Ye tradeful merchants! that with weary toil
do seek most precious things to make your gain,
And both the Indies of their treasure spoil,
What needeth you to seek so far in vain?

For, lo! my love doth in herself contain
     All this world's riches that may far be found;
If sapphires, lo! her eyes be sapphires plain;
     If rubies, lo! her lips be rubies sound;

If pearls, her teeth be pearls, both pure and round,
     If ivory, her forehead ivory ween;
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
     If silver, her fair hands are silver sheen:

But that which fairest is, but few behold,
Her mind, adorned with virtues manifold.

-- Edmund Spencer

Dr. Jordan Peterson on Masculinity, Heroism, and the Integration of the Shadow-Self

This one follows strangely synchronously with the last. I have only discovered these two thinkers very recently, but have been profoundly affected by what I've heard so far. The thing is, I've felt so incredibly intellectually alone, very nearly absolutely so, my entire life, that I had very much given up on the world. That is, I have always believed and stood for a set of ideas which have been so radically different than those of virtually everyone I have ever spoken to, that I've been driven to the point of complete intellectual and emotional exhaustion by beating my head against the stone wall of what has seemed to me to be the world's total insanity. The primary opposition, of course, has been from those on the modernist, neo-marxist, "progressive" side of the ideological spectrum. But neither have I found much acceptance amongst those on the conservative, traditional side, even among Christians, because I have such a strong vein of unconventionality and nonconformism, especially when it comes to metaphysics, mysticism, and spirituality.

But finding that these two extremely intelligent, very educated, and highly accomplished men have so many ideas which are so very like my own has breathed fresh inspiration and hope into me. Especially because they not only hold these ideas, but are speaking them publicly, and are fighting the good fight against the Ideological Inquisition and the Thought Police so successfully. And what really impresses me, with Peterson in particular, is that he does so with such grace, sensitivity, nuance, and composure, rather than being simplistic and polemical like Limbaugh or Coulter.

I love what Dr. Peterson is saying here about being "dangerous", living one's life heroically, and integrating the shadow-self or one's own potential for darkness. I've spoken about all these things here before. I especially like when he describes our educational systems as being imposed and overly-domesticated, and by implication, emasculating, although he doesn't use the term. He does talk, though, about how they have been intentionally trying to socialize boys as girls to make them less dangerous. He describes many friends he knew who dropped out of school at 15 or 16 because they were already maturing and becoming men and were "Just done with raising their hands to go to the bathroom". That is exactly what I experienced. I felt, from the time I first started to form my identity as a boy becoming a man, like the culture in general (as expressed chiefly through media) and the school system in particular, were trying very hard to "demasculinize" me (and everyone else who showed any signs of genuine masculinity).

What I mean is that, if one has that air of being "potentially dangerous" as he calls it, which people can sense, then one is marked by the feminist "testosterone is poison" types as a threat and an evil, and treated accordingly. But being dangerous, in that sense, is an essential part of being a man. It's who we need to be in order to be self-fulfilled. And it's who we have to be, in order to be what women and children need us to be. In fact, it's the primary thing that women find most attractive in men: that elusive quality which draws women toward "bad men" and leaves "nice guys" wondering why they're always alone. Although I think that it's generally poorly understood by both men and women. Being a real man, a true hero, means neither giving in to nor denying that side of ourselves, but struggling with and mastering that potential for being dangerous, and using it for good. The self-actualized man is the knight: capable of astonishing violence, but completely in control of it, and only using it in the right cause and context. But also capable of great gentleness, sensitivity, and vulnerability.

I use "dangerous" here in the sense that Tolkien meant when he wrote:

"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Gloin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest of Fangorn is perilous - not least to those that are too ready with their axes; and Fangorn himself, he is perilous too; yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless."

And that Lewis meant when he wrote:

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” 

and:

“He'll be coming and going" he said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.” 

Anyway, to it:

part 1

part 2

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake on "The Science Delusion"

"The Science Delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in. This is a very widespread belief in our society. It's the kind of belief system of people who say, 'I don't believe in God: I believe in Science.' It's a belief system which now has been spread to the entire world. But there's a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of enquiry, based on reason, evidence, hypothesis, and collective investigation, and Science as a belief system or worldview. And unfortunately, the worldview aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict the free enquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavour."

-- Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D


This is precisely what I have been saying about science vs. Science for a long time. Only it carries more weight when Dr. Sheldrake says it, as he is an actual scientist, with degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, an honor granted to such trivial contributors to science as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking. The Science as a worldview people dominate all scholarly and public discourse, and are as shackled and blinded by dogma as any Medieval Catholic or first-century Pharisee.

