Eyre Lines

The attacks in Paris last night are horrifying in their death toll, the number of those injured and that fact that there was no conceivable offence which the victims had committed, apart, that is, from living in France. My prayers go with the families of those killed and injured, and with the people of Paris and of France who are coming to terms with the shock.

There are already a lot of idiot statements going around the web, and no doubt there will be many more in the future, but before I get to those, I find I am shocked not to have heard anything from the media about the bombings in Beirut and Baghdad before yesterday, and I suspect I might never have heard about them had it not been for the Paris attacks. Our media has failed us in this; lives do not matter less because they are in the Middle East than in Europe, or because they are those of people with a different religion or a different skin colour. Nor do they matter less because Beirut and Baghdad are far less shocked than is Paris, as they are more used to such atrocities – indeed, we should perhaps consider that Beirut and (in particular) Baghdad deserve special sympathy because there, the violence is more frequent and therefore more damaging to morale.

Some of those idiot statements have come from the French President, François Hollande, in various statements. He talks about severe measures, and about a war on terror, and did that even before anyone had claimed responsibility for the attacks. I can understand that a politician will feel the need to capture the mood of his country, and that that mood is one of wishing to have vengeance for the damage. A statesman, however (and I would have hoped that the president of a major European nation might have managed to achieve that status) would seek to guide the people rather than ride the wave of their anger, and precipitate action is one of the things which terrorists most hope to cause. He would acknowledge the anger, state that he shares it and talk about prevention of a future atrocity and taking measured steps against those ultimately responsible.

Let me start with “war on terror”. This is a ridiculous concept, almost as much so as a war on drugs (do I go out and shoot a few aspirin?). Wars are between sovereign nations, and the vast majority of terrorist groups are not acting on behalf of a sovereign state (though the military of many nations may be guilty of terror attacks themselves). Curiously, these attacks are possibly an exception, in that credit has been claimed by IS, who are de-facto a sovereign state, holding a large swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria. I think he would have been justified in principle in declaring war on Islamic State – I am even inclined to think that this meets the criteria necessary for starting a just war under Augustine’s and Aquinas’ principles (jus ad bellum). Of course, no-one wants to recognise IS as a state…

This topic, in fact, came up in last night’s Global Christian Perspectives webcast, in which Allan Bevere went into some detail about just war, and rightly pointed out that it is not just the issue of whether you go to war which is subject to moral principles (originally specifically Christian, but now in theory accepted as good argument in international law), but also whether the war is waged justly (jus in bello). If you cannot wage war justly, even if it is just to start a war, you have no moral alternative but to sue for peace or surrender, according to Augustine and Aquinas. Major principles are that there must be a reasonable prospect of success, and that you must not kill innocents.

There, I think we have huge difficulties, firstly in safeguarding innocents. Certainly, efforts to date in the “war on terror” have resulted in very large numbers of innocent casualties – many more innocents than terrorists, in fact. Unless we change our way of dealing with this (and there is really no alternative to “boots on the ground” given the lamentable accuracy of targeting from the air – this piece of idiocy from Allen West is actually right on point; I might think that he was a liberal speaking satirically if I didn’t know better), we will not possess “jus in bello” and cannot reasonably wage war even against IS.

Secondly, what remote possibility is there of ever declaring success? In particular, what possibility is there of success when we are not prepared to occupy (for an indefinite but no doubt very long period) even the states which we have held accountable for past terrorism? It is, of course, very widely appreciated that where you kill innocents in significant numbers, you actually create new terrorists in greater numbers than the reduction you tend to achieve, and certainly create more sympathy for the terrorists’ cause; certainly the terrorists understand this, and the overreaction is one of the outcomes they most desire. What possibility is there of success when prosecuting the “war” actually makes more new terrorists than it kills, and where significant numbers of them are living in states which have no responsibility for their actions, sometimes our own nations?

I recently linked again from facebook to my 2013 meditation on Remembrance Day, and the sentiments there are still entirely valid. If anything, though, the more I read the gospels, the less I think that Jesus would have approved any of the Just War concepts which Augustine came up with; he would not approve war at all. I am not quite at the point of being able to say that I would never support my country going to war in any circumstances (though I thoroughly approve Jeremy Corbyn’s undertaking that if he became Prime Minister, he would never order the use of nuclear weapons, and hope that the right wing and the media are wrong that this makes him unlelectable), but at the least, can we try to adhere to Just War principles?

I now realise that I missed something in my 2013 account. Although I rightly, I think, determined that no war my country had fought in the last 100 years or more had been just with the exception of World War II, I missed the fact that the way Britain fought the war emphatically did not meet just war standards, as we deliberately targeted civilian populations (first with the excuse that the Germans had first bombed London, which it proves was in error when a raid overshot industrial targets). I think I can therefore now say that we have not fought a completely just war at any time in history which I can think of.

I realise that in saying that, I am going completely against a lot of public mood, particularly at present in France. I will also probably make myself unpopular in many circles if I point out that the fact that my country, France and Spain have been targeted by Islamic terrorists follows our own actions in bombing and invading Islamic countries, and killing large numbers of innocent Muslims. It is, no doubt, difficult for someone whose home is bombed and whose family members are killed or maimed to appreciate that we were not waging war on them and that the correct action is not to come and bomb us.

I do not think that I would be inclined to accept the excuse of someone who killed my wife that she was “collateral damage”, for instance, though I would hope that my Christian principles would win out over my natural urge to do them at least as much damage in return, and if not them personally, then their families, their friends or those associated with them, or in paroxysms of grief, those who looked a bit like them or shared their politics or religion – it is scary what the frustration of powerlessness in the face of loss can do to human morality, what depths otherwise civilised people are prepared to sink to. I could here point out Rene Girard’s work on the futility of redemptive violence and his identification of the Crucifixion as the “last scapegoat”, after which we need not look to violence to redeem anything.

War is hell. It crucifies people and nations. We should do everything in our power to avoid it. And, if we are a Christian nation, or a nation whose sense of morality was forged in Christianity even if we have moved on from that belief, we should consider very seriously the injunction to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

France, however, is not feeling much like that at the moment (and who can blame them?). Feelings, however, do not have to become actions, and a statesman might point that out. On the back of that, there are some other stupid statements. “It’s because of all the refugees” is one obvious one. Well, despite the fact that I now hear that a Syrian man who is known to have come via Lesbos may be implicated (and I’m afraid I find that all too convenient to those arguing against the refugees), in general the refugees are trying to get away from the people who do these things. Christianity inherited from Judaism an obligation of hospitality towards the stranger, which Europe is not doing a very good job of upholding so far, and it would be a tragedy if the borders now closed completely, which is certainly what not a few people are suggesting. You might argue that Europe is post-Christian, but it has emerged out of Christianity and in theory still holds to largely Christian principles. It could be that the basic European principle of free movement of people within Europe (to which my country does not wholly subscribe) may be ending here, and that would be a tragedy for Europe and a victory for the terrorists. If you’re in the States, contemplate what the imposition of full border controls between the individual states would do to, for instance, the commute from New Jersey to New York…

Equally damaging is the suggestion that the attacks must be because of security failures, and therefore we should massively increase security measures. One of the things which makes Europe a great place to live, work and holiday in is that it is relatively free, we are not a set of police states, a set of nations obsessed with looking over our shoulders. If we lose that as a reaction to these attacks, again the terrorists have won. We also value free speech, and that would vanish under such a regime – in point of fact that has already been horribly eroded due to previous attacks (such as those on Charlie Hebdo, in central London and on trains in Madrid).

A statesman would say that there is a value in being European, a value created from our common beliefs in justice and mercy, tolerance, freedom of movement, freedom of speech and freedom of belief. He would suggest that if we react in such a way as to reduce those values, the terrorists have destroyed us. 8 men with guns and some explosives will have caused the destruction of the dream of a multi-national union of some 750 million people, and we will largely have done it to ourselves.

A Christian statesman might remind us that Jesus said “what you do to the least of these, you do to me”.

