Sunday, March 19, 2006

The Dangers Of Historical Symbolism

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The Dangers of Historical Symbolism
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. ~Thomas Babington Macaulay
The study of history is the study of symbols. We cannot hope to study everyone who fought in one battle, much less everyone who ever lived. Instead, we must focus our attention on those things that seem to us to be good symbols for those things that we wish to understand. When we wish to understand the little people we cast about for good representatives of the little people. When we wish to understand what we believe to be great events of a time we look for people that we deem to be key to those events. Even the process of determining what the great events of a time are is a process of searching for good symbols that will help us understand the time as whole. Since we are not omniscient, this reliance on symbols for our understanding of history is unavoidable. But that does not mean that we should be blind to the dangers of historical symbolism. It is all too easy to decide on a symbol and what that symbol means, and then interpret all other information in light of that symbol. Such a method gives us the comfort and ease of already having a system to assign meaning to all new information. But while it may make the digestion of new information easier, it also deprives us of benefit from the new information. Information that already has a pre-defined meaning does not lead to an increase in understanding. Information only has value to those whose understanding is changed by it. We would hope that historians fall into the latter class and not the former. But this is often not the case. In theory, historians chase after the most obscure facts so that they may have a good understanding about what information best symbolizes the whole that they seek to know. By imparting to us this symbolization of what they know, they hope that we can get the benefit of the historians' understanding without having to know all the information they know. But in practice, historians' symbolization seems to be a very poor representation of the facts they possess. I think this because historians tend to collect information that never increases their understanding. There are many places in history which bear this observation out. I think that one of the best examples can be found in the persons of John Brown and Levi Coffin. Every school child in America has been taught about John Brown. At the very least they have been taught about his raid on Harper's Ferry. Often they have been educated on his exploits in Kansas as well. On the other had almost no one has ever heard of Levi Coffin. Even history buffs would draw a blank at his name. The closest Levi Coffin comes to John Brown's type of fame is this famous picture. But few people know that Uncle Tom's Cabin was based on real people. Even fewer people know that the real Eliza was fleeing to Levi Coffin's house. To understand why this disparity in fame is significant, you need to compare the information that is available about them to what historians chose to portray. Levi Coffin and John Brown had two things in common. They where both born in the same era, and they were both born into religious families that hated slavery. After that, their lives are a study in contrasts. Levi Coffin was born in the South, but John Brown was born in the North. John Brown was an advocate of violence who put his beliefs into practice. Levi Coffin was Quaker who put into practice his pacifist principles. John Brown was a failure in business. Levi was a successful businessman. Levi Coffin's concern for slaves led him to spend much of his own money. John Brown funded most of his various projects by getting other people to give him money. I have never read anything that indicated that John Brown successfully helped any slave gain his freedom. It is estimated that Levi Coffin helped over 3,000 slaves gain their freedom. It is the large number of slaves that he helped to escape that earned Levi Coffin the title "President of the Underground Railroad." It was given to him not by friends or admirers but by those who were trying to catch slaves. They gave him that title because while Levi Coffin lived in Newport, Indiana, not a single escaping slave was recaptured in that city. Of course, Levi was not the only one responsible for that success, but the he was the main organizer. It was his house that was the Grand Central Station that a number of the lines of the Underground Railroad converged on. He bought shoes, clothes, and other things the slaves who came to him needed. He often sheltered them in his own home for extended periods of time while they built up their strength and received medical care. Sometimes, when he could not find any volunteers, he paid people to help the slaves escape. Levi sold his own successful business to start another one for the sole purpose of selling cotton goods that were not made with slave labor. That store did not bankrupt him due to his business savvy, but he did not make money while he was operating it. With the end of slavery, Levi worked hard to raise money to help educate the freed slaves and to provide them with their basic needs. Because of all his labors for slaves and former slaves, Levi did not die wealthy even though he was an extremely successful businessman. Compared to all that, what did John Brown do? Did he do more than this to help the slaves? No, John Brown's fame rests on his intentions, the people he killed, and the manner in which he died. In his own day, his raid on Harper's Ferry was talked about in every newspaper in the nation. His words at his trial were reported, his actions debated. He forced a nation to confront how divided it was. People who disapproved of violence (William Loyd Garrison and men like him) came to his defense while he was on trial for violence. Men who had no use for religious beliefs (Transcendentalists) praised him even though his actions were undertaken in the name of God. On the other hand, some people for whom the violent defense of their rights was the highest duty of mankind (most southern slave holding men) condemned him. People who talked about the evils of oppression (those in the South who fired the first shots of the civil war to free themselves from Northern dominion) condemned John Brown. John Brown was a very divisive man, and because of that he is an excellent symbol of times that he lived in. Certainly, Levi Coffin can hardly compare with John Brown as a symbolic representation of the times they both lived in. Far more people in the North were willing to march against the South than were willing to risk going to jail for harboring a slave. Far more people were willing to demonize the South than were willing to pay extra for goods that were not made with slave labor. Nobody went to war singing songs about Levi Coffin. And when the war was all over, few were concerned with educating the freed slaves or providing for their basic needs. Yet a history that makes John Brown known far and wide but neglects to tell of Levi Coffin is fundamentally a false history though every fact in it is true. Such a charge may seem extreme, but would we call it a true history if we focused on Hamilton and ignored Jefferson? Would it be true history if we discussed the making of the US Constitution solely as a product of the Federalists and ignoring the role of the Republicans? What if we went back further in time and we told the story of American Revolution as if the Federalists could take all the credit for what the Americans did? Even though the Federalist ideas were the ones that did the most to shape America, it is obvious that leaving out the Republicans creates a false history. Not only would it hinder our understanding of that time period of history, but it would also neglect many debates that are still relevant today. Levi Coffin and John Brown are just as symbolic of an ideological contest as Hamilton and Jefferson. The fact that Levi Coffin is missing from the history books is symptomatic of an ideological contest that is ignored by historians. If you look at the people in your average history book who campaigned against slavery, you will find that they all have a connection to John Brown. William Loyd Garrison knew Brown and published a defense of his character after the raid. Fredrick Douglass knew Brown, and after the Civil War he argued that John Brown did not die in vain. The Transcendentalists admired John Brown and attended lectures that Brown gave. Their admiration continued after his raid, with Emerson comparing the gallows that John Brown hung on to the cross. What these people all had in common were unorthodox religious beliefs. For example Garrison was violently against all organized religion. Emerson denied the deity of Jesus. The closest that any of Brown's friends came to belonging to an established religion were those who were Unitarians. These beliefs translated into a radical vision that wished to remake America in all aspects. These beliefs led them to fight for the right of women to vote just as hard as they fought to do away with slavery. They led Garrison to burn the Constitution of the United States as a convenant with hell. They lead some Transcendentalists to embrace socialism. This is not to say that everyone in this group had the same political views. For example, Fredrick Douglass came to disagree with Garrison over the Constitution. But they were all radical in their beliefs, at least for their time. Furthermore, they all disliked the orthodox religious beliefs of their day. But contrary to what you might think from reading the history books, these people did not represent all of the people who were anti-slavery. In fact, there was another side to the anti-slavery moment that was orthodox in its doctrine and conservative in its politics. These people were not merely a subset of the radicals, for the orthodox opposition to slavery was older than the radicals. At the very start of this country, John Wesley was in the South and borrowing the language of the book of James in promising hell fire to those who kept slaves. And though many Methodist kept slaves, many also kept to the teachings of their founder and opposed slavery throughout this country's history. Nor were these conservative anti-slavery people absent during the time of John Brown. If you read a history of Garrison you will find mention of his falling out with Lewis Tappan. But rarely is anything explained about who Lewis was or what he believed. Which is strange, since Lewis was at least as influential in his time as Garrison. It was Lewis who was instrumental in getting the slaves of the Amistad released. It was Lewis who funded the most widely circulated anti-slavery newspaper. It was Lewis who worked hard to convince orthodox churchmen of the immorality of abiding by the Fugitive Slave Act. But Lewis, a devout Calvinist, could hardly be described as liberal even in his own day. If I were to name all the big-name, respectable, orthodox believers who opposed slavery, I would have to write a book. It is simpler to prove how widespread the orthodox opposition to both slavery and radicals was by looking at the Millerites. Most people would consider the Millerites crackpots and even many orthodox Christians would be embarrassed to claim them. But the Millerites were not a separate sect of Christianity, but rather a group of orthodox believers who found the arguments of William Miller convincing. There was nothing that separated William Miller's beliefs from other orthodox Christians, except for one thing. Miller became convinced from his study of the Bible that Jesus was about to come back soon. In fact, he gave the date of October 22, 1844 for when he thought Jesus would return. Over a million people are said to have attended his various lectures. For the purpose of my argument there are only three noteworthy things about Miller. He was an anti-slavery man as Garrison himself attests. He was popular, as can be seen by the numbers of people who attended his lectures. He thought that religious beliefs of men like Garrison were so horrible that they were a sign of the end of time. To quote Miller
