The Dostoevsky Moment, Part I

Right now, I am reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky both for pleasure and in preparation of my senior thesis on theological anthropology. In Part 2, chapter 4 of the book, the protagonist Prince Myshkin is stunned by a copy of Holbein the Younger’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb as all of us are when we first see it. Dostoevsky himself was so captivated by this picture that he stared at it for quite a time and included it in his book. Anyway, the owner of the copy in the novel is a man named Rogojin who is quite a bad character up to this point, at least.


Rogojin comments to Myshkin that looking at the painting makes him lose his faith. It is reputed that it shook Dostoevsky’s faith some as well which is telling for our purposes. Myshkin then goes on to tell Rogojin four stories about isolated people. I know these stories have a profound message, but I cannot seem to figure them out. In the space of four entries, I will recount these stories so you can perhaps help me to interpret them. Here is the first:

"As to faith," he said, smiling, and evidently unwilling to leave Rogojin in this state--"as to faith, I had four curious conversations in two days, a week or so ago. One morning I met a man in the train, and made acquaintance with him at once. I had often heard of him as a very learned man, but an atheist; and I was very glad of the opportunity of conversing with so eminent and clever a person. He doesn't believe in God, and he talked a good deal about it, but all the while it appeared to me that he was speaking OUTSIDE THE SUBJECT. And it has always struck me, both in speaking to such men and in reading their books that they do not seem really to be touching on that at all, though on the surface they may appear to do so. I told him this, but I dare say I did not clearly express what I meant, for he could not understand me.”

Garrison Keillor Quote

“I’m wary of ecumenism. I see nothing wrong with having six or 10 or 15 different churches of Christ in town and people trouping to each one. If the alternative is some nondenominational New Agey all-purpose homogenized feel-good exercise, then give me schism.”
– Garrison Keillor, The Lutheran magazine (January 2002)

Christ Is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

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Good Friday

Ecclesiastes Sermon

This is the last sermon I gave for my Homiletics class this Spring. My previous two really didn't crank my tractor too much, but I felt relatively good about this one. As you will see, I have plenty of room for improvement, though. Some didn't like the sermon and called it a little too philosophical and too dark. My contention is that the good news can't really be all that great unless the bad we are saved from is really bad. The Bible tends to think that the bad news is really bad. The text is Ecclesiastes 1:1-11. - DOB

As I was driving to church a couple of months ago, my faith had reached a low ebb. This happens a lot with me, as I suspect it does with most, if not all, Christians. I was tired from school and wondering what sort of turn my life had taken with this whole seminary bit. My sort of Enlightenment rationalist mind (which bears no real heft, by the way) is always analyzing and probing, not satisfied with taking anything on faith (which is an impossibility, also by the way).

I happened to be listening to NPR’s All Things Considered as most doubting secularists inevitably do. A story came on about a phenomenon called “flash mobs.” Now, this was new to me as I have ceased being hip due to entrance into my thirties and a healthy distrust of anything urban. Apparently, flash mobs are mobs of people who appear suddenly at a particular spot due to the ability to quickly disseminate information by way of text message, e-mail, blackberries, and whatnot. They are generally peaceful and the point of the whole thing tends to be some sort of prank. For instance, one flash mob showed up at a department store, all inquiring about the price of one particular rug. The sales attendant was obviously run ragged and the mob disappeared. Very South Park-like.

NPR tracked down the inventor of flash mobs to get his reasoning behind them. He said that is was a parody of the meaninglessness of our pop consumer culture. Now, sometimes NPR can sort of eschew their narcissism for a very short time and actually report something profound. This was profound. Flash mobs as a parody of pop consumer meaninglessness or pop nihilism. Very Fight Club-like.

The inventor of these flash mobs was obviously very proud of his brainy insight. Obviously, he did not read his Bible. There was another brilliantly insightful sage named Qohelet and his analysis in Ecclesiastes was truer to the mark on a world without God and significantly darker.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-3 "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?

Everyone who reads this blog is engaged in some sort of work. That work may be anything including looking for work and going to school. I myself have primarily been engaged with politics and business. Now, you have seen all sorts of people in your line of work. There are the super-charged hot dogs who would have a heart attack if you startled them, the big-ego types who have had some sort of success at what they do and put a lot of stock into it, and the bitter failure who hung all their hopes on success in a particular field and failed.

The preacher Qohelet says all of it is meaningless. What sort of profit is there for someone after all this hard work is done? One retires, plays a few rounds of golf, moves to the beach, and dies.

Ecclesiastes 1:4-7 A generation goes and a generation comes, But the earth remains forever. Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; and hastening to its place it rises there again. Blowing toward the south, then turning toward the north, The wind continues swirling along; And on its circular courses the wind returns. All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again.

Have you ever been on a mountaintop out in Montana or Tennessee and stopped to ponder how ancient that landscape is? How many tribes and races of people has that mountaintop seen? How much human victory, defeat, and depravity have that landscape seen? Does it seem to be affected? Does it seem to care? Generation upon generation has passed and yet it remains; a monument to indifference. The endless cycle of the natural world carries on, oblivious to its frail human inhabitants.

The Hebrew for the word rendered “hastening” literally means “panting.” The sun is wearied, panting after its chore like Lawrence of Arabia lost out in the desert. The wind is making a big show of it, but it is just blowing in circles. The streams are engaged in a doggedly futile attempt to fill the sea to its capacity.

Ecclesiastes 1:8-11 All things are wearisome; man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So, there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, "See this, it is new "? Already it has existed for ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things; And also of the later things which will occur, there will be for them no remembrance Among those who will come later still.