There have been a few exchanges on facebook between James McGrath, whose blog “Exploring our Matrix” is justly one of the most celebrated Christian blogs, and Laurence Moran, who blogs at “Sandwalk” occasioned by a blog post by Jerry Coyne commenting on a recent BBC poll indicating that 40% of Britons don’t think there was a historical Jesus. There seems to be, to say the least, a failure of meeting of minds. The link to the Sandwalk blog incorporates some of that.

Coyne, supported by Moran, is of the opinion that there really is no persuasive evidence for Jesus, so the 40% of my countrymen who seem to think that Jesus never existed are on sound ground.

This rests on four foundations, firstly the fact that there is no plausible historical evidence for Jesus outside the Bible; references in Josephus are discounted as forged. Well, there are two references to Jesus in Josephus, in book 18, chapter 3, 3 of the Antiquities of the Jews, and in book 20, chapter 9, 1. The first of these is without much doubt partially forged, in that at some point a Christian scribe has added some wording. Scholars vary as to how much wording has been added; those who wish to see the evidence as weak tend to go further than the scholars and consider that if any of the statement is inauthentic, the whole can be discounted, which very few current scholars would agree with.

However, those seeing the evidence as weak generally go on either to ignore the second or to claim (against virtually all scholarship at any point) that it is also a forgery. This is, I think, an untenable position for a serious historian; the second quotation thus establishes the existence of Jesus as the brother of James, about whom Josephus writes at some length. It does not, however, give any other detail about Jesus. Nor do the various references in Roman historians to the early Christians, noted as being a problem from the reign of Nero onward in Rome and Asia Minor, as the mythicists are keen to point out.

They also tend to say that the Romans were assiduous record keepers and nothing about Jesus has been found in Roman records. This is a non-argument, as nothing about any other Palestinian Jew of the period has been found in Roman records either. They may have kept a lot of records, but almost none of them have survived!

The second foundation is to dismiss everything written in the Bible as being without historical value. Generally, this revolves around an attack on the Gospels as written at the least some tens of years after Jesus’ given lifetime and on some accounts as much as 100 years later (an extreme dating for the Fourth Gospel); some further stretch the point and attribute a second or third century date, on the basis that there probably are second and third century alterations to the texts.

In doing so, they tend to ignore the fact that the genuine 7 Pauline letters are virtually incontrovertibly dated to between 40 and 45 for the earliest and 60-65 for the latest, or to dismiss them as having little detail of Jesus’ actual life. That second fact is entirely correct; Paul is depressingly (for a biblical historian) disposed to ignore what Jesus actually said and did in favour of writing about his importance for people at the time of writing.

The snag there is that Paul not only confirms (and is confirmed by) Josephus in referring to James as brother of Jesus, but he also reports a number of pre-existing traditions about Jesus, notably including that he was crucified by the Romans and is worshiped as Lord, this within 10 to 15 years of the date of his death. He is plainly joining what is already a well-established community of believers at that point.

The third foundation is to attack the blatant failures of historical accuracy (such as the census of Quirinius, which could not have had the effect claimed nor have been at the time specified) and the presence of supernatural events (miracles) as entirely removing any credibility from the Gospel accounts. I don’t think we can do that (and neither do 99+% of historians). Certainly, as Dr. McGrath strives hard to point out, historians are going to discount any report involving a miracle (or, indeed, any supernatural event at all) as being too unlikely ever to be capable of historical proof.

(As an aside there, I would note that a historian of thought would not discount those aspects of the gospels, but a historian of thought is merely cataloging what people were thinking and not what actually happened.)

Does the presence of miracles invalidate the Gospels as a source of other material? Not for an historian, as otherwise almost all ancient writers of history would need to be discounted in their entirety, most of them being entirely willing to accept supernatural events or beings as part of history. Neither does some particular factual inaccuracy; historians treat all ancient sources with some suspicion, and are keen to cross check them against other evidence, if there is any. On the other hand, for a source where there is no other evidence one way or another, an historian will tend cautiously to accept that factual claims may be true. Despite the best endeavours of some mythicists to argue that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence (i.e. that events did not happen), this is not historical technique.

The fourth foundation, and that which seems to be a stumbling block in the discussions I link to, is the argument that the existence of an historical person called Jesus who in fact did not turn water into wine or rise from the dead, or say quite a lot of the things he is reported to have said (if we believe the Jesus Seminar who, to be fair, are not too much more sceptical than the bulk of NT scholars) would not be sufficient to say that there was an historical Jesus. The only way you can say that there was an historical Jesus, according to this argument, is if he actually was God incarnate, claimed to be the Son of God, performed miracles and rose from the dead. Dr. McGrath entirely correctly points out that historians could never say that any of these things was an historical fact, and indeed my reading of him for some years indicates to me that he probably thinks that supernatural causes did not operate in the first century any more than they operate today, which is to say that they very probably never did operate.

The argument is very much that in order to say there was an historical Jesus, the person identified must have substantial identity to the Jesus described in the Bible, and if you cannot say that, you cannot say that there was an historical Jesus. This is, it seems to me, a foolish argument. We do not, for instance, say that because it was said of Augustus Caesar that he was son of God and God, and that he was miraculously conceived, then there was no historical Augustus Caesar. Equally, we do not say that because a lot of people have seen Elvis after the date of his death, then Elvis never existed. We equally do not say that as (say) ancient historians writing of a battle must be discounted in total because they got the date of the battle wrong some years after the event (or because it was not, according to archaeological evidence, the unmitigated success which the winning side claimed, or because the numbers of troops involved prove to have been massively inflated).

Any suggestion these days that there was no historical Jesus, on whom the stories in the New Testament were based, is, frankly, an insult to generations of scholars, many of them atheist, agnostic or non-Christian, who have spent years of study piecing together an account of a real person who was called Jesus and was crucified by the Romans in around the year 30. It cannot be argued that they were serving an apologetic end, either, as generally their efforts to use historical method have resulted in howls of protest from conservative believers and often loss of position or reputation. Yes, it can be argued that different scholars see different patterns in the evidence, some emphasising the Jewish wisdom teacher, some the mystic, some the social radical, some the apocalyptic prophet. Actually, it is entirely possible for all of those to be aspects of one complex personality.

The situation is, I think, rather well summed up in this article; in particular I share the embarrassment of the author that as many as 40% of my fellow countrymen are so badly historically educated. However, I do not share the opinion that Christianity must fail completely if it could be shown that there were no historical Jesus (any more than Buddhism would fail if it could be shown there was no historical Gautama Buddha). Christianity, to my mind, rests far more on the actual experience of Christians, and Christians experience Jesus here and now – and it is not really relevant to the survival of the religion how exactly it is that they experience Jesus. I could certainly live with a determination that there was in fact no historical Jesus myself!

The thing is, if there in fact were no historical Jesus, there would have had to be an invention of Jesus. Richard Carrier (who is notable as being one of only two or three mythicists with advanced degrees which actually relate to the area) has addressed this issue in a talk.

Carrier is superficially plausible in this talk; his quantity of study time definitely shows. However, we must remember that in that video he is making a case, not presenting a dispassionate view. I ought, I suppose, to be more impressed with Carrier – I do not, for instance, have any relevant degrees myself. However, I am a retired lawyer, and making, countering and assessing arguments is part of the professional expertise of a lawyer.

Starting with Philo is particularly powerful, as Philo’s writings, in my view, have to have been the basis of the thinking of the author of the Fourth Gospel; the author was taking a set of concepts which Philo developed and applying those to the person of Jesus. That said, Philo does not, of course, identify his angelic figure as being called “Jesus”, he merely refers to a passage from Zechariah which deals with a high priest called Joshua (granted, that is another anglicisation of the Hebrew form of Yeshua).

I am much less impressed with the collection of dying and resurrecting gods which Carrier outlines. These are in every case fertility gods, representing the cycle of the seasons with rebirth in spring and death in winter; this is a motif strikingly lacking from anything in the New Testament, and suggestions that the Osiris cult may have involved personal salvation may well be arguing that result is cause and vice versa, as I see no evidence that this tendency existed in Osiris cults before the late first century. I also see no significant evidence that the cults of these gods involved a real historical incarnation, at least not before the concept was current in the nascent Christianity.