The unwillingness of men to hear sound doctrine, taught us by Paul, 2 Tim. iv. 1-4, "I charge thee, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom. For the time will come, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." My brethren, need I say one word on this passage? There is none of you so blind, but you see that this passage does actually describe the most fashionable preaching at the present day. How many thousand do run after that kind of preaching which is only relating fables, and that doctrine which gives all power to man?
Later on, Miller becomes more explicit about what he means by that, saying
"Can ye not discern the signs of the times?" Let me give you one rule by which you may know a false doctrine. They may have many good things in their creeds, they may be very plausible in their arguments, and after all deceive you. But examine them closely, and you will find they will deny, ridicule, or try to do away some prominent doctrine of the Bible, such as the divinity of Christ, his second coming, office of the Holy Spirit, eternal punishment, doctrine of grace, election, conviction for sin, regeneration, repentance, or faith. And when you hear or see them make light or scoff at any thing of this kind in the word of God, go not after them, nor bid them God speed. "Can ye not discern the signs of the times?"
That such man as William Miller, who could almost serve as caricature of the ignorant, intolerant, fundamentalist preacher, would have such a large following and be anti-slavery does not fit into the common view of the time. The only fundamentalist that is commonly portrayed as being anti-slavery in history is John Brown. But it is doubtful that men like Miller would have considered Brown orthodox because the mark of a fundamentalist is that he does not tolerate what is considered heresy. John Brown, however, never seems to have had a problem with the beliefs of Garrison and the like. In fact, he may very well have shared them. Whatever John Brown's beliefs really were, the fierce contest between Protestant orthodox believers and their liberal counterparts in the years leading up to the Civil War tore apart almost all of the denominations. Even the Quakers were not immune to this contest. Around the same time that William Miller started preaching, the Quakers split into two opposing factions. One faction was called Hicksite. They were what would be called today a "liberal" faction, the Quakers like Lucretia Mott who were part of the circle that supported Garrison and John Brown. The other faction called itself the Orthodox Friends, and was what we would call the conservative faction. It was to this faction the Levi Coffin belonged to. This struggle between Quakers was almost exactly the same as wider struggle amongst all Protestants. Just compare the words of Miller to a pamphlet written by orthodox Quakers against Hicksites. Like Miller our anonymous orthodox Quaker author believed that the correct doctrine was very important, saying,
If we "search the Scriptures," we shall find from the highest authority, that faith, or belief, in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, is an indispensable preliminary to becoming real Christians. Thus our blessed Lord told Nicodemus - "He that believeth on him (viz. Jesus Christ,) is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." When the Jews asked him "what they should do that they might work the works of God," he replied, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom God hath sent." And on another occasion he told them, "If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." Again, to Martha he says, "He that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." When he sent forth his eleven disciples to preach his gospel to every creature in all the world, he solemnly declared, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not, shall be damned." We have then the most conclusive testimony from the mouth of Him who could not lie, who came to be our Saviour, and who will be our judge, that a belief in the doctrines of that gospel which he sealed with his blood, is essentially and indispensably necessary to our salvation. Let us not, therefore, deceive ourselves with the presumptuous idea, that we may deny with impunity, or that we are at liberty to choose and carve for ourselves, and say we will believe a part and deny a part.
Both the Orthodox Quakers and Miller identified the same opponents, thought the Quakers were better educated than Miller. Here is a partial list of the men they held to be teachers of false doctrine.
Lord Herbert, who wrote in 1663, taught that repentance was the only propitiation, that the Christian doctrine of atonement, granted pardon on too easy terms, and derogated from the obligations of virtue - that we cannot be ascertained that the Scriptures are a revelation, and if we could ascertain it, we know not that the translations are correct; and hence he says, is the necessity of rejecting all systems and forms of religion and adopting the one universal, natural religion, written upon the hearts of all men by the divine finger. - Hobbes asserts that the only assurance for the authenticity of Scripture is the authority of the church or commonwealth - and that the New Testament was never received as of divine authority until declared to be so by the councils - Blount taught that there was no necessity for a Mediator between God and man, and that the belief of such a necessity was derogatory of his Infinite Mercy - Toland declared that there were no mysteries in religion, nor anything contrary to, nor above reason, and that no Christian doctrine can be called mystery. - The Earl of Shaftsbury wrote much to discountenance a belief in the authority of Scripture and in the truth of the Christian religion as there set forth - frequently repeating the charge of corruptions and interpolations in the Bible. - Collins declared that all those who contend for the faith of the Gospel, as contained in Holy Scripture are enemies to a just liberty of thought, and to free examination and inquiry - and that the books of Holy Scripture were corrupted and altered by the early fathers and clergy to suit their own notions. - Woolston says that many of the facts recorded in Scripture are mere allegorical allusions to the work of religion in the heart, and that literally taken they are absurd and fictitious; that the history of the life of Christ is only an emblematica or allegorica representation of his spiritual life in the soul.
Just as the John Brown, Garrison, and all the rest of that circle shared a set of common beliefs, so too did most of the orthodox anti-slavery people. Levi Coffin was aware of this divide and he took great pains in his memoirs to make it clear that he shared a common faith with all orthodox believers regardless of their denomination. To quote but one instance in his memoirs,
A few days after Uncle Tom's death, an old lady, a prominent member of Ninth Street Baptist Church, called to see us, and said: "I have been thinking that you and your wife will occupy a high place in heaven for nursing and taking care of Uncle Tom." I replied: "Thou hadst better advise us not to depend on works for salvation. If we have true faith, we shall do good works. We have done no more than our duty; works without faith will not save us.
I have taken such pains to demonstrate the hostility of the orthodox to the liberal because historians portray ideological contest of the time as being John Brown and all his liberal friends vs pro-slavery thinkers and clergy. But as I have tried to show, there was a third party in that debate that also had a significant following. In fact, my reading of history leads me to believe that the majority of the opponents of slavery were orthodox believers. Any history of the slavery debate that includes Garrison and Brown should also included Coffin and Tappan. To do otherwise is to fundamentally mislead people as to the nature of the anti-slavery debate. But even though all historians of the period are aware of the facts that I have presented, they persist in presenting the anti-slavery debates as being between John Brown &co and the South. To do otherwise would challenge their own view of history and force them to question their own beliefs. The "conservative" or the "liberal" historians both have reasons to hold onto this South vs John Brown &co divide. The Conservatives fall into this arrangement because such a divide makes it easier to justify the South in their own minds for they can make the South out to be the defenders of the American way with a little slavery thrown in. Their argument tends to run "Sure slavery was not good, but look at who was opposing them. Mr. Brown, the murder, who thought he had God's sanction, Mr. Garrison who burned the constitution and wanted to do away with government, and the Transcendentalists who wanted to do away with religion and destroy the family unit." The liberal, on the other hand is the intellectual heir of Garrison, the Transcendentalists, and others of that type. It is natural for them to identify all opponents of slavery with their own school of thought and to assume that all who oppose their school of thought are the heirs of those who fought for slavery. The question these historians would ask is, what difference would it make to give equal time to orthodox Christian opponents of slavery? Would portraying their contributions have changed how destructive the Civil War was? Would it have changed the fact that many clergy in the south supported slavery? The answer to these questions depends a lot on what you think history is for. Is it healthy to portray our nation's current simplistic conservative vs liberal divide as governing this nation's whole history? Is there profit in having an accurate understanding of how larger portions of the north came to see slavery as an evil? Is there any benefit to exploring differing ideas of how people reacted to what they regarded as evil? If you would answer those questions the way I would, then it is obvious why it important to include the orthodox Christian opponents of slavery.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

