Of Memory

So, this is a short story I wrote the other day, tell me what you think of it:

Time is the only reality of life, yet it is a strangely nonexistent reality: it constantly dissolves life in a past which no longer is, and in a future which always leads to death.By itself, time is nothing but a line of telegraph poles strung into the distance and at some point along the way is our death.

-Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World-

OF MEMORY

Time has a funny way of galloping by in great chunks while simultaneously creeping, moment to moment; whole epochs exist in the quivering of the longer hand. Anyone who has ever mowed a lawn knows what I mean by this. Medius Harper’s lawn mower sputtered to a halt. He turned to survey his handy work and saw all of the perfect, uniform eighteen inch lines robing his yard with verdant dignity. The funny thing was, he couldn’t remember having mowed any of the lines. Yet there they were, stretched out in front of him. He looked at the fence line which needed weed-eating, but decided that the newest episode of that great new cop thriller show on that one station with the letters was more appealing.

He climbed the sun faded steps of his wooden porch, and opened the sliding glass door into the family room. He made a mental note to power wash the steps next weekend and re-treat them with weather sealant. He remembered to take off his shoes and socks and carry them into the laundry room, taking caution not to drop grass on the carpet. He mounted the stairs to the top floor and entered the master bathroom. He hesitated before entering the shower, debating that question which always presents itself to the one who has engaged in manual labor: hot or cold shower? Hot will relax the muscles, but cold will reinvigorate the spirit. Medius opted for the former, as one always does, preferring comfort to stimulation.

Usually, when a person stinks of body odor, he is unaware of it. Because the smell is emanating from his own body and because it builds up steadily over time, he is inoculated by the smell. It creeps up on him, not presenting itself immediately to his consciousness but infecting the air around him. This is not the case when he has been mowing the lawn. The noxious smell of petrol-fuels mingles with the sweet yet sharp, untamed smell of fresh-cut grass and the whole thing is undergirded by a repugnant, sticky, well-earned sweat.

Medius emerged from the shower and went into his walk-in closet; the light flickered on automatically as he opened the door. He dressed himself quickly opting for jeans and a polo. He descended the stair stopping briefly in the kitchen to heat his microwavable meal and grab a few beers. He trudged to the basement, flopping himself on the micro-fiber, malaise green couch. He scooped up four different remotes and with deft skill brought the world in front of him to life. The cop show was proceeded by that hilarious new sitcom with that girl from the old hilarious sitcom, which coincidentally, was being shown on the channel Medius flipped to when there was a commercial. The news followed the sitcom and Medius switched remotes and pulled a recording of his favorite reality show from the memory banks of his cyber-friend.

After three episodes, Medius began to yawn, and figured now was as good a time as any for bed. He said good night and mounted the stairs. He detoured into the kitchen depositing the empty plastic tray from his dinner in the trash and the beer bottles in the recycling bin. He grabbed the package of processed cookies and headed for bed, taking a glass of milk with him.

Between the Egyptian cotton sheets, Medius picked up his ultra-compact notebook and caught up on his social life while munching on cookies before switching off the lights.

When he woke in the morning, Medius looked out his picture window as he stretched. The window overlooked his back yard: there were those damned lines alternating shades of green, perfect, uniform. How did they get there?

