#the notion of identity as an expression only of immutable truth does us all a disservice

[postdoe]

My life would have been so different if someone had suggested to me that being trans was possible for me. Maybe I would have come to different conclusions, maybe not. But I would have enjoyed the chance.

[argyrocratie]

Religious and philosophical examination of the principle of authority

(Elie Reclus’ pastoral thesis accepted in 1851 before his immediate resignation. Tranlsated trought me from here )

...

“You, who want to be under the law, do you hear the law!”

- Gal. iv, 21.

INTRODUCTION

At all times of transformation, the question of authority and freedom is increasingly debated. Whenever a new idea wants to creep into humanity, those who are afraid stop it in the process, and say to it: Who gave you the right to live? - Non licet esse vos, said the official world to nascent Christianity.

Now, that a new religious movement is being prepared, this is what everyone has a presentiment of, some with joy, others with apprehension; but whether we love spring or hate it, the swallows are back. 

- I wanted to do a job of removing muck

It is only a question of the religious question here: to leave it is to descend. 

It’s not me speaking, it’s the Idea: I have accepted the starting point of Authority, to produce all of its consequences, to multiply itself by itself. Evil reveals its ugliness by showing itself in broad daylight.

Having to deal only with ideas, I wanted to be severe, because the struggle is serious, it is even deadly. For my part, I refuse any quarter that I would not give; between force and idea, I sided with freedom, and I said: Live free or die!

PART I, CHAPTER l

ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY AS A PRINCIPLE.

Sovereignty.

I. What is authority?

Etymologically, authority means the power of the creator over the created thing. Factor, actor, auctor, auctoritas. In practice, this word designates the government and its delegates. In religion and philosophy, it applies to any principle that calls for obedience.

This is what is meant by authority, but it is about getting into the idea itself, understanding its content and consequences. - I say that it is power, that is to say, necessity, in the forms of right and of fact. 

II. By analysis, particular objects break down into elements common to many others. Thanks to certain laws, gases form oak, moss, or seaweed; what constitutes a flower, a trunk or a fruit could have become charcoal, diamond or freestone. The individual exists only through the action of some law.

If there is an absolute law, it is correlative to the very idea of Being.

III. The Being is not yet life. The stone exists, but it does not live. The laws of Being can be summed up in mathematical laws, but if they had no other existence than the abstract reality of four equal to two plus two, they would be nothing. What is justice without a righteous being? Being as substance will have to take form and life; it will act through individualization; through personality he will truly be a force, and will enter the world of facts and realities.

But the personality will never be anything but the expression of the laws of Being, from which it can no more be freed than nine of the laws of the ternary. Without individualization, the law would be an abstraction, but personality without a law, would be nothing at all. To be, yes or no, subject to its law, for each individuality, is to be, or not to be. Authority as law is summed up in the idea of ​​Being, in that of the Supreme Being, who is God. Authority as a fact, in turn, is summed up in the primary personality, which is God. Authority is God, God is authority.

IV. Whoever unites with God becomes a participant of divine qualities, becomes a participant of impeccability and infallibility. 

Communication with the Divinity carries with it the right of sovereignty. The respect due to the master is due to his representative, and to his ministers; now his ministers are the Prophet with the word of truth, the King with the sword of righteousness, and the priest with the bloody knife of atonement. The king, the pontiff and the prophet are in the midst of men the reflections of the divinity, as in the midst of pebbles, the diamond is the mirror of the sun.

V. The philosophical idea of the law brings us back to Being and to personality, that is, to God, the Law and the Lawgiver. But the religious man does not restrict himself to this detour; he accepts faith in the name of God, and God in the name of faith, he starts from obedience, and returns to obedience. 

VI. All existence being only a living law, nature is only the system of laws, is only universal law. The law being the principle of cohesion and Being, outside of it there is nothing but nothing.

Who will tell all the laws of organic and inorganic matter, the laws of gases, liquids and solids, laws of light and heat, of electricity, of magnetism, of gravity, of expansion, and molecular unions? Where is the forgotten stone, where is the star in the heavens that is not the culmination and the starting point of countless laws? Show it, you who say: I am free!

VII. The law, that is, the authority, is absolute. As absolute, it is the cause, goal and means of all things. As absolute, it is everywhere and always identical to itself. So, the essence of authority being absolute, so too will the attributes; therefore all manifestations of authority are equally just and legitimate. 

VIII. Being absolute, it is the unity of all contradictions. One does not have to do with this or that change, it ignores them. The stream, the cloud and the ice cube are always water. Yesterday it was this, today it is, and tomorrow it will be quite another thing, but it will still be the authority.

IX. Authority, being the absolute principle, confiscates all others for its own benefit. It is she who calls herself the source of justice, of truth, of good and of beauty. 

X. Authority begins by denying any intelligence towards it. For strength without intelligence is pure strength. What can intelligence do against force? Force institutes order, even without intelligence, but intelligence deprived of authority what can it achieve? Something less than disorder,nothingness.

Intelligence is only a passive view; the sight of what is inside and outside of man; it is the more or less obscure perception of objective laws. Man has reason to be proud of his intelligence, as the drop of water to be proud, because the sun has penetrated it with one of its rays, as the night because a lamp has entered its darkness. All subjectivities can only exist through their union with the Objective, that is, through their dependence on the primary fact. So everyone's reason is only the more or less misleading mirror of primary intelligence.

Any intellectual notion in accordance with the immutable laws of Necessity is true, any notion in disagreement with them is false. Intelligence is the apperception of laws, intelligence itself is law like optics. The laws of intelligence are the laws of logic; the logical laws are the laws of equality, then of inferiority, or of superiority, those of addition and subtraction, also those of multiplication and division; they present themselves, it is true, under various combinations, and under great philosophical names; but they are nothing else than mathematical laws, generally qualified as material. Since intelligence is valuable only through its submission to authority, intelligence in itself is null.

XI. Authority again says: I am justice, and outside of me there is nothing but nothingness and injustice. For justice is only harmony with the law, and the law is only the expression of authority. The law is the will of the legislator, and the pure Will is outside justice, it is arbitrary. If God had wanted good to be bad, good would be bad, and evil would be good.

Authority does justice to the most violent injustice. When Jehovah ordered the massacre of the inhabitants of Canaan, he gave an order that it would be a crime to find bad.

The law cannot be debatable, the law can only be fair. The law is not law because of its justice; on the contrary, it is just, because it is the law.

XII. Authority being the negation of freedom, its presentation begins and ends with the negation of freedom.

This negation has much more logical force, now that the authority has just eliminated reason and justice; while freedom can only live on the life of love and understanding.

Authority is therefore supreme freedom to itself, and to others supreme necessity.

XIII. As much as the vulgar apologists for authority and those for freedom have agreed to confuse the two terms, so do we strive to maintain their distinction. If Bahal is God, serve him; if the Lord is God, love the Lord. 

The relative has only a relative value. Now, the relative is precisely what needs law. Whether there are relative authorities, whether there are so many and more, from delegation to delegation man must be able to ascend to the ultimate sovereignty, from which no one can call and say: I brave you; before which all will bow down, as the grass bends in the wind. Under pain of suicide, the authority must crush all enemies; if authority is not binding, it will no longer be authority. Which means that authority has force for its essence, that is, necessity.

However, relative authority is not authority. Because as a relative, it can only engage man relatively, so it cannot constrain him, so it leaves man free. 

We are a slave, or we are not. 

Relative freedom is not freedom either. As soon as there is coercion, there is no more freedom. One is tied to a tree, were he only tied by a thin loose rope, if he were only tied by a very long rope, he is certainly not free. One with his hands tied behind his back, even if he can walk around the whole world, he is not free.

We are free, or we are not. 