A Tragic Tale Of Irreconcilable Preceptions

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A Tragic Tale of Irreconcilable Perceptions
"Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic"-- Edward de Bono

It is a commonly known fact that the root of many people's disagreements is the result of a difference in perception. Even if people have the same facts, the same amount of education, and the same intelligence level, they can still have a fierce argument over a point that seems obvious to both sides. A close inspection will reveal that the way they perceive the facts in question is all that separates them, and yet that is often an unbridgeable gap.

There are very few people who do not understand the difference that perception makes on one's view of the world. But understanding the impact of differing perception is like understanding that we are all going to die eventually. We all know that we are going to die, but most of the time it is simply some kind of vague idea that we all pay lip service to. That changes, of course, as there are many events that happen to us that makes the fact that we are going to die very real.

I think that our comprehension of how important perception is to our understanding works in the same way. We will readily confess that people can look at the same thing and come up with different results. Yet when we run across someone who disagrees with us, we rarely stop to consider that they might not perceive things the way we do. We assume that our opponent is not aware of all the facts, or simply needs help understanding in order to come around to our view. If careful explanation, or the presentation of all possibly relevant facts, does not do the trick, we tend to dredge up other explanations for their failure to see things our way.

We might say that they do not have enough exposure to how other people think. If we lack charity, we tend to say that they are stupid. Paranoia might lead us to say that they are deliberately trying to mislead people. All of these explanations can be correct. Scholars have been caught fabricating data; some people are undeniably less bright than others; and exposure to other points of view has lead people to change their mind. But I think that we know, in the back of our minds, that these things are rarely the real cause. Even though we know this, we do not want to face the fact that there can be a truly unbridgeable gap between people.

