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ON “REALISM”

In the prologue to The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism became the Religion of Modernity, Eugene McCarraher says,

Words such as “paradise” or “love” or “communion” are certainly absent from our political vernacular, exluded on account of their “utopian” connotations or their lack of steely-eyed “realism.”  Although this is a book about the past, I have always kept before me its larger contemporary religious, philosophical, and political implications.  The book should make these clear enough; I will only say here that one of my broader intentions is to challenge the canons of “realism,” especially as defined in the “science” of economics.  As the master science of desire in advanced capitalist nations, economics and its acolytes define the parameters of our moral and political imaginations, patrolling the boundaries of possibility and censoring any more generous conception of human affairs.

“Realism” is a deeply ideological word, and in a very negative sense.  “Realism,” in other words, says more and other than what it pretends to say.

“Realism” pretends that it refers simply to “that which simply is, or that which is possible.”  But we all know, given the countless times we have heard the word used and in its usual contexts, that what is or what is possible as designated by “realism” always has to do with what we wish were not real, that which thwarts our desires, or that which simply can’t live up to them.

“Realism” is invariably linked to some reality (present or possible) that cannot be what we wish of it.  “Realism” has to do with telling us we cannot get what we want, and that we may as well accept this fact.

What are we saying if we tell someone to “be realistic”?  We are almost certainly not telling him or her to see that the situation is or will become much better than he or she imagines.  Almost certainly we are trying to say that things are worse than this person has imagined, or will be worse than our addressee hopes.

So what am I saying?  Simply this: that “realism” is a subtle, powerful, and very commonly used ideological battleaxe deployed not only to diminish hope in a given context—indeed, in the name of honesty, one might well be justified in doing this sometimes—but to assault hope in principle.  The sinister and dishonest ideology of “realism” is that it equates reality with thwarted needs or desires; it subtly curses the positive, the good things in life, with the label of unreality: if something is good, even if it is undeniably extant (and “realism” is always very reluctant to see the good, literally blinds itself in its presence) that good is somehow not real.

In effect, we have what might be described as a kind of dystopic Platonism.  Only the negative, the regrettable, is entirely real in this rhetoric.

And what could be more useful to a society that wants to destroy hope at every turn?  What could be more useful to a society that wants millionaires and billionaires to be in charge and desires that no one will ever question this self-evidently absurd and unjust situation?

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TWO WAYS WITH GOD

Christianity seems to present us with God’s good books and his bad books.  How do you tell which one you are in?  Christianity seems to present us with either a great thundering about how sinful we are because we are disobedient, unloving, too unconcerned with the poor, etc.–in other words, we are faced with God’s justice–or Christianity presents us with a God saying never mind, I love all my broken children, and I know you can be nowhere near what I want you to be on your own efforts.  Relax.  I always love you no matter what.

The young rich man is told he must give all he has to enter the kingdom of heaven–an apparently impossible task.  Later in that tale we hear that with God all things are possible.  I always wonder what, exactly, is it that is possible?  Is it possible for the rich man to enter the Kingdom of God without having given his riches to the poor?  Or is the meaning instead that God will help the rich man to give up his riches in order to enter the Kingdom?

Which one is it?  How does God look upon me right now?  Can one be in the good books and the bad books both at the same time?  How do we get into God’s good books and know we are there?  It is very well to say here are the commandments, or here are the two great commandments upon which all the law hangs (love God with all you’ve got and your neighbor as yourself) but we know we are going to fall short here.  How close to the mark must we get before we are in the good books as opposed to the bad ones?  Or are our efforts here irrelevant?

Christianity has tormented us for two thousand years with such questions, and with no answer that I can see, except for those who have been given one on some mystical level.

When we say that God welcomes sinners, do we really mean it, or do we just mean “sinners” in an ironic way.  It seems to be the conservative way to be highly censorious of those society already treats as garbage, putting temptation before them and then blaming them when they fall.  The liberal way, on the other hand, is to treat “sinner” ironically and dishonestly.  All too often what is meant here is simply a person who is a sinner in a conservative’s eyes but not in a liberal’s.  Let’s get over a sentimental idea of “sinner.”  It is easy enough for liberals to castigate conservatives for being harsh on prostitutes, for example, or drug users, the poor, and other underdogs.  When the liberal says “sinner” he doesn’t mean literally “sinner,” but actually “those whom conservatives falsely label as guilty.”