So, for instance take the lady scientist who discovered actual dinosaur DNA in tyrannosaur bones. Her findings were dismissed and attacked by the scientific community because it simply was "not possible", because dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, and no DNA can possibly survive for 65 million years. Logic, reason, and actual science would, when faced with the factual reality that she DID recover said DNA that either a) DNA can, in fact, survive for 65 million years in certain conditions or, b) Dinosaurs went extinct much more recently. And then, based on those two possibilities, would conduct further investigations to discover which one was the better hypothesis.

Or, for another example, look at the timeline of the Exodus. Historians have an "accepted" timeline for Egyptian history, and have dated the Exodus "if it occurred" at a certain point. Then they looked for archaeological evidence of the Exodus at that time, didn't find it, and therefore concluded that it did not happen. However, there is ample evidence for it at a slightly different time, by a few hundred years, which gets completely ignored because they are unable to even consider the possibility that their timeline is wrong (and also, I suspect, because they want very much for the Exodus, and therefore the Bible, to not be true).

When you summarily dismiss a line of inquiry without giving it due consideration, for the sole reason that it does not fit your already-fixed assumptions; when you label a field of study as "pseudo-science" not because its methods are flawed, but because its conclusions are ones that you do not allow to be possible in your belief system, then you have left logic, reason, and science behind and have entered the realms of philosophy, religion, and dogma.

"As my friend Terence Mckenna used to say, modern science is based on the principle, 'Give us one free miracle, and we'll explain the rest.' And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, and all the laws that govern it, from nothing, in a single instant." -- ibid.

More here:

The Dream

Dear Love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream,
          It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for phantasy,
Therefore thou waked'st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it;
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreams truths, and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,
Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.

As lightning, or a taper's light,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise waked me;
          Yet I thought thee
(For thou lovest truth) an angel, at first sight,
But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an angel's art,
When thou knew'st what I dreamt, when thou knew'st
          when
Excess of joy would wake me, and cam'st then,
I must confess, it could not choose but be
Profane, to think thee anything but thee.

Coming and staying showed thee, thee,
But rising makes me doubt, that now,
          Thou art not thou.
That love is weak, where fear's as strong as he;
'Tis not all spirit, pure, and brave,
If mixture it of Fear, Shame, Honour, have.
Perchance as torches which must ready be,
Men light and put out, so thou deal'st with me,
Thou cam'st to kindle, goest to come; then I
Will dream that hope again, but else would die.

-- John Donne

If Love's a Sweet Passion

If love's a Sweet Passion, why does it torment?

If a Bitter, oh tell me, whence comes my content?

Since I suffer with pleasure, why should I complain,

Or grieve at my Fate, when I know 'tis in vain?

Yet so pleasing the Pain is so soft as the Dart,

That at once it both wounds me and tickles my Heart

I press her Hand gently, look Languishing down,

And by Passionate Silence I make my love known.

But oh! How I'm Blest when so kind she does prove,

By some willing mistake to discover her Love.

When in striving to hide, she reveals her Flame,

And in our Eyes tell each other what neither dares Name.

"There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man."

-- Leo Tolstoy

"Whenever you see a person insult his inferiors, you may feel assured that he is the man who will be servile and cringing to his superiors; and he who acts the bully to the weak, will play the coward when with the strong."

-- Cecil B. Hartley,  The Gentleman's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness 

Does God Still Speak?

That's the next question, isn't it? 

The real question is, what do you believe? For someone who doesn't believe in God at all, rationalizations will obviously be found. Just as they do with everything. When people die and see God, and come back, it's just neurons firing randomly in the brain. When someone is healed of cancer, it's "spontaneous remission". When Jesus rises from the dead, it's that his disciples stole the body and made up a story. These people are like the dwarfs in the stable at the end of C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle; they are blind because they refuse to see, even when the reality is right before their faces.

But there is another philosophy out there, too, and that among Christians. It says that all supernatural works of God ceased at the close of the Apostolic age, including His supernatural leading and intervention in our lives, and that everything we need now is contained in the Bible. That he only leads us through His written word, and not through (they usually add derisively) "inner voices and mystical experiences". This doctrine is called Cessationism, and is one of the most malignant and pernicious lies ever to infect the Church. I am of the opinion that it is the work of none other than Screwtape and his ilk. It's the cleverest and most--if you'll excuse me--diabolical thing they came up with until one of them had the brilliant idea to pretend that they don't exist altogether (which is really an extension of this idea). It robs the Christian and the Church of all power to resist them, and places them firmly under their control. The Devil is perfectly at home in many churches; he doesn't mind religion one bit, as long as it's devoid of the power of God. In fact, he rather likes it--"the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof" (2 Tim 3:5)

The story that the miraculous ceased at the end of the Apostolic era can be simply and easily proven false by a quick and cursory search of the Church Fathers. Miracles, healings, prophecy, and yes, even tongues, are recorded as still occurring throughout the first few centuries of the Christian era. I won't waste space citing them here: a quick Google search will prove my point, if you doubt me.

