The busiest couple weeks of the year continue. But pressure is easing up in the library at last – I have adjudged my two new assistants qualified to range freely, within limits. Which gives me time to do other stuff. And other stuff need to be done.
I found out I’ll be doing my first seminary lecture (first of two) Thursday morning. That was somewhat short notice. But it’s not as if I haven’t been preparing. I just need to organize my piles of notes into a PowerPoint. And I’ve made a good start. Still, it’s a little daunting. If you like to pray for trivial concerns, you might remember me Thursday.
I think I figured out why they asked me to lecture on the historical roots of our conception of the pastorate. There’s been some concern in recent years, from certain quarters, that our seminary – while maintaining a high view of Scripture and Lutheran orthodoxy – has lost sight of its roots, the semi-romantic 19th Century dream of a repristinated New Testament congregation. They wanted somebody to explain our beginnings and the reasons why we do things in the (rather eccentric) ways we do them. As editor and translator for the Georg Sverdrup Society journal (devoted to the works of a founder of our tradition), I guess I qualify as a kind of an expert. There’s one guy who wrote a doctoral thesis on Sverdrup who certainly knows more than I do. But he’s retired. And another fellow who probably has a better global grasp on the historical factors than anybody alive. But he’s busy teaching other classes.
So I guess I qualify as a kind of an expert, in a very small niche. Funny how expertise snuck up on me. I never planned on it. It’s kind of like rummaging in your pockets and finding a candle snuffer in there. And you don’t remember buying one. But what do you know? There’s a candle right here that needs snuffing!
On the translating front, I hear that my next project will be a book on “the right of resistance,” the ancient Viking law that allowed the people of the land to rise up against, and kill, kings who got too big for their britches.
I think it will go over well among Deplorables.
Friday Fight: Sword vs. Long Axe
Breathless drama in the library
It’s the roughest week of the year for this librarian.
First week of school. I’ve already done my orientations (a lecture and walk-through for Bible school students, a walk-through for seminarians). I’m training two new assistants (most years I have a junior and a senior assistant, so there’s only one to train at a time. But things happen). And I have a lecture to do on writing academic papers, tomorrow (I’ll be doing that with less practice than I hoped). And I’m putting together an article on the Reformation in Norway, for the Georg Sverdrup Society newsletter, deadline coming up.
Oh yes, I sell textbooks, too.
I’m not complaining. The days go quickly, and I’m not bored.
I also agreed, in a preliminary way, to tutor a seminary student in Norwegian. But that won’t happen (if it happens at all) until next year.
Oh yes, the Viking Age Club will be at the Nordic Music Festival in Victoria, Minnesota this Saturday. I’ll be there if I have any strength left.
Gloomy news day
Yesterday was the first day of school for my institution(s), so I was pretty busy. But I learned (primarily through Facebook) of two deaths that were significant to me. For very different reasons.
Phyllis Schlafly died. I assume that the left has assumed the same classy and openminded attitude toward her in death that it assumed during her life (which is to say, there is no epithet too vile for them to throw at her. I’ve seen one example already). I’m sure that in heaven she wears those clods and brickbats as royal decorations. She was a model to us all, in her patient endurance of personal insult, for the sake of the truth, and her refusal to back down.
I think of her most from back in the ‘80s, when I was living in that twilight world where I still voted Democrat while my heart was really with the Republicans. Oh, I still believed that high taxes were God’s chosen means for building the Kingdom of God, but the things my fellow party members said about Mrs. Schlafly made me mad. And eventually I figured out that the people who called her names didn’t think any more highly of me. It helped me to jump parties. Thanks, Lefties!
Another death yesterday was Hugh O’Brien, who – when I was a boy – starred in a TV series called “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.” I was a big fan of that show. O’Brien, unusually for television in those days, made some minimal effort to dress like the character he was playing. It wasn’t very authentic, but it was an effort. After all, there was no question of his affecting the real Wyatt’s magnificent mustache in those days. I’ve seen re-broadcast episodes, and while the show is not high art, and it leans too heavily on Stuart N. Lake’s highly unreliable biography, it’s a notch better than average TV western of the day.
He devoted his later life to a foundation for youth leadership development. He seems to have been a serious man.
Finally, our friend Gene Edward Veith posted an interesting article today in relation to the canonization of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. As a Lutheran, he doesn’t have much to say about the Catholic canonization process, but he articulates thoughts I share about her admitted struggles with depression:
I have heard this period of darkness referred to as evidence that Teresa “was not perfect,” but I think it makes her holiness more believable. The life of faith is not “perfection,” nor constant joy; rather, it often involves what Luther called “tentatio”–struggle, conflict, agony of conscience–and her descriptions of her depression shows that her faith was in Christ and not her own good works, which she had in such abundance.