The Good Life

Here is yet another one of my papers. It is a little longer, but I think you will enjoy it, and it is certainly an important question: what is the good life?
Nathan Farris
12/10/09
The Good Life
Dr. Yonan
THE GOOD LIFE
From the beginning of time, man has asked the question why am I here. This is one of the enduring questions of mankind–what is a good life. It resonates so deeply because humans are purpose seekers. This question starts as a basic ethical question but quickly finds itself saturated in the spiritual and political. It has been pursued by the greatest minds in history, and they have come to different conclusions. But there is one that stands above the rest: the Westminster Catechism. It states that a good life is one that “glorifies God and enjoys Him Forever.”
The question of the good life is really a question of purpose. It asks why am I here, what is it that gives my life meaning, what makes it good. The ancient Greeks have a useful word in the discussion of the good life: telos. A telos is the end of any object or process. For example, the telos of a phone is to make calls. Aristotle calls this the final cause, “something’s end—i.e. what it is for—is its cause” (Physics 194b 30). Every object has a telos: a phone calls, a refrigerator cools, and a towel dries.
In the same way that every object has a telos, so does every human. An object or person is only good if it moves toward its telos, just as a phone is only good if it makes calls. Therefore, the answer to the question what is the human telos is the answer to the question what is the good life. Ethics are derived from teleology; the phone is only good if it accomplishes its telos. If it does not accomplish its telos it is a bad or unethical phone. The same is true of humans; a good human is one who moves toward his telos.
This view of teleology necessitates that the good life is universal. If human ethics are determined by our telos, and our telos is the same, then the good life is the same for every person. It is widely accepted that different humans have different ends, but this is preposterous. If you change the end of something, it is no longer that thing. If the purpose of a phone changes such that it is now meant to play compact disks, then it is no longer a phone, it is a compact disk player. Mortimer Adler points out the very thing that makes us human is that we have common goods; we share common purposes, “I can make, I think, moral judgments about what every human being ought to seek and ought to do, that I think can be shown to be true and true for all men everywhere” (Adler, 195). Dr. Adler is saying is the very thing that makes us human is our telos; thus we all have the same ultimate good. To say this human has a different telos than that human is to say that this human is a different species than this one.
If the good life is bound up in accomplishing our telos, and our telos is universal, then what is our telos? What is it that all of our actions and thoughts should lead us to? The Church father Boethius says, “all the striving of human nature directs itself toward true happiness” (Consolation of Philosophy, IV.p2.10). The ultimate goal of every human life is to be happy, to be completely satisfied. Augustine points out God “hast made us for [Himself] and our hearts are restless until they find rest in [Him]” (Confessions 1.1.1). The only way anyone will ever be happy is to rest in God. Our telos is to know God and thus fulfilled in Him.
This is still a very ambiguous definition of the good life. But as God is the ultimate goal of all humans, further discussion of how to glorify God may paint a better picture of the Good life. Christians paint this picture within the context of the Gospel, the story of God’s interactions with humans. This story determines the ethics of Christians, and can be broken into four acts: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.
In creation, God creates a good creation and intentions into it the telos of glorifying Him. The crowning piece of this creation is humans, who are imprinted with the very image of God. This image makes us superior to all other forms of creation by making us self- aware, reasonable, and free to make decisions. We alone among God’s creatures can ask a question like what is the good life. Our ability to reason allows us to think about such questions as well as to subdue all of nature and bring it under our dominion. But most importantly, we are given freedom to choose our own actions. This special status given to us by God gives us the unique ability to glorify God more fully than any of the created things:
Since God made the Heavens and the Earth, which do not feel the happiness of their existence, He wanted to make beings who would understand it and compose a body of thinking members (Pensees, 104, S392).
God gave humans alone the gift of knowing happiness in the achievement of our telos.
However, because we are free to chose God and thus glorify Him, we are also free to not choose Him. In the fall, humans chose to rebel against our Creator and our telos. We determined that we could be happy without God. We boldly proclaimed that we were self-sufficient, capable of being good without God. This rebellion against our created order is called sin. This thing called sin has made it impossible for us to reach our telos. We have been estranged from God by our free choices. Cornelius Plantiga says, “We once had a choice,” but with the first act of rebellion the snow ball started rolling, “We now have a near compulsion” (Engaging God’s World, 50). Our sin caused something to go deeply wrong, and we are now incapable of fixing it. The effects of sin are not well hidden--we need only turn on a T.V. to see we live in a world that “has long ago lost its Eden, a world that is now ruined by billions of bad choices” (Ibid). Our free will has buried us in a mountain of sin, and we have no way of being good.