Authority, relative freedom, are only relative ideas. Both are only a swing between the two extremes and the two opposites, a compromise between Yes and No, an absurdity continues. Relative authority and freedom are the adulterous fruits of the union of Freedom and Necessity, of Being and of Non-Being.

The relative is a liar, there is only truth in the absolute.

CHAPTER II.

ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY AS FACT

Obedience

XIV. Sovereignty having placed itself above intelligence, justice and freedom, affirms that it is nothing but Force. What is strength in turn? It is not an idea, it is not a principle, it is necessity, it is inevitability, it is chance, it is a fact.

It will therefore be the absolute fact.

XV. If authority is absolute, it is because it has no other reason than itself; it is sovereign, to exercise sovereignty. Why wouldn't the tyrant flog the slave? Now, the God of the slave, can and must only be a despot. For if no tyrant would find themself before a slave that the slave would enslave themself not to the free man, but to another slave. The servile soul enslaves itself to everything, it is afraid of what is good, as well as of what is bad, it is afraid even of what does not exist.

Free the slave? It’s pointless and absurd, it’s cruel.

XVI. From God man derives his being and his personality. He was plunged into the abysses of nothingness, and God, in giving him existence, committed himself to nothing, but committed him to everything. May God send him torment upon torment, man will perhaps owe him gratitude, always submission.

Moreover, he still continues to be before God only the nothingness from which he emerged; his ground is nothing, and the form which this nothing has taken has been given to him by a will other than his own. What does he have left for personal value?

Now, what are, vis-à-vis Omnipotence, what are the rights of nothingness?

XVII. Not being the cause of his life, of his inner principle, he is even less the creator of outer things that can happen to him. If the germ does not come from him, all the developments of the germ will be things beyond his control. Which means that the supreme fact is that of Predestination.

XVIII. The reason for predestination? - But there isn't, and there shouldn't be. Predestination is the pure fact, isolated from any consideration of justice and morality.

If a child dies at birth, and by some accident, has not received the waters of baptism, it is predestined to doom. Cardinal Séfrondate, a modest and pious man, had hoped that these poor innocent people would not go to the place of torture, but Bossuet, the last father of the Church, overwhelmed him:

"Low and angry feeling, which destroys the strength of piety, strange novelty, detestable error, incredible language which strikes us with astonishment! "

“The damnation of infants who die without baptism is of steadfast faith in the Church. They are guilty, since they are born under the wrath of God and in the power of darkness. Children of anger by nature, objects of hatred and aversion, thrown into hell with the other damned, they remain there eternally under the horrible power of the Demon."

"So decided by the learned Denis Peteau, the eminent Henri Nolis, the eminent Bellarmine, the Council of Lyon, the Council of Florence, the Council of Trent. And such things are not decided by thin reasoning, but by the authority of the Scriptures!"

XIX. Whatever happens to you of joys and sorrows, O son of nothingness, comes to you by the express will of Him who, before children were born, loved Jacob and hated Esau. He created light and darkness, the fiber to suffer, and the heart to bleed; it is he who created the criminal and the torment, and the wicked for the day of wrath.

On feast evenings Christians and Christian women were brought into the emperor's gardens, tied to posts, smeared with pitch, and that pitch was set ablaze. And these men burned in the night, and died in excruciating pain, while Nero, accompanied by the imperial ladies, walked by the light of the horrible torches.

Nero had the right to do so; for he was absolute master.

And what you abominate in Nero, with your hand on your mouth, adore it in the strong and jealous God, who decreed the birth of Humanity, so that all of it, except "the little flock," may be destined for the sin and sorrow, and with infinite happiness, he looks upon his dreadful agony during the stream of eternities, and says: All is well, and I have done this for my glory.

XX. To say that authority is absolute as a fact and a principle is to say: de jure and de facto you are a slave.

But who to obey?

Since authority boils down to de facto necessity, one owes absolute submission to the Church or the religious community, in whose bosom one finds oneself by chance of birth.

Your Church will therefore impose some sort of dogma on you. Without discussion or murmur, you will accept them; with love, if she orders it; whether they are from the Thibetian catechism or from the La Rochelle Confession. It is of no importance that you understand them; you have to believe them; although absurd, because absurd, if you understand them, so much the better, but if you doubt, you are a criminal.

To the Church and its leaders, who impose dogmas, correspond the State and its leaders who impose laws. You will obey them.

Who is the legitimate authority in politics?

This question was urgently removed from the jurisdiction of individual reason. Legitimate authority is that under which one finds oneself, whether it be that of a usurper of yesterday, or that of a descendant of the usurper of centuries gone by.

All power is sent from God, if you disobey the power, you insult the representative of the Divine Majesty, that is why you will be punished. The de facto authority is the de jure authority. The authority is the one who holds the scepter which is a staff, the one who holds the sword, and says to you: It is the sword of God. This sword will hurt you, it may kill him too, but would you resist God?

XXI. As much as absolute authority as a principle has denied relative freedom, so authority as fact will deny freedom of examination, which for it is the rotten fruit of a poisoned tree. So if we do not ignore it, it is not to clarify the question, it is only to better formulate it.

In examining the principle of authority, absolute sovereignty has been asserted objectively and a priori. Infinity being the cause and purpose of the finite, submission is required in the name of infinite power.

In the examination of the fact of authority, absolute obedience is justified subjectively and a posteriori. Man not being his own cause, man being only an effect, submission is demanded in the name of his infinite weakness.

This justification, for being only a way to put iself out of the question, is no less terrible. It is the authority that turns around and condemns who wants to judge it. Indeed, if it is in the nature of freedom to forgive, authority need to justifi itself only by irony against whoever doubts, only by lashes and swords against who fight it.

XXII. Freedom of examination is a lie or obedience is a lie. Because if authority is authority only after being accepted by reason, it is reason that is the sovereign mistress. However, the spirit of each one is subjectivism, therefore dispute; intelligence by its nature is individual. What did I say ? The rights of individualism are the rights of intelligence, and before authority, the right of individualism is the right of revolt.

Individualism and authority are mortal enemies, they only fight to kill each other.

If the review confirms the value of the authority's orders, it is unnecessary; if it is against them, it is criminal. Why roll the dice, why risk the unnecessary against crime? 

Who says freedom of examination, says absolute freedom. This man who maintains the autonomy of human reason vis-à-vis all revelations, would this man then abdicate his freedom to bow under a yoke? It would be absurd, it would be bitter madness.

Does he submit himself who submits only conditionally? If religious authority grants the right to scrutinize the Scriptures, it grants the right to reject them; if it is permissible to seek the rights of the pope, priest and pastor, the sincere man and the hypocrite will be able to claim that they are void. 

Otherwise, the so-called freedom of examination is nothing but the freedom to find anything good; the executioner allows this to his victim.

Such were the consequences that Lamennais and J. de Maistre drew from the principle of the Reformation, and by denying them Protestantism lied to its principle and was cowardly of heart. 

He therefore accuses the authority which wants it to be justified and which says to him: Wash away your iniquity. Whoever doubts today will attack tomorrow, for doubting is the first degree of disbelief, protest and hatred. The protest is revolt, and woe to the rebel!

The authority covers the idea and the ideologue of a sovereign contempt, it would gladly do like Nero, who, going for a walk in Greece, forbade the speaking of philosophy during his absence. Mystery and criticism are two contradictory ideas, and the very notion of mystery implies absurdity in the mind of whoever would like to judge it.

What is your right to judge, son of ignorance and desire, nothingness and greed? To be puffed up with pride and puffed up with vanity, which lives only by sucking the void, you would judge the laws immutable and eternal! Say, blasphemer, who assert that God is this, that God is that, say, who are you? where did you come from? say where you will go Do you only know what is your thought, what is your will?