We do not want to face this for similar reasons to our reluctance to face the fact that we are going to die. A difference in perception separates people and among our human fears, the fear of being isolated or separated from our fellow humans is one of the strongest. Call this unbridgeable separation of perception a "mini-death" that brings up similar anxieties as real mortality. Further, a difference in perception also brings on a feeling of helplessness. No matter how smart we are, and how many facts we know, we cannot change how other people perceive things. This inability to change the way that people see things often means that we feel powerless to affect them, or to join in their life. Again this feeling of helplessness is also akin to what death can make us feel.

Most of the time, we can ignore the unbridgeable gulfs that are opened up by a difference in perception, just as we can ignore our own mortality. In part, we can ignore the unbridgeable gulfs because they are often not that important. I may like how one kind of food tastes, and you may hate it. The gap may be unbridgeable, but it is hardly important. However, some perceptions are important since it is our perceptions that determine what is important to us. It is those differences in perception that are important to us that bring out the strong feelings and the truly bitter arguments.

Thus we often learn from an early age to avoid exposing ourselves to differences in perception in matters that are truly important to us. The preferred strategy is to only mix with people who see the world as we do, but this is not always feasible. When the business of living prevents us from seeking out only those who share our perceptions, we very carefully avoid any talk that will reveal those differing perceptions. We create taboos that all socially aware adults know and follow to prevent conversations about subjects that might be important to people.

Sometimes the reality that people have different perceptions that cannot be bridged is impossible to ignore. When we are forced to face up to this reality, it is often painful. Most of the time we react by blaming the one who made it impossible to ignore the difference in perceptions. We devote our energy to figuring out the flaw in the other person that leads them to see things differently. But if we can get past the pain and the anger there are benefits to facing up to gulfs that exist between us just as facing up to our own mortality has benefits. In both cases, it can lead us to test our foundations and our values. More often than not, though, we can not find the clarity of mind to do this, because every time we clear our minds the only thing we can see is how we can not make the problem go away.

It is the common problem with finding clarity of thought when facing our own limitations that is the moral justification for all of those sob stories about brushes with death. If you read of others' experiences, perhaps you can get the benefits of those experiences without the problems that tend to cloud the mind. It seems to me that if that can be true about stories that deal with our mortality, surely it should also be true about stories that force us to face the gulfs that come between us while we are still living. Yet I cannot think of any true story that is devoted to forcing us to face that issue.

To be sure, there are many stories devoted to proving how evil, stupid, or otherwise deficient people are who have different perceptions than us. And I will admit that those types of screeds have their place. But these screeds tend to obscure the problem of the gulf that comes between people instead of facing it. We need a story devoted to facing that gulf instead of trying to prove that someone was deficient. Such is the excuse for my tale anyway……

Because my upbringing included regular lectures on the importance of perception, I tend to think that I am more sensitive than many to its importance. In reality, the illusion that I am prepared for differences only causes my shock to be all the greater when I do run into a perception that is vastly different than mine. Such a shock happened to me when I was first introduced to St. Jerome's pamphlet Against Helvidius.

It would help you to understand the rest of my sad tale if you would take the time to read this document, before my comments color your views. I wish I could find the author who first pointed me to Against Helvidius, because he had politeness towards his opponents that is so often missing in tract writers. That was really the only thing that was noteworthy about him. He was just giving the standard defense of a particular doctrine, though it was new to me at the time. Unfortunately, other writers who advance the same argument have peculiarities that may turn people off. Nonetheless, it would also help if you read one of the many variants of their argument. Doing this should highlight how radically different our perceptions of Against Helvidius are. In fact, if you read the links throughout this post it should bring out in even starker relief how big that gulf is between our perceptions. The ironic thing is that our statement of what the facts are should be pretty much the same. After all, I use them as my sources.

I forget exactly what I was doing at the time I first read Against Helvidius . I was either trying to educate myself as to various Catholic beliefs and how they came about or trying to educate myself as to the early church's struggle to maintain accurate copies of what would become the Old and New Testament. At any rate, I was reading various Catholic writers whose beliefs were different than mine, but whose scholarly methods were something I was comfortable with. The comfort I had with their scholarly methods softened me up for the shock. (Or, at least, that is my excuse.)

During this period of reading, I came across this modern day orthodox Catholic apologist on the web who had written a track defending his belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Now, I wish to stress that I in no way found the Catholic belief in perpetual virginity of Mary shocking. Nor do I intend to write a post exclaiming over an obscure Catholic doctrine. It was this writer's use of a particular historical document that threw me for a loop. The part that caught my attention was at the end.

Here the tract author argued that the Protestants who did not accept the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity were innovators influenced by the enlightenment. He said that the entire early church had held the view that Mary stayed a virgin for her entire life. Being the good fellow that he was, our forgotten author provided a link to an original source document that he said proved his point. The document in question was Jerome's pamphlet Against Helvidius.

As most orthodox catholic apologists advertise, I was indeed shocked the first time I read the pamphlet. But what shocked me was that it seemed to me to prove the exact opposite of what he said it would prove. I had been prepared to be under whelmed by the promised proof, but I had thought that I would at least be able to see how it might support the view of the Catholics. But try as I might, I could only see how the pamphlet proved that many people in the early church did not believe in the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. How educated and intelligent people could argue otherwise was beyond my perception, yet the catholic apologists don't even argue for it. They just assume that it proves their point to everyone who bothers to read it.

I do not want you to take from my expression of shock the idea that I read Jerome's pamphlet once, and then gave up all hope of there being any reconciliation between my perception of Against Helvidius and the Catholic perception. In fact, I put in a fair amount of work to see if I could at least understand how the Catholics arrived at the idea that Against Helvidius proved that the early church uniformly held to that particular belief. This work was profitable in some ways, but it did not help me to understand what the Catholics see in Against Helvidius that I miss. To understand why, we must first look at my initial reaction to Against Helvidius.