But the story does not end here; in the greatest act of love ever, God sent His Son into the World. The Creator became part of the creation in order that He might redeem it (John 1:1-5, 3:16-21). The incarnate God suffered and was crucified as punishment for our sin. After three days, He rose from the dead. Through this act of extraordinary love, God provided a way for us to be reconciled to Him. As the great Hymn proclaims, “For God the just is satisfied/ To look on Him and pardon me” (“Before the Throne of God Above,” Bentencroft).
Without Christ, no one can be happy. We were created by God for Him and can only be happy in Him. Sin separates us from God; it precludes us from knowing God. Sin is a universal affliction. Thus, we all need Jesus to reach our telos. To be human is to be in need of Jesus. This is why Christianity claims to have the answer to the world’s problems; it is for this reason we claim the universality of our doctrine. It is not some vain ego trip, nor an attempt to win a competition (although plenty of Christians say otherwise). Our quest for truth is not some devious plot to win the “cosmic battle of ideas.” It is an attempt to help the lost and broken. If we have the truth and do not share it, then we rob others of their humanity by robbing them of the only thing that can make them happy.
The final act of the Christian story is restoration. This is the process by which we are re-created; we are restored to our original created order. It is through this re-creation that we can reach our telos; it is through this re-creation that we can be happy. It is in this act we currently find ourselves, and it is in this act that we must pursue our telos. This pursuit involves three key elements: humility, desire, and love.
In order to know God and be happy in Him, we must rightly understand our relationship to Him. This correct assessment of our standing with God is called humility. Humility is often thought of as making ourselves smaller than we are or not being prideful in our abilities. But when we compare ourselves to God, neither of these is a problem. The person who honestly sees God for who He is will see how very wretched he is. This is why Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount by saying, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:3 New Revised Standard Version). Humility is not so much a low opinion of ourselves as it is a high opinion of God. It is helpful to think of humility as making space for God. It means recognizing that since God will make us happy it would be best to have a lot of room for Him.
After understanding our relationship to God and making space for Him, we have to desire God. It is one thing to know that God is good, but it is another to want Him. The Greeks use the word eros which is translated love but should be desire. This is the subject of Plato’s Symposium. He claims that eros always desires the good. What varies is the “good” which eros desires. Eros is the fuel of our actions. We do not move towards anything unless we desire it. A good life must not only recognize God as Good, it must desire God.
At the end of Symposium, Plato introduces Alcibiades who embodies incontinence. Incontinence is the state of knowing what the Good is but not choosing to pursue it. The incontinent person is lacking in eros. Alcibiades enters just after Socrates has given a speech naming the telos as beauty found through contemplation. Alcibiades concedes that Socrates is right about the ultimate good being found in contemplation. But Alcibiades explains that while he knows the Good, he finds himself dragged down by the allure of physical pleasures. The problem of incontinence is puzzling not only to Plato but also to Aristotle. How can someone know the Good and not choose it?
The Christian narrative has no problem explaining this phenomenon. Augustine says that our will is in bondage, “Yet habit had grown stronger against me by my own act, since I had come willingly where I did not now will to be” (Confessions, VIII.V.11). We may be able to know the Good on a rational level, but, as a result of the fall, our will is naturally bent toward sin. We have, as Plantiga says, a “compulsion” for sin. Even if we are shown that God is our telos, our will will lead us away from God. The only way our will can escape its bonds is in Christ. Christ frees our will to pursue God. Through the death and resurrection of Christ, our will can be restored, and we can once again point our eros in the right direction.
Finally to live a good life, we must love those around us. We must attempt to treat them with the care and respect God has shown for us. We must reflect the love of Christ: “let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16, NRSV). In order to truly live, we must serve others by loving them, “Only as we learn to love God and others do we gain real freedom and autonomy” (To Love as God Loves,10). If we are to truly free our will, we must serve others. If we are to know the true fulfillment God intends for our lives, we must live in harmony with others; we must value them. We are created to be in community with one another--it is an integral part of our happiness. Remember what Pascal says, “[God] wanted to make beings who would understand [happiness] and compose a body of thinking members” (Pensees, 104, S392, emphasis mine). God wanted to create us to know happiness as a community and this means loving one another.
While Christians agree with the Greek idea of teleology, there are some differences. The Greeks believed that an active life was not necessary to reach the telos. For Plato and Socrates the telos could be achieved by contemplating the divine. Socrates says that the person who reaches his telos most perfectly is he “who approaches the object with thought alone” (Phaedo, 66A). The telos can be reached without any actions on the part of the seeker. Socrates is arguing that there is no political side to a good life. In other words, a person could be stuck in a windowless room, with no one around, and still reach his telos because he can contemplate the divine.