Whoever has not searched what is in a drop of water, would he scrutinize the mysteries of the divine essence? The unfortunate one would dare to judge the one to whom he must obey? 

Why do you command the ox, the horse and the donkey, and impose on them the labors of hard slavery? Because you are smarter than the animal, that is also why you slaughter it and eat its flesh. Now the law which is just against the beast is also lawful against you, whose understanding is without virtue, and is only exalted a degree above that of the brute. 

XXIII. Now, even in logic, the idea of ​​ignorance resolves itself into that of sin, for ignorance can only be caused by estrangement from God, that is to say evil. 

Sin has terrible significance. 

Don't we say that the progress we make in our knowledge of the world and of ourselves is progress in the science of evil? 

Whether you were created as one, or have become one, you are a villain; now, from the wicked one must take away his freedom and his life, if one can. You crush the barely hatched viper, which never bit or hurt, just as you crush the one you meet on your way. And you who, defiled from head to toe, dare to show yourself to the rays of the sun, you were created poisonous scorpion, poisonous scorpion, you will be killed and tormented.

The fruit of sin is death, and to him who has deserved death, the hardest slavery is commutation of punishment and a gift of mercy. For all sin is a violation of eternal laws, and before eternal laws there is not too great a penalty for the least of peccadilloes.

Sin, then, is the moral foundation of the idea of ​​authority. Who says original sin, says absolute authority and complete perversity of human nature, and says that gangrene has rotted the head and the heart.

CHAPITRE III.

Sanction of authority.

XXIV. When there is sin, authority is the punishment. If the crime calls for punishment, it is the authority that gives it. The great sanction of the law is retribution. The commanding word says: "Do this, or you will die." "The punishment, say the laws of Manon," the punishment governs the human race, the punishment keeps watch while all sleeps, the punishment is justice, the punishment is the most powerful of energies. "

Since man is evil and corrupt, can he do anything other than evil? The good is then that it is passive, entirely passive. Being absurd and wicked, he will obey by constraint; of intelligence he must have only to understand the order, of sensitivity, only to feel the lashes. 

It doesn't matter to the authority whether you accept it or not; What does the resistance of the captive do to the heavy chain which seals him to the wall? Authority ignores your obedience, like your rebellion; but if you brave it, force will remain with the law, that is to say, you will be crushed and you will learn what is the reason of the saber and the logic of the grape shot. 

XXV. Political and civil laws, as de facto authority, will have their de facto sanction. This is why the executioner closed the king's procession. This is why the state is calling for the prison and the guillotine. 

In absolute authority, Church and State are brother and sister, and all religions give eternal condemnation as the last reason for their dogma. So much so that the believers, who tied Arnold de Brescia and Michel Servet to the stake and blew the flame there, said: If it is right for God to burn the heretic throughout all eternity, it is our duty to burn them already in timely manner. The last religious formula is this: Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, or he will send you into the lake of fire and brimstone.

Summary.

XXVI. Man now knows what to expect. The earth is only one of the dark satellites of a dark star, an atom in the luminous dust raised around it by the ten-millionth of those blue, green or red suns, which seek some radiant constellation in the boundless fields of space.

Lost on this earth, which seems so great to him, lost like the infusor in the drop of dew trembling at the end of a straw, what is a man in the peoples of humanity, in the generations of past, present and future?

It is the drop tossed from one wave of the sea to the other, and which swirls between the whitening ridges; and the drop cries out: My life is agitated, it is stormy like the ocean; it speaks of revolutions and historical cycles, as it dies in the course of wave to wave, while it vanishes under the vault of an air bubble.

Your cries of joy and sorrows, O generations without number, are they anything other than the little sizzling sound of foam, of foamy foam that melts and goes away! 

XXVII. With respect to authority, man is only one of the forms of nothingness, he has no right but to worship in the dust. His intelligence will never receive any other explanation than: I want it, and it is enough for you! If reason wants to protest against this absolute obedience, it is because the demon of pride is in it; it is that the man who thinks is a depraved animal. If your hand wants to disobey, cut it off and throw it dead and bleeding, as you would throw the slobbering head of a snake far away! Your submission should have no limits except that of your existence, miserable worm!

For it is not an exterior and passive submission that suffices, it is necessary interior and absolute.

The rights of human personality are not made for the slave, to whom the master owes nothing, not even his life. Whether the master chains him to the posts of his doors, so that he remains there from his youth until his very white old age, or that he has the body of the unfortunate thrown to the fish in his tank, the master is in his law.

The slave is one thing. He must annihilate his individuality in that of the master, he must “obey like the corpse,” submission is eternal suicide. 

Slave of authority, do you understand? 

XXVIII. It follows from the above: That authority is no principle of greatness, beauty, justice or intelligence.

That authority is a fact, and that this fact is that of overwhelming force, the fact of necessity.

Let absolute authority deny relative authority.

That authority denies in man all freedom, all reason and all conscience, and reduce his value to the value of nothingness.

SECOND PART.

RELATIVE AUTHORITY.

XXIX. Relative authority and relative freedom are just two sides of the same principle, that of the relative.

As much as the absolute is an enemy of the relative, so much is the antagonism between the two expressions of the same relative principle. So that relative authority fights relative freedom, and these two, leagued together, fight absolute authority and freedom. And yet relative authority has its source in absolute sovereignty, like relative freedom in absolute freedom.

XXX. Relative authority says that absolute sovereignty is impossible, by the very fact that it claims to be absolute. Man is not absolute, therefore nothing absolute can be imposed on him.

Moreover, absolute authority is absurd by the very fact that it places itself above, that is to say, beyond reason. Is absurd whichcommands absurdity.

Likewise, absolute authority is immoral in that it places itself outside the laws of justice and morality.

XXXI. Relative authority is now fighting the religion of absolute sovereignty, having attacked its morals and philosophy. 

If the good and the just are such only by the will of God, if what is false and bad today could cease to be so tomorrow, the good would only have a value of arbitrary, arbitrary willed from all eternity perhaps, but always arbitrary. It is to deprive God of all moral value. This is to say that the divine personality is only a blind and fatalistic will, caprice raised to the height of the absolute, fantasy in the power of eternity. 

What are the consequences ? 

It is that chance and necessity, despite their apparent or real enmity, are only a duality reducible in the same principle, that of fatalism. Chance is the cause of fatality, necessity its effect. 

So that the religion of chance and that of necessity are the same, so that the philosophy of the atheist and the religion of the God of predestination are correlative.

The philosophy of the atheist thus says: There is no God, there are only logical laws, and the harmony of universal laws. Everything is thus reduced to a mechanical-mathematical system of the attraction of similar and proportional, of opposites and homogeneous, everything is reduced to being nothing more than the product of the law of the vibrations of the strings, and of planetary gravitation. . 

But why?

“… Necessity,” we are told.

For their part, the Muslim and the Calvinist blame the atheist for not leaving the idea of ​​pure Being, yet the pure Being, the God of the Neoplatonists has only a much less real existence than that of hydrogen gas. As for them, they bring everything back to a primary personality.

Very good. 

But this personality is only the hypostasis of predestination, which is only eternal arbitrariness, despite its name of immutable justice. 

If in the first system all the affections, from the dog's attachment to his master, to the love of man and woman, have no more moral significance than the fact of a stone which falls under the laws of earthly attraction; in the second, all loves, including the love of God for man and of man for God, have no more moral value than the fact of pebbles placed next to each other by a idle child. 

The atheist naturalist says: There is no God, there is only the impersonal existence of cosmic laws. The supernaturalist says: There is only reality the divine personality, apart from it, to imagine itself to be something, it is the drop of dew which believes itself to be the sun.

