Archive for March, 2012

« Older Entries

Amateur Theology Hour: On Irenicism and Heresy

Posted March 31, 2012 By John C Wright

After my conversion, and having no loyalty one way or the other for any particular communion, and, being an American, having a Constitutional right to join which ever I pleased without fear of legal retaliation, I was in the position of an orphan who, having just discovered that his parents are alive after all, rushes to their arms only to find them divorced, and commanding to chose whether he will live with father or mother. He is put in the position of a judge between them, despite not being trained to judge such disputes, nor being inclined by temperament to do so.

I discovered that you Christians, you foolish Christians, had shipwrecked and severed your Church, and the world is scandalized. The mocking atheist points at this as evidence that She is merely a human institution, no more sacred than the local Zoning Commission, and he says, “Those who preach love and altruism fight over homoousianism and homoiousianism, the difference of an iota! Religion breeds division rather than quells.”

Being a local and lawyerly thinker, I looked to the sources of dispute.

That the Protestants find the Real Presence to be scandalous was no concern to me: I did not see why, if almighty God can incarnate Himself as a Jewish Rabbi, He cannot incarnate Himself as a loaf of bread. Is one so much more dignified than the other?

The existence of icons and statutes likewise meant nothing to me. It was clear even to an outsider that these were objects of reverence but not worship, no more idolatrous than singing a hymn.

I had no enmity against St Mary. I was raised Lutheran, and to this day am not sure what the point of the contempt for St Mary is, or why the mother of the savior merits being ignored.

Whether or not man was justified by works of faith or by faith that produced works was of no moment to me, since I intended both to have faith and to do good works, as do all true Christians.

These were all non-issues, not worth writing a paragraph to discuss, much less write a book, much less fight a war.

So, to me, the only point in contention worthy of consideration was the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. My reasoning was as follows.

Read the remainder of this entry »

148 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Apologetics

More Interview! More Dimmest Secrets!

Posted March 30, 2012 By John C Wright

Here is part two of the interview with raygun revival:

http://www.raygunrevival.com/sffwrtcht-interview-author-john-c-wright-part-two/

An excerpt:

SFFWRTCHT:  How do you deal with writer’s block?

JCW: By not believing that there is such a thing. Writer’s block is the muse trying to tell you that you have made a mistake and are lying down railroad track going the wrong way. The only thing to do is swallow your ego and rip up the track, go back to wherever the wrong turn was, and start again. If you cannot do that, then you will suffer writer’s block.

SFFWRTCHT:  What future projects are you working on that we can look forward to?

JCW: […] The paratime fantasy mentioned (tentatively titled SOMEWHITHER) above was born when I wanted to write something set in a Dan Brown-style background, or, rather, the opposite background, with clerical assassins from archaic and hidden orders of the Church as the good guys, and the Harvard trained symbologist as the mad scientist with a beautiful daughter.

I also wanted monkey-masked ninja-girl, a Haunted Museum, a voluptuous sea-witch, a talking falcon, the Holy Grail, primordial Ur-Language of Man, the Ring of the Nibelungs, monsters from the antipodes, sardonic Latin werewolves, haughty Hellenic blood-quaffers, high-energy physicists, evil astrologers from a parallel world where astrology actually works, nihilistic Babylonians, the Tree of Life, the Simurgh of Persia, a magic katana, an unkillable hero, the Deep of Uncreation, and a prayer-powered mecha made from the abandoned celestial armor of a forty-four story high archangel hidden in the depth of the Great River Euphrates.

So SOMEWHITHER is basically a gentle and meditative love story about the ineffable beauty of … oh, no, wait. It is an action-adventure story about a goofy teen with buck teeth and a puppy love crush on his busty girl boss who gets tossed down a rabbit hole into another dimension and finds himself in a fight scene about once every two or three chapters, with gratuitous blood gushing every which way. He has got to solve the mystery, save more worlds than one, and rescue the girl, and she cannot remember his name. It is one of those kind of stories. Grim and serious it is not.