A variant of this doctrine says that, rather than ending with the death of St. John, (the last Apostle), miracles ended with the "closing of the canon" of Scripture in the fourth century. An event, incidentally, which never actually happened: there is nothing in the canons of the Council of Nicea, nor any other ecumenical council, formalizing or even listing the canon of the Bible. The Council of Laodicea did discuss the issue of the canon, or which books should be read in churches, but did not specify which ones those were, just that only canonical books should be read. There is a spurious later additional document which pretends to be connected to that council, and contains a list, but a) it is obviously a late forgery, as it is absent from almost all the manuscripts, and b) it is a very different list from what we now know; for instance it forbids Philippians, Ephesians, and Revelation. The canon of Scripture was not formalized until 692 in the East at the second Council of Trullan, and in the West not until the Council of Trent in 1552. And of course, neither of these was ecumenical.

I have issues with the originators and purveyors of this doctrine, in whatever form. But as regards most of those who believe it, they are for the most part sincerely believing and well-meaning people who are just mistaken. Either because they have been taught wrong, or because they have been disappointed in their spiritual lives and that has made them vulnerable to being deceived. When things don't work out, the human tendency is to say, "Well, I guess that doesn't work" and to create a theology to fit one's experience. I was one of those latter for a long time. I never formally held the doctrine of Cessationism, but I adopted a philosophy that God more or less left us to our own devices; because I had experienced so much failure and defeat in my spiritual life (due to my own fault). These people are well-represented by Lewis's character Mr. Macphee, in That Hideous Strength, who, although all these miraculous occurrences are happening all around him, stodgily sticks to his philosophy that it's all superstition and hogwash. But he's still basically a decent man, in spite of his error.

But let us leave aside, for the purposes of this discussion, the other questions of Cessationism; that is, the continued occurrence of signs and wonders, healings, tongues, prophecies, and the like, and focus only on whether God actively speaks to and leads us or not. Because, really, it is not necessary to believe in the former in order to accept the latter. Indeed, that was the position of all the the historic churches until the advent of the charismatic renewal caused them to take either one side or the other. The Roman Catholics, for instance, have always accepted the existence of miracles, apparitions, mysticism, etc.; but they did not formally acknowledge the validity of the continued charismata from around the time of Augustine and Chrysostom until Vatican II. It was only in the Calvinist churches and those heavily influenced by Reformed theology that the aversion to "superstition" was held as a formal doctrine. And then later, when the "Enlightenment" decided that nothing existed beyond the material, its poison seeped into the Church, as such venomous philosophies of the world, sadly, always do. Anyway, let us examine the question, then, in that light.

First of all, I have very serious reservations about any doctrine or theology that did not exist in the Church until fifteen hundred years after its founding. And this one did not. Calvin claimed that he based his doctrine of cessation on Augustine. But that's not what Augustine said. What he wrote, was that tongues no longer occurred as a matter of course when hands were laid on young people and new believers at confirmation.

‘In the earliest times, “the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spake with tongues,” which they had not learned, “as the Spirit gave them utterance.” These were signs adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away.’ (Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John. Homily VI, 10)

But elsewhere he wrote about the great number of miracles, especially healings, which had taken place in his time, many of which he had witnessed personally.

The other Church Father cited by Cessationists is Chrystostom, in whose writing is found a passage where he questions why some things happened in the early Church, but no longer did in his own time; specifically, in regard to the spiritual gifts in 1 Cor. 12.

‘This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. And why do they not happen now? Why look now, the cause too of the obscurity hath produced us again another question: namely, why did they then happen, and now do so no more?’ (Homilies on First Corinthians. Homily XXIX, 1)

But again, Chrysostom himself, in other writings, reported miraculous healings that he had personally witnessed, as well as discussing various means for the casting out of demons.

So again, while it is true that the charismata, as such, as specifically practiced by the early Church and enumerated by St. Paul in his epistles, seem to have either died out or at least become far less common as the centuries passed, the cessation of all supernatural or miraculous acts of God among His people was never taught, until Calvin had to explain, in response to Catholic criticisms, why his reformation movement lacked any miracles to confirm that it was a true move of God. I tend to agree with the Catholics on this one. "For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of words, but of power." -- 1 Cor 4:20. But Calvin's new religion was exactly that: a matter of words, and not of power.

This is a very telling point, and is the same thing that has been done on both an individual and corporate level over and over again. That is, churches and individual believers create a doctrine in response  to their own observations and experiences, to explain why their lives differ from the Christian life as depicted in the Bible; why there is no spiritual power in their lives. Then they go back to the Bible, to the Church Fathers, and to Church history, and try to justify that doctrine. This is called eisegesis, and is bad theology. It means reading into the Bible a belief that one already holds, and is the primary reason for the multitude of vehement and vicious divisions that plague the Church. This is in contrast to exegesis, or extracting the meaning from the text and adopting it as one's own belief system, which is good theology.