This denunciation of the active life comes from Socrates and Plato’s rejection of the physical world. They do not believe that the physical world is good. In fact they call the body the prison of the soul “we shall escape the contamination of the body’s folly” (Phaedo, 67A). They speak of the physical with disdain, “as long as we have a body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain what we desire” (Phaedo, 66A). The good life stands apart from anything in the physical world; therefore, the active life has no role to play in the good life. This point is driven home by Socrates in the Phaedo where, though in prison and facing execution, he is happy. Socrates is unflappable in the face of death because nothing done to his physical body can take the Good from him. As he says in his Apology, “a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death” (Apology, 41d).
However Plato and Socrates are ambivalent on the subject. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” argues the need for education, which is both political and active. He sets up a scenario where people are trapped in a cave and unaware of the real world outside. Plato shows it is the duty of those who have come out of the cave to go back and rescue those still trapped there. He calls this downward movement education (Republic, 517). Plato shows that only people who have come out of the cave are fit to lead those in the cave “the uneducated who have no experience of the truth would never govern a city satisfactorily” (Republic, 519c). However, there is a problem, the people who have seen the outside of the cave will not want to go back to lead those who are still in it. Plato asks if it would do those who have been outside of the cave, “an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?”(Republic, 519E). Does asking the contemplative life to become active preclude it from being good? According to Plato:
we shall not be doing an injustice to those who have become philosophers... when we compel them to care for and to guard the others... [philosophers] are better and more completely educated than those others, and [philosophers] are better able to share in both kinds of life. Therefore [philosophers] must each in turn go down to live with other men (Republic 520 b-c).
But how can this not be injustice? Why should anyone be forced to live the active life? The active life does not appear to impede the good life; in fact, it appears to be necessary to it. Plato says, “[philosophers] are better able to share in both kinds of life” (Republic, 520C). The contemplative life precedes the active life and better equips a person to live the active life, but the active life is still a necessary part of the good life.
Christians reject that a good life only encompasses contemplation and maintain that those who have been reconciled to God must tell others about it. Just as those who have come out of the cave must go down to bring others out, so people who have been rescued by the work of Christ must attempt to rescue others. Plato calls it education, Christians call it evangelism. Since all people need Jesus to fulfill our telos, and Christians are concerned for the welfare of all people, it is incumbent upon every Christian to share the Gospel. As the Apostle Paul says:
How are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have not heard? And how are they to believe without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news?”
(Romans 10:13-15, NRSV).
The active life of evangelism is a good life.
Christians are not so willing as Plato and Socrates to renounce the physical world. We believe the active life, which is part of the good life, is more than evangelism. The physical world is good because God created it, “God’s original judgment on creation was that it was ‘good’, even ‘very good’. God made a paradise and we can still find signs of it” (Engaging God’s World, 47). The physical things all around us declare the goodness of God. We can glorify God more by looking at a mountain than by thinking about a mountain. C.S. Lewis argues in “Men Without Chests” that objects “demand a certain response from us, whether we make it or not” (The Abolition of Man, 31). The mountain is beautiful whether we recognize it or not. Lewis says that we must have “magnanimity” towards objects, that this “good will” towards beautiful objects is good. In other words, glorifying God demands enjoying what He has created.
Conversely, there are things, which God has not created, that do not demand our magnanimity. In fact, they deserve our bad will. In order to live a good life we must recognize that a mountain is beautiful, and that strip mining is not.
The active life has two essential components: work and enjoyment. The active life enjoys the good things which God created and works to reproduce them. It strives to dam the effects of the fall. The Apostle Paul gives a shining defense of the active life in Romans 12; he sums up the whole argument in the last clause, “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:36b, NRSV). Christians see that activity predates the fall and thus must be good. Humans were meant to work to produce good and beautiful things. It is a part of our telos to be active.
This is how a Christian can work to end world hunger and still enjoy a great ice cream sundae. It is good to correct injustice; it is good to work against the uncreated things which harm others. It is right for a Christian to be repulsed by the fact that a child dies every five seconds of hunger. This is not the way God created the world, and it is certainly not good. But the ice cream sundae is good, and to not enjoy it is to not fully live the good life. Similarly to enjoy the ice cream sundae while remaining inactive in the face of injustice is to miss the good life.
Psalms tells us to “taste and see that the Lord is Good” (Psalms 34:8, NRSV). This verse creates a beautiful tension between the active and the contemplative life. Tasting is associated with the physical (the ice cream sundae) and seeing is associated with contemplation. So, the good life encompasses both the active and the contemplative life. The contemplative life is necessary for the active life. It allows us to think about the beauty of God. The active life is worthless unless it moves us toward our telos. The active life needs the contemplative life to direct it toward our telos. But there is no substitute for actually seeing the mountain; no amount of reason can produce good will for the mountain. However, the active life threatens to trap us by making us forget that the mountain is not the good but rather something that moves us toward the good. The active life tempts us to worship the mountain or the ice cream rather than the Creator.
If the active life is not available to a person, they are not incapable of living a good life. The active life necessitates freedom; a person thrown in jail is incapable of the active life. They are still capable of contemplation and thus can still rest assured in the promise of Christ. However, man is by nature a free creature and restriction of his freedom is not ultimately to his benefit. The man in jail is not worried because he knows God is in charge and that He will right all the wrongs (Romans 8: 18-25). In the end he knows that no man can take from him what God gave him. This is different from Socrates; a good man cannot be harmed only because Christ promises resurrection of the body. The destruction of the body and subsequent restriction of freedom is bad. Where freedom is available, the active life is necessary. Where freedom is restricted, the contemplative life plus the promise of future freedom is enough.
There are myriad other views of the good life. Eryximachus argues that the good life is found in the balance of opposites. He claims that there is good love and bad love; good love is desirable and bad love is not. He says good love creates harmony of opposing forces. A balance between hot and cold makes pleasant temperatures, and in the same way, a balance between poverty and wealth makes a good life. The good life is achieved by maximizing good love and minimizing bad love (Symposium 186A-189D).
Others, like Aristophanes, perorate that love is the answer. Aristophanes tells a story in which humans are created as a whole but have been split apart; each of us is only half of our original self. The good life is finding our other half. We are completed by loving our other half (Symposium, 189E-194E).
Another view of the good life is encapsulated in Fortune, who tells us that the good life is found in obtaining wealth, power, and pleasure. She allures us with the promise of riches, might, and fame (Consolation of Philosophy, II, p1). This view tells us that happiness is found in controlling things and people.
At this point, we find the need for another crucial element of the good life: wisdom. Wisdom is our good guide who helps us to distinguish the truth by adding to us the sum total of human experience. Wisdom has seen all of human history and has heard all of its lies. She can help us to see that Eriximachus would like balance in everything but good love and bad love. Or that Aristophanes has made the telos easily achieved; what happens after we have found our other half? Wisdom will show us that the things Fortune promises us will be taken from us. Fortune attempts to satisfy our infinite desires with finite things. Wisdom helps us to debunk false views of the good life.
Wisdom not only shows us what the good life is, but how to live it. She shows us that humility is still the foundation of the good life, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalms 111:10, NRSV). Wisdom helps us to see that both the active and the contemplative life are necessary for a good life. Wisdom is also that aspect of the contemplative life which guides the actions of the active life.
Wisdom also knows that the process by which we come to know and live the good life is important. In Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Wisdom does not tell Boethius what the good life is, but rather she questions him. She leads him to the truth without telling it to him. This may seem like an insignificant distinction because the end result is the same. But Wisdom knows that the end does not justify the means. The Spanish language has two words for the English verb to know: saber, which has to do with head knowledge, and conocer, which means to know something intimately, to be familiar with it. Saber is used for things that you know in your mind where as conocer is used for things that you know by experience. Wisdom guides us in such a way that we will conocer God, by making us walk the path to Him.
The answer to the question why am I here is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. The Good life is found in glorifying God. The way to live a good life is summed up beautifully by John Piper, “the deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God” (Desiring God, 28). The good life cannot be separated from God; it cannot even be found through God. It must come in God. We become happy only as we move closer to God, and moving closer to God means emptying ourselves of ourselves in order to make space for God. Piper amends the Westminster Catechism slightly to reflect this truth, “man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever” (Desiring God, 18). We are creatures of a Good Creator who desires for us to be happy. He wants to give us the very best things that will most eternally satisfy us. And as the greatest thing is Himself, He provides for us most completely by creating us for Himself. God loves us so much that he orders that:
Just as a fire’s flames always rise up,
Inspired by its own nature to ascend,
Seeking to be in its own element,

just so, the captive soul begins its quest,
the spiritual movement of its love,
not resting till the thing loved is enjoyed(Purgatory, XVIII 28-33).

Does the Allegory of the Cave Demand Jesus?

This is an essay I wrote in response to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"

DOES THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE REQUIRE JESUS?

Every person seeks to understand the world around them. We use our minds to ask if things we sense are real. We wonder about a greater truth. Although everyone seeks to know what this greater truth is, or if it is, very few people ask how it is we can come to know this truth. “The Allegory of the Cave” found in Plato’s Republic is one of the most widely read pieces of literature in history. Its traditional interpretation limits its scope to the discipline of education. This is understandable as Plato opens the allegory by saying, “compare the effect of education and the lack of it upon our human nature” (Republic, 514A). However, the allegory also has significant ramifications in the field of epistemology. “The Allegory of the Cave” demands an epistemology of divine revelation.
Plato uses Socrates to narrate the allegory. Socrates was Plato’s mentor; Plato frequently uses Socrates as his mouthpiece to avoid ridicule from his contemporaries. Socrates starts by describing a large cave, with an entrance at the top leading out of the cave into the light. In the cave, a group of men are bound in shackles facing one wall; they have been there their whole life. Their heads are fixed so they can see only the wall in front of them. There is a fire above and behind them. In front of the fire is a ledge on which another group of men walk carrying various objects. The light from the fire projects the images of the men and their objects onto the wall in front of the men in shackles (imagine making shadow images on the wall by sticking your fingers in front of a flashlight). The bound men can see only the shadows on the wall in front of them. They assume that the images they see are reality because the images are all they have ever known.
Next, Socrates imagines what would happen if someone were to drag one of the chained men out of the cave, into the light. At first, the man would be blinded by the sun. But, as his eyes adjusted to the light, he would see the true forms of the shadows he had previously perceived as reality. He would see for the first time the outlines in the cave were more complex than he had known, that they have color and nuance. He would realize that everything he experienced in the cave was only an adumbration of reality.
Socrates uses the cave to represent the realm of the sensible, what you can experience through your five senses. The area outside the cave represents the realm of the intelligible, what you can conceive only in your mind. Socrates believes he escaped the cave by reason. Socrates feels that by contemplating the form of the light, you can escape the cave. You can move from the realm of the sensible to the intelligible—also known as the invisible—by the “contemplation of the divine” (Republic, 518E).
Socrates says education is the attempt of someone who has escaped the cave to descend once more into the cave to rescue those still bound. Socrates believes he is the one charged by the god with the task of going back into the cave and pulling people out. He must educate them: “It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city” (Apology, 30E). He predicts that the people in the cave would be reluctant to leave; they might even kill anyone who tries to “free them and lead them upward” (Republic, 517A). His prediction comes true; the people of the city were so infuriated by his attempts to educate them that they executed him. At his trial, Socrates tells the people of the city that by killing him they are harming themselves because they would no longer have anyone to educate them. They would not have anyone to free them from the cave, “if you kill me you will not easily find another like me” (Apology, 31A).

Socrates makes two epistemological assumptions. First, that the things we experience with our five senses are not the ultimate reality. Since we are bound by our physical circumstances, we have no way of knowing if the things we experience are reality. The men in the cave cannot discover the light by more closely examining the shadows in front of them. They will not escape the cave by using their senses to gather more information about the cave. In the same way, as humans stuck in space and time, we cannot escape the sensible world by studying it more carefully. This is the mistake many naturalists have made in modernity. They assume there is nothing besides the physical world. They refuse to entertain the idea that the things they hear, taste, touch, smell, and see are merely shadows of some bigger reality. Socrates assesses correctly that the things in the sensible world point us to something more.
Second, Socrates assumes by contemplating the divine (which is represented by the light) he can discover its form. He believes he can find the nature or essence of the divine through reason. To put it in terms of the allegory, he can escape his bonds in the cave by engaging his mind. By employing his intellect he can break free of his entrapment in the sensible realm. Socrates claims reason can lead him to an accurate understanding of the nature of reality. This is his epistemology: reason, not the senses, brings understanding about the intelligible. Reason is how comes he knows what he knows.
The flaw in Socrates’ epistemology is he trusts too fully in the capacity of his intellect to unveil the nature of the invisible. Socrates believes reason has freed him from the cave. In reality all it has done is show him there is something more than the cave. He is still bound in the cave. He believes the mind is the key that unlocks his shackles.
However, the mind is limited. It cannot comprehend the nature of the divine; it is not equipped to do so. Socrates fails to see that even his reason is shaped by the sensible realm; his reason is in the cave. The mind can conceive that there is something more than the sensible realm or the physical world. But, since it is stuck in the physical, it has no way of thinking about the nature of any reality outside of its experience. The intellect can only conceive that there is something more. It cannot discover what this something more is like. Since the mind has not experienced this something more, it cannot tell us about its nature or its qualities. Reason has no language by which to define this something more. Reason can only imagine about things it has not seen; it cannot know them. It does not have the power to bring us out of the cave; it can only bring us to recognize the existence of the light.
Imagine you lived in the year 1490. You could look out over the ocean and think, “There could be land somewhere over the horizon”. But you could only think about that land in terms of the geographic features you are familiar with. If the land was altogether different than any land you have ever seen, you would have no means of contemplating this new form of land. Now imagine as you stare across the ocean, a ship appears on the horizon. It brings people from the other land. Only they can reveal to you the nature of their land. Your reason is limited by your experience.
In the same way, something outside of the cave must go into it to free those bound there. We need something external to the physical world to step into it and describe the nature of the nonphysical world. Socrates believes that he is the one to go back into the cave to tell of the intelligible realm. The problem is that he has not experienced the intelligible realm. He is like the person who looks across the ocean and dreams of a distant land. He has no understanding of the invisible realm, just as the person who looks across the ocean has no understanding of the land beyond the horizon. In order for him to learn anything about the invisible world, it must be revealed to him by something that has experienced it.
This is exactly what Christians believe the Bible is: God’s revelation about the invisible world. God steps into the world, our realm, to tell us about Himself. Since our language does not allow us to understand the invisible, God puts Himself into language our minds can comprehend. If God wishes to reveal Himself to us and if the sensible realm is all we know, then God must translate Himself into the words of the sensible realm.
The ultimate manifestation of God’s nature is Jesus Christ, the God who became human in order that we can know God. Notice the parallel between the imagery of the allegory and the Bible’s description of Jesus: “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15 NRSV). The invisible (God) became visible (Jesus), so that we might know the form of the invisible. It is the exact same imagery. God is “speaking our language”. He is communicating to us about his nature in terms we understand. Jesus is the ultimate revelation of the nature of the invisible realm. The Bible also uses the imagery of light saying Jesus is “the light of all people. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:4b-5 NRSV). God is equating Himself to the light in the allegory, which represents the invisible realm. Jesus, not Socrates, is the one who comes into the cave to free us because Jesus is the only one who knows the invisible. The beautiful message of the Bible is not that we can find a way out of the cave into the light, but that the light has come into the cave.
Many would argue it is irrational to believe in divine revelation. Yet, this interpretation of “The Allegory of the Cave” shows that it is the only rational option. Our senses are clearly unable to glean the nature of the invisible world because they are only able to gather information about the visible world. Our intellect can provide us with no sufficient definition or description of the invisible because it is has not experienced the invisible. Socrates is certainly correct in his assessment of our situation: we are indeed chained in a cave. Some of us say the cave is all there is. Most of us engage our minds to see there is, at the very least, the strong possibility of a greater reality. We are left with our imaginations screaming that there must be something more. We dream with C.S. Lewis when he says, “All [our] life in this world and all [our] adventures have only been the cover and the title page” (The Last Battle, 210-211). Without divine revelation, without the Bible and Jesus Christ, we have no way of knowing what this something more is.

Oh the Torment Bred in the Race.

It has been a while since I last posted. I have obviously undergone a few changes in my life-- starting college. I have been immersed this semester in the great thinkers of the Western Tradition and have had so much to think about and read that the idea of blogging brought bile into my mouth. No More! I have decided that the best way to share with all of you what I have been learning and to hear your opinions about it, is to simply post the essays I have been writing for my classes. I will follow this post with my first essay.

