Sanjay Merchant

Nicholas vs. Arius: Smack Down in Nicea

Sanjay Merchant — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:29:52 -0800

I often tell my children an apocryphal story about Nicholas of Myra's courageous stand against blasphemy at the Council of Nicea in 325.

Here's how it goes:

"A long time ago--just a few hundred years after Jesus rose from the dead--all the Christian pastors went to a city called Nicea to talk about some important things. There were a lot of great men there; many of them had been beaten up for telling people about Jesus and some had almost died. Still, none of them ever gave up believing in Jesus because they loved him so much... and the people loved them too.

"One of the great men at Nicea was Athanasius of Alexandria. He told people the truth about God. You've heard of Athanasius because we named your baby brother after him. Another great man at Nicea was Nicholas of Myra. Today, everybody calls him Santa Claus. Nicholas was good--he was kind to the people, he gave money to the poor, and he too told them the truth about God. But there was also a very bad man at Nicea named Arius who told a lot of lies. You've heard of Arius because we named the iguana that used to live in our courtyard after him. (Remember how we would yell, "Get out of here, Arius, you ugly lizard!" as it crawled along our fence?)

"Well, at Nicea, Arius began telling the pastors that Jesus wasn't really God but, instead, that the Father had created him, just like the angels. Now they knew that he was telling lies because Jesus is our savior and only God can save us. Plus, he forgave sins, which only God can do. And the Bible calls him the creator, but there aren't any creators other than God. The pastors also knew that we should worship Jesus, but it doesn't make sense to worship anybody besides God. So, Nicholas listened quietly but, after a while, all the lies made him really angry. When he couldn't take it anymore, sweet Nicholas stood up, walked over to Arius, and punched him in the face! I know that's not a nice thing to do, but Arius was being a really, really big dork.

"Of course, you shouldn't punch people in the face for telling lies... usually. On the other hand, if you really love Jesus, you might do some strange and unexpected things. So don't worry too much about making mistakes, be like Nicholas: do the things that God wants you to do, trust him, and love him with all of your heart; even if it takes a lot of courage. And by the way, if any Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door, let Daddy do the talking. Okay?"

On the Comprehensibility of God (Part 2)

Sanjay Merchant — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:52:14 -0800

In my last post, I referred to theologian Elizabeth Johnson's claim that God is "incomprehensible, unfathomable, limitless, ineffable, [and] beyond description." The key problem with her assertion is that she muddles two senses in which God is said to be incomprehensible. The first sense of divine incomprehensibility expresses the theologically modest insight that one can never possess exhaustive knowledge about God. He is too great and his being is too deep to be described in toto; he is ultimately incomprehensible. However, the second sense expresses austere skepticism with regard to one's ability to genuinely know or properly articulate anything about God. In other words, he is utterly incomprehensible.

The Problem with Utter Incomprehensibility

Yet, while ultimate incomprehensibility is uncontroversial, utter incomprehensibility is seriously flawed because describing something as indescribable or comprehending of something as wholly incomprehensible involves a contradiction. It is self-defeating to define God as a being that cannot be defined. The theological pessimist undermines her position in the acts of describing, defining, and comprehending.

Johnson, however, may endorse the subtler notion that human concepts only apply to things in the world of human experience but, since God transcends the world, human concepts cannot apply to God. This is to say that, in utilizing worldy concepts to refer to the matchless and unique God, we "reduce divine reality to an idol." If we say that God is like anything in the world, we commit idolatry.

But, this modified version of utter incomprehensibility also has a fatal flaw: to say that no human concept can apply to God is to say that one concept does, indeed, apply to God; namely, according to philosopher Thomas Morris, "the concept of being such as to escape characterization by human concepts" (Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1991], 21). Moreover, it's almost certainly false that human concepts only apply to matters of human experience. We develop concepts about a number of things that we do not, or cannot, experience like numbers, Martians, and Abraham Lincoln.

The Problem with Restricted Comprehensibility

Given that utter incomprehensibility fails, the pessimist may opt for restricted comprehensibility by claiming that almost nothing can be known about God. The problem is that, ironically, one must know quite a bit about God in order to affirm restricted comprehensiblity. Besides, those who believe that humanity bears the divine image have a good reason to be optimistic about the prospect of possessing a clear concept of God. We are designed to know him.