Where his argument is strongest, however, is in the entirely correct observation that the earliest witness, Paul, does not talk about details of Jesus’ life, merely his death. This is, to my mind, the biggest single argument against the process suggested by Carrier. Yes, there was an incentive to revitalise Judaism following the destruction of the Temple (which, I point out, occurred some years after Paul’s death), but were you trying to do this, you would not choose as an historical referent someone who would be likely to be remembered by people still alive, and you would definitely not choose someone about whom the main historical fact claimed was that he had been crucified by the Romans. That fact by itself negated any claims of being the messiah for mainstream Judaism (and still does); reference to the “suffering servant” passages in Isaiah ignores the fact that in Judaism before and since, those passages were not seen as being messianic and referred to the nation of Israel as a whole; the messianic connection was made by followers of Jesus looking for foreshadowings in previous scripture (and yes, I accept Carrier’s statement that the early followers were doing a form of pesher on the scriptures with that in mind). As Paul says on more than one occasion, this is a stumbling block to Jews.

I think it is worth mentioning here that an experienced advocate will use ridicule (as Moran does with this reference to Humpty Dumpty and Carrier does with his reference to space aliens) in only two circumstances (as otherwise he weakens his argument). The first is where he really does not have a strong case and is grasping at straws. The second is where he is insulting the intelligence of his audience, as I note often occurs (and fairly frequently works) in jury trials. Personally, I do not appreciate having my intelligence insulted.

There is a further major point, however, which Carrier completely ignores. To start with, as James McGrath points out, the historical move which is apparent from careful study of the New Testament documents is actually from an historical figure (albeit one worshiped from a very early stage) to a more divine, cosmic one, and not from angel to historical figure. Granted, the earliest writer, Paul, talks almost exclusively about the significance of Jesus as a cosmic figure rather than as an historical person, but this is relatively quickly corrected by the three synoptic gospels, or at least by the materials used by the evangelists to construct their writings, which may well have predated Paul.

As I mention above, supernatural claims, such as divine status and miraculous birth, were often attributed to historical figures such as Augustus and his successor emperors. Alexander the Great was a notable earlier example, and some earlier Greek healers who were probably historical were credited with miraculous healings. So too in Judaism were a number of early Rabbis (such as Eliezar and Honi the Circle Drawer) credited with miracles. The mindset of the time demanded that great men were not like common beings, but had something of the divine about them, and this resulted in such stories. Indeed, that mindset has not completely left us, as witness Elvis still being alive according to some!

This is a known, natural progression. I would therefore choose this as a probable mechanism over any suggestion from Carrier that a pre-existing godlike figure was alleged without any historical basis to have existed for a time in first century Palestine. That, however, raises another issue. How is it that a relatively insignificant Jewish carpenter’s son, killed as, in effect, a terrorist, started having this kind of story told about him within at the outside ten years of his death, and more probably during his lifetime?

The only viable answer to that question which I can see is that there was indeed an historical Jesus, and that he was an entirely exceptional man, capable of inspiring remarkable devotion among his followers. Yes, not everything which was later written about him is historically true, and not everything which he is claimed to have said is at all likely actually to have passed his lips, but he must have been unique (and he became more unique in the hearts and minds of his followers over the next 350 years to the point at which the Roman Empire became Christian).

And that brings me to my last point. Carrier refers to Cargo Cults as a reference for how strange beliefs can arise; I find that wholly unconvincing. However, within my lifetime there has been a Jewish Rabbi who became hailed as “King Messiah” by his followers, and still is after his death, with a “second coming” anticipated by some; I refer of course to the Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. I consider him a far better parallel for how a Jewish messiah figure can arise and gain a large following which persists after his death. The Rebbe was indeed an entirely exceptional man, and had he lived in the first century, I have little doubt that he would be said to have performed many miracles. In point of fact, he IS said to have performed miracles. He is also said to have pre-existed his mortal lifetime.

None of this means that Rebbe Schneerson was not a real historical person.

The trouble with the arguments of the mythicists is that they are just that, arguments. They have to be seen as you would view the statements of counsel for the prosecution (or defence) in a trial; they make the best case they can for their chosen position. In a trial, you always have the adversarial point of view presented, and must then make up your mind whether one or the other is correct, or whether the truth actually lies somewhere between the two. I should therefore point out that what I write here is not the case for the other side; neither are the posts of James McGrath  I link to or the whole book on the topic written by Bart Ehrman (who is neither a Christian nor, indeed, a believer). All three of us are weighing the evidence on both sides and attempting to reach a measured conclusion; the case for the other side is that of those who claim that everything in the Gospels is historical, of which you can find many.

 

Over the last couple of months, I’ve seen a lot of very favourable words written by left-leaning sources firstly about Pope Francis and then about Bernie Sanders, followed by some push-back from people who don’t think they measure up to the ideal of a leftist which the commentators would like. I grant that in neither case is that criticism anything like notable compared with the howls of conservative anger, but it is definitely there

Francis, for instance, is criticised for not pushing the church in the direction of equality for women, abortion or homosexuality.  I have no idea whether he would want to, and frankly that doesn’t matter to me; the fact is that he is saying some things about poverty, climate change and global capitalism which I think are thoroughly in accordance with the teachings of both Jesus and his sainted namesake. Even if he wanted to move towards a more liberal position on sexual equality or abortion, he has stirred up quite enough controversy in the traditionally very conservative halls of the Vatican already, and to stir up more would be distinctly a bridge too far.

Bernie Sanders has similarly received criticism for not being left wing enough. (Yes, for my US readers, Sanders is in fact not very left wing at all by international standards). He’s not, apparently, sufficiently loudly in favour of black Americans, nor is he a wholly believable anti-Zionist. (Actually, I think he’s adequately to the left on those issues, just not rabidly so). Apparently, in order for “liberals” to support him, he needs to tick every possible liberal-progressive-radical box, just as does Francis. (Incidentally, I’m using “liberals” in the US sense there – “liberals” in the UK are centrists, often with a somewhat anti-big-government tinge to them).

I really have no time for this “bounded set” thinking, where unless you tick every box, you’re not “one of us”. I far prefer the idea of a centred set, where there are one or several markers, and anyone who is moving toward any of them is a member, even if they may be slightly further from the absolute centre on other points. The left should thank it’s lucky stars that they have in Francis and Sanders two people who are moving closer to their ideal location than has been seen in either of their institutions in generations. If the left regards itself as a tribe with rigidly defined boundaries as to who is out and who is in, they will never succeed; if they regard themselves as following general directions, they will find a lot of people walking in the same direction.

I say that as someone who by US standards is definitely well to the left myself – though in UK terms, I’ve been a centrist since my teenage years, although the centre of gravity of UK politics has moved a long way right over that time and I haven’t.

My irritation here is not by any means confined to the left, however. The right, and particularly the religious right, also do it and have been doing it for a long time. I spare some thoughts of sympathy for the Reverend Rob Schenck, whose credentials as a conservative evangelical are stellar, and with whom I disagree on almost every subject. Rev. Schenck has recently taken the entirely logical step of deciding that if he is against abortion in any form due to a high view of the sanctity of life, he must therefore also be in favour of gun control. Many of the conservative evangelical tribe are busily disowning him. Apparently in order to be a conservative Christian in the States, you also need to be in favour of unrestricted ownership of deadly weapons, and he is not any more.

There is absolutely no danger that the progressive left tribe are going to take him to their bosoms and welcome him into the fold of true believers, as this is only one of the many markers he would need to adopt, so he is left in the uncomfortable position of being in the middle.

Uncomfortable, that is, only if you feel the need to belong to one of the two tribes (both of which would prefer to see everyone as one or the other). Actually, just like Francis and Sanders, Schenck is in the position of most of us, not agreeing with everything which either extreme puts forward.

Welcome to post-tribal humanity, where you can (and should) look critically at all the sacred cows of both left and right!

 

I’ve had much the same kind of question asked of me a few times recently. In essence, it’s “Chris, you don’t believe in the supernatural, so how can you be a Christian?”