Materialism on the one hand, pantheism on the other, blind fatalism on both sides.

XXXII. After denying the principles of absolute authority, we will deny the consequences.

If man is evil itself, if he can only be an abomination, he is no more wicked than the rolling mill which by chance crushes a poor worker between its rolls.

If man is necessarily bad, evil is necessary, evil is only mechanical and material, that is, the very notion of moral evil is destroyed.

XXXIII. If absolute authority brings out the idea of sin and perversity, the relative authority and freedom bring out human weakness, and reduce the principle of human corruption to be nothing but that of the sin of ignoring. Relative authority and freedom therefore have intellectualism as their religion; this is what we see in these religions of compromise between the two opposing tendencies, such as Semipelagianism, Arminianism, Jansenism, Socinianism, and so on. 

Indeed, the principle of relative freedom is summed up not in the principle of creation, but in that of a choice between two extremes. 

Relative authority and freedom will therefore be summed up in philosophy. And what philosophy?

For example, that of Monsieur Cousin. -

XXXIV. But as soon as it comes to rebuilding the overturned edifice, then the union between relative authority and freedom disappears. One wants to take the most, the other wants to give as little as possible; and the struggle has no other logical end than that of a common death. 

The relative authority will copy the absolute sovereignty, that is to say, it will reproduce the brass colonnades, the marble porticoes, and the granite walls, with slabs of clay and wicker trays. . 

Instead of being based on the perversity of man, and his blindest unintellence, it will be based only on weakness and ignorance, and while one claims Omnipotence and that everything be nothing but nothingness around it, the other will have for strength only the weakness of what surrounds it. 

XXXV. Relative authority as authority will feel the need to go back to its principle and will always end up believing itself to be pure authority and giving precedence to sovereignty over reason and justice, in other words: "order comes before freedom, obey first, then you will claim. "

By the sole fact of its exercise, relative authority becomes again theocratic despotism and divine right.

XXXVI. "Choose your government," says Freedom to Members of State and Church. "But stay loyal to it," adds relative authority.

This government, once established as best it can, wants, by the very logic of things, to realize the idea of ​​government, that is to say to govern more and more. Relative freedom, in its turn, wants, no less logically, to be free more and more. 

The struggle is therefore permanent; since there are governments and ruled, there has been religious heresy and civil revolt. Quite naturally, power will therefore compress more and more, just as freedom will react more and more. However, the compressive force on one side and the repulsive force on the other have the same goal: to break the existing union.

The old government will therefore be overthrown, another will be raised, and the struggle will never be more violent; for relative authority must reduce relative freedom, relative freedom must destroy relative authority. 

XXXVII. If absolute authority is only a fact, with much more reason it is the same for relative authority which is only a compromise between two principles, which is therefore only their limitation, their mutual negation. 

Relative authority is said to be the golden mean between absolute authority, which it calls despotism, and complete freedom which is only license to it.

The golden mean being the system of measurement, resent everything that goes too far to the right or too far to the left, because as soon as the two parties go to extremes, the union breaks up, the dualism of wills being irreducible. So, if a power understood its interests, it would only be the point common to all the parties (it is true that this power would only be one of the expressions of freedom), but always power is lost by ceasing to be the central point of opinions, becoming a party itself, an extreme.

The golden mean is the balancing of the forces; a matter of statics, it is the neutralization of all powers, which he minimizes; he protests against any energetic movement, for then how would he control it? he does not like life, because life cannot be weighed, nor measured. It tends to stand still, it tends towards death. Indeed, the golden mean concentrates the universe at a mathematical point, and that point is it. This mathematical point, having neither width, nor length, nor height, nor thickness, would be the infinity of littleness, if it were not the golden mean between what is and what is not; and how would he want movement, it who does not know what space is, how would it want Spirit, it who protests against infinity?

XXXVIII. As a fact, relative authority will translate into relative fact. It will be the chance of the moment that will become the necessity of the moment. These are the laws and dogmas of a day, the merit of which is to be provisional and temporary, and the wrong of believing themselves to be eternal. This is how civil property is that which has been owned for thirty years, without question; for under pain of an eternal war, there must be a statute of limitations for all usurpations.

On the other hand of religious authority which does not claim to be absolute, there are very few; for almost all of them give themselves an eternal value. But for a dogma to be absolute, the faith of the believer is not absolute; which is also a way of relativizing the absolute.

XXXIX. Telling the facts of civil and religious authorities, wouldn't it be a reminder of the shame and pains of humanity? We therefore refrain from doing so here, and stop only at the flow of ideas.

Authority being a fact, authority is necessary as long as the devotee, the serf and the subject believe that he who commands them is more than them, and that he is more than a man; it is then true, indisputable, for we need it, for necessity is the first of laws and the best of reasons; but the moment one no longer believes in authority, it is de facto and de jure annihilated; because if it can burn, it cannot convince. 

As soon as relative authority, that is to say authority mixed with intelligence and liberty, has spend away its higher principle in favor of a people or an individual who has known how to assimilate them, it is then no more than pure authority; and it is precisely when it must perish that it proclaims itself eternal and absolute.

XL. Absolute sovereignty and relative authority agree that the measure of sin is that of their power.

Be it.

However, the authority being exercised by men, so much worth will be the subordinate, so much worth will be the master.

XLI. As far as the authority has been fair, as far it has developed the people towards morality, as far it will have done the work proposed by the tutor of Louis XV, who was working to render himself useless.

As far as it has been unjust, as far it will have developed the instincts of revolt and produced rebellion.

Thus the authority which is legitimized by the sole fact of its existence, is destroyed by the sole fact of its existence.

XLII. Who says relative authority, says authority which will end. For it can only have the practical value of time, accidents and circumstances, which vanishes as soon as we speak of God, conscience and eternity. 

Relative authority is typified by paternal authority, which is also absolute at its origin. As long as the child is null as a force, he would be the victim of all external agents, if he did not have beside him a complementary being to be its strength and his intelligence. But as soon as the child is the smallest possible thing, it is only a question of relative authority, which in turn will decline in the face of the relative freedom of the child, from the day when the father has been somewhat wrong. ; finally, this authority will be nothing at all, when the son is morally up to his father.

Absolute sovereignty and relative authority correspond to the birth and childhood of man; however, it is in the very fact of childhood that it destroys itself by continuing; it is in the nature of authority to destroy itself by exercising.

This is the history of States, of Churches, it is the history of mankind.

Summary.

XLIII. Absolute sovereignty has proven by logical argument that it alone is true and that relative authority is absurd.

Relative authority has proven by the practical argument that only it is possible and that absolute authority is absurd.

Do we state an antinomy between fact and reason? 

Yes, if there is no freedom.

Yes, if the freedom is not absolute.

- I believe in my infinite freedom.

CONCLUSIONS.

There are three religions, that of Force, that of Wisdom and that of Freedom.

The religion of intelligence is the religion of the golden mean, and like any intermediary, it has only a transitional value, and resolves itself into dualism; it is in fact only the perpetual antinomy of the ego and the non-ego, and the eternal attempt at union between the finite and infinite world.

Sixty centuries have slowly come to parade before the God of Strength, all peoples have come down through the ages to bow down to the dark Majesty.

The God of authority is the Sanzaï, it is the terrible Siwas and the heavy Djaggernaut, it is Zeus and Jupiter, it is the Manitou, it is the bloody Teutatés, it is the great fetish of the Kohi desert, and of the black inhabitant of Guinea. 

This God they also called Jehovah, and of Christ with a heart burning with love, the wicked have made the minister of anger and vengeance. On Golgotha ​​stands an immense cross, which rises above the rolling and noisy waves of human generations; and from the cross of the Saint and the Righteous they made a gallows, and to its two arms they tied the sons of Liberty, it is there that they die condemned in the name of God, and of the Man of Sorrows and infinite compassion.