On the Comprehensibility of God (Part 1)

Sanjay Merchant — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:59:59 -0800

There is a longstanding suspicion that claims about God go beyond the limits of knowledge. Is it possible to know that God loves us, or that he is all powerful, or that he is known through Jesus Christ, or that he is a "he," let alone that he exists? Some individuals insist that we can know a number of important things about God; Scripture, philosophical reflection, and mystical experience are typically thought to be essential sources of insight about the divine nature.

Others, however, are doubtful that we can know many significant things, while still others are downright pessimistic that we can know anything at all. Ironically, some of the pessimists have a lot to say about God. For example, the Catholic, feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson expresses doubt about the viability of God-talk from the outset of her recent book, Quest for the Living God:

The very nature of what is being sought is incomprehensible, unfathomable, limitless, ineffable, beyond description. The living God literally cannot be compared with anything in the world. To do so is to reduce divine reality to an idol. The divine magnitude means that no matter how much we know, the human mind can never capture the whole of the living God in a net of concepts, images, or definitions, or preside over the reality of God in even the most exalted doctrines.... If you have fully figured out who God is, then you are dealing with something else, some lesser reality (Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God [New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., 2008], 12-13).

What do you make of this claim? Is Johnson is completely right, partially right, or completely wrong? I'll share my thoughts in my next post.

Pop-Atheism's Swindle

Sanjay Merchant — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:03:40 -0700

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris have recently published wildly popular books attacking belief in God. This Troika of Secularism emphatically rejects theism and insists that the rest of us should as well. They are, in fact, evangelistic atheists; or more precisely, "anti-theists."

It would be foolish to underestimate the impact that they and their ilk are having on the public's perception of faith, in general, and Christianity, in particular. Their works contain a tangled convergence of insightful criticism, sophomoric philosophizing, and raw, mean-spirited bluster which has served to, simultaneously, rally the skeptics and irk the saints. The most curious aspect of their collective project, however, is that they make almost no effort to defend atheism.

The Presumption of Atheism: A Swindle

Apparently, they don't think atheism requires any validation. In their minds, theism has a lot of explaining to do. What about religious hypocrisy and bigotry? What about the problem of evil? And what about religion's anti-scientific disposition? Atheism, on the other hand, is depicted as a safe haven for sober rationality and the default epistemic position for any unbiased, clear-headed person. That is to say, they simply presume atheism and then demand that "religion"--a bizarre cultural force which motivates and encompasses individuals as disparate as Pat Buchanan and Osama Bin Laden--answer for the injustices that are perceived to emerge from its various amorphous doctrines.

Suffice it so say, the Troika's understanding of fundamental issues in theology and philosophy of religion ranges from uncharitable to inept. (Anyone who compares what Thomas actually argued to that which Dawkins thinks he argued can hardly disagree.) Nonetheless, they are sure that, despite the rich history of ideas which flows from classical theism, there are no compelling reasons to think that belief in God is a viable option for intelligent individuals.

This presumption, however, is a swindle.

How the Swindle Works

All propositions--like "Crows are black" or "Rosie hates Donald" or "There is no God"--are either true or false. Correspondingly, if we think they're true, we will believe them; if we think they're false, we will disbelieve them. Yet there is a second way to express disbelief: we can withhold judgment. Consider proposition G: "God exists." The theist affirms G, the atheist denies G, and the soft agnostic withholds judgment about G. Moreover, by denying G, the atheist affirms ~G: "God does not exist." The theist, of course, denies ~G and the soft agnostic, once again, witholds judgement.

Undoubtedly, the theist bears a burden of proof with regard to G and the atheist bears a burden of proof with regard to ~G. Rational people can disagree about which proposition is initially more plausible and, so, it's difficult to show that either theism or atheism is the default position. The agnostic simply waits for someone to make a compelling case either way.

Pop-atheists, nevertheless, mask atheism's burden of proof by bringing it under the umbrella of "non-theism" with soft agnosticism. That is to say, they illicitly muddle soft agnosticism's lack of epistemic burden with atheism's positive claim; they purposely confuse belief in the non-existence of God with non-belief in the existence of God. The swindlers, in effect, want to have atheism by affirming agnosticism.

Turning the Tables

Yet the scam could run the other way. If one were to conflate soft agnosticism with theism, it could be argued that "non-atheism" is the default position and atheists must do all the proving. But this is obviously unreasonable. So Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris cannot blithely rely on their mistaken notion that G is unproven, even if it were not. If their overtures are genuine, they must offer a positive case for ~G.