This tends to come up which someone puts to me that, in order to be a Christian, I have to believe that some supernatural event either took place or will take place (usually the first). It is, I’m sorry to say, completely beyond me to say honestly that I believe that any supernatural event actually happened. That said, I also can’t say honestly that I believe that any supernatural event didn’t or couldn’t happen. I am, strictly speaking, agnostic on the subject, though I have a powerful tendency against seeing supernatural causes for things.

This is because I am methodologically naturalistic. That’s a mouthful, but what it means is that where anything happens, I look for naturalistic explanations, explanations which rest on the operation of established scientific principles. Almost every Christian I know tends strongly to do the same; OK, I did hear a preacher recently who claimed to have tried to walk on water, buoyed up by God’s power (he failed, on his account), but very few people of my acquaintance would try this with even a remote expectation of success. Most think that the popular story of the man caught in a flood quite reasonably justifies methodological naturalism even if you believe that God just might intervene (and I agree).

Where I perhaps start parting company with some more conservative Christians is that where I cannot find a plausible naturalistic explanation for some event, I assume that there actually is some naturalistic explanation, it’s just that either I’m not clever enough to figure it out or there is some feature of reality which science hasn’t yet found an explanation for, but might in principle. The figures aren’t as much with me there as in the previous case, but I think probably a majority of the Christians I know take pretty much that view except when considering miracles in the Bible. They would, for instance, take exactly the same view as I do when considering an account drawn from Judaism other than in the Bible (say the story of the Oven of Akhnai), but still hold that Jesus actually multiplied the loaves and fishes.

Then  there’s the case of events for which there’s definitely a naturalistic explanation, but which seem to people to be coincidental beyond the bounds of expectation. There, a majority of the Christians I know tend to talk of God guiding events, and I reserve my position, because I know too much about human tendencies to detect patterns in the random (hyperactive agency detection) and other cognitive biases. I notice, for instance, that the same people who detect the hand of God where something good happens to them very often don’t detect the hand of God where something bad happens, though some I know tend to identify those as the work of Satan.

Actually, the concept that God is not an agent in the world is a lot more respectable than many of my questioners might think. Formal scholastic Catholic thinking, for instance, as well as being keen on Aquinas’ for proofs of (the existence of) God, also decided that “exist” was the wrong concept to use of God, as it argued that God was a part of creation rather than the creator. I happen to disagree with Aquinas’ five proofs and the Catholic insistence on God’s complete otherness, but they do represent theological orthodoxy on the point. How miracles could actually happen on this basis rather escapes me, however, as a completely separate God would seem to have no mechanism to effect miracles!

Going back to the question of naturalistic phenomena for which science does not as yet have a viable explanation, I’m open to possibilities. Indeed, back in my youth I spent a lot of time exploring such concepts as astrology, astral projection, telepathy and telekinesis – I was, after all, 15 in the year when the musical “Hair” proclaimed the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and the New Age movement was becoming popular, and having just had a peak mystical experience which scientific naturalism didn’t have any good description or explanation of. I was, however, looking for evidence that the phenomena occurred, and trying to develop naturalistic concepts of how they did (if they did).

The snag is, I ended up with the conclusion that none of these things actually works, at least not in any remotely reliable manner. Not, at any event, in any place other than the consciousness of the person who is trying to do things; there, some New Age concepts can definitely have profound effects. I say this with one caveat; there is, I think, a small possibility that some of these may operate if and only if all the people involved fervently believe that they will (this would mean that they would probably not operate if any sceptical observer were involved). I think this unlikely, given that an “all believer” audience will be prone to detect what they expect irrespective of whether it has in fact happened, but I cannot rule out the possibility.

That said, I have personally experienced what I interpret as God breaking down the resistance of a very sceptical individual with no belief in any such thing as the supernatural, let alone God, and providing a set of insights; this was what happened in my first peak mystical experience. I have also experienced (due to a large amount of experimentation in my younger days) the apparent fact that certain techniques can improve the likelihood of such peak experiences happening, including certain forms of prayer and meditation (which I recommend); so can things such as sleep deprivation and temporary anoxia, and certain drugs (which I do not recommend).

Was this a “supernatural” occurrence? I don’t know. I have gone over the circumstances of my first such experience in detail with doctors, psychologists and several ardent sceptics, and we cannot identify a cause from within any of those science has identified a mechanism for. I had done nothing to facilitate such an experience and didn’t desire one, having no conception that that was a possibility. No drugs were involved, I was neither sleep-deprived, anoxic or stressed and electromagnetic stimulation was easily ruled out. I was not epileptic or schizotypal (or any of the other potential neuropsychological candidates). That leaves us with either an as yet unidentified physical (or neurological) cause or supernatural intervention.

In passing, I can’t really do more experimentation, as all repetitions of the experience have followed a lot of work conditioning my mind and practising prayer and meditation, so might well result from that rather than from whatever the cause of the original experience was. I can say, however, that I have not found it possible to “force” a full-bodied repetition – those are few and far between and seem to be “out of the blue” as well. I think the evidence is that certain practices improve the likelihood, however, and therefore recommend prayer and meditation without any note of caution (and anything else with considerable caution).

Of course, if God is conceived of as fundamentally supernatural, it was clearly a supernatural experience. However, one feature of what was an extremely self-verifying experience was that God was radically immanent, i.e. all things were at the least permeated by God to the very smallest and very largest scales, and probably all things could be regarded as being part of God as all fixed boundaries appeared capable (at least) of dissolution; I was a part of this, and all other things were also parts of it. If that is a true insight, then God is in any event able in principle to act through everything that is, including (of course) the material, if one assumes that there is anything which is not material in and of itself.

I therefore, on balance, think that there was some mechanism the details of which are not clear to me (though one of my atheist friends said it must have been a “brain fart”). It is, of course, possible that this mechanism was God (whether supernatural or immanent) deciding to do this. Another facet of the experience was that God had at least some aspects of what I understand as being a person.

I think it reasonable to point out that most people who believe in a supernatural God also believe that God acts in rational ways, and develop theologies which, probably non-accidentally, have an objective of being able to predict what God will do in any particular circumstance. This, it seems to me, is almost imperceptibly different from me seeking to establish by what mechanism this occurred. We are all, in one sense, trying to psychoanalyse God. There are plenty of scriptures to indicate both that one shouldn’t do that and that it won’t work, including Isaiah 55:8, the whole of Ecclesiastes and the last portion of Job.

These, indeed, illustrate my problem; I do not know how anyone else can experience something akin to my peak experiences (and I would dearly like more people, and preferably all people, to be able to – these have been by far the best experiences of my life), and if this all does indicate a God who is acting as an agent and can break into the minds of humans at will, why does this not happen more often?

This does, however, leave me with the conclusion that God acts in the world, in all probability, only by influencing the minds of His creatures.

 

My Small Group has been doing the Jeff Lucas series “Elijah, Prophet at a Loss”, and I got to lead the last session recently.

First, a few words about the series. On the whole, it’s pretty reasonably constructed and at least intended to leave those leading sessions fairly little to do. It takes a standard evangelical approach to scripture, but there is material on which you can base excursions beyond that. There are four sessions, and each then has five days worth of short readings and bible passages, plus a prayer. Jeff writes rather good short prayers. I do worry that having five readings after the last actual session doesn’t allow a neat conclusion, though (especially given the tendency of groups to “do their homework” if at all, the day before the next session…).

However, the series only deals with Elijah’s earlier career, and ends with an episode where he becomes completely dis-spirited, so the last session material deals with depression, stress and burnout. In fact, I added some material at the end of the session to underline a more upbeat trajectory from Elijah’s later story and his reputation in Judaism and as referred to in Mark 8:27-8 (inter alia).

The “icebreaker” question for the session involves drawing a picture representing your worst fear. I elected to just ask people to share, suspecting rightly that the group would balk at drawing, but even that was, it proved, asking for more disclosure than many were happy with.