Well, if God welcomes those people, it’s not such a big deal, is it?  Why would he reject helpless innocents, if that’s what they are, just because conservatives do?

When Mary Magdalene wept and washed Jesus’ feet with her own hair, she presented us with the quintessential image of the repentant sinner.  Personally, I am not inclined to judge prostitutes harshly.  The chief cause of their situation, as far as I am concerned, is poverty caused by economic injustice.  I’m not even sure that prostitution, as such, is always and inherently immoral.  But if the whole message of this Biblical incident is taken to be that prostitutes are not such bad people as the world makes them out to be, I think we have missed something.

And for the pharisee who said “I thank you that I am not like other men” there is always another pharisee thanking God he is not like the first pharisee, and another pharisee after that one . . .

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from THE RAGAMUFFIN GOSPEL by Brennan Manning

Consider this: if Jesus sat at your dining room table tonight and laid out your whole life story – the miserable, recurring sins, the hidden agenda, the skeletons in the closet, the dark desires unknown even to yourself—you would still experience joy, peace, and acceptance in His presence.

Why?  Because you would finally recognize the being of inestimable value that Jesus sees in you.  And because you would hear him say, “Your sins go over here.  It’s you that I’ve come for, My friend.”

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CELEBRITIES AND ARISTOCRATS

Perhaps in some ways celebrities are what has replaced aristocrats in a largely republican world (in the non-American sense of the word “republican”).  But celebrity is more cleverly dishonest than is aristocracy.  Aristocrats claim superiority as a function of birth.  This claim is now easy to see through.  But celebrities claim superiority as a function of earned worthiness.  What confounds the rejection of the power of celebrity is that from time to time, unlike in aristocracy, a given celebrity may well have earned some measure of his or her exalted regard.  Aristocrats, conversely, are always aristocrats only because of birth, no matter how worthy some amongst them may be.  Aristocracy can be rejected as nonsense across the board, for no aristocrat is superior by right of birth.  The needed annihilation of celebrity as such is handicapped by the occasional truth of this or that celebrity’s perceived earned superiority.

One can therefor reject aristocracy untainted by one’s own personal envy, self-loathing, or other dubious motive.  To reject celebrity in the same sweeping manner is much more difficult if one is wary of one’s motivations.

This is all the more tragic since the motivations of a given individual hostile to the idea of celebrity as such are not relevant to the overall need to annihilate the deceit and injustice of celebrity.  But we doubt ourselves and hesitate.  And for some, becoming a celebrity may be a genuine (if unlikely to be fulfilled) hope.  The same is not true of aristocracy since it is decided at birth whether one will ever be a member.

What I have said here about celebrity is also similar with regard to plutocracy under capitalism.

Could this be the secret of Donald Trump’s power? the persistence of his fan base and the incredible leniency shown him despite whatever he does?  There are many business people who are not celebrities.  There are many celebrities who are not business people or even particularly rich.  But Trump is a businessman, and a celebrity.  Nobody in the culture is more thoroughly both than he, and nobody more thoroughly combines the most odious capacities of both: the imperious sense of entitlement, of being the special case that the worst celebrities display; the parasitical nature of capitalists at their worst, who produce nothing of value and are instead vampires of money.

The combination of capitalist and celebrity makes for the most dangerous sort of spiritual vampire.

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THE POLITICS OF CHAPTERS BOOKSTORE

I was in a Chapters bookstore not long ago and noticed a problem: no, I am not talking about the fact that what used to be a bookstore with a large number of gift items has now turned into a gift store with a large number of books.

I am talking about an interesting section of books called “Culture and community.”  This was divided into four parts with the following labels: “Black Voices,” “Gender,” “LGBTQ+,” and “Indigenous.”

It is this sort of thing that makes conservatives bleat that liberals run everything.  But this is like complaining women run the world because there is a preponderance of females leading the feminist movement.

No, the real problem is there is no section on class.  And this, briefly, is the problem with much progressive politics.

The supposed liberal hegemony that conservatives complain about is nothing which in fact threatens them very much.  What is truly thrust into the shadows, as if there is a quiet understanding amongst all good people that the neocons are right in saying Marx and everything connected to him is both outdated and hopelessly wrong, is a class-based understanding of our current situations.