Night covers the fields of the past, but if you look in the dark you will see the red flame of the pyres, and on these pyres they burned Vanini, they burned the noble Arnold and Savonarola, the heralds of freedom, they burned Jean Huss and Giordano Bruno, they burned the holy Joan of Arc. But will I say the names of the martyrs? Ask Torquemada, ask the Albigenses!

As for the people, they never recognized the man of God and cried out to him: Hail, O prophet! only when he saw her hanging bloody from the top of a cross. Who will speak of your sorrows, O martyrs of truth, you who have exercised righteousness! You have been stoned, you have been killed, you have been put to death by the edge of the sword, you have been grieved, tormented, you of whom the world was not worthy!

Oh ! when I look at the executioners dressed in purple reddened in the blood of martyrs, my heart trembles, and my flesh shivers. I shuddered with anguish and anger when I saw Faith, bloody Polyxena, dragging their hands behind their backs, before the altar of a black snake-headed fetish; they spread the dark veil of the criminal over her face, she lowered her head, then the priest cursed her, and the executioner plunged his knife into her chest.

Authority, bloody authority, I will not curse you, for I would make you hated by men weak of faith, and we must pray Forgive, O God, for they do not know what they are doing, to the executioner forgive, forgive because of the victim !

By accusing authority, I am accusing Humanity, and if I cursed it, I would curse my mother. For Humanity adores Necessity, peoples adore the Law of the sword with frightening fervor and immense cowardice. 

All of them adore egoism, which imposes itself on other egoisms, and walks haphazardly across the world, all of them adore despotism, except a few men of desire and love who are lost here and there, near whom pass the people of the city who smile and say: Look at the poor dreamer! 

You who cry out: Slave crouching in the mire, slave, with your head bowed between your knees, get up, get up, and be tall as a man! Poet, prophet, and you, preacher of truth, you are doing a work of greatness and nobility. 

Help them, Lord! 

Because they will be told: You are an ungodly and a blasphemer. They will be told: I excommunicate you, that is, if you take part in the meal of the saints and the blessed, I want the blood of Christ to become poison in your veins, and the flesh of Christ to become in you ferment of death

.Friends, in the name of the Idea, you advance against the sharp bayonet, and you advance against the whistling bullet, and you declare war on the Might, and you want to defeat the Force. So you will perish. 

Let them cry out about madness, about immense madness! They will cry out about the madness of the faith and the absurdity of the miracle.

Go, noble prophet, go therefore and cry: That which is selfishness in the soul manifests itself in tyranny and bondage; what is love in the heart is revealed as Devotion and Freedom!

Our father in heavens, May your kingdom come!

THESE

I.

Ubi spiritus domini, ibi libertas. 2 Cor. III, 17.

Ubi spiritus diaboli, ibi auctoritas.

II.

To argue with authority is madness. It accepts only one response: I am as strong as you, or this one, which is even better: I am stronger than you.

III.

It is said: Authority is the bond of beings, therefore it is unity; it is the first principle, it is therefore life.

Paralogism.

If authority is a link, it only recognizes the enmity of two pre-existing objects.

There is better than a chain to unite two beings, and all the freedoms there is attraction and love.

IV.

If the authority is legitimate by the sole fact of its existence, Freedom will find its justification in the sole fact of its existence.

If authority is only a question of fact, it will only have a matter value.

Now, if for the slave there is no Right against the Fact, for the free man there is no Fact against the Right.

V.

Any power that wants to impose itself must be said to be of divine right; because man cannot have rights against man.

VI. If authority is the product of corruption, authority is corrupting.

VII.

Denying individuality, authority denies the immortality of the soul.

Without absolute freedom, the eternity of man is nonsense.

If man has infinite duration, he must have infinite value.

VIII.

I say that all Revelation, all Redemption was made against authority.

IX.

To be free is my right and my duty.

X.

Protestantism has severed the vital root of Catholicism by depriving it of its principle of authority, papal infallibility.

If Protestantism in turn materializes in any authority, it will perish through authority.

Jesuitism and Calvinism represent the same principle of absolute authority; one stuck to the purely religious and metaphysical question, the other represented the authority of the Vice-God on earth, and stuck mostly to religion in its earthly dealings.

Jesuitism and Calvinism were born and died around the same time, today they are resurrected around the same time.

Representatives of the same principle, they have been the most violent enemies.

The authority of the last days had to be realized in the two most powerful extremes, the better to neutralize each other.

Because authority must perish.

XI.

If fatalism is a pagan idea, through Calvinism and Augustinism, paganism has entered the Church.

As far as it was in him, Calvinism destroyed the redemption of Christ.

XII.

One makes Christ an apostolic and Roman Catholic.

One makes him an "old Lutheran".

One makes a Calvin.

One makes him a rationalist.

Someone else does something else with it.

Certainly, Christ is the Christ.

XIII.

 One make of Christianity  this,

One make of it that.

One tastes of the nut only the very bitter husk.

One eats the fruit of it.

XIV.

God is the supreme objectivity only because he is the supreme subjectivity.

XV.

No one assimilates objectivity, except according to the power of his subjectivity. If I have no more self-awareness than the pebble in the road, I will not have the feeling of God any more than it has. My life is my love. -

XVI.

A higher truth would be fatal to a lower life. The fish that must breathe the little air in the water suffocates in atmospheric air.

Everything is mortal for the being who balances between life and nothingness, but for life everything is life-giving.

This applies to faith, to love, to all energies of the heart.

XVII.

It is said that two infinities cannot coexist without limiting themselves, that is to say without mutually destroying each other.

This is true for infinities which would be of the same nature. This would be true for the co-eternity of Good and Evil, the two sides of the same moral principle.

Is this true for infinities that are of a different nature?

I do not believe that.

I believe that infinite number of individuals would all have infinite value.

If the notion of individuality is identical to that of a being whose essence is absolutely sui generis, the notion of individuality is identical to that of infinity.

XVIII.

God is love.

Man is love.

End.

[gravitascivics]

SOCIALIZING PRODUCTIVE CIVILITY

To this point, this blog has been reviewing the work of Jonah Goldberg.  He has offered a foundational construct – a view of how and why governments exist and why liberalist government emerged and has been maintained since the 1700s.  The following quote summarizes a lot of what he is trying to get his readers to understand: “When we fail to properly civilize people, human nature rushes in.  Absent a higher alternative, human nature drives us to make sense of the world on its own instinctual terms:  That’s tribalism.”[1]

         Proof?  Look at those urban youths that find themselves in struggling families – both economically and socially – and are attracted to join a street gang.  The sense of belonging these arrangements offer the young person goes a long way toward explaining other attractions, that of the Klan or the Mafia.  These are all forms of tribes.  

Instead, to avoid such membership, the young person needs to be taught to seek that sense of belonging in those groups that further the common interest (the family, the workplace, the school, and possibly the church – assuming the religion involved has a pro-civic theology) to counter this attraction.  Of course, these institutions need to be operating in such a way that they advance this sense of belonging – they need to project a federated relationship among their members.

         Goldberg points out Benjamin Franklin’s observation that those colonists who were abducted by indigenous tribes at a young age and “went native,” would likely refuse to leave the tribal life for the more “European” lifestyle when the opportunity was offered.  Why?  The speculation is that the native life more completely satisfied this human yearning – the interpersonal relationships that characterized the indigenous tribes. Obviously, humans have an innate need to have the relationships that add meaning to their lives.  Tribal life does that.