8 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Crowing

Hunger Games

Posted March 30, 2012 By John C Wright

The HUNGER GAMES is a mediocre movie which has been hyped to the point of hyperventilation. I am impressed with the marketing campaign, even to the point where the dictionary site I visit had a picture of the heroine from the film.

I saw it this week, and have not read the book on which it is based, and I acknowledge that this is merely the first third of the trilogy, but, even so, I was disappointed.

SPOILER WARNING! I give away several important plot twists, including the ending, so read no further if you mean to see this movie!

Read the remainder of this entry »

41 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Fancies

Applied Amateur Theology: Do Women Sin?

Posted March 30, 2012 By John C Wright

A reader named Nate Winchester sent me this link to the following article (http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/Do.Women.sin.htm)

It’s happened to me three times now so I need to ask you about it.  All three times were so similar it’s eerie.

In a spiritual formation class we work on how Christians can get victory over sin as a part of their spiritual growth. To start the unit I ask students to list the sins Christians face most today.  They list four sins immediately:

  • Internet Porn
  • Pride
  • Lust
  • Anger

Then they pause…they run out of sins.  These four got listed quickly each time. In fact I’ve come to call them the “foul four” sins.  Then they run out of gas and just sit there thinking.

At the pause I usually ask, “OK, for each sin on our list let’s decide as a class if men or women are more inclined to this sin.  In all three classes they have agreed that while women are sometimes tempted in these areas men are more inclined to these four sins.

So I say, “Only women participate now—decide among yourselves what four sins you’d add to the list to that you think women are more inclined toward.   Silence.  Furrowed brows. Thinking… [long pause]

Read the remainder of this entry »

41 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Apologetics, Only Posting a Link

Amateur Theology Hour: the Canon of Scripture

Posted March 30, 2012 By John C Wright

One of the reasons why I became a Catholic rather than returning to my Protestant roots after my conversion is because of the paradox of Lutheranism.

With all do respect to my God-fearing brethren who follow Luther, there is a basic logical contradiction in his teaching I cannot in good conscience resolve, and that is this: if you teach Sola Scriptura, namely, the doctrine that the authority of the Bible, independent of tradition, is sufficient to define the doctrine of the faith, you cannot also edit the Bible, throwing away books and epistles not to your liking.

I trust the paradox is clear: if the Bible is the sole authority of doctrine, you cannot pick the doctrine first and edit the Bible to suit yourself, and then claim that it is the Bible’s authority rather than yours on which your rest your doctrines.

I am speaking of the  Deuterocanonical  books: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch (including the Epistle of Jeremy, a.k.a., Baruch 6), 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with longer versions of Esther and Daniel, which the Protestants list among the Apocrypha along with Shepherd of Hermas, Gnostic gospels and the like.

An honest Protestant friend of mine told me, and firmly believes, that the Deuterocanonical  books were never part of the canon, merely that the Roman Catholics added them to the Bible at the Council of Trent. I am not sure what the Church’s motive was supposed to have been in my friend’s theory: in this version, Luther was making the conservative and traditional claim that the Deuterocanon was not part of the Canon, and Rome retaliated by making an unprecedented innovation injecting much extraneous matter in the to Canon.

If this theory were true, all the lists of the books of the Canon we inherit from the Church Fathers should follow, or at least resemble, the Protestant Canon. I would argue that they do not.

Allow me to quote Joe Heschmeyer of Shameless Popery as counsel for the defense. I cannot improve on his words or his case: Read the remainder of this entry »

27 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Apologetics

Reviewer Praise for COUNT TO A TRILLION

Posted March 29, 2012 By John C Wright

Review for COUNT TO A TRILLION

http://natewinchester.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/counting-to-a-trillion/

Here is a quote from the review:

Count to a Trillion is the latest fictional work from author John C Wright, and I eagerly picked it up after having thoroughly enjoyed the Chaos Children trilogy.  True to form, John not only writes a book that’s hard to discuss without spoilers, but one that makes you curse the day he was born for having to wait for the next book to come out (seriously, cliffhangers in his hand should be considered a violation of the Geneva convention).