I would not simplify history in the manner of a vulgar Marxism and reduce it to a mere playing out of property relations.  But whereas there is little or no inherent power accruing to race, gender, sex, or sexual orientation, there is power inherent in the control or ownership of the means of production.  In other words, such power as men have had over women, for example, has been based not so much on some inherent power in being a male, as that men have managed to have more property rights than women in many times and places.

It would be a mistake to get into a competition between a class-based analysis and these other types of analysis.  In struggling with each other, advocates of all kinds for oppressed and marginalized people would only weaken each other and strengthen the oppressors.  So my point is not to decrease the attention paid to current ways of understanding injustice.  Rather, I would attach an understanding of class to these issues.

For is not class power central, perhaps even essential, in the oppression of various groups?  Consider some of the following observations.

A key factor in the oppression of women, historically, has been in making it difficult or impossible for them to own property.  Materially, they have been dependent on fathers and husbands.  In societies where they can get the same jobs as men, they often get less pay.  In other words, control of the means of production is restricted in their case.

Indigenous people in North America were opened to oppression largely by losing their land: that is, their means of production.  In the late 19th century the buffalo of Western Canada were opened up to massive over hunting by white people, causing literal starvation amongst the indigenous people of that region.

A common incentive for sexual and gender nonconformists of all types to stay in the closet is fear of job loss or harassment on the job.  Yet again, a threat to one’s means of production (keep in mind that employees do not own the means of production to begin with) is a key factor in maintaining injustice.

African people not only lost control of their means of production when removed from their land and forcibly exiled: they could not own property in North America and became literally the means of production for others in becoming slaves. 

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“HOW CAN UNIVERSALISM BE TRUE IF…?”

Under the breath of many Christians who raise objections to universalism you can hear them say, “but universalism has always been a minority tradition.  How can all the infernalist greats like Augustine and Aquinas be wrong?  How can so many pastors, priests, and ministers—including some who are hardly of the intolerant, fire-breathing sort—be wrong?”  Indeed.  (In fact, according to David Bentley Hart, for the first few hundred years of Christianity universalism just might have been more than a minority position.  But let that go for now.)

Well, we should not forget what a shock it must have been to the Roman Catholic world to be confronted by some obscure German monk in the early 16th century and told that the Pope himself, the Vicar of Christ, was wrong, terribly wrong, in a number of very serious ways.  Besides, is Christianity or is it not a revolution?  If it is, (and it is) it should not be too surprising to expect it might change drastically in a number of ways over the years, that it might teach us things that either are in scripture but have never been seen there, or which might not be in scripture at all.  (I am leaving aside for the time being the question of whether universalism is scriptural or not.)  But must the truth of God be small enough that it can be packed in one book and tied up in a bow with no significant, new developments for almost two thousand years?  How were Jews during and shortly after the time of Christ expected to follow Jesus if religion is simply a matter of following extant texts in ways that were already prescribed?  Wasn’t Jewish scriptural tradition always evolving anyway? And were not its ways of reading far more creative than some of the arid Christian fundamentalism one encounters?  And what of the pagans?  Were they not being asked by Christianity to throw over—contemptuously even—certain of their beliefs and practices that had been held dear for countless generations?  If Christianity upset the apple cart of history some two thousand years ago, we should not be too surprised if within Christianity itself old certainties are to be overthrown.

Or are we to believe that it is only the hallowed “us,” the Christian tradition, which has no need of revolution?

“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen,” is not a reference to human understanding, even of the most enlightened sort.

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I DON’T GIVE A DAMN IF PEOPLE ARE TIRED OF HITLER/TRUMP COMPARSONS: WHY TRUMP MUST BE PROSECUTED

Go into any well stocked bookstore or library and you are certain to find books about Nazis.  Consider the subject of how these Nazis got into power in Germany, and you will see these books deal with it in varying degrees of competence.  Indeed, the issue of how such terrible people could attain power, apparently with the approval or at least acquiescence of millions of Germans, is one of the topics that fascinates Western culture endlessly.

The reasons usually cited in popular public discourse for the rise of Nazism include such things as Germany’s history of authoritarianism and anti-Semitism, bitterness over defeat in WWI and over the terms of the treaty of Versailles, and despair and rage over the economic consequences of the great post-war inflation and the later Great Depression.