And, of course, I was completely targeted (I’m assured, and I believe, that knowledge of my history was not in anyone’s minds when allocating that session to me, which makes it one of those coincidences which either reality or a hyperactive pattern recognition tends to interpret as a guiding hand). I’m the only member of the group who has suffered a major clinical depression (or debilitating stress, or burnout), so I had a story to share, and I’m a twelve stepper, so I’m not unused to sharing my story.

Now, whether Elijah, in the story, was actually suffering a major clinical depression or merely a depressive episode is uncertain. It was, in the account, fairly short, but did involve a loss of hope and a wish to die (I spent six and a half years telling myself “Just for today, I will not kill myself” and hope, as a positive emotion, was entirely beyond my comprehension at the time). Jeff Lucas has clearly not suffered even as serious a depression as Elijah, and while he tried hard to understand, he could really have done to listen to testimony from someone who has actually been there, like this TED talk from Andrew Solomon. Even better, he could have given a section of the video over to someone who had first hand knowledge. At least he didn’t suggest that some trivial prayer would inevitably cure depression, which I have heard far too many times, but I didn’t feel he communicated the potential severity of the condition, and neither did the group. However, there was, I think, good discussion. I was very glad that I’d prepared a more upbeat ending, though!

My greatest fear, as I explained to the group for the icebreaker, was that my depression might return. It’s not something I dwell on, but in low moments I do wonder if that might be happening, as my slide downwards was not something I really noticed at the time. That, of course, highlights the difference between low mood and depression; I can still have distinctly down times and not be remotely in the same place as clinical depression. Incidentally, I have found that a touch of prayer and meditation is good medicine for low mood!

As came to me in the course of our discussion about fears, however, is the fact that pre-depression (and all the stuff which contributed to it), my greatest fear was of being broke and jobless; eventually the depression resulted in me being both, and that fear has now been more or less eliminated. There’s a good chance that that’s actually because “the worst happened and I survived it”. Circumstances combined to put me in a place I couldn’t see a way to achieving by myself, as I couldn’t then and still can’t bring myself to follow the example suggested to the rich young man by Jesus. I had to have that done for me. That is, of course, a positive I can take from the experience – and rather than accept several years of “ruined time”, I want to find as much positive as I can in it!

I can link this with Elijah’s story at the point we looked at (1 Kings 19); Elijah flees, afraid of death at the hands of Jezebel, but then ends up disspirited and praying for death. Perhaps this was his equivalent of giving up his fear?

From where I stand now, this fear of economic catastrophe led to me being overly concerned for years with making money, latterly trying to make enough to be able to retire and not have to worry about money again in the future. If you look at an operational definition of my position, I was behaving as if money was my main objective in life, rather than spiritual progress or practical care for others, and if you behave as if something is your ultimate objective, you are worshiping it in fact even if not in theory. As the love of money is the root of all evil, and you cannot serve God and Mammon, although I was still trying to give practical care to others as well, in accordance with the social gospel, I can point to that period and say that I was operationally “worshiping strange Gods”, i.e. Mammon, as money frequently came first. I have described free market capitalism as the system of Satan, and I was thoroughly caught up in it. Certainly my spiritual praxis declined almost to nothing over the years against the background of this need to make money; I was by and large not stopping to seek moments of prayer and meditation, to become closer to God.

I can now ask myself if this idolatry of money was, in fact, a major contributing feature of the depression in the first place. However, there’s more. Although at the time our national social security system was not yet broken to the extent that makes unemployment and lack of capital a real demon, I felt that I had to achieve this by my own efforts; I was fiercely self-reliant and did not want to ask for or receive help from anyone else. This in itself was a turning from God; we are repeatedly told to rely on God for our basic needs (and not ourselves), including in the sentence “Give us this day our daily bread”. I was praying that frequently, but I was not really thinking of its full implications, nor those of “give no thought to tomorrow”.

As a last point, the fact that I was always conscious of not yet having enough money, fearing the lack of enough money to buy the basics of existence (Maslow’s lowest two levels at least, and possibly the third as well), made me a slave to work, and a more or less willing slave at that. In my case it was based on a lie I told myself, that I needed not only to have enough for today, but enough for the rest of my life. It wasn’t that I felt that I needed a lot of new stuff all the time, what I wanted was not just to have enough today, but enough forever. However, I look at advertising, which is generally calculated to make you feel that you need stuff you in fact don’t, and consider that it is trying to make us all slaves to money. We are encouraged to have more and more, newer and newer. And we don’t need it – in fact, the perception of that need is bad for us. You might describe it as the Devil’s evangelism.

Finally my thoughts have to turn to those people who don’t even have enough to fulfill the bottom two levels of Maslow’s pyramid, these days in a climate of “austerity” which seems to hit the poorest the most an increasing number, frequently people who actually work very hard, just at jobs which don’t pay enough for even basic requirements of life. They are not free, they are slaves. They have no option but to take such jobs (and, if they can get them, second jobs which give them some small hope of getting as far as Maslow’s third and fourth levels, but never the highest level), no option but to work extremely hard for nothing but a bare minimum.

I can say from my own experience that when you are enslaved this way, it is incredibly difficult to turn your attention to the top two levels proposed by Maslow. It’s very arguable that faith and spirituality are actually in the top level. It’s difficult to turn your attention to the third level, love and belonging, and one would hope that those are available through a church community.

I dream of a society in which Maslow’s two bottom levels are met for every one of us by our community, working as a whole (and that implies that we use the mechanism we have for operating our community, namely the State and lower levels of government). We are not too poor as a country to provide for everyone air, water, food,  and shelter (level 1) and personal and financial security, health care and care in the event of accidents (level 2), and to provide it as of right, provided by those of us fortunate enough to be able to make surplus money, and provided by us as an absolute obligation of living in a community which has some aspiration to be considered civilised, let alone one which is moving towards being the Kingdom of God on earth.

Let us, therefore, demand that government give up the system of Satan, and stop listening to the Devil’s evangelists.

I’ve just read an interesting article on what you might call “other Jewish Messiahs”. I wouldn’t argue with the conclusion that Bar Kochba probably did the most damage to Judaism of all of the 50 or so candidates.

However, I think the article misses the point of why modern Judaism considers Jesus to have been the most damaging. That’s because the result was a major rift in Judaism which produced a new religion which was considered non-Jewish, or at least it was following a rather painful process of separation which is dealt with in a very compelling way by Daniel Boyarin in “Border Lines” and in “A Radical Jew”. There are strong hints of the early stages of that process in Paul’s letters and in the book of Acts, but the process probably didn’t become complete until well after that, probably around the middle of the second century, much aided by Justin Martyr seeking to clarify an identity for Christianity as against Judaism.

How many ethnic Jews actually ended up following the new religion of Christianity is a hotly disputed subject; the standard Orthodox Jewish response would be that vanishingly small numbers of Jews, if any, would have accepted the Pauline disintegration of ethnic distinctives, those things which actually made Jews a people. There is probably now no way of establishing what the truth of the situation actually is; the New Testament witness would argue that significant numbers joined the new movement (I don’t say “converted”, because at the time I don’t think most would think there was a need to “convert”, seeing Christianity as a natural development within Judaism), but is clearly susceptible to allegations of bias. Rome too, it seems, had difficulty distinguishing the two, considering the very early reports of the Jews agitating at the instance of someone called “Chrestus” (Suetonius, writing probably around 100CE).

However, if one can assume that there were indeed significant numbers who joined the new movement (and, of course, all the very early members were Jewish), the fact that a new religion (and one with massive staying power) was thereby started would, I think, rank Jesus as the greatest threat. One has to recall that, for many Orthodox Jews, conversion to any religion other than Christianity is a failing, but becoming a Christian makes someone dead to Judaism (and funeral rites are not infrequently performed in absentia); conversion is thus seen as a form of genocide. Boyarin thinks, and I agree, that this attitude is a part of the increasingly acrimonious split which on the Christian side became antisemitism; I cannot now think that had it been Judaism which had achieved ascendancy there would not have been a major possibility of similar treatment of Christians, given the recent history of a resurgent nationalist Israel.

