by Dean | May 13, 2018 | General
A teacher named Rolfe narrates his older brother’s story in the Russell Banks novel, Affliction (1989), and even if he is not likely to be a wholly reliable narrator, he can surely be trusted in pointing out his brother’s deepening affliction. Wade Whitehouse, the 41-year-old sibling, is divorced from Lillian, the only woman he has ever genuinely loved, and painfully misses having his young daughter in his care. He struggles against the wrath of his half-mad father and harbors unreasonable suspicions about the men around him, at the risk, it turns out, of losing his job.
Wade’s life starts going down the toilet. For him to be is not really to live, for he is living with a “dumb helplessness.” Or he begins to live with it. Being is all that Wade has. A helpless man is not free. A Christian couple, Wade’s sister Lena and her husband Clyde bring to the family a set of traditional religious beliefs that their relatives don’t know what to do with. Lena and Clyde can be fatuous, but that they live lives distinctly separate from those of Wade and his father is understandable. The men’s behavior creates a maelstrom increasingly difficult to control.
Affliction is cohesive, thrilling and mature. It is better than much of Faulkner, and although it is not as profound as the best of Faulkner, to me it is just as powerful as it.
by Dean | May 10, 2018 | General
Title page to the original edition of the RSV Bible (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The angel of God said to the shepherds, “I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people” (Luke 2, RSV).
A great joy for all the people of the earth? All the people who have ever lived and will live? The angel could have been adverting to universal salvation. I can imagine some people submitting that he meant a great joy for all the people who duly follow Christ, but how could they know this? And, in point of fact, those who follow Christ are mentioned just a minute later by the heavenly host: “and on earth peace to men [and women] on whom his favor rests.” These are the saints. Are they mentioned twice? In my view, not likely. Doubtless other folks say the angel was adverting to all the people of Israel and that’s it. Again, how could they know this? “All the people of Israel” is not the phrase used, and in any case these anti-universalist souls would never believe that all the Jews are slated for great joy, just some of them. So much for Romans 11:26—“and so all Israel shall be saved.” And so much for Ezekiel 37.
by Dean | May 9, 2018 | General
“Conservatism, as a distinguishable social philosophy,” wrote Robert Nisbet, “arose in direct response to the French Revolution.”
Almost as an afterthought, Irving Kristol averred that liberalism inevitably “makes a mess of things” before people vote it out.
Vote it out, yes—because they keep seeing mini-French Revolutions, usually without violence but always a shabby mess, in their midst. Think of what happened after the frantic policeman in Missouri shot and killed Michael Brown. People start wanting something that at least approximates conservatism.
by Dean | May 7, 2018 | General
Girlfriends (1978 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Its nebulous ending is not much of a flaw. Claudia Weill‘s Girlfriends (1978) is still a pretty good film about a young Jewish woman (Melanie Mayron) who loses her live-in friendship with BFF Anne (Anita Skinner) when the latter moves out to get married. The arrangement worked, but for Susan, the Jewish girl, very little after that works very well, including a foolish dalliance with a married rabbi. On her own, Susan painstakingly searches: for herself no less than for an actual job that will relieve her poverty.
Weill directed and Vicki Polon wrote this trenchant, fundamentally comic (and low-budget) picture. At 88 minutes long it is soundly interesting with a mild edginess. Memorably does Mayron play the charming and errant Susan. Girlfriends is enjoyable, despite some visually ugly nudity. “Sarna at the Well” (an artistic 1939 photograph by Gotthard Schuh) it ain’t.*
*Susan, by the way, is a budding photographer.
*I have yet to see “Sarna at the Well” on the Internet. It is displayed in the book, Nude Photography by Peter-Cornell Richter.
by Dean | May 3, 2018 | General
English: fragment of the Gospel of Matthew (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“And if anyone gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”
This is from Matthew’s Gospel (NIV), and I do not believe that by “little ones” Jesus meant believing children (merely). He meant believers period.
A person who provides a follower of Christ with a cup of water will not lose his Heaven-sent reward, whatever it may be. But if he’s unsaved, what does it matter that he will get a reward if after he dies he just goes to Hell? How much value can the reward have?
by Dean | May 1, 2018 | General
Those who believe the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16) is a parable are right. If they also believe it’s a parable about a rich man and a poor man, they’re wrong. Dressed in the royal color of purple (Judges 8:26) and having five brothers, the rich man, true to the character of a parable, symbolizes Judah: the (royal) tribe of Judah: the Jews of Judah. The story has the rich man in a tormenting fire, although it’s not even certain he is being actually tormented. He is being judged or chastised, though, and he doesn’t like it. That is, the Jews of Judah are being judged or chastised because they have violated the covenant of God. The same fate will befall the rich man’s five brothers—five tribes. All six of these Israelite tribes originated in the union of Jacob and Leah.
If the rich man is in Hell, as most Christians hold, it must be admitted that the Jews of Judah are in Hell, and that those of the other tribes will be too. Do we really want to believe that? One Jew after another goes to a place of everlasting torture?
In point of fact, where the rich man goes when he dies can be called “the invisible” or “the unseen” (hades), and there’s nothing in the text about the distress in this place being eternal. In my view, if the Greek word kolasis (“punishment” in Matthew 24:46) means correction, the Jews of Judah are being chastised in order to be corrected.
And what about Lazarus? Simple: he represents saved Gentiles. More on that later, perhaps.