But of all the reasons for Hitler’s rise to power, there are some that are commonly overlooked.  And the reason they are overlooked is that these reasons threaten our society’s conception of capitalist, so-called “democracy” as the unquestionable apex of what is fair, or at least, of what is possible in the world.  These overlooked reasons are also neglected because they threaten to shine a positive light on the political Left: those people whom we are supposed to assume are at best well-intentioned idiots, or at worst Stalinist monsters–that is, when they are not ignored entirely, which they often are in discussions of how the Nazis gained power.

But let me be more specific about one of these reasons for Hitler’s success: essentially, the radical Right, even before the Nazi party had gained a large following, murdered hundreds of leaders of the Left and got away with it in every case.  The relatively few political murders committed by the Left were punished by heavy sentences, including death.

In 1922 one Emil Julius Gumbel published a book called Vier Jahre politischer Mord (Four Years of Political Murder).  In this book he analyzes the political assassinations committed by the Right and the Left since November 9, 1918, the beginning of the German Revolution.  Keep in mind that at this time the Nazi party was nowhere near as large and powerful as it would become eventually.  However, many of those right-wing people whose essential beliefs and attitudes were those of the Nazis, and who would eventually willingly join them, were already active and violent in other organizations such as the various Freikorps militias.

I can do no better at this point than present some very illuminating quotations from Gumbel himself.

Correspondingly, the right is inclined to hope that it could annihilate the left opposition, which is carried by hopes for a radically different economic order, by defeating its leaders.  And the right has done it: all of the leaders of the left who openly opposed the war and whom the workers trusted–Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Eisner, [Gustav] Landauer, [Leo] Jogisches, et al–are dead.

The effectiveness of this technique is for the moment indisputable.  The left no longer has any significant leaders, no more people toward whom the masses have the feeling: he has suffered so much for us, dared so much for us that we can trust him blindly.  The working-class movement has thereby doubtlessly been set back by years.  This success is all the greater since in no case has punishment occurred.

The unbelievable leniency of the court is also quite well known to the perpetrators. . . . Today the [right wing] perpetrator risks nothing at all.  Powerful organizations with an extensive network of confidantes over the whole country provide him with shelter, protection, and material sustenance.  “Right-minded” bureaucrats and police chiefs supply falsified papers for potentially necessary trips abroad. . . .  The beneficiaries live magnificently and happily in the best hotels.

Here is a summary of some of the statistics Gumbel collected on these events:

Political Killings Committed

                                                        Political killings                Political killings

.                                                              by the Left                   by the Right

Total number of murders                         22                                354

Number of convictions                             38                                  24

Duration of incarceration per murder    15 years                           4 months

Number of executions                              10                                   0

Gumbel also states,

Virtually all of the relatively small number of assassinations of reactionaries have been atoned for through severe penalties; of the very numerous assassinations of men of the left, on the other hand, not one has been atoned.  Credulousness, wrongly understood orders, or actual or purported insanity were always the bases of the defense to the extent that trials even took place.  Most of the proceedings were quashed either by the prosecutor’s office or the criminal court.

Gumbel also discusses how newspapers could call for the murder of specific individuals and be punished only by small fines.

Gumbel also relates how his earlier work, Two Years of Political Murder, which analyzed the earlier years of these same incidents, was received by the establishment.  He had thought that either this work would be believed by the judicial system, which would then punish the murderers, or that he would be accused of slander and be punished himself.  But neither happened.

Although the brochure in no way went without notice, there has not been a single effort on the part of the authorities to dispute the correctness of my contentions.  On the contrary, the highest responsible authority, the Reich minister of justice, expressly confirmed my contentions on more than one occasion.  Nevertheless, not a single [right wing] murderer has been punished.

So people always ask, why is it everyone in Germany was apparantly a Nazi, or a least a person who did not care enough to oppose them?  The answer, in part, is this:  there were anti-fascists in Germany (especially in the working class) who were numerous, active, and brave, and their leaders were murdered with impunity when Hitler was still in his political infancy.  This was one of the ways in which the capitalist structure of Germany (which had been shaken but not overthrown by revolution) paved the way for Hitler’s rise to power.  To ignore this fact is to slander the better elements of German society by ignoring them, and even more significantly, to slander the Left and the realistic hope it has always offered.