The story is in the grand tradition of space operas (or at least, what I’ve heard is their tradition as I’ve not read a lot of them) with epic ideas and mind boggling “what ifs”.  The cornerstone “WI” of this story is “what if the Singularity came, and nothing changed”.  Being a geeky techhead, I’ve heard more about the Singularity that I’ve ever cared to know, and I’ve often believed that everyone was just a little too hopeful about it (but then, I’m a cranky cynic).

The other “what if” is, “what if we lived in the galaxy of star trek or star wars – filled with myriad aliens, yet still could travel no faster than light?”  How would wars and trade and even communication work when trying to accomplish any one of those would take centuries on the galactic scale.  It’s almost like a throwback to the old legends of Marco Polo and other great travelers of old – except grander.

13 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Crowing

Wright’s Writing Corner: De Partibus Animalium

Posted March 29, 2012 By John C Wright

The beautiful and talented Mrs Wright has returned to Wright’s Writing Corner and the series of articles about writing about the 102 Great Ideas. This one is about animals:

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/244758.html

Excerpt:

Nowadays, the shelves of the children’s and young adult sections of the book store are filled with books on vampires and magic schools. It was not like that when I was young. There were very few books about magic. Mainly, if you liked enchantment, you were limited to fairy tales and books of myth.
But there were many, many, many books on animals.

Be the first to comment
Filed in Wisdom

Amateur Theology Hour: On the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

Posted March 29, 2012 By John C Wright

There are basic arguments for and against the position that Mary retained her virginity in perpetuity. The words below are not mine, but are cribbed from various sources. I deal below briefly with the theology, with dogma, and with Biblical and emotional arguments for and against the position.

The first source you might recognize from the exceptional clarity of the logic.

The Theological Argument

I answer that, God so prepares and endows those, whom He chooses for some particular office, that they are rendered capable of fulfilling it, according to 2 Corinthians 3:6: “(Who) hath made us fit ministers of the New Testament.” Now the Blessed Virgin was chosen by God to be His Mother. Therefore there can be no doubt that God, by His grace, made her worthy of that office, according to the words spoken to her by the angel (Luke 1:30-31): “Thou hast found grace with God: behold thou shalt conceive,” etc. But she would not have been worthy to be the Mother of God, if she had ever sinned. First, because the honor of the parents reflects on the child, according to Proverbs 17:6: “The glory of children are their fathers”: and consequently, on the other hand, the Mother’s shame would have reflected on her Son. Secondly, because of the singular affinity between her and Christ, who took flesh from her: and it is written (2 Corinthians 6:15): “What concord hath Christ with Belial?” Thirdly, because of the singular manner in which the Son of God, who is the “Divine Wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:24) dwelt in her, not only in her soul but in her womb. And it is written (Wisdom 1:4): “Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins.”

The Angelic Doctor goes into more detail on the topic here: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4027.htm

Catholic and Orthodox Argument

The primary questions for the Catholic and Orthodox are:

(1) Did the Church ever teach authoritatively that Mary lost her virginity after the nativity of Our Lord? If so, was the reverse of this doctrine justified?

(2) Did the Church ever teach authoritatively perpetual virginity of Our Lady? — and, if so, is this an ancient (for if not, the charge that it is an innovation is not impossible) and anciently majority view (for perfect unanimity is never to be expected)?

(3) Did the Church leave this as a matter for each man to decide in his own conscience? — and if not, is it an abuse of the authority of the magisterium so to teach?

We are not asking whether Mary was Perpetually a Virgin or not, simply because absent her eyewitness, or Joseph’s, or relatives present at the birth of younger siblings, we have only the records. What does the record say? The record we have is the testament of the Church Fathers, since the written testament of scripture is not definitive on the point.