Prayer (Part 2): God's Responses to Our Excuses

Sanjay Merchant — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:41:22 -0700

In my last post on prayer, I enumerated various ways in which we excuse our prayerlessness. Our excuses gain their strength from fundamental misunderstandings about both God's nature and the human predicament. In this post, I'll address questions about God's nature as it pertains to our excuses.

The Good News: God is personal.

God is personal and, as a divine person, he desires personal fellowship with us: the created objects of his love. He wants us to share our lives with him and prayer is a vital element in that sharing.

But what about "spiritual principles"?

Advocates of the, so called, "prosperity gospel" effectively regard God as if he were a supernatural vending machine that dispenses health and wealth when we correctly perform certain religious procedures and abide by particular "spiritual principles." But God is not a machine, he is the preeminent person, and in his wisdom he may permit faithful believers to experience great pain (as was the case with Job) in order to bring about our greatest good.

The Good News: God is all-knowing.

God exercises perfect wisdom. What we ask of him is far less important than that we ask him. Prayer expresses our dependence upon God; it's not critical that we ask him for precisely the correct things in precisely the correct way. He already knows what to give.

But what about theological fatalism?

If he knows what we need before we ask, why do we ask? It should first be noted that, despite the seeming pall of theological fatalism that hovers over the intersection of prayer and divine omniscience, the Spirit-indwelt heart often cannot help but express its needs to God. Still, the question is fair. The answer is that we ask of him, and share our lives with him, for our own good and for his good pleasure. The latter can be understood by analogy: we parents love to hear the breathless stories of our young children, even when we already know every detail—whether it's a terrifying story about a small cadre of ants that crawled all over them as they sat in the grass or an exultant tale about reading a really hard word for the first time. Similarly, God delights to hear our stories, desires for us to tell him our fears and pains, and is eager for us to express our requests—even though he already knows them. He does not need to be informed of our situation, he wants us to invite him into the situation and share it with him.

The Good News: God is all-powerful.

Because God providentially directs the unfolding of history, he can do anything we ask and alter any situation in which we find ourselves.

But what about unanswered prayers?

If God can respond definitively to our needs, why does he sometimes leave us in bad situations? If he can do anything we ask then why does he often decline to meet our requests? It is certainly not because God isn't listening or because we've failed to perform our prayers in a way that entices him to dole out the desired response. Rather, his response extends beyond the prayer spoken in a moment because we often ask amiss, or are not yet prepared for the response that he desires to give. Having what we want now can often do more harm than good and God, above all others, knows this. Thankfully, he does not always respond to mere momentary prayers; he responds to our whole lives.

The Good News: God is present everywhere.

There is no place we can go to escape his Spirit and there is no place in which prayer is inappropriate. He always hears us.

But what about the hiddenness of God?

If God is always present with us, why does he often seem absent when we pray? It can seem at times that our prayers go no higher than the ceiling. We wonder, where is God? Theologians have called him Deus abscondicus: the hidden God. In truth, our sense of distance is often the result of our own sin. We hide from God in our hearts as Adam and Eve did when they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They foolishly imagined that they could avoid God by covering themselves with the foliage of the garden, but they could not; he sought them out. And he seeks us out as well. God wants to redeem and restore us, and he is never far off.

The medieval thinkers also realized that God often seems absent because he is transforming us, not because he has abandoned us. They recognized that when a individual first comes to Christ, his desires and affections are curled inward toward himself. He is self-centered, not yet God-centered. So when the new believer worships and devotes himself to prayer and the reading of Scripture, the Lord gives him a great sense of consolation. He experiences spiritual pleasure and seeks God all the more because of it. Yet as he matures, the Lord removes that sense of consolation so that he will not be addicted to the feelings that go along with devotion, but will come to love God for God's sake rather than how it makes him feel. The fact that we no longer "feel" God's responsiveness to our prayers is actually a sign of his love toward us by means of his transforming guidance.

The Good News: God is all-good.

God wants to give us good things according to his perfect will.

But what about the problem of evil?

If God desires to give us good things, why do we experience evil? First, we are certain that God will give us the ultimate good: eternal life with him. All other gifts, needs, and situations pale in comparison. Still, the problem of evil is intellectually vexing and existentially aching. Adequate answers cannot be stated briefly, so an inadequate answer will have to suffice: God permits evil in order to bring about the greatest good for the sake of those who love him and for his glory. Through the course of our unending lives we will experience the depths of his benevolence, while faintly remembering some trifling unpleasantness toward the beginning.

The Good News: God is gracious... but what about my constant failures?