For the first three quarters of its length, Against Helvidius seems to prove nothing one way or another. It is merely a record of Jerome's argument. I began to wonder when the proof was going to come on. Finally, I got to point where Jerome says, "Pray tell me, who, before you appeared, was acquainted with this blasphemy? who thought the theory worth a tuppence? You have gained your desire, and are become notorious by crime." Here, I thought, is my promised proof. Here is their evidence. As I said, I had been prepared to unimpressed, but I could see how that sentence could be taken as proof that Helvidius was an innovator. However, barely three paragraphs later, I read this: "Feeling himself to be a smatterer, he there produces Tertullian as a witness and quotes the words of Victorinus bishop of Petavium. Of Tertullian I say no more than that he did not belong to the Church. But as regards Victorinus, I assert what has already been proved from the Gospel -- that he spoke of the brethren of the Lord not as being sons of Mary, but brethren in the sense I have explained, that is to say, brethren in point of kinship not by nature."

Now, perhaps this had a greater impact on me than it should have. But at the time I first read Against Helvidius, Tertullian was one of the few early Christian writers that I recognized. I had seen him quoted by a number of modern Catholic writers as proving what doctrine in the early church was like. Jerome's casual dismissal of Tertullian could not erase that fact from my mind. As much as this bothered me, I might not have given it any more thought if Jerome had not gone on to say "Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus, held these same views, and wrote volumes replete with wisdom."

It seemed clear to me that Jerome was painting the picture of a long contest between his idea and Helvidius's idea. This contest, he seemed to be saying, stretched right back to the earliest Christian writers. I could no longer take Jerome's comment about Helvidius's singularity as serious. How could Jerome mean it seriously, when he himself testifies to a number of people throughout the breadth of early Christian history, whom he says shares Helvidius's views? And how could the Catholic apologist, who first introduced me to that letter, feel so confident that it would prove that all early Christians had held to the same view as Jerome--when Jerome himself seemed to indicate otherwise?

If I had thought that orthodox Catholics had some kind of doctrinal necessity to believe that it had always been the predominate view of the early church, I would not have been so puzzled. But Catholics are quite frank that the early Christian era was a time of much controversy. They freely admit that, in some cases, what is now the orthodox view on many subjects was in the minority. So why should they hold so firmly to belief that the doctrine of the perpetual virginity was universal throughout much of Christian history? I could only think that it was because they honestly believed that Against Helvidius supported that view. But for the life of me, I could not understand how they were getting that out of Against Helvidius.

Since I was well aware that I did not know much about Jerome, Tertullian, or the early Christian era in general, I thought that maybe I was missing something obvious--something that all the Catholic apologists who kept referring to Against Helvidius to prove their point assumed was common knowledge. I thought that perhaps there was something about Jerome, that made people think that he was an especially good representative of the early Christian church. Or perhaps there was something that I did not know about Tertullian, something that made people think that his views on Mary were not as representative of the early church as his other writings were. Given the fact that I did not recognize any of the names that Jerome mentioned as predecessors of Helvidius, I thought that perhaps there was something about them that made Catholics dismiss them. But the more I read on any of these subjects, the more it highlighted the unbridgeable difference in perception between me and orthodox Catholics.

Take Jerome, for instance. Of course, all orthodox Catholics think very highly of Jerome, overall. It is almost required for an orthodox Catholic to think highly of Jerome, seeing as he was sainted and made a doctor of the church after he had died. But orthodox Catholics, even today, are not quite comfortable with how Jerome handled his arguments. To quote the Catholic encyclopedia "However that may be, Jerome may be accused of imprudence of language and blamed for a too hasty method of work. With a temperament such as his, and confident of his undoubted orthodoxy in the matter of Origenism, he must naturally have been tempted to justify anything." The American Catholic puts a nicer gloss on it saying "It is true that he had a very bad temper and could use a vitriolic pen, but his love for God and his Son Jesus Christ was extraordinarily intense; anyone who taught error was an enemy of God and truth, and St. Jerome went after him or her with his mighty and sometimes sarcastic pen." Whatever modern orthodox Catholics think of Jerome's "perfect hate," many of his contemporaries were none too pleased by it. He was compelled to leave Rome because he had become such a divisive figure.

Jerome's method of writing had more flaws than simply angering his contemporaries. He could also be sloppy with the facts and with doctrines that were important to the Catholic Church. Nobody is perfect, of course, not even a saint. But two of the flaws in Jerome's writing that were pointed out to me by orthodox Catholics increased my puzzlement at their reading of Against Helvidius. The first is Jerome's evident sloppiness with history. As the Catholic encyclopedia says, "For the first three centuries Jerome depends to a great extent on Eusebius, whose statements he borrows, often distorting them, owing to the rapidity with which he worked." Now, Eusebius is know to have relied on some forgeries in his histories, so these facts seemed to cast some question on Jerome's view of the early Christian church.

The second area is the problems that Jerome got himself into when arguing against Helvidius and his friends. Again quoting the Catholic encyclopedia, "The relative dignity of virginity and marriage, discussed in the book against Helvidius, was taken up again in the book "Adversus Jovinianum" written about ten years later. Jerome recognizes the legitimacy of marriage, but he uses concerning it certain disparaging expressions which were criticized by contemporaries and for which he has given no satisfactory explanation." Most orthodox Catholics do not believe that Jerome was as anti-marriage as his writings seem to indicate. To maintain that position, however, they seemed to confess that Jerome could get very sloppy in his use of language when he was arguing against Helvidius and his allies.

Needless to say, none of this helped me understand the orthodox Catholics' view of Against Helvidius. I had thought that perhaps Jerome was such a popular figure in the early church that people would assume that his views were broadly representative, or perhaps that he had a good reputation as a historian. Not that it would have changed the fact that Jerome himself seemed to indicate that the controversy over the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity was long standing, but at least it would have helped me be able to understand why Catholics assume that Against Helvidius represents early Christian views. Yet Catholics themselves acknowledge that Jerome was neither a unifying figure, nor an accurate presenter of facts/doctrine during the heat of an argument. This made it hard for me to think that there is anything about Jerome himself that causes them to put such faith in Against Helvidius as a representative of early Christian thought.