Read the remainder of this entry »

109 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Apologetics

Raygun Revival Interview — All My Dimmest Secrets Revealed

Posted March 28, 2012 By John C Wright

I am interviewed by Raygun Revival by author-editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

http://www.raygunrevival.com/sffwrtcht-interview-author-john-c-wright-part-one/

Bryan Thomas Schmidt(SFFWRTCHT):  Where’d your interest in SFF come from?

John C. Wright: I was always a bookish child, reading such well known classics as Daniel Boone: Young Hunter and Tracker by Augusta Stevenson and Three Boys In A Helicopter by Nan Hayden Agle and Janet Wilson and The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall as well as obscure books like Alice In Wonderland by some guy whose name I don’t remember.

My father was in the Navy, and servicemen on cruise often collected paperbacks to read during bunk time. One of these men, a friend of my fathers, had accumulated a huge boxful of books he was reluctant to throw away, so he gave it to me. On the top of the box was a paperback showing a kid in a spacesuit the globe of the earth in the background, and faces hanging in space above that, a fat crook and a thin one, a child, an evil alien and a good one.

Mystified, I opened the first page: You see, I had this space suit. How it happened was this way: “Dad, I want to go to the Moon.” “Certainly,” he answered, and went back to his book…

And I was hooked for life.

Read the remainder of this entry »

8 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link

Marc the Bad Catholic is Back

Posted March 28, 2012 By John C Wright

… And he is in rare form and rarin’ to rumble.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/03/3-failed-attempts-to-troll-the-catholic-church.html#more-1431

Allow me to quote his potent end paragraphs:

Read the remainder of this entry »

20 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link

Avatar: Racial Note for the Benefit of the Leftists

Posted March 28, 2012 By John C Wright

Korra, like Katara and Sokka is an Eskimo or Finn or Laplander with blue eyes, so whatever actress plays her in any live action movie made hereafter will have to show her Ancestry Passport (or Ahnenpaß or Ariernachweis) to prove she is not White, lest the film-makers be accused by the Political Officers of Thoughtcrime. I’m just saying.

1 Comment. Join the Conversation
Filed in Drollery

Legend of Korra

Posted March 27, 2012 By John C Wright

That noise you just heard, if you live in Virginia, was me squealing like a schoolgirl.

Nickelodeon released for a single day the first two episodes of its upcoming sequel to AVATAR: THE REAL ONE called AVATAR: LEGEND OF KORRA, which I was lucky enough to see.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is very hard to do a sequel, because the writing has to catch lighting in a bottle for a second time, with a new plot and new situation which is like, but not too like, the original, but not too different either, and with a character who is like but not too unlike the beloved characters of the first.

They’ve done it.

The same sense of humor, of drama, even of morally complex drama is present. There is no war, but the world is slightly out of balance, as one might expect after a steampunk-themed industrial revolution, and the monarchies of old have given way to a republic, with at least some of the advantages (and drawbacks) of a republic.

Korra from the first moment on screen is a charming and well realized character, enough like Aang to be his reincarnation, but with the spunk of Toph and the drive of Kitara.

The writing also nicely extrapolates the implications of what was established in the first series. I will not mention them, for I would not spoil your surprise come April.

Read the remainder of this entry »

2 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Fancies

Romance, Political Correctness and Power Hunger

Posted March 27, 2012 By John C Wright

I was recently reading the following passage from THE CITY OF THE CHASCH by Jack Vance. In this scene, Adam Reith pursues an abducted space princess Ylin Ylan the Flower of Cath, who has been taken for sacrifice by the Priestesses of the Female Mystery:

The Seminary of the Female Mystery occupied an irregular flat area surrounded by crags and cliffs. A massive four-story edifice of stone was built in a ravine, to straddle a pair of crags. Elsewhere were sheds of timber and wattle, animal pens and hutches, outbuildings, cribs and racks. Directly below Adam Reith a platform projected from the hill, with a two-story building to the sides and the rear.