We constantly fail but God is never dismayed. Some imagine that, while God was willing to graciously reach down to them at one time, he has since become so exasperated with their continued failings that he has finally given up on them. This is a somewhat useful excuse for those who are considering giving up on God, but it is not even a remotely accurate depiction of how God deals with his children. If he had given up on us he would have foreknown both that we would fail repeatedly and that he would give up on us. But our Lord is too wise to play such a charade and too loving to become irritated with us. If he has opened the door of grace to you, the door remains open. He doesn't want to condemn us; Jesus went to the cross to redeem us and will not, now, give up simply because we make stupid decisions.

Prayer (Part 1): The Agony of Prayerlessness

Sanjay Merchant — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:36:18 -0700

Prayer is not about getting what we want from God; it's about exposing our hearts to his transforming presence and receiving what he wants to give us. This is particularly significant because sin distorts our natural appetites and so, despite a sense of certainty, we often don't know what we really need or want. God, however, knows precisely what we need because he knows how we fit together within his eternal plan, and he knows what we truly want because he has designed our hearts such that our natural appetites are ultimately fulfilled in him. Above all, God wants to respond to our prayers with good gifts (see Matthew 7:11).

Still, it's one thing to know the true purpose of prayer and it's another thing to cultivate a life of continual, fruitful communion with God. Richard Foster articulates our predicament: "We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it. We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do, but it seems like a chasm stands between us and actually praying. We experience the agony of prayerlessness" (Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home [New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992], 7).

Prayerlessness is agony because it is sin (e.g., 1 Samuel 12:23a); and sin leads to pain; and dull, unremitting pain results in agony. It's sin because we grieve the Spirit, who indwells us, when we resist his transforming operation in our hearts (see Ephesians 4:30). The Spirit seeks union with the Father through us, but our sins drive a wedge between us and God.

We make a number of excuses in order to dilute the spiritual pain that results from prayerlessness. Here are a few common ones:

"I pray all the time, but I never get what I ask for."
"I don't know how to explain to God what I really need."
"Things have gotten too bad. God can't help me now."
"I don't think God really hears me."
"God has a lot of big issues to deal with; my problems are so petty in comparison."
"God may respond to others, but he never responds to me."
"I've made too many mistakes. I'll start praying once I get things together."
"I don't know how to talk to God."
"Prayer is hard and really boring."
"I never know what to pray for."
"Praying doesn't make any sense. God already knows what we need. Why do we need to tell him?"

Our various excuses for prayerlessness gain their strength from fundamental misunderstandings about both God's nature and the human predicament. I'll address those issues in my next post but, in the mean time, if you have any pet excuses that I've missed, I'd be happy to hear them.

Never Tell God What You Really Think

Sanjay Merchant — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:08:50 -0700

I recently came across a remarkable ancient Hebrew prayer which begins with an astoundingly crass complaint: "Yahweh, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me."

Apparently, the writer blamed God for his lack of popularity. But who could be so arrogant as to slander a blameless and holy God for his own laughably insignificant troubles? The audacity! Who, exactly, did this ninny think he was dealing with? If he possessed a passable understanding of the Biblical God, he would never dare to utter such faithless words.

The accusation is so childish, so crude, that I was tempted to slam the text in disgust. Except that the text is the Bible and the whiner is Jeremiah... the prophet... who is in heaven with God. And as these things tend to go, the Bible slams those who are enticed to slam it.

Jeremiah fervently loved the God of Israel. But as the Lord pressed him to preach a message of doom, his public esteem when into the tank. In return for his faithfulness, he received beatings, reproach, mockery, and ostracism; so much for prosperity and favor with men. Thankfully, most of us have neither the spiritual gumption nor the emotional fortitude to be employed in this manner. If we did, God would probably put us to good use as objects of scorn and condemnation because Jeremiahs simply refuse to give up when set on a divine task and they have no one to trust but the Lord. Jeremiahs are incorrigibly stubborn, utterly irritating, and desperately needed.

Yet, while they're fully of moxie, they're also willing to be contorted and reformed by the Lord in any manner, and for any purpose, that He may see fit. Their courage, however, often prompts them to tell Him what they really think about all the contorting and reforming. Jeremiahs just don't know how to hold back.

Now telling God what you really think in the midst of angst--or at any time, for that matter--may seem to be moral feebleness, at worst, or forgivable impetuousness, at best. But on the contrary, it's a great spiritual virtue because an individual who expresses what is really in his heart is telling the truth; at least about himself. The truth may be ugly, but it's the truth nonetheless. Those who don't really want to know what's inside of their hearts insist on hiding behind the right words at all costs--devout words, bland words, flattering words, worthless words. (Let's call these latter poltroons "Ananiases".) Whereas Ananiases slather an impressive veneer of piety over their ceaseless deceptions, Jeremiahs prefer hideous truths to pretty lies.