Gumbel also adds sobering words on how much of the public was suckered into accepting this murderous situation:

Public opinion in general approves of this procedure.  For clever propaganda has taught it that every enemy of militarism is a Spartacist, therefore an enemy of humanity, therefore open game.

Keep in mind that such propaganda was well underway when Hitler was no more than a gleam in Hindenburg’s eye.

Please keep in mind also that Gumbel’s work discusses only cases of premeditated, illegal killing of a well-known German by another German for domestic political motives, whereby the incident is characterized not as mass action but as an individual deed.  Four Years of Political Murder is not about deaths due to armed battles in the streets.  In these conflicts as well, however, killing by the Right far exceeded killing by the Left, and the violence of the Left was far more often used in self-defence than was the violence of the Right.  In other words, the German revolution was far less violent than the counter-revolution.  One could actually make a very strong case that the Left should have used a great deal more violence than it did.

Germany’s population in Gumbel’s time was approximately twice what Canada’s is now.  Were we to transpose Gumbel’s work to a fictional scenario set in Canada at the present time, we would be faced with a situation where, in four years, left wingers killed 11 people and were heavily punished in each case, and wherein right wingers killed 177 prominent, left-wing Canadians without one individual doing any serious time for this.

For anyone with their eyes open, the implications for America are even more alarming.  The tepid response of the Democrats to Donald Trump’s violent insurrection attempt sends the same message to the American Right what the German judiciary sent to the Nazis: do whatever you want; we will never get in your way.

Donald Trump must be prosecuted: yes, even if it means violence from his supporters.  For if the threat of that violence succeeds, it will be followed by far greater violence, just as the violence in the four years after the German revolution, horrible as it was, was dwarfed by the violence that followed when it helped to put Hitler into power.

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ON THE RHETORIC OF “PRIVILEGE”

Before the word “privilege” was recently coined as the prefix to words like “white,” “male,” or “able-bodied,” before the word “privilege” had any political connotation, there was already a whispering of the word “undeserved” as privilege’s prefix.  There was already a simpering attached to “privilege,” such that whenever anyone claimed to have a privilege, he or she was bowing the head just a bit, acknowledging, even if not explicitly or consciously, a kind of shameful failure: one had received what one had not earned.  One was therefor on the spot, to be watched closely: would the privilege be sufficiently appreciated?  Would enough gratitude be shown?  Would the gift be misused in any way?

Would the freely given gift be paid back?

Of course, “privilege,” by definition, is undeserved.  As is a gift.  If a so-called privilege is deserved or earned, it cannot be a privilege.  But the context, style, and attitude with which the word has been so often expressed connoted (and still connotes) however subtly, a significant but unvoiced disapproval, disappointment at the recipient of said privilege.  (I am still speaking here, of the word’s use in a non-political context).

When the word “privilege” is deployed, what would otherwise be the gifts of love are tainted with accusation, a lack of confidence in the receiver.

With this taint comes the ruination of gratitude.  For “gratitude,” even though there is nothing wrong with the word, and at its basic level it connotes only positive things, is, by its popular usage, another of those simpering words.  “We should be truly grateful” is so often delivered with a tone of “we don’t deserve this; it should not have been given to us.  How worthy the giver therefor, and unworthy are we.  Rejoice now, in your gift!”  The message may even be, “I give you this from sheer love and/or generosity.  But to whom much is given, much will be expected.  And you have probably gotten more than you can live up to.  I have bestowed failure upon you, and debt.  And it is all your fault.”

Such is the way adults often teach children to be grateful, and provoke instead ingratitude.  For how much of a gift or a privilege is that thing which is immediately a reminder of one’s unworthiness? 

Now to the more recent, political meanings of “privilege.”

Privilege, in one sense, is quite real.  Certain dominant groups have things in part or in whole because they were stolen from others.  For example, white people in North America stole massive amounts of land from Indigenous people.  A man in a corporation may get a promotion he is worthy of, but which a female colleague was more worthy of, and was passed over for sexist reasons.