Since nothing about their views on Jerome caused me to understand the orthodox Catholic perception of Against Helvidus, I thought I would examine their view of Tertullian. I wanted to know why they labeled Helvidius with the title of innovator, even though it is clear to orthodox Catholics that Tertullian did not believe in perpetual virginity of Mary anymore than Helvidius did. This would not be so odd if Tertullian had been a contemporary of Helvidius, but Tertullian wrote over a hundred years before Helvidius.

I did not think that Catholics could explain this away by saying that he left the Church like Jerome tried to do. Catholics put too much faith in Tertullian to prove what the early church believed on any number of doctrines, ranging from the Trinity to the authority of the Church to use that argument. But I thought that there might be some indication in Tertullian's writings that he was aware of the doctrine of perpetual virginity. I thought that maybe there was some sign that he knew he was putting forth a controversial doctrine. After all, how could Tertullian, a man widely considered to be well educated, not be aware that he was promulgating a doctrine that was supposedly different from the vast majority of his contemporaries?

Unfortunately, my researches of Tertullian cleared nothing up for me as to why they call Helvidius an innovator. Tertullian's assertion that Mary had other children after Jesus can be found it the same writings that Catholics refer to in order to prove what other early Catholic doctrines were. Nothing I read, either in translations of Tertullian's own writing or in the writings of orthodox Catholic writers who commented on Tertullian's writings, indicated that Tertullian was even aware of the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. Seeing that Tertullian was well plugged-in to the church politics of his day, and that he based much of his own work on earlier Greek writers (particularly Irenaeus), this seems hard to explain. Further confusing me was the fact that Jerome says that Tertullian was very influential long after his death. Given Tertullian's influence it seems odd to me to think that Helvidius was the first to come along who shared Tertullian's views.

All this was making it harder and harder for me to think that I might ever understand how the orthodox Catholics came to their understanding of Against Helvidius. But I was given a little hope when I looked into those that Jerome seems to indicate supported Helvidius outside of Tertullian; namely "Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus." Upon inspection, these people had nothing in common with Tertullian or Helvidius. All of these men either denied the deity of Jesus or denied that he was born of a human. None of their beliefs seem to be similar in anyway to Helvidius. In fact, the writing of Tertullian that Helvidius was probably quoting from was an argument against the beliefs of Valentinus and his followers. Jerome himself says that Helvidius did not deny the deity of Christ or the virgin birth itself. So what I had at first thought was Jerome acknowledging a long line of people who had the same belief as Helvidius now seemed to me to be an attempt to slander Helvidius.

Slander or not, I could at least see why Catholics did not see Jerome's mention of those men as being proof that there was an argument about doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity stretching back to the early Christian times. But the flip side of that is there is no good evidence that the men that Jerome quoted supported his view point. It seems that "Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men" that Jerome mentions were primarily concerned with demonstrating the deity of the Jesus and the fact that he was born of a virgin. There is no indication that any of them taught the doctrine of perpetual virginity of Mary in any of the writings that are known to be theirs.

In fact, if you read the translations made by Catholics of the writings of Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, you would think that they did not believe in doctrine of perpetual virginity. Of course, Jerome would most likely argue the same thing that he did about Helvidius's use of Victorinus. Or maybe he would say that I have a bad translation. But when Irenaeus says "And as the protoplast himself Adam, had his substance from untilled and as yet virgin soil ("for God had not yet sent rain, and man had not tilled the ground" ), and was formed by the hand of God, that is, by the Word of God, for "all things were made by Him," and the Lord took dust from the earth and formed man; so did He who is the Word, recapitulating Adam in Himself, rightly receive a birth, enabling Him to gather up Adam [into Himself], from Mary, who was as yet a virgin." It is hard for me to ignore the parallel structure and believe that "as yet" means a different thing in regards to the soil than it does Mary.

At this point I began to wonder if there was any evidence outside Against Helvidius that anyone in the early church believed in the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Most of the Catholic apologists that I was reading would only refer to Against Helvidius, or else someone later than Jerome, as proof of their doctrines. After much reading, it became apparent that Jerome was the first one on record to come up with the theory that the people who are called brothers in the gospels were really cousins. To quote Catholic Answers "Prior to the time of Jerome, the standard theory was that they were Jesus’ "brothers" who were sons of Joseph though not of Mary."

I must say that I think that Catholic Answers is on shaky ground when it calls it a "standard theory". There are only two pieces of evidence that I could find that Catholic scholars are confident are genuine showing any kind of belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary before the 300's. One of these was the document called the Protoevangelium and the other is the writings of Origen. But it is not often that Catholic apologists will bring up The Protoevangelium or the works of Origen in their defense the Doctrine of Perpetual Virginity. For one thing, the Protoevangelium has been called heretical by a Pope. And though Origen called those who did not believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary "stupid" or "not of sound mind," he also disparaged many beliefs that orthodox Catholics held. In fact, Jerome himself spent much of his time denouncing many of Origen's teachings.

But it does not matter if you do not restrict yourself to sources that Catholic Scholars are confident are authentic for the purpose of this tale. For I am merely trying to show how big a difference there is between my perception of what documents prove and the Catholic perception of what documents prove. For I have read some of the apocryphal accounts that purport to show that various early Christians believed in the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. And I can say that even if all of them were proved genuine, they would merely prove that the doctrine was a matter of dispute since the very beginning. For they often make frequent mention of those who thought otherwise in much the same way that Origen does. And even I do not doubt that Origen believed the doctrine. In short, most of the documents that Catholic apologist pulls up to prove that the early church believed in perpetual virginity of Mary also prove that many in the early church did not believe in that doctrine.

Or at least that is my perception. It is obvious that Catholics have a different perspective. But even though I used only their writers and their sources I cannot see how they arrived at their view of history. Not that I accuse them of being ignorant; it is their writers that I draw my understanding of facts from. Not that I accuse them of not bothering to understand the other point of view; some of them have obviously tried to deal with the arguments of their opponents. Yet we seem to be on different worlds. So great is the gulf between us that I do not understand how we could converse on subjects of common interest.