The strength possessed by Jeremiahs is not their own. It is coaxed forth by the Spirit who desires to lead us inward; into the miry pits of our souls so as to reveal the teeming basins of lust, hatred, pride, and careless self-love that exist there. After all, the Spirit is intimately aware of the things we hide; it is we who are just finding out about them. He knows what we genuinely are; we can spread fig leaves all over our shame but neither He nor we are fooled. His purpose is to show us these dark areas and demonstrate how He, alone, excises the filth so that we can, in turn, adore Him.

This is where we are first conformed into the image of the Son: in the midst an embarrassing, terrifying, and painful divinely-guided tour through the heart. And this incursion begins when the Spirit uses our simple, sometimes faithless and cavalier, words like a scalpel in the hands of an expert surgeon. We cry "ouch" before he's even drawn blood.

After being tossed off her cart into a puddle of mud, the medieval saint Teresa of Avila shook her fist at the sky and yelled, "God, if this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few!" She was a short and feisty woman; bold and useful to the Lord. In that moment, she was covered in mud, inside and out, but because she was a Jeremiah, she was utterly unable to conceal the muck. She loved her God and refused to hide from him behind a bush in a garden. Teresa shouted her heart to the sky because, good and bad, it belonged to her Lord.

"But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,' his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." (Jeremiah 20:9)

Pop-theology and Conspiracy Theories

Sanjay Merchant — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:55:07 -0700

Pop-theology is awash with conspiracy theories. We're breathlessly informed that the church (that omnipotent, crafty monolith) suppresses evidence that Jesus developed his philosophy in an Indian ashram, or that he survived his crucifixion, or that he fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, or that religious bullies hijacked his original message of peace and equality in order to illicitly place his imprimatur upon their own strange metaphysical theories.

On his blog, Five Sacred Crossings, Craig Hazen aptly calls conspiracy theories "the fruit of the soul's dark regions" and notes that such nincompoopery tends to emerge from the fertile ground of blind contempt. Once it has thoroughly poisoned a soul, this emotional vice creates dark regions from which bombastic conjectures grow like diseased fruit. That's why, to use his example, those who obsessively villanize George Bush find it easy to believe almost any outlandish rumor about his nefarious scheming. After all, if you're going to beat a dog, does it really matter what kind of stick you use?

But there's also an intellectual vice which tends to give rise to conspiracy theories; or, perhaps, makes them attractive once they've been formulated: intellectual laziness. Experts in every field of study enjoy insights that non-experts lack; that's what makes them experts. While the information and fundamental ideas from which they've drawn their insights are readily available to everyone, it takes more work to acquire these insights than most people are willing to invest. Those who actively cultivate virtuous mental lives--exemplified by rationality, openness, persistence, vigilance, laboriousness, and humility--gain understanding; those who find this too difficult do not.

Conspiracy theories seemingly shortcut the need for serious study by providing maximum intrigue at minimal mental expense. So, for the lazy-minded, a conspiracy theory is hard to pass up because, although it may seem to be the product of serious study, one need not engage in serious study to grasp a terse, pre-packaged rationalization. One only needs to be in the know. And, once one is in the know, he feels as if he has gained insights that have eluded the ignorant. Coming into possession of such stunning deliverances on the cheap is like buying an academic degree online; it has the form of scholarliness with none of the substance.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and William Loftus

Sanjay Merchant — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:58:34 -0700

After slaying the Bull of Heaven, Gilgamesh and his devoted friend Enkidu embarked on a long trek back to the palace at Uruk. Along the way, Gilgamesh boasted to Enkidu that he had installed an ingenious security system to protect his royal chamber from intruders: if anything larger than a gnat passed through a door or window, the system would give it a lethal electrical shock. He added that the system logged each instance in which it was triggered and security cameras monitored activity outside his room at all times. There was no safe way in or out, Gilgamesh warned, unless one carried the electronic key card that hung from his neck.

But when the Champions of Uruk arrived at the royal chamber they found that the furniture had been overturned, the king's clothes were shredded and strewn across the floor, certain valuable items--jewelry, statues of lapis lazuli, and his T.V.--were missing, a half eaten sandwich was left on the dining table, and the words "William Loftus wuz here!" were painted on the wall.