But I often hear certain things described as “privileges” which are actually rights.  For example, take the fact that people who are white will not be pulled over by the police simply because they are white.  Things like this are sometimes referred to as “white privilege,” as if not being harassed by cops was some kind of gift one was not worthy of, as if a truly responsible white person would contrive somehow to be abused by the cops.  Isn’t not being harassed by the police a right?  The injustice in this example is not that white people are not going to be harassed on the basis of their race, but that people of colour are harassed on a racial basis.  The issue is not white privilege, but white supremacy.  If a white person takes the rhetoric of privilege to heart, he or she will feel guilty simply for not being victimized.

Does the rhetoric of privilege make any sense?  I don’t think so.  With this mentality, any good thing you have (such as your rights being respected) that somebody somewhere does not have becomes of itself a moral failure.  No wonder, then, that some people are eager to claim the status of victim for themselves whether they are victims or not.  No, if there is any guilt to be felt in the example of racially motivated police harassment, it is in the performance of the white supremacy, or the failure to oppose it.  I suspect those who use the rhetoric of privilege would agree with this, but the rhetoric itself implies a subtle shift: it broadens the scope of accusation to include things which simply are not moral failures.

There are psychological machinations at work here, and rather than simply disapprove of this rhetoric of privilege, perhaps we need to understand where it comes from.  A capitalist culture prioritizes property rights (first and foremost, of those with the most property) more than any other.  Along with this comes the old work ethic of personal worthiness: I am wealthy because I earned it.  You, on the other hand, deserve your poverty.  A person who may be unmoved by protestations of human rights violations (such as police harassment) either denying they exist or being unconcerned enough to do anything about them, might have a bit of a fire set under his or her ass if, on the other hand, someone says, “you have something you haven’t earned.”  The accusation of “white privilege” is very effective at this.  The rhetoric of privilege has an emotional force to it.  The person who does not feel responsible for the police harassment, or who may be unmoved by the statement, “it is your responsibility to help me defend my rights” may well be galled and/or morally intimidated by language which says, “you are a freeloader, one who reaps where he has not sown.  You are, in the moral sphere, a thief, a bum.”  Whether this person is then wracked by guilt and becomes an ally, or defiantly berates “woke culture,” he or she has at least been forced into some attempt at self-justification.

And the accusation of “Privilege” is a secular equivalent to some conceptions of original sin.  You needn’t actually sin through your own choices to be guilty—neither a sin of omission, nor commission.  You need only to belong to a privileged group, one which you may never have had any choice about belonging to.  The problem with certain kinds of privilege is that one is born to them—given what the historical and cultural context is–and cannot give them away.  The accuser is smug in the knowledge of pinning on you a crime you are surely guilty of but did not commit.  One can decide not to engage in racism, one can decide to fight it, and one can be justly judged on the basis of whether one does or not.  But one cannot give up “white privilege.”

Some measure of so-called “white fragility” (though I think not most of it) can be explained by this mind-fucking rhetoric: few things are more exasperating than an accusation that in one sense is irrefutable, but which points to an offense that is either not a real offense, or one that one could not help committing.  How many preachers over the centuries, for example, have angrily furrowed their brows at their congregations and accused them in effect of not being pre-lapsarian?  People have enough to feel genuinely guilty about without the volume being turned up on the survivor’s guilt, which is a psychological, not a moral category.

So you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.  Those who put you in this rhetorical bind are probably trying to replicate for you in a small way their own experiences as members of marginalized groups.  Now, one may choose to commend this action as morally salutary or deplore it as small minded and dishonest.  But let us at least see clearly how the mechanism works.

A focus on “privilege” in its political context takes righteous anger and undercuts it by resentment; the legitimate and righteous complaint made by a genuine victim is twisted into sounding like the whining of a failure.  “You have stolen from me” becomes the voice of Envy as in Marlowe’s Faustus: “I am lean with watching others eat.”

In response, the victimizer (for example, white supremacy again) rubs his hands with glee: “Oh look!  Resentment!  Didn’t Nietzsche speak of this?  For shame!”  This development parallels on a cultural level what often happens on a political one: a violent and oppressive group fails to respond to peaceful demands for change; some of the oppressed eventually take up violence against the oppressor, and the latter in a fit of moral ecstasy decries the heavily provoked violence which is actually much smaller than the unprovoked violence of the oppressive group itself.  Thus do the champions of the “anti-woke” make full use of the small-mindedness of privilege rhetoric to once again make the relatively innocent David look like the wicked Goliath.  We have seen the term “politically correct” deployed for the last thirty years to make any attempt at equality and justice for the marginalized look like some kind of tyranny on the part of a terrifying liberalism that has had everything its own way.  But nothing has been more politically correct than not being politically correct.