Who is going to bridge this gap? Who is going to produce facts that will make either side see differently? I am game to be educated but I think I am pretty well read up on all the Catholic arguments. Nor do I think I have said anything that the better educated among them do not already know. After all, I used Catholic sources to make my point. You might say that how widespread the historical belief in a certain doctrine was is hardly important. But importance is itself a matter of perception. Some Catholics obviously feel that that this issue is important. What is important to me is that the great disparity in our perceptions calls into question whether we can come to a common understanding of anything.

To understand my feeling, imagine that you have been introduced to a very intelligent man and that you have had weeks of interesting and stimulating conversation. This man then comes to you and says that the sky is as green as the grass. When you express disbelief, he confidently invites you out to see for yourself. Wondering if some weird natural phenomena has happened, you go outside with this man only see that the sky is still blue as best as you can tell. As you turn to your friend, he smiles and says, "I told you the sky was green."

What points of logic can you use to prove that the sky is blue? You either see it that way or you don't. In a sense, whether you see the sky as being blue or being green does not make that much difference. On the other had, such a great difference in perception is going to show up in other areas that are important. Yet debating them will have no more effect that getting in a shouting match over whether the sky is green or blue.

I suspect that the differing interpretations that I have of the historical documents that the Catholics use suffers from same problem. We cannot profitably debate this issue without degenerating into a shouting match over whose eyes are better. Our only hope for civil discourse is to politely acknowledge that we operate in separate worlds and to go our own way; conscious that we are unable to explore the world that we are in together.

And that to me is a tragedy.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Pondering the Battle of Bicocca

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Pondering the Battle of Bicocca
Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats.
Ralph W. Sockman
When I think about the mercenary Swiss armies of the 15th and 16th centuries it always brings to my mind the post Desert Storm American Air Force. This association is odd, to say the least. The charge of the Swiss pike formations has little resemblance to a dogfight or a bombing campaign. The efforts of the US Air Force to avoid civilian casualties would have been totally alien to the take-no-prisoners Swiss. But the association did not spring to my mind by comparing the tactics and ethos of the Air Forces and the Swiss, but by the effect that they had on their enemies. Both the Swiss armies and the US Air Force succeeded in overturning conventional wisdom and in establishing a reputation of being invincible. Before Desert Storm, the Thanh Hoa Bridge cost the Americans 10 planes and took over to 800 sorties to take out. After Desert Storm the dying Soviet empire and the Chinese realized that their air forces were completely outclassed. In a similar manner, the Swiss before their defeat of Charles the Bold were just a bunch of rebellious mountain men who had thrown off their masters. After their defeat of Charles the Bold they took on a reputation of invincibility. What was so shocking about Desert Storm was not that the US won the war but how easy it was for them. The quality of the air frames in the American inventory did not out class those of the rest of world by any significant margin. Many of them were planes that had flown in Vietnam with much less success than they had in Desert Storm. Furthermore, the Iraqis had a very sophisticated air defense system that ranked right up there with anything the Soviets or the Chinese possessed. It wouldn't ever have occurred to anyone before Desert Storm that the only planes the Americans would lose would be to lucky AAA fire. It never occurred to anyone that the Iraqis would be absolutely helpless to interfere with the American bombing campaign. The mistake everyone made was paying too much attention to the air frames, and not enough to the improvements that were made to ordinance, command and control, and surveillance. For example, The Thanh Hoa Bridge was finally destroyed by an early laser guided bomb. But that success happened towards the end of the Vietnam War and was over shadowed by the previous failures. But even though nobody noticed, changes like that increased the effectiveness of the US Air Force many times over. In fact, even though American allies were flying the same planes as the US was during the campaign against Yugoslavia, the US Air Force considered their help to be next to worthless. Without ordinance, command and control, or surveillance capabilities that came anywhere near to what the US could do, they were like a little kid trying to help--always getting in the way, but never able to do anything. The story of the Swiss army is somewhat similar to that of the First Gulf War. Charles the Bold was the duke of Burgundy. He had one of the most modern armies in Europe. Charles's nominal master, the king of France was afraid of him. In fact, Charles beat Louis XI on the field of battle and compelled him to give more territory to Charles. Not satisfied with that, he picked a fight with Swiss. He made sure that the fight was personal by hanging some Swiss soldiers even though they had surrendered. The Swiss destroyed him in almost the same amount of time it took America to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Just as no one expected the US Air Forces to be as effective as it was, no one expected the Swiss to utterly thrash Charles. Swiss did not have any weapons that were not commonly available. Nor did they have exceptionally large armies. But their speed, discipline, and skill with their weapons shocked Europe. For forty-odd years after the fall of Charles the Bold, no one could figure out how to beat them. Enemies would often try to bribe them, rather than meet the "invincible Swiss" on the field of battle. The invincible Swiss did not stay invincible forever. They lost their reputation at the Battle of Bicocca to Fernando de Avalos and some outnumbered Spanish arquebusiers who shot them like the proverbial fish in a barrel. The common explanation for the Swiss defeat at Bicocca is that the Swiss failed to adapt to the rise of gun powder. Certainly, the US Air Force would understand the battle that way. By their reading of history, those who fail to stay on top of the arms race are doomed to lose. People within the US Air Force are at the forefront of those calling for the transformation of the American military, so as to make better use of the latest technology. Technology is considered to be so important that current plans call for cutting the number of troops, in order to pay for programs that "modernize" American armed forces. But as I ponder the battle of Bicocca and the downfall of the Swiss reputation, I find this explanation to be far too simplistic. Historians say that the Swiss were doomed by their failure to adapt to gunpowder weapons, yet the Swiss where among the earliest adopters of the arguebus. Nor did Charles the Bold's large train of artillery save him from the Swiss. Many people also claim that Marignano showed that Swiss could not deal with the improving cannon of the early 1500's. But the Swiss defeat at Marignano had more to do with luck than it did the French cannon. At Marignano, the French outnumbered the Swiss and were fighting on terrain that favored the French. And yet, the French still would have lost if the German mercenaries had not been fighting with the French, if the Italians had not arrived when they did, or if the French King had died on one of the charges he had to make to keep his line from collapsing. To say that even with all of these advantages and strokes of luck the French still would have lost had they not had so much artillery is undoubtedly true. But it hardly proves that the Swiss could not handle the rise of gunpowder. If things had gone just a little bit differently, the French king's artillery would have been no more effective than the cannon of Charles the Bold. Ironically, it seems that the Swiss decreased the number of firearms they used as time went on. At Morat in 1476, they had 5 firearms for every 5 pikes. Yet, by the time of Bicocca, the Swiss seemed to have at most 1 firearm for every 4 pikes. The reason for the increasing reliance of the Swiss on the pike was not because they were poor or technologically illiterate, but because they were so successful. Swiss gunmen were useful for softening up the enemy, but they were never clearly superior to their rivals. Swiss pike men, on the other hand, were never matched. Victory after victory taught the Swiss that they could win all battles by pushing their pikes. Therefore, the Swiss began to increasingly rely on a weapon where they had a clear competitive advantage. These victories also led Swiss to rely on only one tactic: the frontal advance in formation at great speed, for which pikes were well suited. They failed to develop any tactics that would make use of the gun powder weapons that they already had. These choices seemed intelligent at the time. They were successful, and people often take what is successful for what is intelligent. What defeated the Swiss was not the appearance of gunpowder weapons, or even the improvement of gunpowder weapons. Rather, it was a matter of tactics. By focusing so narrowly on their own competitive advantage, the Swiss became the proverbial man who only has a hammer and sees every problem as nail. Fernando de Avalos developed tactics that were based around hoping that someone was fool enough to think his troops were a nail. That is why he was able to defeat the Swiss even though they outnumbered him greatly. Swiss tactical failure at Bicocca was really no different than the tactical failure of the Union forces at Fredericksburg. The main difference was that the Swiss had become a one-trick pony as a result of their constant success. Taking away that trick was a blow from which they never really recovered. If you can accept that analysis of the fall of the Swiss army, it raises questions about the US Air Forces post-Desert Storm. Is the US Air Force's success causing it to over-focus? Does the US Air Force understand the proper use of new technologies? Many nations who invented or acquired revolutionary military technologies were defeated by that same technology, because they did not understand how to use it. Just because the Air Force has a large technological edge over its rivals does not mean that they understand how to best use those tools. The Swiss and the Spanish both had guns, but the Spanish knew how to use them. Moreover, it could very well be that the successes that the US Air Force has experienced with certain technologies may cause it to over-rely on them. It may not seem like the Air Force is overspecializing with the broad array of toys it has, or is developing. But just as looking at air frames did not tell the whole story of how the US Air Forces improved pre-Desert Storm, so, too, you will never see signs of the Air Force overspecializing if you just look at the shapes that are flying around in the air. Rather, it is what you can't see that reveals the overspecialization. To give but one example, during Desert Storm some people in the Air Force still had to navigate by means other than GPS. Now it is questionable whether anything in the US armed forces can navigate without GPS. This is symptomatic of the increasing reliance on satellite based technology within the Air Force. In one sense, though, American dependence on satellites is a minor issue. The real issue is that almost all of the systems that Air Force has or is developing presuppose that the Air Force will be able to do whatever it wants with the electromagnetic spectrum. Satellites, JSTAR, AWACS, and SOF guys calling targets all use the electromagnetic spectrum in different ways. If an opponent could seriously challenge the Air Forces control of the spectrum, all of those assets would be useless. The Russians and the Chinese have devoted a lot of thought to that very idea. The ironic thing is that only America has as yet a weapon that has proven effective at controlling the Electromagnetic spectrum. Yet, just as the Swiss devoted little thought to how the firearm might affect their use of the pike, the Air Force seems to have given little thought to how this weapon might affect their own use of the electromagnetic spectrum. The weapon in question is the AGM-88 Harm. Unlike most methods of electronic warfare, this weapon is a relatively conventional missile. Instead of trying to jam or spoof, this missile simply follows radar emissions back to their source and destroys it. Since radar emissions can be detected at far greater ranges than the radar itself can "see", planes armed with the AGM-88 can destroy radar at little risk to themselves. Because of this missile, the Air Force can bomb any non-nuclear country with impunity. Since Desert Storm, nobody has been able to use radar against the US Air Force with any degree of success. Most people do not realize what a revolution this is. During the campaign against Yugoslavia, certain people in the news were acting like it was some kind of crisis that Yugoslavia had turned off its radar systems in an attempt to prevent them from being destroyed. Yet during the Vietnam War, the Air Force could only dream of having the North Vietnamese voluntarily turning off their radars. Without radar, SAM systems don't work. With radar, SAM systems can be very effective at shooting down planes. Soviet-made SAM's almost cost Israel the Yom Kippur war. In fact, before Desert Storm, SAM's were such a great fear that the Air Force's doctrine called for pilots to fly low to avoided radar, even though this increased their vulnerability to passively guided fire. After Desert Storm, Air Force doctrine called for pilots to fly above 10,000 feet because passive fire was the only real threat they faced. The natural question is, how long is it going to take before someone comes up with a counter measure for this weapon? No one can answer this question for sure, but it is more likely that the AGM-88, and missiles like it, will do away with radar, than it is that a way will be discovered to protect radar. The reason for this is that radar must give off continued emissions in order to work. The only way to stop an anti-radiation missile from following those emissions right back to the source is by trying to switch frequencies or by starting up decoy emissions. These methods did in fact defeat predecessors to AGM-88. But the increase in computing power has made it possible to create missiles that can differentiate between various emitters. Anyone hoping to change that situation has to bet that they can stay ahead of increasing computing power. Attempting to do that brings to mind the plight of Italian armourers as they tried to improve armor faster than gun powder weapons increased their lethality. If this is true, then the real question: is what is the US Air Force going to do when this technology becomes more wide spread? What if AWACS could be shot down before they can identify their attacker? What if the American Air forces do not dare turn on the radar it uses for theater defense? What happens to ballistic missile defense if turning on radar is an invitation to be shot? What if communication transmissions that control the unmanned drones enabled a missile to target them or worse, their controllers? It may be a while before the Air Forces has to face these issues. But if radar does go the way of the pike, will the Air Force see it coming given how much they have invested in radar and other electronic emissions? Will the US Air Forces meet their own de Avalos?
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