So, most people do not see how tiresome and repetitive the world is. They look, explore, and listen believing they will find something new, but it never happens. “You worked very hard to close that deal. Congratulations. Now go and close another one.” “You defeated your primary opponent. Congratulations. Now, here’s the general election.” Democrats are ushered into office on the heels of the New Deal, thinking they will change the world. They succumb to arrogance and complacency and the Republicans are ushered into office only to fall to the same thing. Enemies and friends come and go. Can someone please put me in touch with the next flash mob?

Wait just a second, though. There is a question asked here that needs to be addressed. Is there anything of which one might say, "See this, it is new "? Well, actually there is. The answer to this question lies not in the Book of Ecclesiastes, but the first chapter of the Gospel of John:

John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The Greek philosophers would constantly search for the meaning of life or “logos”. They believed that if one’s life was aligned with the logos, the full potential and purpose of the human race would be realized. The bomb that the Apostle John dropped was that the logos was not some abstract notion, but it was a person. He existed before the creation of the cosmos and, as a matter of fact, it was created through Him. Everything came into being through the Light of the World.

Jesus Christ came into this world and was crucified, buried, and resurrected to redeem the meaninglessness of the human condition since the Fall. The preoccupation with death is no longer is an issue in eternal matters. There is hope in the coming new creation where the entire world will be remade and reborn. The relationship between God and man has been restored and we will steward this new creation.

Do you see the difference? If one is in Christ through faith, then everything means everything, as Tim Keller says. One can actually engage in humanitarian works because the image of God is in all people. Otherwise, there is no inherent worth to humans other than their utility in serving your purposes. One can actually go to work in the law firm and work with purpose, knowing that there is a Redeemer who has conquered your greatest enemy.

“So, is there anything new?” asks the preacher of Ecclesiastes. “I’m dying here. There is no reason for me to be on this planet. My life means nothing.”

In the movie The Passion of the Christ, the Lord is carrying His cross to Golgotha where He will be nailed to it to suffer death by torture. He is a bloody and tired heap as His mother Mary comes to Him in tears. His response in that time of humiliation, contempt, hatred, and pain? “Woman, behold. I make all things new.”

Immanuel Kant and Martin Luther

Have you ever misjudged anyone due the context into which you were born and raised? I certainly have in the simplest situations when I should have known better. The following is going to be a really elementary attempt at broadening this common experience to discuss the philosophy of Immanuel Kant as it relates to Martin Luther. I hope to redeem some of his thought from Christian attack specifically in the realm of the bound will. Please feel free to throw rocks at my hypothesis as I wrestle with this subject. I will be in your debt.

Background
Kant was raised as a Lutheran Pietist which meant that his religious categories were in the realm of morals and ethics. This was in contrast to Lutheran Orthodoxy which (at least doctrinally) emphasized the objective work of Christ which is given to the believer as a gift. Due to this upbringing, Kant believed he was able to formulate a defense of the existence of God by the moral grid that was within him. If there were no God, he argued, there would be no moral grid within man that made him perform moral works, even when doing so risked life and limb.

Now, there are all sorts of problems with this. What about the moral grids of cannibals, etc? This certainly would not prove the existence of the Christian God. Kant failed to remove himself from the Western Enlightenment context he found himself in. He was a victim of his own grid, if you will. This is really not what I wish to discuss, though. That was a background, more or less.

Internal Grid
I would really like to discuss the merits of man's internal grid itself. Kant's critique of John Locke and Isaac Newton's empiricism (experienced observation that infers causality) was that it assumed a blank state in the mind of man. Experiences and observations served as stimuli that man could discern and use. The stimuli went into the mind completely objectively and untainted by the receiver's context, cultural or otherwise.

Kant responded by saying that there was no way man could objectively observe his surroundings. Physical laws and observations are not objective, physical realities; they are laws of the mind. The mind has categories already developed that take stimuli and process them according to the mind's internal grid. Man only knows reality to the extent that it conforms to the mind's internal grid.

The Bound Will and Original Sin
In Luther's Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, he wrote in theses 3 and 4:

• Although the works of man may seem attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.
• Although the works of God are always unattractive and appear evil, they are nevertheless really eternal merits.

The interesting part here for me lies in human perception and action taken in response to that perception. If the appearance of human works is good and attractive, we will necessarily initiate them, join in them, or cheer them on. For instance, defeating a political foe and rising to power appears attractive. Think Machiavelli.

The reality of it, though, is that it almost always enthrones the self over God in one's mind. In riots, genocides, gang rapes, evil political movements like Nazism and Stalinism, and other mass movements, people like you and me willingly join in. Why? We all want to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Why?

It is because we are the proud owners of original sin which warps our internal grid. It warps the way we receive and process external stimuli. Due to this, we are bound to this internal grid like slaves. We inevitably act in the way most logical to what our grid is telling us, unaware of anything different.

The Nazareth Principle
God works by the Nazareth Principle. He chooses the weak and unattractive to confound the strong and wise. Consider where God may have worked in your life. Was it after you vanquished a political foe? Unequivocally no. He worked in your life when you were vanquished. He worked when you were unable to continue. Consider the suffering servant in Isaiah 53:

Isaiah 53:1-5 Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.

Consider and be aware of this internal grid. Then swallow some Christian vitriol and thank Immanuel Kant for inadvertedly thinking through the givens of original sin and the bondage of the will.

Coleridge

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Disclaimer: I am not a Schleiermacher/Hegel fan, obviously, but I have always loved this poem.

Dostoevsky Quote

"Humble yourself, proud man, and, above all else, break down your pride... Conquer yourself, quiet yourself - and you will begin a great work, you will make others free, you will see good days, for your life is fulfilled."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky