MATHETΩN

… Only let me not give up my life irrationally, only let me not give up my life faintheartedly, or from some casual pretext. For again, God does not so desire; for he has need of a good universe and of good men to go to and fro upon earth. …

What then? Must I explain these things to the multitude? When the children come up to us and say ‘Happy Saturnalia!’ do we say to them, ‘No, all this is not good’? Not at all; but we cheer too. And so you, therefore, when you are unable to make a man change his belief, realize that he is a child and cheer with him or hold your peace.

All these things a man ought to remember, and then, when he is summoned to meet some difficulty, he ought to know that the time has come to show whether he has learned. Wrestling students act displeased with the youths of light weight: ‘He cannot lift me,’ says one — ‘bring me a sturdy young man.’ But when the crisis comes, sometimes they weep and say, ‘I wanted to keep practicing!’ Why, what did you practice for! Now, I like to think that someone among you reading this is in travail within his soul, saying, ‘Alas that such a difficulty does not come to me now as came to such-and-such good man! Alas that now I must be sitting in a corner!’ You ought all to be thus minded.

If one should take away from a good tragic actor his paraphernalia, is he lost or does he abide? And so it is in actual life. God may say, ‘Take the governership’: I take it and show how a man educated in the good comports himself. ‘Lay aside the robe of state and put rags on’: What then? Has it not been given to me to mount the stage now as a witness summoned by God?

What kind of witness do you bear for God? ‘But, O Lord, I am in sore straits and in misfortune; no one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.’ Is this the witness that you are going to bear, and disgrace the summons so important?

Or what if the priest declares, ‘He is impious’ — what has happened? ‘I have been pronounced impious.’ Nothing else? ‘No nothing.’ And if he had made a declaration: ‘When it is day, then it is dark,’ or: ‘The circumference of a circle is not equidistant from its center’ — would the educated man pay attention? So why when he passes judgment on what is holy and unholy, just and unjust?

How great is the injustice committed by us if we do so! Leave to others quibbles, grumbling about the good. For what is lacking now is a man to bear witness to these arguments by his acts. This is the character I would have you assume, so that we may no longer use old examples of good men in the schools but may have some examples from our own time!

I’m reading such a difference from Christianity now in the ca. A.D. 600 The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Here are some examples:

1.

“God is the life in all free beings. He is the salvation of believers or unbelievers, of the just or the unjust, of monks or those living in the world, of the educated or the illiterate, of the healthy or the sick, of the young or the very old. He is like the outpouring of light, the glimpse of the sun, or the changes of the weather, which are the same for everyone without exception. ‘For God is no respecter of persons.’ “

I can hear the snort with which a Christian now would greet this description — a Christian used to hearing and saying “ethics aren’t situational”, “but those people worship a different God”, “God bless America.”

2.

“Do whatever good you may. Speak evil of no one. Rob no one. Tell no lie. Despise no one. Show compassion to the needy. Be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you. If you do all this, you will not be far from the Kingdom of heaven.”

Contrast this with “Accept Jesus as your Lordnsavior; do it today!”

3.

“The true teacher is one who has received directly from heaven the tablet of spiritual knowledge inscribed by God’s own finger, that is, by the active working of illumination. Such a one has no need of other books. … Do you imagine that plain words can describe the love of God? Do you imagine that talk of such matters would mean anything to someone who had not experienced it? If you think so, then you are like a man who with words tries to convey the sweetness of honey to people who have never tasted it.”

To which a Christian now would shout, as he shouts at everything either soulful or intellectual: “The Bible is the repository of knowledge!”

4.

I can’t think how often I’ve heard Christians bemoaning their prayers: “I ask for thus-and-so and He does not give it”; “I desire that this-or-that be removed and He does not remove it.” Instead:

“Prayer is the mother, and then the daughter, of tears. Prayer is an expiation of sin, a bridge across temptation, a bulwark against [later doing others harm]. Prayer wipes out conflict. It is the work of angels and the nourishment of everything spiritual.”

“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”

“Oh that you would rend the skies, that you would come down so that the mountains flowed at your presence — the way an iron-melting fire works or the way fire causes water to boil — and make your name known to your enemies so that the nations tremble at your presence! As [long ago] when you did terrifying things that we expected not, when you came down and the mountains flowed at your presence.

“For since the beginning of the world mankind has not heard or perceived or seen, O God, what you have prepared for those who wait for you. You meet those who rejoice and work righteousness, those who remember you in your ways — see, you are wroth, for we have sinned — but in those is continuance and we shall be saved.

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. And there are none who call your name, who stir up themselves to take hold of you: for you have hid your face from us and have destroyed us because of our iniquities.

“But now, O Lord: You are our father; we are clay and you are our potter; we all are the works of your hands! Be not wroth very fiercely, O Lord, nor remember our iniquities forever: See, we beseech you, that we are all your people!

“Your holy cities are a wilderness, Zion a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful House, where our fathers praised you, is burned up with fire. And all our pleasant things are laid waste.

“Will you restrain yourself in spite of these things, O Lord? Will you stay silent and [continue to] afflict us very fiercely?”

“Everyone dies. It is the final and only ever lasting justice.

“Evil exists: it is intelligence in the service of entropy. When the side of a mountain slides to kill a village, this is not evil, for evil requires intent. Should a sentient being cause that landslide, there is evil; and this requires justice as a consequence, so that civilization can exist. There is no greater good than justice; and only if law serves justice is it good law.

“It is said correctly that law exists not for the just but for the unjust, for the just carry the law in their hearts, and do not need to call it from afar.

“I bow to no one and give service only for cause.”

Wow.

Wow. Who wrote this really?

“If the poster really meant to state that ‘individual justice’ [his term for any justice without overwhelming force] would be unjust, then he must believe that societal justice must be unjust any way it is configured — for what is society but individuals by the dozens or millions? Adding one million unjust things is to have injustice — this is simple arithmetic.

“However, I think that what he meant to state is that ‘your justice, or his justice’ would be unjust. While ‘hizzoner’s justice, or the reverend’s justice, or that very smart man over there’s justice’ is indeed just and society can and must rely on it.

“Every argument for archism ends up this way: that there are humans, who are unreliable, despicable, and even risible, and then there are ueber-humans — transformed by the magic of expertism, institutionalism, divine right, and so on — who only can look out for the common good, and if we know what’s good for us we’ll give them silent obeisance.

“The Christ-follower, however, knows that there is only one justice, Christ’s, in any human who will hear Him in the heart …”

My play would differ from Hr. von Trier’s in many ways, the first being: that Grace is mother to all in the town and to the gangsters—primitive Justice being her eldest son; that she is, further, the builder of the town and its sustainer by anonymous donation; that this is known by at least several townspeople, but that all the town make it a great secret—or denounce it a great lie; and that they all say of her the story that we see in Hr. von Trier’s play (or some version of it), while they all treat of her the way that we see in it.

The second being: that two townspeople, late one night, crawl weeping to the door of Grace’s hut and confess themselves her offspring; that the town, with some disdain, allows them her adoptive children; that they become as she—naives, incapable of dissembling or resistance, used in every way.

The third being: that after the wreak of the town, Grace and her adoptive children beget there a city-on-a-hill, so lambent it blinds as far as Georgetown; and that Justice dwells with them their aegis.