This thinking, however, leads me to posit a different ranking, based on which messiah figures came closest to instituting a new religion. Sabbatai Zvi has third place after Jesus there; there were at one point a very large number of followers and commentators at the time were concerned about the possibility of that becoming a majority in Judaism. However, the Sabbatarians proved not to have staying power, particularly after the forced conversion of their leader to Islam.

Second place, however, has to go to Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who is perhaps politically skated over by the article (though, to be fair, he cannot be blamed for many, if any deaths). He was the last Lubavitch Rebbe (and earlier Lubavitch Rebbes had also been hailed as messiah to a lesser extent). His followers are extant as Chabad Lubavitch, who have a very prominent presence in conservative Judaism to this day (running many Jewish educational establishments inter alia), and having a substantial proportion of people who still hold that the late Rebbe was Moschiach, and that any prophecies not actually fulfilled by him in his lifetime will be fulfilled in a second coming (some followers say “right idea, wrong guy” to Christians). Of course, they are not officially a separate religion – but not a few Rabbis think that they should be, as they follow someone who, from the strict point of view, is another failed messiah, as he did not fulfill ALL of the prophecies deemed messianic by Judaism. (A note for my Christian readers – these are not necessarily the same prophecies as Christians consider fulfilled or to be fulfilled by Jesus).

To my mind, Chabad escaped being declared a separate religion by the skin of their teeth in the late 20th century. If you were to ask me “Why?”, I might guess that by the time the problem was realised, Chabad actually had too large an influence in Judaism (Christianity might have had were it not for the elimination of most of the Jerusalem Church in 65-70 CE) and also by the fact that there was no-one in Chabad with the interests of Justin Martyr in distancing them from the rest of Judaism.

If nothing else, I think a study of Menachem Schneerson and Chabad casts an interesting light on how Christianity might have developed.

I found a piece on my FB feed today on the origin of the universe, written by a Physicist. “What was the cause of the Big Bang?” it asks.

I find it slightly surprising to find that from a Physicist, to be honest. The author will know well that if there was indeed a “Big Bang” (and it seems overwhelmingly likely that there was, despite the criticism that it has to have been a “one off” event which can’t be replicated so as to produce additional experimental data), the mathematics of the situation demand that there be a singularity at the origin, a point beyond which there is no space and no time.

I’ve become used to the question from laymen “So what caused the Big Bang?”. Everything we experience in normal existence, after all, seems to have a cause, and this is a cataclysmic event which we detect at the earliest point in time.

The thing is, the whole notion of cause demands that there be event a which causes event b, and event a has to be before event b, i.e. earlier in time. When it comes to the Big Bang, however, there is no “earlier” to look at. The idea of “earlier” is impossible, and so the idea of a cause for it is equally impossible.

That can require some getting the head around for most of us. However, in the case of a Physicist, ideas of the random (in which you cannot say something was “caused” because the same supposed cause could have produced a variety of results including the one observed) are prominent. So is the concept of the “Dirac soup”, an universe of elementary particles in which particles pop into existence and out of existence on a purely statistical, random basis; that too seems to be experimentally verifiable.

More even than that, however, is a set of observations in particle physics which seem to give the lie to the whole concept of causation; particles can influence each other at a distance simultaneously, being “quantum paired” and a change in circumstances can actually have an effect earlier than the cause (in the case of this experiment by altering the situation after a particle has passed a double slit).

In the circumstance, it surprised me a little to find a Physicist writing about the “cause of the Big Bang”. Clearly there was and could be no “cause”, because time as well as space just “happened”.

Theologians will probably want to say that as God is atemporal, a cause remains possible. The thing is, “cause” is still an incoherent idea unless one postulates another time-like dimension experienced only by God, and at that one to which God is subject, i.e. experiences as a constraining factor. I suspect most theologians who go down this route are not going to want to concede that God can be constrained by any dimension… If, with God, there is no “before” and no “after”, then with God there is also no “cause”.

And yes, I know this all throws a huge spanner in the concept of God as creator, at least if you interpret it as “creatio ex nihilo”, creation out of nothing. The concept of creation, too, is a time dependent one. I can see little option but to think in terms of creation as a process in which God may well be involved (and I am confident that whatever it is that is God is fundamental to that process), but which it is impossible to say that God originated.

Guns continue to occupy a lot of my facebook feed. There are a lot of very impassioned arguments being made, particularly in the comments sections – as is the case with this article.

I don’t resonate all that well with the author, to be honest, despite agreeing with him completely about climate change and recognising that I’d feel the same kind of lack of safety if I were in the States. If you’re teaching, you teach the facts as nearly as they can be known, and where there’s a substantial scientific consensus, there’s no need to teach minority viewpoints. I can’t see either passionate advocacy or diversions into another topic as being justified, in other words.

Where I do find common ground is in identifying the tendency of all such issues to be dealt with like a set of lawyers in a courtroom, and in particular an US courtroom with a jury (there is, for my US readers, far less use of juries in the UK, including almost all civil cases,, the major exception being defamation). I’ve spent some 25 years as a practising lawyer, and I recognise the tricks – and I’ve also spent 20 years in local politics, so I also recognise the political use of the same tricks.

I used to joke that when a client came to me and said “What does this mean?”, I’d negotiate a fee and then ask “What do you want it to mean?”. This was a cynical attitude which came to me eventually after going into law thinking that a court would decide reasonably correctly on the facts most of the time, and that all the lawyers had to do was to present the best interpretation of the facts from their client’s point of view and leave it to judge and jury (more often just judge or magistrates in the UK). As time went by, I became increasingly convinced that in fact, the victory tended to go to the best lawyer (for which read “best arguer”) more or less irrespective of the facts.

By and large, the best lawyer was also the most expensive lawyer, and the client with a disproportionately large amount to spend was therefore going to win in a lot of cases where they shouldn’t. Even if the small guy managed to get a lawyer who was a really good arguer, the big guy’s lawyers could spend more time and have more people working on the case (as inevitably time costs money), and frequently that would carry the day.

Incidentally, just in case anyone is asking themselves, I had an 85% success rate for not guilty pleas over the course of my career. This may sound really good, but was bolstered by the fact that I wouldn’t plead not guilty for anyone I was confident was in fact guilty. As time went by, I steadily stopped doing trial work, as the feeling that it was not, in fact, producing justice increased and I felt more and more that the system was intrinsically flawed. In addition, the three cases I lost which I was certain were wrongful convictions and the two I won which I became certain by the end of the trial should have been guilty verdicts weighed on me.

That, I point out, is in a situation where I was arguing in front of judges and magistrates, not juries; one could therefore expect that they would be less swayed by false logic and appeals to emotion.

Now, let’s look at the two standards of proof in legal cases. The first, which applies in civil cases, is the test of balance of probabilities. Which of these two situations do you think is more likely to be the case? This is, I think, the standard which we should apply to both climate change and gun control arguments. In both cases, the human cost of getting it wrong is substantial; in the case of climate change it could well be colossal.

The other test is that of proof beyond reasonable doubt, which is the standard which should apply in criminal cases. Actually, my experience in the UK is that most of the time you need to do a lot more than establishing a reasonable doubt, except in front of a jury; judges and magistrates become fairly hard-bitten and I was never confident in an argument before them unless I felt I could manage something close to balance of probabilities.

The problem is with climate change and gun control that there are a lot of people who do not want to restrict their lives in a way which would enable us on the one hand to reduce our CO2 emissions to a reasonable level and on the other, in the States, to give up playing with guns. There are also huge and wealthy corporate interests which would be damaged were we to take the necessary steps to alleviate these problems, and they have a lot of money, and the ability to produce a lot of arguments and a lot of statistics.

That alone would be sufficient, in my mind, to question very closely any claims made against CO2 reduction or gun control. They have the money, and they can buy the media and the research.

It is not, of course, a reason to question particularly closely claims for these unpopular positions; they do not have the money and find it far more difficult to pay for powerful arguments or slanted statistics. Indeed, the other side, having the money, has already done this!