So, then to what is really the most important point: what does the Bible say on this subject? After all, those who hold to Cessationism claim that the Bible is all-sufficient, containing everything that is needed for the Christian life. So let's see what it actually contains.

Psalm 16:7: I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.

Psalm 25:9: He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.

Psalm 32:8: I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. 

Psalm 37:23: The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand.

Psalm 48:14: This God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even unto death.

Psalm 73:23-24: Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.

Proverbs 3:5-6: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Proverbs 16:9: The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

Job 33:14-18: For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds, then he opens the ears of men and terrifies them with warnings, that he may turn man aside from his deed and conceal pride from a man; he keeps back his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword.

Isaiah 30:21: And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.

Isaiah 8:19-20: And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?  

Matthew 7:7-8: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 

Matthew 28:20: And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. 

Luke 12:11-12: And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. 

John 14:12: Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 

James 1:5: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

This is just a sampling. There are more, throughout the entirety of Scripture. Remember, for instance, though I'm not going to provide all the verses, how in the Old Testament the people actively and continually sought the Lord's will, either through the prophets or through the Urim and Thummim of the priest, or the casting of lots as it is called. And in the New Testament, especially in the Acts of the Apostles, it is always, "the Holy Spirit led us", or "the Holy Spirit forbade us". Or how God continually spoke to them through prophets, like when Paul was warned in every city that bonds awaited him in Jerusalem. There is even at least one instance of the casting of lots to seek God's will in the New Testament: in the selection of Matthias to replace Judas.

Now, here is the Scriptural case for Cessationism:

1 Cor 13:8: Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 

That's it. One verse. Taken completely out of context, and given a highly dubious interpretation, which contradicts itself and is in no way justified by the text.

First of all, this verse is found in a chapter about love, and not about how one received guidance, instruction on church discipline, the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit, or anything of the sort. It's about how love is the greatest of the Christian virtues, and the gifts are mentioned as a means of comparison. He also mentions martyrdom and works of charity as comparisons, but they have not ceased.

Secondly, look at the context; here is the next verse, and those following:

1 Cor 13:9-12: For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So, if Paul is saying that the supernatural works of God and the mystical life of the Christian are going to cease, either with the death of the Apostles or the completion of the New Testament, then since that event, whichever it was, we should have been able to see God clearly, face to face, and to know Him fully, even as we are known by Him. Do we? Most especially, do those Christians who don't accept that He speaks to them and guides them? And, looking back at the first verse, has knowledge ceased? If tongues and prophecy were to cease at a certain point in Church history based on that passage, then knowledge should have too.

Then, there's the issue that the last part of the passage is written in the first person. If "becoming a man," "knowing in full," and "seeing face to face" somehow mean, "having the full revelation of God in the completed canon of Scripture", and that was to occur at some point after the death of all the apostles, how could Paul have spoken of it as something that he, himself, was going to experience? Obviously, this was not what he meant: he was talking about when he (and we) are going to behold God directly in the next life. But even if Paul is referring to something that we can experience here on earth, and not what is to come in the next world, it sounds an awful lot like a mystical experience that he's talking about: seeing God face-to-face, and knowing him personally, intimately. Like I said, self-contradictory.

But here is yet another perspective from which to consider the question: Logically; rationally; why would God spend the entirety of the Bible teaching us that the way to know Him and follow Him is directly to seek his guidance, and then completely change that as soon as the Bible is "finished". And only give us one verse, obscurely hidden and very unclear as to its meaning, to let us know that He really didn't mean everything He'd said previously--that it was only for the guys who wrote the Bible, and now He's leaving us on our own, because we've got a book to go by? It's perverse. It's illogical. It's capricious. It's insane. "Live by this book. Except, don't, because the things it says don't apply to you."

So, to sum up: The case for Cessationism is one Bible verse and two paragraphs from the Church Fathers, all taken out of context. Whereas the case for the continuance of God's activity in the life of the Church and the believer is the entirety of the Bible, the Fathers, and Church history, with the exception of certain specific post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment sects and denominations. I choose to believe the former. And, as it coincides perfectly with my own experience, I take it as confirmation that I am not, in fact, crazy or delusional, but am living the normal Christian life, as God intended.

"I believe in miracles here and now. . . .We ought all of us to be ashamed of not performing miracles and we do not feel this shame enough. We regard our own state as normal and theurgy as exceptional, whereas we ought to regard the worker of miracles, however rare, as the true Christian norm and ourselves as spiritual cripples."

-- C.S. Lewis, Petitionary Prayer

Your heart understood mine,

in the thick of the fragrant night,

as I listened, with ravished soul,

to the tones of your beloved voice