         But tribes have limited resources.  And the resources are not only those having to do with environmentally based assets – such as minerals – but human resources in terms of talents, knowledge, dispositions, sensitivities, experiences, motivations, and other assets.  Goldberg understands the lure of the tribe but points out its limitations.  That is why the Miracle – the economic advancement liberal governance has made possible – had to oppose the tribal option.

Liberal democracy, though, through its mechanisms provides one an understanding of these limitations.  It encourages inclusion beyond the tribe.  This writer believes – and this is central to his criticism of Goldberg – that liberalism, on its own, does not provide the substantive narrative countering the alienating sense it ignores in its explanations.  That is, Goldberg might point this out, but the purely liberal construct does not.

While liberal writers, such as Adam Smith, point out the need for community, the theory itself ignores it and provides nothing to establish, maintain, or advance it.  Apparently, scholars have pointed out, for example, how incongruent Smith’s two major works are – they are incongruent on this very notion.  

These scholars refer to Smith’s two major works:  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – the work more based on egoistic motivations of humans – and The Theory of Moral Sentiments – the work that points out the need for humans to be sensitive to the needs of all, both rich and poor.  This was called the “Adam Smith Problem.” [2] Generally, the judgement here is:  natural rights literature ignores the need to express benevolence and emphasizes the egoistic interests of the individual.

What one sees when socialization toward liberal democracy is wanting, people seek the tribal relationships that often exist to address the alienation the individual is likely to feel.  For example, the attraction of gang life demonstrates the emotional bent the young harbor that lead to membership in these ultimately anti-communal groupings. What Goldberg points out is the naturalness involved when such a move or decision to join a gang takes place.  The young person is merely seeking those intimate relationships.

         He also names the set of emotions that leads to such strivings:  romanticism. Goldberg describes his use of this term:

The core of romanticism, for Rousseau and those who followed, is the primacy of feelings.  Specifically, the feeling that the world we live in is not right, that it is unsatisfying and devoid of authenticity and meaning (or simply requires too much of us and there must be an easier way).  Secondarily, because our feelings tell us that the world is out of balance, rigged, artificial, unfair, or – most often – oppressive and exploitative, our natural wiring drives us to the belief that someone must be responsible. The evil string pullers take different forms depending on the flavor of tribalism.  But the most common include:  the Jews, the capitalists, and – these days on the right – the globalists and cultural Marxist.[3]

Romanticism fills in in what liberal democracy tends to ignore.  Democratic capitalism, that construct’s “off-spring,” does not provide meaning beyond the motive to gain profit, yet humans seem to need meaning – a meaning anchored in human relationships.  Without such meaning and left with a view one can basically seek one’s self-defined interests, many, if not most, will seek those interests by means that counter the common good.  

That is, reaction to liberal democracy is reactionary.  Emotional, romantic movements are against liberal democratic rule and rely on sentimental corruptions – as in decay, putrefaction, rot – that strives to return to more natural modes of thinking and feeling. Romanticism fights against inclusion among the peoples of the earth.  Why?  Because such inclusion is emotionally offensive to humans’ natural bias against those who don’t belong to one’s tribe.

Goldberg writes:

The Miracle ushered in a philosophy that says each person is to be judged and respected on account of their [sic] own merits, not the class or caste of their ancestors.  Identity politics says each group is an immutable category, a permanent tribe. Worse, it works from the assumption that what benefits one group must come at the expense of another.[4]

In one way or another – some being very imaginative – liberal democracy repudiates this basic view. There are those, in the academic world, who focus on alleged oppression.  Goldberg cites Howard Zinn’s work, People History of the United States.  It makes the case that US economic policy has been a series of exploitive actions.  This blog has identified this view as the critical theory construct.

         That strain of argument can be classified as extreme leftism. But there is also extreme rightist arguments; this being in the forms of populism and nationalism.  Both the extreme right or left magnify the incidence of ingratitude for the accomplishments of the Miracle.  Goldberg claims that both are at best based on half truths or pure fiction.  Despite that, these intellectual denizens have become very popular and are dominant in certain circles including academic social studies.

         This writer – a critic of Goldberg – highly recommends his cited work.  He ends his introductory chapter to that work with the analogy of the fable of the golden egg, the Miracle, and with a scene from The Godfather.  Highly entertaining and apropos.  The next posting will pick up on this theme and continue this report of Goldberg’s foundational construct.  That posting will be this writer’s critique.

[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018), 12 (Kindle edition).

[2] See “Adam Smith (1723-1790),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n. d., accessed June 10, 2019, https://www.iep.utm.edu/smith/ .  

[3] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy, 13 (Kindle edition, emphasis in the original).

[4] Ibid., 16.

[aliceviceroy]

Tarico: Let’s talk a little about marriage, because it seems that two of the issues you have really wrestled with are the role of women in Christianity, and the question of dignity and equality for LGBT people, including marriage equality.

Held Evans: I don’t agree with Christians who think that what makes a marriage sacred is a man and a woman with a man in charge. What makes a marriage sacred is not conformity to social norms, not how well you fit the Ward and June Cleaver model, not patriarchal hierarchy, but the degree to which there is love and self-sacrifice like we see in Christ, in that relationship. My aim is to say that what makes a marriage sacred and special and life-giving is that mutual love and concern and giving.

Tarico: For some who criticize Evangelical Christianity from the outside, who see it as harmful, what they find most untenable is orthodox Christianity’s exclusive truth claims, the claims that are laid out, for example, in the early 20th century pamphlets “The Fundamentals” that became the basis for our term fundamentalism. Worst, maybe, is the idea that anyone who isn’t an insider is an evildoer who lacks a moral core and is condemned to eternal torture. I say worst, because this is an idea that through history has opened up all manner of mistreatment toward outsiders. After all, burning someone at the stake is peanuts compared to burning them forever.

Held Evans: I understand why people wouldn’t want anything to do with the Church, I really do. But not everyone reduces faith to where you go when you die. Historically that has been a problem, but not every Christian has reduced Christianity to that. Not every Christian believes that everyone who doesn’t believe as they do is going to hell. Christians often act like they don’t understand why people doubt. That can make us seem really detached and checked out of reality.

Something I like about the Episcopal tradition is that it focuses on the mystery of faith: Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again. There are days I struggle to believe that literally, and there are days when it’s easy. But there is something unique and special about the teachings of Jesus and committing ourselves to following those teachings.

As to exclusivity, I believe people can embrace Christian belief and do Christian things without assuming that God isn’t present in other traditions or that we have nothing to learn from outsiders. I can hold my own tradition with conviction and respect and still think it possible to learn things from my Buddhist neighbors. I enjoy reading atheist and agnostic blogs and learn a ton from their honesty, for example.  We don’t have to choose between conviction coupled with strong faith identity and openness to learning from others or acknowledging their spiritual insights and shared humanity.

Tarico: Your focus on the sacraments is interesting because it strikes me as a move away from belief—from belief-ism toward a focus on practice or praxis, more akin to Dharmic traditions, like Buddhism, and more mystical traditions within Christianity itself.

Held Evans: Much of my evangelical Christianity was an assent to propositional truths. Christianity was something you believed. I’ve come to understand Christianity even more as something you do. It’s sharing communion not just around the altar but around the table. It’s anointing the sick—that’s not an effort to cure someone like a magic charm. It’s acknowledging someone else’s suffering and saying I am present and I am here and we can find god even in this. That is what it means to be Christian and a part of the church. Being in community and experiencing god in that community. The sacraments make that possible.

Tarico: When I think about what it means to be Christian, I’m struck by the bifurcation between liturgical and other traditions. It seems like the churches that have kept the traditional order of worship and liturgy have been more free to explore theologically, while for “Bible-believing” denominations, the thing that is immutable is the theology, which frees them up to be entrepreneurial about music, buildings, outreach, and the order of the worship service. So it’s like people can creatively explore the order of service or they can explore theologically – but not both.