Jamaica Day 1.5

Hello All (even though it will probably only be Betsy and Mom who read it),
We all arrived here in Jamaica safely! Our plane ride from Atlanta to Montego Bay was not restful. There was an infant in the seat infront of us (Will, Ryan, and Nathan) two rows infront of Mrs. Wolffe and Catherine. Screaming is too mild of a word to describe what this little one did for the entire duration of the flight. Customs was uneventful; We got through and found a taxi to take us to Galena Breeze. One sweaty two and half hour bus ride later and we had arrived! It was a bit of a surreal expireince for all of us as none of us had left here thinking that we would ever be back. But we are, and it is as beautiful as ever. I am writing this in the large open air dining room over looking the ocean. It is a hot day on the island, 94, and probably about the same humididty percentage. We are staying realitively cool as the breeze off the ocean is very refreshing. And yes, I am trying to brag.
After arriving last night and getting settled in, we had a delicious dinner of jerk pork and chicken. There was another group here, but it was there last night. We spent the night hanging out by the pool, learning a new version of UNO from the summer interns. We fell asleep on the roof of the utlitly shed star gazing. We went to bed early, 9:30. We have spent most of the day installing old programs like: thinking things, mario typing, and the original printshop. It is the first time any of us have worked with floppy disks in a while. All in all it has been a pretty lazy day as the staff has been flipping the camp for the group of 30 that is arriving from Ohio. Tommorow we are going to be at Church and continuing our installs.
That's all for now from Jamaica.

What If continued

One of my earliest posts asked the question "what if Jesus knew exactly what He was talking about?" I have been reading John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus lately. He constructs an argument to prove that Jesus' teachings are a very functional foundation for all ethics. He goes so far as to claim that Jesus' ethical system is universal and sociologically viable. He points out that all though the Church(which I am a part of) often pays lip service to this truth but does not flesh it out in its actions. We ask questions like What Would Jesus Do, but in reality we are terrified of the answer.
What I am realizing about ethics is that more than anything it is an epistemological issue. Ethics is asking what is the right action. However, such a question is unanswerable unless we first answer the question what is right.( which is a cosmological question) And at an even deeper we must ask how can we know what is right. Now we have arrived at epistemology, how can we know reality? The answer to this question inevitalbely defines our ethics.
If all of this seems as abstract to you as it does to me, let me bring it to a more concrete example: "You have heard it was said LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AND HATE YOUR ENEMY. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in order that you may be that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you what reward have you? Do not even the tax gathers do the same? "
Befor I go any further, let me preface this for all of you who are thinking: "here goes Nathan on one of his pacifist arguments again." This is not about war, I promise. What we have here is a very basic ethical statement by Jesus: the right course of action is to love your enemy and be loving to towards those who do not reciprocate. Yet, the Church has argued for two millineia over the meaning of these words. The split has not come over an ethical disagreement, but an epistemological one. When someone reads these words, they have two choices 1) reject what Jesus is saying because it does not appear to be practical, or viable. 2) to accept that it is true, even though it may seem irrational.
The first response is a typically arrogant human response, and all too often it is my response. As Yoder puts it, this argument says that "it is by studying the realities around us, not by hearing a proclamation from God that we discern the right." To reject Christ's ethical statement is to say that it can not be true. The way that its veracity is tested is against what the natural world seems to order. To reject Jesus' claim as "unpractical" is the epitome of arrogance. It is to say that my experience is more capable of informing reality than God, and therefore I reject God's revelation because it does not compute with my experience of reality. It is to say that I know reality better than God.
The second is to acknowledge that truth may be outside of your sphere of experience. To say, I do not feel that this is true, or have not experienced it to be true, but still esteem it to be so, is to admit that truth may lay outside your ability to define. What we see in all of this is that morality is a question of how you understand truth. Thus morality is an epistemological issue.

What I Want

I think that there is a common misconception amongst Christians that the life that is lived in Christ is one that is only about not getting what you want. While the Christian is required to deny the sinful impulses which are innate to us, in a much larger sense, the life Christ has for us is far better than the one the World has to offer. I think that often Christians talk about future glory and the life that will come. They think that they must not enjoy their life now. They do not know how to enjoy God.
I think however that God wants us to enjoy Him. C.S. Lewis once said that if God could give us something better than Himself, He would. If there were a better way than God's way for you, God would want that for you. That is the kind of love He has for you. However, the life of a disciple of Jesus is the most fulfilling, the most correct option. Simply put, it is the best. God desires what is best for you. He does not ask that you deny yourself in a way that makes you miserable, but rather that you deny your sinful urges and follow His far superior path. The best thing for us is God!