Anti-Christian Stereotypes

One of the most difficult things to do is argue against the historical "urban legend" type of arguments that agnostics throw in the face of Christians. It is difficult because it must be done again and again with little apparent effect. For instance, the theologians of the Medieval world never taught that the Earth was flat. Aquinas, for instance, knew it was round. Yet again and again you will hear people say that Medievals were afraid of sailing too far from shore since they thought they would fall over the edge.

One recurring myth concerns the figure of Giordano Bruno, a putative scientist who died defending Galileo's ideas. In fact, Bruno was apparently an unlikeable man in a number of ways, and he got himself into trouble for practicing the occult and for being nasty to his sponsors. Today, we would insist that it was wrong to burn him for his views, but we would be right to say that he is not a poster boy for Reason and Enlightenment.

The problem is, of course, that even with these kinds of refutations, such historical myths seem to live on. This suggests that those who accuse Christians of being fearful of using their intellects are in fact afraid themselves to alter their own erroneous views based on reasonable evidence. The opponents of Christianity often base their arguments on subrational desires to be free from religious constraints, not on real historical truth.

Reading Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels has a stereotyped reputation of being a children's book. People who think this obviously haven't read the book. Swift's novel is about many things, some of them rather obscure, since the book makes numerous hidden references to people and events of the day. In spite of this dense allusiveness of the book, though, it deals with perennial issues that we deal with even today.

One of the things the novel is concerned with is, ultimately, original sin. Swift's depiction of the multifarious ways in which humans are grotesquely distorted from their created purposes is sometimes hard to face, even when couched in ridiculous satire. The novel ultimately reflects humanity back to itself, showing us what we look like without redeeming grace.

Freedom of the Will

We've been discussing some of the ideas and strategies of Erasmus and Luther on freedom of the will. Though our purpose is not to tell anyone what he or she must believe, we do want to clarify ideas so that others (and ourselves) can come to more informed decisions concerning Christian doctrine. The Institute does not exist to promote a particular vision of the Christian faith, and we do not intend to tell students (or anyone else) what they must believe. Even so, it is good to look at these ideas from the past and engage them for our own intellectual and spiritual profit.

Since there was some real, solid dialogue over the issue that set Erasmus and Luther upon one another, I thought it might be helpful to see one Lutheran's brief take on the place of good works and faith. This blog entry certainly won't solve the problem, of free will nor will it explain in depth the issues involved. But it will help give a brief overview of what Luther was getting at by rejoicing in the lack of free will to choose God and to do works naturally that please Him.

You don't have to become a Lutheran to understand and appreciate Luther, and you don't have to become a Roman Catholic to understand and appreciate Erasmus. But to appreciate and understand, you do have to learn what they are really saying. That's getting educated.

Shakespeare Resources

This site for Shakespeare essays (that is, essays on Shakespeare, not essays by Shakespeare) is an example of the good and the bad side of the Internet. On the one hand, it is good because many of these essays are genuinely helpful and come from a variety of backgrounds and serve a variety of purposes. On the other hand, many of the links are dead.

One could go to a traditional library and find a fifty year old essay stowed away somewhere in a bound collection of journals or on microfiche. Today, the 'net is hit and miss. Something that might last for five years suddenly disappears one day and you can't find it anymore.

The 'net brings us some good stuff, but it is also curiously impermanent in some ways. It is transitory like the computer technology itself that has to be updated every five years (or less) at enormous expense, whereas the books waiting in the library can be cracked open even if they haven't been touched in decades. Can one ever expect a server, a hard drive, or a cd-rom of today to be accessible in fifty years? They will all be in a landfill or an attic or a museum somewhere.

Just some thoughts.

Russian Lear

Even though we are pretty much finished with our study of Shakespeare, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out one version some of you might want to watch.

This Russian version does some pretty amazing things visually with the story, such as in this scene; here, the storm scene is re-envisioned as a collection of the powerless among whom Lear falls in. The film is full of these interesting variations on what we normally assume Lear should look like.

The Cordelia in this version is one of the best I've seen. It seems that Cordelia is a hard part to play without going overboard. Portraying love and mercy is hard to do in film ,a medium that is better at displaying evil and horror since those are visually more appealing than goodness.

The stark black and white colors also serve the story well.

Finally, this version is a testimony to how much power Shakespeare has on even non-English speakers. The number of film, operas, and plays based on Shakespeare in other languages suggests that his power is not just in his amazing use of language.