Held Evans: I’m still exploring why the sacraments are so powerful for me personally, but that’s part of why I was drawn to the liturgy. The culmination of the typical Evangelical worship service is the sermon—the preacher’s interpretation of the text. In a more liturgical service, the climax is the table, gathering for communion. There is something mystical and ever-giving about that. It is centered around the community. It is also something very open to interpretation and people take different things away from it.

In an Evangelical church, people will say “I didn’t feel like I got fed today” as a reference to the pastor. In a liturgical tradition you never say that, because you are fed the communion—the body of Christ. Liturgical traditions give us more space to explore belief, because what unifies us is not shared belief but shared experiences.

Tarico: Let’s talk about the Bible, the center and source of those Evangelical sermons. When I look at the Evangelical tradition I grew up in, I think that the Bible has become a golden calf. The Bible has human handprints all over it and yet people treat it as if it had the attributes of divinity: timelessness, perfection, completion. In an age of the written word, what better golden calf than a golden book? I think of it now as a form of idolatry. How do you see it?

Held Evans: What troubles me is the notion that we can somehow read a sacred text without interpreting it. People say they are just reading the text. That’s not possible. The idea that we can approach a text without bringing our imperfect often greedy often selfish selves to it. It’s crazy to think that anyone is claiming simply to take God at his word.

Tarico: So how do you think about approaching the Bible?

Held Evans: The tendency is to accuse one another of picking and choosing. Of course we do! But how do we pick and choose in a way that is healthy and life giving? What method or metric should we use for doing that? As a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, I think it’s appropriate to think of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of scripture, that in his life and death he put into practice what scripture was meant to teach us. It seems to me that I can take my cues from how Jesus interacted with scripture, which was always life giving. You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. This offers an illumination of how to approach scripture.

When Jesus was asked by experts on scripture what is the most important commandment, he said, Love the lord your God with all your heart soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and all the prophets land on this.The whole point of it all is love. If we take that posture when we approach the text—To what degree does this help us love God and each other better?, that is a helpful life-giving guide. If Jesus interpreted scripture that way, that’s how I hope to interpret it.

If you are going to scripture to look for a weapon you’ll find it. If you go to scripture looking for healing balm you’ll find that too. So much has to do with what we’re looking for. If we want to use the Bible to hurt other people, we can. If we want to use it to promote healing, hope, love and grace it’s there.

Tarico: Many Christians would argue that the Bible is the final arbiter of any doctrinal dispute; you are saying that the model of Jesus is the final arbiter, the lens through which people need to read scripture.

Held Evans: I believe the Bible is authoritative in Christian life, but that we interpret Scripture through Jesus, who is the ultimate expression of God’s will for us. The notion that we experience Christ only through the pages of the Bible isn’t even biblical! We encounter Christ in communion, in the needs of people who are suffering or hungry, where two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, and so on. When we care for those who are suffering we experience Christ.

God speaks to us through all of sorts of ordinary, everyday things. In a similar way God speaks to us through scripture–through imperfect words. The idea that God is too good to speak through imperfection is mistaken. God uses all sorts of everyday things to reach out to us.

Tarico: I’ve heard the natural order described as “God’s other book.” I guess that would include our experience of each other, of love, community, suffering and healing. It also includes the natural world, including the laws of physics and biology and genetics that increasingly are being unveiled by scientific inquiry. Any thoughts on that?

Held Evans: All truth is God’s truth. If something is true, then it’s true. If the universe is billions of years old and humans share ancestors with apes, then that’s the truth. God can reveal himself through science. More and more even in the Evangelical world I sense there is openness to what the natural world has to teach us. Evangelicals don’t have a great record. There has been science denialism, but I think there is common ground.

Denialism is based in fear, but we don’t need to be afraid, and in fact, this fear is such a denial of the core of Christianity. 1st John 4 says, Perfect love casts out fear.Fear is not a healthy way to view the world, and it’s not a healthy way to view and approach our faith. You cannot love God and be afraid—afraid of the world, afraid of a Bible that isn’t how we think of as perfect or afraid of new discoveries and information. Christians are called to be or do something more.

Tarico: Back when I was a college student at Wheaton, I remember reading an assigned book with the title, Your God is Too Small. I now find that even the god-concept proposed by the author seems too small, too modeled on humanity. But the title—the concept—stuck with me, as I discuss in my own book, Trusting Doubt. It seems like you are working to articulate an understanding of Christianity that is big enough to be compatible with both compassion and tradition, and what we know about ourselves and the world around us.

Held Evans: People fear this God who punishes everyone who is wrong. Really?! We’re all wrong about lots of things, even small ordinary things. When we’re talking about the nature of ultimate reality, we’re going to get some of this wrong. If I thought that God vindictively punished everyone who was wrong, I’d be afraid all the time too. (In fact, I used to live that way and I remember that fear; and it’s really nice to live differently.) Why is it hard to believe in a god who is big enough and kind enough to forgive us for being wrong?

[fear-god-shun-evil]

When I studied at a junior middle school, my parents believed in the Lord and often told me some stories about the Lord Jesus. At that time, I thought God’s name was Jesus. Afterward, when flipping through The Old and New Testament which was my father’s greatest treasure, I noticed that “Jehovah” was mentioned in many verses in the Old Testament. Curious, I asked my father, “Who is Jehovah?” Then he told me, “Jehovah is the heavenly Father. He is an omnipotent and omniscient God.” I continued, “Isn’t there only one God? How come He is called by Jesus and also is called by Jehovah? Why is He called by different names? Could it be that God is just like us human beings: we have first names at home, formal names at schools, and pen names when we are writers?” Smiling, my father answered, “When it comes to God’s name, it’s a mystery. There is no way for us humans to explain it properly unless God reveals it.”

Later, persuaded by my parents, I often attended the church meetings and also read the Bible. In the Bible, I found several verses about God’s name. For example, Psalms 135:13 says, “Your name, O LORD, endures for ever; and your memorial, O LORD, throughout all generations.” Matthew 1:23 says, “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” Luke 1:31-32 records, “And, behold, you shall conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of his father David.” Seeing these verses, I considered: What is exactly the mystery of these names: Jehovah, Jesus, and Emmanuel? Since when has God had name? Why does one God have different names? In order to make clear these questions, I consulted the Bible, sought and discussed with others, but I didn’t find the answers, these questions being always mysteries in my heart. When attending the meetings, I listened to messages carefully to notice whether the preachers could explain the mystery about God’s name. Yet many years passed by. Though I had listened to numerous messages, no one talked about that. Gradually, I found the preachers fell into a conversational rut, with the result that I was incapable of enjoying the enlightenment from the Holy Spirit. So it became a misery for me to attend worship at the church with my mother every Sunday.

Later, as a consequence of being occupied with the work, my attending meetings became less frequent, and I was less and less interested in belief in God. One day, my mother came to my home with a sister. When we spoke about belief in God, I asked the sister, “Do you know why God is called by Jesus, and also Jehovah? Why does God have different names?” Instead of replying to me immediately, she took out a book from her handbag and opened it. Then pointing at a few lines, she showed them to me, “You should know that God originally had no name. He only took on one, or two, or many names because He had work to do and had to manage mankind” (“The Vision of God’s Work (3)”). These words were like a flash of lightning. I thought: It turns out that God had no name originally. It was because He had work to do that He took on names. But, what’s the relationship between God’s work and His name? I must listen to the sister carefully.