Gilgamesh frantically searched the system's logs and found that it had, indeed, been continuously operational while he was away; the logs registered neither that the system had been accessed nor that anything had passed through an entry. Moreover, the video cameras failed to capture anything approaching the chamber from the outside and there was no dead intruder on the floor. He confirmed that the system was operating properly by throwing one of his many prize-winning pet hamsters through each door and window and observing that the system killed it.

"I don't know how William Loftus got in here--whoever he is--but he's one remarkable burglar," the wild man Enkidu muttered in amazement.

Gilgamesh turned to his astonished friend with conspicuous confidence. "On the contrary, Enkidu, I'm certain that no one could have possibly gotten in or out. There is no 'William Loftus' behind this calamity; what you see here is the result of ordinary events."

Enkidu knew very little about the ways of human society, he was not sophisticated--or even domesticated, for that matter--but he was unable to restrain his incredulity. "What sort of ordinary events? What could possibly account for all these things?"

Gilgamesh cocked his head in a pensive, academic manner. "Well, perhaps a great earthquake rocked the chamber. That could have easily overturned all my furniture and left things in disarray. Most importantly, it wouldn't have triggered the system."

"But your clothes, they've been torn to pieces!"

"It may be that after the earthquake a violent wind ripped through the chamber. That wouldn't trigger the system either, yet it would have blown my clothes around. As the clothes were stirred by the wind they probably tended to catch on that closet doorknob over there. Now if the door was open then the other end of any garment could have snagged on that nearby bedpost. The swirling wind would have caused the door to open and close and, so, if any article of clothing was hooked on both the doorknob and the bedpost, it would be torn when the door slammed shut."

"Lugal Gigamesh, clearly your stories cannot account for everything we see here! What about your missing items? Surely wind didn't carry them out of the room. If it had then your security system would have been triggered."

"Yes, but I have inexplicably lost things before, Enkidu. Until recently I had a back scratcher and a Star Wars DVD that I am now utterly unable to locate. I have looked everywhere but I just can't find them. Still, I have no reason to think that they were stolen or that I took them out of the chamber myself. Things like that happen from time to time. Just give me time to search; they may still turn up."

Enkidu's was stupefied. "Great king, what about the paint on the wall and the half eaten sandwich?"

"It's true, I did not paint on that wall nor did I leave that sandwich. But aren't some things simply mysteries? There are many, many curious things that cannot be explained. Even you cannot explain how this mysterious William Loftus got into my chamber. Who is William Loftus, anyway? Why have I never heard of William Loftus before? Surely we can't be expected to explain everything, but if we are simply willing to search, we can explain many things. There's simply no reason to resort to fanciful burglar theories."

"By Ishtar! Have you lost it Gilgamesh? Obviously someone broke in, overturned your furniture, made and ate a sandwich, painted on your wall, and stole some of your items. Your just-so stories clumsily explain some things but cast other recalcitrant questions into the abyss of mystery. The people of Uruk would howl to see their wise king beg for time to explain things that he should be able to explain now. I know a crime scene when I see it. Whether you like it our not, your security system cannot keep William Loftus out."

The Meaning of "Perichoretic Blue"

Sanjay Merchant — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:40:58 -0700

The phrase "perichoretic blue" comes from a poem that I wrote for my wife about the love shared by the sky and the sea, entitled "The Second Day". The final stanza reads:

The horizon dissolves into perichoretic blue,
Where there's no separating me from you.
And there's no separating you from me,
Because you are the sky and I am the sea.

"Perichoretic" is the adjectival form of "perichoresis": the theological doctrine pertaining to the interpenetration of, and complete fellowship shared among, the persons of the Trinity. Marriage, while not truly perichoretic, resembles the unity of the divine persons as two individuals become one flesh. In my poem, the horizon is a metaphor for "marital perichoresis" as an azure band where the sky and sea meet, becoming entirely confluent.

In a far less mushy sense, there is a deep fellowship and natural intercourse between the Queen of the Sciences--theology--and Her Handmaiden--philosophy--that cannot be facilely bifurcated; despite the fact that some theologians bellow, "Nein!" with impressive emphasis. To put it bluntly, unphilosophical theology risks incoherence and untheological philosophy flails into explanatory incapacity as it drifts from its moorings.

Modernism's retarded twin children--isolationist theology and scientific naturalism--will go the way of the dodo. In eternity, thinking about God, science, ethics, meaning, and metaphysics will be perichoretic.