Moving!
I’m not dead, just really busy with packing. Man… you never know you have so much junk until you try and pack it away. Whew.
Also, it looks like Professor Millett made a poor decision when he chose to move to New Orleans at the end of this year.
Maybe they’ll have utility service by the time he gets there. Speaking of utilities, I have no idea what the deal is with my internet service at University Village, so I might be MIA for a while.
man...
Soooooooooo... guess who had to work today and has almost zero time online.
Back to the thesis!
First off, I want to bring a cool new add-on for blogger to everyone's attention.
Blogger for WordThis helps A LOT because I've had entries, usually longer, more involved ones, deleted randomly by the web-based blogger entry thing.
Secondly, I really can’t say enough about
www.newadvent.org when it comes to religious texts. It makes quoting easy, as you will no doubt discover while reading this entry.
Now let's get down to brass tacks. Professor Grimsley reminded me that I haven't been posting about the thesis at all. This is due to equal parts poor home internet access and a full time job destroying lots of my motivation. The job was supposed to be 30 hours a week max, but that is neither here nor there. As it is, the reading took longer than I anticipated and my notes are all in a notebook instead of online. I did manage to write down good footnotes though, so I can copy and paste big chunks of quotes to the blog. That should speed things up.
I'll try to transfer the notes to the blog every few days or so, but next Wednesday is when I move into my new apartment, and I'm not sure how the utilities will be handled, so I might not have web access for a day or two. After that, the updates will come much faster.
For now I'm just going to consolidate some of the notes I have about Tertullian.
I was kind of taken aback by Tertullian. He yells a lot about the fact that the military required ceremonies and oaths that placed the Emperor as a divine being. At first it seems like he objects more to the fact that a blasphemous oath is uttered then to the actual act of killing someone. But in another book,
De Corona, he goes back and inquires “whether warfare is proper at all for Christians.” Even in this book, he still puts a lot of emphasis on the symbolism of the Roman army.
“And shall he keep guard before the temples which he has renounced? And shall he take a meal where the apostle has forbidden him? And shall he diligently protect by night those whom in the day-time he has put to flight by his exorcisms, leaning and resting on the spear the while with which Christ's side was pierced? Shall he carry a flag, too, hostile to Christ? And shall he ask a watchword from the emperor who has already received one from God? Shall he be disturbed in death by the trumpet of the trumpeter, who expects to be aroused by the angel's trump? And shall the Christian be burned according to camp rule, when he was not permitted to burn incense to an idol, when to him Christ remitted the punishment of fire? Then how many other offences there are involved in the performances of camp offices, which we must hold to involve a transgression of God's law, you may see by a slight survey. The very carrying of the name over from the camp of light to the camp of darkness is a violation of it.”Later on in this same chapter, he makes an exception to certain people in the bible that encountered faith
after military service. My justification for military service, which I would go on to discover that others have also used, is invalidated by Tertullian.
“Of course, if faith comes later, and finds any preoccupied with military service, their case is different, as in the instance of those whom John used to receive for baptism, and of those most faithful centurions, I mean the centurion whom Christ approves, and the centurion whom Peter instructs; yet, at the same time, when a man has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there must be either an immediate abandonment of it, which has been the course with many; or all sorts of quibbling will have to be resorted to in order to avoid offending God, and that is not allowed even outside of military service; or, last of all, for God the fate must be endured which a citizen-faith has been no less ready to accept.”I got a little bit ahead of myself there, so let’s go back to the symbolism thing. In the next chapter of this book, Tertullian says that the “crown”,
which I understand to be the classic laurels worn behind the ears, is too associated with false gods for a Christian to accept. Even if he doesn’t utter the oath to the Roman gods, he is still accepting them by wearing those leaves. The laurel is “sacred to Apollo or Bacchus”, “the myrtle belongs to Venus, the mother of the Æneadae, the mistress also of the god of war”, the olive is associated with Minerva, etc…
Tertullian even takes exception with the fact that a soldier could sell his crown. “The laurel is likewise commanded (to be used) at the distribution of the largess. So you see idolatry is not without its gain, selling, as it does, Christ for pieces of gold, as Judas did for pieces of silver.”
Tertullian mentions something about rendering unto Caesar at the end of this chapter, and he seems to use it as a command to avoid service. I freely admit that I don’t really understand his reasoning when he says “But even then you are still the soldier and the servant of another; and if of two masters, of God and Caesar: but assuredly then not of Caesar, when you owe yourself to God, as having higher claims, I should think, even in matters in which both have an interest. “
In another book he wrote, On Idolatry, he uses the Caesar line again, saying “One soul cannot be due to two masters--God and Caesar.” This seems to be a key part of any reasoning behind the “legality” of a Christian warrior, but different people take drastically different things from it. Take Augustine’s whole theory of two cities for example.
At the end of this chapter, he says something that I don’t agree with at all.
“And yet Moses carried a rod, and Aaron wore a buckle, and John (Baptist) is girt with leather and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march; and the People warred: if it pleases you to sport with the subject. But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier. No dress is lawful among us, if assigned to any unlawful action.”
I really don’t see how Jesus telling Peter to put his sword down can be seen as a command to EVERY Christian. I always took that part of the gospel to be Jesus grimly accepting his fate as a sacrificial lamb. He prayed for God to take the cup from his hands, but if it was His will, Jesus would go through with it. Telling Peter to put his sword away was just Jesus trying to do his job on Earth without hurting anyone that wasn’t destined for it. Peter was to be the rock that Jesus would build his church on, it wouldn’t do for Peter to die in a sword fight with some soldiers over something that God wanted to happen anyways. That is what I always thought the “live by the sword, die by the sword” quote meant.
Well, I think I’ve written enough for just one night. There’s a football game on that I
really should be watching. I’ll post more soon though. I think I’m taking Wednesday off, so I can probably find some free time to unleash volumes of incoherent notes on the blogger audience.
Can you say "spaz"?
So I took a break from reading religious stuff to do a little
light reading. I grabbed my copy of
A Bridge Too Far and went to town. Only got about 100 pages into it, but I really like the style. I guess I'm an odd bird because I like the mid-20th century British historian style. There's
a book on Patton written by a British guy that has the same feel as this book. Dr. Guilmartin let me borrow his copy and I liked it so much that I went out and bought my own through an auction site.
Anyways, I really like this book. The way that the Patton-Montgomery struggle is portrayed is excellent. Plus, Ryan includes notes from interviews with Eisenhower and the like. My favorite is when Ike goes off on Montgomery. I also like how the book isn't cluttered with footnotes like a lot of the books I've read recently. When footnotes are used, they're there to illustrate a point or to expand upon a subject. I like that free and open style, but with all the talk of academic misconduct and plagiarism, I doubt I could write like that. Look at what happened to Stephen Ambrose. Not so much deliberate theft of material, but just free-wheeling without regard to proper MLA standards, and everyone raises a stink.
Well, I have to go work tomorrow morning, so I'm going to sleep now. I think I'll have Friday off, maybe I can sleep all day!
I'm back
I've been hearing this new System of a Down song on the radio, BYOB, and in between the largely indechipherable screaming lyrics, they shout about the war in Iraq and ask "Why do they always send the poor?" over and over again. I can't find any stats on enlistment vs. wealth brackets (stupid unhelpful internet!), but I seem to recall seeing information that shows enlistment in the military roughly shadowing the same percentages of the general population with a majority in the middle class. It really bugs me that I can't find stats because I'm sure the song is wrong. Maybe they were in the small encyclopedia of scattered sheets that Dr. Millett gave us in that American Military Policy class... To the pile of notebooks I go!