The sister seemed to read the notion in my face and said, “God’s identity is the Creator and He originally had no name. When He created the heaven and the earth and all things in the beginning, He still had no name. Until when He sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, He didn’t tell Moses the name Jehovah. As it says in Exodus 3:13, 15, ‘And Moses said to God, Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say to them? … And God said moreover to Moses, Thus shall you say to the children of Israel, the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial to all generations.’ In this way, the Israelites were able to call God’s name precisely when praying. And God made the laws and commandments through Moses to teach man how to live, how to worship Him, and so on. God launched the work of the Age of Law with the name of Jehovah. All those who prayed to the name of Jehovah God and obeyed the law and commandment promulgated by God could live with His blessing and grace. On the other hand, those who disobeyed the law would be burned by the heavenly fire, or stoned to death. And so, God led people to live with the laws. Thus, the name of Jehovah was the particular name of God in the Age of Law. It means ‘The God of the Israelites (God’s chosen people) who can take pity on man, curse man, and guide the life of man. It means the God who possesses great power and is full of wisdom.’

By the end of the Age of Law, as people got increasingly sinful, there were not enough sacrifices to make atonement for them. If the situation had been developing, all we humans would have perished under the punishments of the laws and the wrath of God, because God is holy, and the filthy is not allowed to exist. Yet, we humans were created by God Himself and God’s intention was that we could live upon the earth happily. Hence, He incarnated Himself in the flesh, came to this world to do the work of saving man, and took on the name of Jesus. The Lord Jesus preached everywhere, accomplished healings and cast out demons, supplied people with abundant grace to enjoy, and bestowed peace and joy unto them. If they sinned, their sins could be forgiven by praying to the Lord Jesus to ask for His mercy and forgiveness. At last, the Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross as the sin offering for us humans, so that we could continue in existence. In the name of Jesus, God ended the Age of Law and started the redemptive work in the Age of Grace, which means ‘the sin offering that is full of love, full of compassion, and redeems man.’”

After hearing her fellowship, I was surprised and delighted for I had been puzzled by these questions for many years and now, I eventually had some understanding of them. Overjoyed, then I said to her, “I got it. It turns out that it’s meaningful for God to take on different names. In different ages, God would take on different names to do the corresponding works and express different dispositions.”

She said with a smile, “Thank God for His enlightenment and illumination. You got that right. Concerning God’s different names, we still need to understand another aspect. God is so wise and so almighty, and what He has and is is so abundant. A single name isn’t able to fully represent Him at all, so He took on different names in accordance with the need of His works. But regardless of the changes to His name and His work, His essence is immutable, and there is only one God throughout the entire universe from everlasting to everlasting. Let me take an example that may not be very appropriate. Suppose that our father was a teacher at first; afterward, he was promoted a dean of the students; in the end he became a principal. Although his appellation changed, and at the same time the nature and the range of his work also altered, he is still our father, which is shall never change regardless if he is a teacher, a dean, or a principal. Brother, let’s read more passages. You’ll be even more clear about the truth of God’s names.”

While speaking, the sister opened the book and read, “God can be called many names, but among these many names, there is not one which can encapsulate all that God has, there is not one which can fully represent God. And so God has many names, but these many names cannot fully articulate God’s disposition, for God’s disposition is too rich, and extends beyond the knowledge of man. The language of man is incapable of fully encapsulating God. Man has but a limited vocabulary with which to encapsulate all that he knows of God’s disposition: great, honorable, wondrous, unfathomable, supreme, holy, righteous, wise, and so on. Too many words! Such a limited vocabulary is incapable of describing what little man has witnessed of God’s disposition. Later on, many people added more words to better describe the fervor in their hearts: God is too great! God is too holy! God is too lovely! Today, sayings such as these have reached their peak, yet man is still incapable of clearly expressing God. And so, for man, God has many names, yet He has no one name, and that is because God’s being is too bountiful, and the language of man is too inadequate. One particular word or name is powerless to represent God in His entirety. …

And so, each time God comes, He is called by one name, He represents one age, and He opens up a new path; and on each new path, He assumes a new name, which shows that God is always new and never old, and that His work is always progressing forward. History is always moving forward, and the work of God is always moving forward. For His six-thousand-year management plan to reach its end, it must keep progressing onward. Each day He must do new work, each year He must do new work; He must open up new paths, must begin new eras, begin new and greater work, and bring new names and new work”(“The Vision of God’s Work (3)”). Then she fellowshipped, “God’s disposition is too great and wondrous. A single name is incapable of representing God in His entirety. The whole society is always progressing forward, and God’s work which is always new and never old, is always moving onward. And His name is changed as the era of His work changes. We must not constrain God to a scope or think that keeping a single name of God is equal to being loyal to Him.

At that time, the Pharisees holding on the letters of the prophecies in the Bible thought that the returned King must be called Messiah; otherwise, they would not accept Him. Due to holding to the name of Messiah based upon their own conceptions and imaginations, they didn’t seek and investigate the Lord Jesus’ work and words, but resisted and condemned His coming crazily. Eventually, they nailed the Lord Jesus on the cross, with the result of being condemned by God because of their enraging God’s disposition.”

Hearing this, with the truth bursting upon her, my mother said, “The Pharisees’ failure gives all of us believers in God a warning. Whenever we should not only keep a single name of God, otherwise we will not acknowledge Him if He changes the name. In that way, won’t we be eliminated like the Pharisees?”

I thought to myself: Yes, absolutely. What she said makes sense. It seems that our faith in God can’t only insist on a single name of God. Because God is always new and never old, His work of saving man is always going higher, and He was called by different names in different ages. We can’t only hold on His single name, or it’s easy for us to walk the path of the Pharisees and crucify God on the cross again.

Due to my knowing nothing of God’s work, I asked the sister, “I think the words you read are right, and they unlocked the mystery. But I just heard you say God’s work is always progressing forward, and is always new and never old. It seems that there is another new God’s name apart from Jehovah and Jesus. Are there any prophecies in the Bible to substantiate it?”

She said with a smile, “Yes, there are biblical bases. Only in the Revelation, there are several prophecies to testify it. As it says in Revelation 1:8, ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, said the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.’ Revelation 2:17 records, ‘He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches; To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knows saving he that receives it.’ There are still other verses in the Bible. These verses show us that in the last days, God’s name will not be called Jehovah, or Jesus, much less the Messiah. And He will not be the Lord Jesus who is full of love and mercy and forgives others until seventy times seven as we know, but rather will take a new name and do a more through stage of work of salvation, so as to end up the whole era. Finally, God will allow all creatures to see His true countenance and admit that it is this God that leads us mankind from the beginning to the present day.”

I asked sharply, “Will God still have a name after His whole work comes to an end? What will we call Him when we pray?” The sister opened the book again and asked me to read, “The day will arrive when God is not called Jehovah, Jesus, or the Messiah—He will simply be called the Creator. At that time, all the names that He took on earth shall come to an end, for His work on earth will have come to an end, after which He shall have no name” (“The Vision of God’s Work (3)”).

Until that moment, the questions and perplexities in my heart were smoothed away finally. I just understood God had no name originally, and it is because of His management plan to save mankind that He started to take on names. Every name God takes has a profound historical significance, which represents His disposition and what He has and is expressed by Him in this era. I also realized that God will have another new name when He returns in the last days, and we couldn’t insist on a single name of God by our notions and imaginations in case we walk the path of Pharisees’ believing in God yet resisting Him. From these words and the sister’s fellowship, I benefited a lot and my relationship with God got closer at once. At that night, I was too excited to fall asleep soon.

Next day at break, my mother and the sister left hurriedly to look after other new believers before breakfast. When they were about to leave, the sister left the book for me and exhorted, “You will understand more and get nourished by truth as long as you read this book attentively.” I replied with nodding joyfully and decided to read this book carefully in the hope of keeping pace with the Lord’s footprints.