The reader will have concluded that I do not at all care for the rhetoric of “privilege.”  It muddies the waters.  It makes silly accusations while overlooking very clear and serious ones which the accusers must understand better than anyone.  But I suspect much of the root of this rhetoric is the persistent and truculent attitudes of dominant and exploitative groups resisting change.  So much injustice has not been properly addressed or resolved, or in many cases admitted.  By and large the rhetoric of privilege is an angry attempt, made by thwarted and abused people, to get a little revenge against systems far too slow to stop their own much larger injustices.

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KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL; FRANCOIS JULLIEN

“Knowledge of good and evil” in the book of Genesis may not mean realizing the truth that good and evil already exist.  Knowledge of good and evil is not a “fall from innocence” in the sense that one had not heard of or even imagined evil but then comes to know of it.  The knowledge of good and evil comes about in the context of a non-dualistic universe where there is only good, and it needs no evil to set it off, to be its foil.  But to know good and evil is to fracture good into both, to create evil, unnecessarily.

The “knowledge” of good and evil here is not only an abstract knowledge, but more like “cleaving unto,” a knowledge in the erotic sense.  One emerges in a fallen world where good seems to need evil (even in the imagination) to exist as good.  This may well be the greatest evil of the situation.  (See also Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” as a marvellous exploration of this idea of “necessary evil.”)  One is leaving behind the knowledge (in both senses of that word) of an entirely good world, to a world where this pure good cannot be imagined, cannot be made workable, even as a theory.  To the fallen world, the world where good and evil are known, a world of pure good seems an absurdity.

It is in this context then, that in order to save us from this situation, to restore us to a world without evil, Christianity offers the solution of belief in Christ.  At this point the words of Francois Jullien become illuminating:

“Because it involves ipseity—selfness in itself—believe takes on a whole other meaning.  ‘Believe in’ (pisteúein eis, πιστευειν είζ), John often writes.  And, in fact, everything rides on the shift from ‘believing that’ [croire à] to ‘believing in’ [croire en].  What we believe when we believe that is from the start limited, constrained, objectivized (even when the belief is that God exists).  But believing in—i.e., in a self, in an ipseity—is not undefined but infinite.  When I say ‘I believe in you’ I have no limit in view.  Moreover, believing that can be detailed and itemized: I can believe that X is and not that Y is, and thus make a selection.  But belief in is by necessity whole; it calls for an absolute.  When I say that I believe in you I no longer wonder “what” in you I believe in.  To put things differently, believing that entails a necessary measure of credulity, even if I have good reason to believe, because I might just as easily not believe what I believe.  I recognize its hypothetical character (e.g., belief that Santa Claus exists).  Whereas belief in is not credulous but trusting.  By the phrase ‘believe in yourself’—one that a parent might say to a child, or vice versa, or that one lover might tell another—I mean that I am counting on you, that I am expecting something of you, that I am placing my hopes in you, in you as yourself, in your ipseity, or that I am expecting everything of you.  Thus belief in entails a self, an ipseity, on both sides.  When I believe in someone I involve the entirety of myself.  What I believe in in the person in whom I believe is what he himself reveals of himself, but also what he conceals within.  Belief that might be open to convincing, but its truth will still rest on insufficient grounds; I would prefer knowledge that was certain.  But the truth of belief in, precisely because it entails an as-in-oneself, will not be measured by a truth subject to proof; it is its own guarantee and can claim no other.  You must believe in me, says Christ, and not believe what they say of me.  But hasn’t the Church, with its dogma, been compelled to shift from belief in (ipseity) to belief that (identity)—and made the latter into the ‘faith’ that tempers its armor?” 