Against this background, I find it striking that a majority of scientists with expertise in climatology or meteorology agree that there is human-caused global warming and that it presents a major threat. It is unfortunate that some proponents of climate change arguments are doing the lawyerly thing and skewing the statistics; it is not 85%, but it is substantially better than 50%. There is, of course, a range of opinions; the vast majority will agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and promotes global warming, but a lesser majority consider that this effect is large in comparison to cyclic changes in climate; there are even a few who argue that there is an underlying trend in the opposite direction in the statistics. That’s unfortunately true; however it is also a truism that “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics”, and it is regrettably easy to skew these.

The thing is, it has really not been in the interests of scientists to find human-caused global warming, just because doing something about it would be unpopular (so few votes) and because all the big money would like to find that there isn’t. Remember – “What do you want it to mean?”. There were, of  course, bound to be a few dissenters – after all, you make a name for yourself in science if you can destroy someone else’s hypothesis.

It also hasn’t been in the interest of politicians – see my comment on votes above, even if you don’t think politicians are swayed by campaign contributions at least as much as by votes. I therefore find it extremely convincing that the consensus of the G8 and of all the national leaders in the EU is that global warming is happening and is significantly human-produced and that reducing CO2 emissions will help. They were not quick to come to this conclusion – some scientists were saying this was likely back in the 1970’s, after all.

The thing is that these are both what a lawyer would identify as “admissions against interest”. Even in the case of a generally very unreliable witness, lawyers pay huge attention to these as they go against the trend of testimony to be self-serving.

Sadly, I can’t identify many admissions against interest in the case of guns in the States. In Australia, yes – their parliaments instituted fairly strong gun control after the Port Arthur massacre, which followed a number of mass shootings. This was in a country with a strong tradition of hunting, sport shooting and militia activity, so one which is not so dissimilar from the US, and involved every one of their state legislatures. They have not had a mass shooting of note since then.

There is, however, apparently a scientific consensus.

Perhaps the difficulty is that, where you have a personal interest in something, you’re inclined to take a “beyond reasonable doubt” approach. It is certainly possible, both with climate change and gun control, to say that there is “reasonable doubt”, even if it’s (as one of the statistics in the above article states) 73% to 8%.

So, how about this. This link is to an individual who actually supports concealed carry as a self-defence measure. He has one video in particular which I think illustrates my point (although the fact that the main site proposes a 20 hour course plus a huge amount of regular training before you contemplate carrying a gun as a means of self-defence and crime prevention). Insofar as it may put anyone off the idea of carrying (or even possessing) a gun, it’s an admission against interest. Of course, as the presenter is trying to sell training, there is an element of self-interest – but I note that his awful example is a police officer, who will have had plenty of training, albeit possibly not good training.

So, were I to suggest that no-one who has not followed every piece of advice in that video should be permitted to carry a gun (or have one at home for “self-defence”), how could that be unreasonable? Are you, for instance, happy that your neighbour, who has not done this kind of training, has a handgun?

PS. Needless to say, this last set of links doesn’t apply in the UK or in most of the rest of the first world, only in the States. Most of us aren’t allowed to own handguns for self-defence and/or have such strict laws on what constitutes self defence that it would be a very bad idea to chance using one.

Dear America,

I find I am again horrified at an episode of mass violence using firearms in the USA, and my prayers go out to those who have been injured or who are mourning family or friends.

The trouble is that word “again”. It seems to be happening every week or so. Surely, by now, the mood must be “enough is enough; we have to do something about this”? Look, we are not all that different from people in the States over here, and I can recall three instances of mass shootings, in 1987 (Hungerford), 1996 (Dunblane) and 2010 (Cumbria). Two of those also involved schools, which I think gives the lie to the idea that the phenomenon in the States targets schools because they tend to be gun free zones. The Hungerford and Dunblane shooters could have chosen almost anywhere with confidence that it would be gun-free, but chose schools anyhow.

Yes, I know we have a significantly smaller population, about a sixth of that in the States. This might mean that we might have expected instead of three shootings in 28 years, about 18 if we had had an equal population.

Not one a week, as it seems is the case with you at present.

“But”, I hear, “We’re a very different country”. I’m not all that convinced by this argument. Certainly there’s a far larger population of people not of British origin which you’ve accumulated over the last 250 years, but we share a language and, frankly, a large amount of our culture (as US domination of English speaking media is huge), and, of course, the bases of our legal systems.

Now, there’s the rub, potentially. We don’t have a written constitution, at least not one which can supersede legislation and see it struck down (we do have a constitution of sorts, but it’s partly in legislation no more protected than any other legislation and partly in longstanding custom – and most of that longstanding custom we exported along with the early settlers).

This article highlights the problem, the Second Amendment. For anyone reading this who does not have it burned into their consciousness already, it reads “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The article I link to quite reasonably asks what contribution is being made to the establishment or maintenance of a “well regulated militia” by the current state of US law, which allows more or less any individual to own a gun, and often to carry it around in public, sometimes even concealed. As far as I can see, there are no militias (except a few self-described groups on the extreme lunatic fringe, many of whom also deny being citizens), let alone well regulated ones.

I could readily have seen, on the basis of the strict wording of the amendment, the limitation of possession of all firearms to people who were members in good standing of a formally constituted militia, with (inter alia) rules as to the abilities of those allowed to bear arms, their character and stability, and their conduct while in that position. This would be a situation rather analagous to that in Switzerland, in which all men (at least for the moment, just men) are called up, do national service and are then members of the reserve – and they hold weapons, which can be denied them for good cause (see the previous sentence). The authors of that article don’t go quite that far. Unfortunately, they probably also underestimate the power of the Supreme Court decision in DC -v- Heller.

Now, I know that a future Supreme Court could in theory overturn this. However, Supreme Courts have been historically reluctant to go entirely against stated previous decisions of the same court, usually looking to distinguish the situation in front of them so that the previous decision can at least arguably still be regarded as correct. That decision includes the words “The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.” This could well be fatal to any future argument that only the possession of arms in furtherance of membership of a militia (and a well-regulated one at that) should be protected.

The court decision also includes the words “The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.”  This, of course, completely negates any suggestion that the class of people (as long as they are male and physically capable) cannot be restricted – even, it would seem, by the requirement that the militia be “well regulated”, something which the court seems to have conveniently forgotten. They also stated  “But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home. ” This was to justify their decision that in particular handguns, possession of which had previously been prohibited in certain circumstances, were legitimate weapons of self defence, giving it a plausible link back to the first (militia) clause of the amendment.

There were a few positive elements – the court was at pains to state that the decision did not permit machine guns, and I think that can colourably be made to include all automatic and semi-automatic weapons (being new weapons not available at the time the amendment was drafted). As did the UK government after Hungerford, I think an immediate blanket ban on the private possession of these is probably not within the Heller decision.

However, it is also interesting to note the Court’s interpretation of “militia” as being all able bodied men. Actually, this was not the way a militia was constituted in the 18th century, either in the fledgling USA (except very briefly immediately prior to the introduction of the amendment) or in the British law previously in force. Militias were volunteer organisations raised by and led by prominent local men; they were entirely capable of (and did) exclude men they did not think of as of good character, and they were organised and had rules – which is what I am confident those drafting the amendment had in mind by using the words “well regulated”. While yes, they did welcome people bringing their own weapons where they had weapons which would be of use in a military action, these were in general not handguns, which were not particularly useful in the kind of military engagement of the day.

The preservation of (as the court saw it) a right of self defence. Much consideration seems to have been given to the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which was seen as restoring the right of Protestants to bear arms inter alia for their own defence which had been taken away by James II, crucially while allowing Catholics to remain armed. Throughout the history of interpretation of this in England, it has stressed  the wording in the Bill of Rights “That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.” Note the words “as allowed by law”, which were consistently considered to allow government to restrict the possession and use of arms by individuals and groups which it considered inimical to good order, and also the words “suitable to their conditions”, which was code for “It’s fine for the aristocracy and landed gentry, but you’re in trouble if you’re a peasant”.