Gala events were in progress. Flames from dozens of flambeaux cast red, vermilion and orange light upon two hundred women who moved back and forth, half-dancing, half-lurching, in a state of entranced frenzy. They wore black pantaloons, black boots and were elsewhere naked, with even the hair shaved from their heads. Many were without breasts, displaying a pair of angry red scars: these women, the most active, marched and trooped, bodies glistening with sweat and oil. Others sat on benches slack and dull, resting, or exalted beyond mere frenzy. Below the platform, in a row of low cages, a dozen naked men stood crouched. These men produced the harsh chant Reith had heard from the hills.

When one faltered, jets of flame spurted up from the floor beneath him, and he once more screamed his loudest. The flames were controlled from a keyboard in the front; here sat a woman dressed completely in black, and it was she who orchestrated the demoniac uproar.

A singer collapsed. Jets of flame only caused him to twitch. He was dragged forth; a bag of transparent membrane was pulled over his head and tied at the neck; he was tossed into a rack at the side. Into the cage was thrust another singer: a strong young man, glaring in hatred. He refused to sing, and suffered the jets in furious silence. A priestess came forward, blew a waft of smoke into his face; presently he sang with the rest.

How they hated men! thought Reith. A troupe of entertainers appeared on the stage-tall emaciated clown-men with skins bleached white, eyebrows painted high and black. In horrified fascination Reith watched them cavort and caper and with earnest zest defile themselves, while the priestesses called out in delight.

When the clown-men retired a mime appeared: he wore a wig of long blonde hair, a mask with wide eyes and a smiling red mouth, to simulate a beautiful woman.

Reith thought, They hate not only men, but love and youth and beauty!

Read the remainder of this entry »

143 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Fancies, Musings

March Madness Continues at Bookspot Central!

Posted March 27, 2012 By John C Wright

The beautiful and talented Mrs Wright has a message about her ongoing campaign:

Amazingly, I have made it to Round Four. If you would like to vote, here is the link:
http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/03/27/6th-annual-book-tournament-round-4-quarterfinals/
I am so grateful for everyone’s support. Bless you guys!

Be the first to comment
Filed in Other

Church and State by FPB

Posted March 24, 2012 By John C Wright

The eloquent historian Mr Barbieri sums of the history of the struggles between Caesar and Pontiff nicely, ending with the observation that “history is the greatest of comedian and the master ironist of all ironists.”

Here is the opening paragraphs:

The history of the Western Church begins with the Pope recognized as the ultimate court of appeal. Kings were crowned by bishops and therefore could, in extreme cases, be uncrowned (as Pope Innocent did to King John Lackland, and Gregory VII to Emperor Henry). But in the late middle ages, the kings – beginning with the king of France – began to realize that they could bring the Church under their own control, and make themselves effectively lords and masters. The Great Schism was the result of this, with the king of France and his allies manipulating the Avignon succession, the Italian states (then immensely powerful) and varying numbers of allies behind the Rome succession, and eventually a third line of Popes based in Spain. This was obviously intolerable, and in the end unity was restored, but in the meanwhile Czech Bohemia had gone off on its own tangent, the Hussite revolt, which demonstrated that a whole state could break off from the Roman communion and not only survive (at least for a while) but become powerful and threatening. By the time of the Reformation, the idea of breaking away from Rome and remaking the church in whatever image the ruling classes wanted it had already become reality, which is why the revolt caught on so fast. Luther was not much of an innovator – even his public personality was pretty much imitated from that of earlier Dominican preachers, especially Tauler. But while two centuries earlier anyone would have been horrified, as if by the ending of the world, at the notion of breaking up the Church and renouncing Roman allegiance – the reason why France and the other kingdoms had tried to pull the Papacy to themselves, ripping it up in the process, was that they still thought only in terms of one Church led by one Pope – the idea could now be easily entertained, especially by lords who bordered on Bohemia and whose fathers and grandfathers had suffered from Hussite raids within living memory.
Read the remainder of this entry »

35 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Other
« Older Entries