(Francois Jullien, Resources of Christianity English edition, 2021, Polity Press, pp. 82-84)

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UNIVERSALISM AND A CHRISTIAN LEFT

In That All Shall be Saved (Yale UP, 2019) David Bentley Hart says,

“The truth is that all of these theological degeneracies follow from an incoherence deeply fixed at the heart of almost all Christian traditions: that is, the idea that the omnipotent God of love, who creates the world from nothing, either imposes or tolerates the eternal torment of the damned.” (78)

It is one thing to argue that a just and loving God might annihilate or even torture forever some of his children.  Infernalists and universalists clearly are on opposite sides of the fence here; the issue is usually argued on the basis of reason, scripture, or both.

But what does it mean spiritually or psychologically to believe in an infernalist God?

What does it mean politically?

I think that Christian infernalists are houses divided against themselves.  As Hart asserts, probably many Christians only think they believe in hell.

But might it be that infernalism has hamstrung the church?  Might it be that laying our arguments for infernalism aside, the infernalist position sets up a God who, even if he can be justified on logical or scriptural grounds simply cannot be loved?  I believe so.  The god infernalists love (or think they love) is not lovable.  This cannot be stressed enough.  It is all very well to take a hard line on divine sovereignty and say that since God is God there are no ethical constraints above him to which he must comply.  But if what God does with this infinite right and power strikes us as abomination, how are we to love him?  We cannot.  We may proclaim that it is ourselves who are totally depraved in objecting to hell and to such a God, but whatever one makes of that argument we still cannot love the God of hellfire we claim to believe in.

If a Nobel Prize winning mathematician told you that 2+2=5 you might choose to believe he is right, even if you cannot see how.  But you have disqualified yourself from ever doing mathematics again.

And if a cruel and monstrous god is supposed to be love itself, that makes it more difficult for us to truly love ourselves or each other.  This is true in both the personal and political spheres.

So what is going on?

Why this insistence on the divine bogey, the horrific Nobodaddy?

Once one has swallowed the balderdash of infernalism, one can believe almost anything.  If an omnipotent deity wants to save everyone, but cannot because his hands, supposedly, are tied by our free will, what other social, political, economic monstrosities can be rationalized and accepted?  Feudalism, patriarchy, capitalism—one can do a song and dance and accept their necessity or even goodness if one can believe the holy, just, and loving creator of the universe will roast certain of his children over an open flame forever.

In effect, the church has corrupted itself by holding a form of moral idiocy close to its heart.  It does not help that the idiocy of infernalism has been believed by many people who are by no means idiots.  It seems that most thoroughly respected and even brilliant theologians have believed it.  The idiocy has been believed by people with loving hearts and a true desire to know Christ.

It is also notable that it tends to be the more politically and socially conservative of the church who are most likely to believe in hell and to emphasize it.  Could this situation be one of the reasons why Christianity and the Left have so often been at odds and even outright enemies?  By this I mean not only that leftists object to infernalism, but that there is something in the beliefs and attitudes behind infernalism that are inimical to the entire leftist project.

(It seems to be a common phenomenon to find people who are theologically brilliant, but politically obtuse.  Likewise, some of the most acute and perceptive political thinkers are blind or ignorant when it comes to matters of religion.)

Not that there has not always been a Christian Left, of course, but in his 2017 Protestants: The Faith that Made the Modern World (Penguin) Alec Ryrie asserts, “The real novelty of our own time is not the prominence of the religious Right but the silence of the religious Left” (7).

It is time for this Christian Left to arise.  We must tell the world that infernalism is not fundamental to the faith.

Even if one makes the case that the secular left from the 19th century onwards owes its sense of justice to Christianity, this is no reason for religious triumphalism.  What it means is that while the Church largely fumbled the ball by siding with the powerful, opposition to oppressive systems and ideologies like capitalism has been left largely to a secular Left, thereby deprived of the greater strength and spirit it might have had.

At numerous times and places the secular Left has had a stronger and more Christian ethic than the church.  I am convinced the church’s frequent hostility to the secular left comes in part from an unacknowledged moral envy the church has sometimes had when it failed to help the poor the left was in solidarity with.  Could it be the church’s ethic and spirit has been crippled by infernalism?  Could it be that a more ethically sensible Left found itself unable to cleave to a religion that demanded eternal torture for some malefactors?  I by no means advocate that Christianity should give up infernalism in order to gain more converts.  One can only justify universalism in the name of truth: whether or not that gets you more or fewer converts is not relevant.  But perhaps the secular Left has been more morally intelligent on numerous occasions.