Of course, in the UK, Parliament is never bound by any previous Act of Parliament, and the “right” to bear arms has been reduced by stages, particularly following Hungerford and Dunblane, to a very restricted one; non-automatic rifles and shotguns for sporting use only, kept under secure lock and key and owned only by those who get a licence, which is not all that readily come by for anyone not owning significant land; handguns only in licensed gun clubs. That is where a right to bear arms “as allowed by law” has ended up in the UK…

So, while a new Supreme Court might not want to overturn the previous court’s statement of law, it seems to me that they might determine that the court in DC -v- Heller misdirected itself on the facts. Militias were not what they thought they were, and neither was the pre-existing right to bear arms independent of restriction by law. The lack of any mention of “well regulated” is also something which could lead to a finding of self-misdirection, it seems to me.

I do not really see good reason why the USA should not aim at moving towards a similar level of restriction to ours, but a first step would, I think, be an immediate ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Australia has, after all, managed a similar transition, and they too are a recovering frontier nation… This might be possible with a more liberal minded Supreme Court, it might require another amendment to the Constitution – but amendments have been passed before this with rather less concrete evidence of continuing harm to the population. Amendments have been passed removing earlier bad amendments. Don’t tell me this could never happen with the Second Amendment; it hasn’t been tried yet.

An immediate response to this tends to be “this would remove the guns from all the law abiding citizens and leave the criminals free to use them at will”. This is, of course, true, but it is the situation in England (and many other countries), and by and large English criminals do not use guns. The reason is that the penalties for possession and use of a gun are far greater than those for crimes committed without these, and on the whole, our criminals are not completely stupid. That may, of course, not work in the States, given that the penalties for relatively trivial offences (particularly connected with drugs) are draconian – but a revision of US sentencing policy would be no bad thing for a number of other reasons, not least to provide a perceptible difference in tariff. I can also see the thinking running “I’m going to get locked up for life for possession of this kilo of drugs anyhow, so I may as well be armed and shoot a few people to try to avoid capture, because it won’t make any difference”.

I also see very little evidence that an armed citizenry provides any sensible deterrent to criminals. Indeed this article outlines some recent research which demonstrates that more guns means more crime, not less, among other things. This one undermines the unscientific survey which is commonly used as an argument that guns prevent large amounts of crime. It also focuses a little on the number of accidents which occur, often fatally, due to guns in homes.

Just in passing, please don’t way “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. Weapons of mass destruction don’t kill people, people using weapons of mass destruction kill people, but we can still get very upset at the concept of mere possession of such weapons. Unless it’s by us, of course. The thing is, the term “mass destruction” highlights the problem – they let you kill a whole load of people more easily.

So do guns.

They also let you kill people at a distance, removing some of the visceral revulsion which most of us feel about killing hand to hand.

So do guns.

Similarly, don’t tell me this is just a mental health problem, unless you’re going to explain to me why people in the States are so much crazier than those anywhere else. Yes, substantial good can be done by a mental health system which identifies threats and acts to manage at risk people, but as that article comments, the mentally ill aren’t a significantly greater threat than the notionally normal (and around one in four will at some point suffer some form of mental illness from depression upward); as it also highlights, if you have someone with this kind of mindset, guns let them do a lot more damage.

Well, there may be an answer or two. Firstly, the version of US culture peddled by TV and movies is a very violent one, in which by and large problems are solved by violence. You can watch whole series of an UK police procedural and never see anyone getting shot; the same cannot be said for the US equivalent, one of which (Chicago PD) is advertised here with the phrase “They have the right to remain violent”. There would seem to be an addiction to what Rene Girard called “the myth of redemptive violence”. This is an “eye for an eye” world at the very least (often glorifying more than just equivalent violence). Girard suggested that a prominent understanding of the crucifixion should be the rejection by God of all such concepts; Jesus is “the last scapegoat”, and no more should be contemplated. Addictions can be treated; I might suggest a communal twelve step programme starting “we are powerless over violence and our lives have become unmanageable”.

Secondly, and connected to that, the States is the one place I know of where the term “gun nut” is of widespread application. Let’s face it, that’s where the term comes from. An Australian comedian has recently commented, rightly I think, that the true reason why gun control is resisted boils down to “F*** off, I like guns”. Why is this? It seems somehow bound up in ideas of masculinity and power; almost all the mass shootings seem to be by men who feel disempowered, and it would seem that guns make them feel powerful again.

I am no more sympathetic to people who want to wave their penis substitutes around in public than I am to those who want to do the same with the real thing.

Both categories should, in my view, be locked up and given intensive therapy until cured. Let’s face it, that’s the attitude we take to someone who says “F*** off, I like crystal meth”.

Consider the path to gun control as the path to rehabilitation, preferably starting with an extended detox. Until that happens, yes, you’re communally addicts, and that is indeed a form of mental illness.

Bo Sanders has provocatively titled a post “There is no Kingdom of God”. A man after my own heart – I like provocative titles. Watch the video – it’s only 8 minutes, and he makes a lot of really good points, not all of which I repeat here.

The problem he sees is that the term doesn’t translate “basilea tou Theou” well for a modern audience (and I might suggest particularly one in the States, which is a Republic).

The thing is, the use of the term, which literally means something more like “Empire of God” or “Imperial rule of God” was a direct subversion of the term “basilea tou Romes”, i.e. the Empire of Rome. The basilea tou Theou was completely unlike the Roman Empire, of course, and the identical formulation there was designed to accentuate the difference.

At the time of the earliest English translations, “Kingdom of God” was, I think, actually a fairly good translation, because at the time England was a Kingdom with a King who had some imperial pretensions and was very nearly an absolute monarch, as the Roman Emperors were; the counterpoint still worked and had some subversive power. It doesn’t work in England nearly as well these days, as the monarchy has become a nearly powerless constitutional monarchy and the fount of power is Parliament, and it works even less well in the United States, where citizens don’t even live under a nominal monarchy or empire.

Granted, it could well be argued that the USA is a functional Empire, with places ruled but without a say in government and a number of “client states” which are nominally independent but in effect operate as instructed by America.The trouble is, most of the population probably don’t believe that to be the case.

I have seen and heard people using other terms, and “commonwealth” is not uncommon – the trouble is, most of these fail to give the subversive element as they themselves have unhelpful baggage (in the case of “commonwealth” it is specifically the historic use of the term for democracies, and a democracy, I would argue, is significantly closer to a system of organising ourselves which Jesus might not want to subvert). Of those which Bo mentions, “Government” is possibly my favorite, particularly as “Government” already has a fair amount of negative baggage associated, as “basilea” did in the first century.

What about the hyphenated terms? Sadly, I don’t like “kin-dom” as it sounds rather twee, although it is clever; “un-kingdom” and “anti-empire” seem to me too direct, lacking the subversive element which was present in the original use of the common term for the Roman oppression, the sense of direct opposition “An Empire but totally unlike the existing Empire”. However, any of these might do – certainly if an unfamiliar term is used, it will alert us to the fact that “Kingdom” needs a bit more understanding.

I might, for instance, suggest once in a while slipping in “the Anarchy of God” for the shock effect – it lacks the sense of subversion, but certainly wakes one up to the fact that Jesus’ basilea is not a top down autocracy. I think he might have quite liked Peter Kropotkin’s ideas about how (not to) organise a state!

On the whole, though, I rather favour trying out “Nation of God”. There’s an awful lot to subvert in our concepts of nation these days;for the nation to which we belong to include axiomatically all people (“no Jew nor Greek…”, the hated Samaritan and the traditional enemy Syrophonecian) is, I think, jarring enough to gain some really good traction, at least until we become over-used to it. It certainly puts a new light on our reluctance to welcome refugees… It also echoes the situation of the Israelites as the People of God, so bursting out of all previously traditional markers for who is in and who is out, as was necessary to include the Gentiles, is doubly accentuated.

Also, and I think particularly in the States, it’s the principal thing to which loyalty is regularly claimed over and above loyalty to God. We regularly discuss whether we can trust a politician whose principal loyalty is to his or her concept of God, possibly to the exclusion of loyalty to our hugely restricted view of nation. Early Christians regularly suffered martyrdom for exactly this reason – they refused to worship Caesar, which was seen as being traitorous.

What price do we pay for our oaths of allegiance, our oaths on taking office?