tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80874021798054776372024-03-21T15:00:18.545-07:00The Problem With Reza Aslan Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-78921402678227300172019-09-02T19:36:00.000-07:002019-09-13T17:49:34.186-07:00God-free States always go after sincere ChristianityEvery government that has freed itself from Judaeo-Christian principles will try to use its power to intimidate Christians from following their conscience and publicly (and sometimes even privately) living out their beliefs. States that are free from such principles are more free to entertain their latent totalitarian tendencies. Denmark does not want to be left behind China and most of the Middle East in their utter fright of people being exposed to (and preferring it to the state-sanctioned worldview) bold and sincere Christianity. <br />
<br />
In Denmark, it looks like similar tactics have been used against Torben Søndergaard to what were <b><a href="https://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2017/05/larry-lea-agenda-for-painting-with.html">used against Larry Lea</a></b> in the U.S. back in 1992, only this time the <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQKlzutWb0Q">disinformation and slander seemed to be coordinated with the Danish government</a></b>. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FQKlzutWb0Q/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FQKlzutWb0Q?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fCObsuoTcIU/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fCObsuoTcIU?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-44706623647546340732017-05-28T16:49:00.000-07:002017-07-15T09:40:42.906-07:00What Reza Aslan really thinks of ChristianityIn various interviews Reza Aslan will represent himself as someone who deftly navigates between religious frameworks as easily as a polyglot switches between languages, and in others he seems to communicate what a bitter disappointment Christianity ended up being for him since he discovered through his studies at a Jesuit school that the entire New Testament was a bunch of made-up stories with little connection to the Jewish scriptures and religion. <br />
<br />
I think the most telling moment is when he is in like-minded anti-conservative company at Loonwatch and <a href="http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/11/exclusive-loonwatch-interview-with-reza-aslan/">attempts to convey what is "brilliant and profoundly moving" about the Christian narrative</a>: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>LW: How was that, what was that experience like when you were an Evangelical?<br />RA:</b> It’s magical! The thing about Evangelical Christianity and why I think it is so appealing, particularly to young people is that I mean it is just such a brilliant and profoundly moving story. There is a reason why it is called the greatest story ever told, right? That God had this physical son, like His little baby boy you know that came down to earth, and because you yourself are such an awful human being, because of all the terrible things you do, God decided to have His son tortured and murdered in order to save you from yourself, and that if you don’t accept that story, not only are you spitting in God’s face but, oh yeah, you are also going to burn in hell for all eternity. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It’s an amazing story, that’s why it is so appealing. Now the important thing to understand is that is what it precisely is: a story. I am not by any means discounting it or criticizing it. </blockquote>
Not by any means discounting it... Aslan seems unaware here of how his characterization of the "gospel" or New Testament story comes across. This summation sounds as patronizing and goofy as what would typically be heard from "New Atheists" and secular humanists. It is at the exact moment he is asked to explain why Christianity is appealing that his veneer of scholarly objectivism unravels and he can't help putting it in a particularly unappealing light-- and then he tries to recover by complimenting his own strawman version of Christianity as "amazing." (I challenge the reader to find any comparable summary of Islam by Aslan.) <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiigzCbnvQ2zoYM-zMX7xnHxJQ2AqNV-m6UYEX0kxx69DSoERXjZWBNdaU3wl9X70JIDVDv3pXMa2k8y17a5TtNsYdmnGA9klcueyI4-ba1UGdNjr_GI-Wzdi1c4uSMDr47TpH_3NAS4P8/s1600/reza_attitude.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="431" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOoxDLwiKF1huTrXOklLm0gKqPpYQgWx0xY14-B0rhtBx84jUL1gcllUNiarf_obFxHd0u2XJ144W8n4plVRuVRw4BTjCT4wBkT_9WuSsyjaC3xYOrCKCft-xynuQMTL2Dp-40hHHMfY4/s200/reza_attitude2.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aslan having a moment at about t=19:40</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In his 'Inside the Scholar's Studio' interview at Harvard, <a href="https://youtu.be/2r54DU8BSPM?t=1107">about 19 minutes into the Youtube video,</a> Aslan appears to have a similar moment sharing a laugh with the audience about the absurdity of a human being somehow being God and also being capable of real human moments:<blockquote class="tr_bq">
... when you try to think about him [Jesus] as struggling or suffering, as anxious or scared, when you try to think about the humanity of him, it's very difficult to do so, because, <i>you knooow</i> ... <i>he's also God</i>. </blockquote>
and then switching back to his objective voice, having already evaded criticism by acknowledging first that the simultaneous humanity and divinity of Jesus is a <i>Christian mystery</i>. This mystery that he seems to be trying to find a scholarly way to ridicule is something that he talks about as being "the heart of orthodox Christianity." He separates what he calls the "God Jesus" from <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/06/reza-real-reason-zealot.html">the human Jesus</a> as though the divine element (along with nearly the entire New Testament narrative, if you read his book <i>Zealot</i>) must be somehow removed entirely before we understand who Jesus is and what he stands for. What Reza means by "God Jesus" is "<a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/06/reza-real-reason-zealot.html">the <b>detached, unearthly being</b> I had been introduced to in church</a>" or "<a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/08/03/reza-aslan-jesus-zealot/H6cwU1ul2Mk7iUilMBvmVI/story.html"><span class="st">a <b><i>celestial detached</i> spirit </b>with <b>no </b>interest in the world</span></a>" (<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=reza+aslan+detached+celestial+being&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8">similar language</a> is used in his book <i>Zealot</i>).<br />
<br />
Now Reza Aslan talks a lot about how <a href="http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/11/exclusive-loonwatch-interview-with-reza-aslan/">his Muslim outlook does not shape his academic beliefs</a>--his personal notion of the Islamic belief of "radical unity" is unorthodox--but his rejection of Christianity seems very much in line with a traditional Islamic interpretation of "radical unity" as <a href="http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/11/exclusive-loonwatch-interview-with-reza-aslan/">he explains</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I always talk about how I had an emotional conversion to Christianity but a rational conversion to Islam. Reading about the way Islam talks about the divine and the relationship between human beings and God and conceptions of the universe and ideas of the transcendent, these made a hell of a lot more sense to me cosmologically speaking than some old man in the sky impregnated a virgin and His son came out [of her] and died for us.</blockquote>
As he goes on to explain in the Loonwatch interview, Islam has very little creed and instead has a lot of rules that are not driven by Islamic <i>theology per se</i>, and so there is not a lot of weird stuff in Islam that is hard to reconcile with rational thought as in Christianity where "some old man in the sky impregnated a virgin and His son came out and died for us." There's no <i>weird stuff </i>like "God Jesus" and real human Jesus somehow being the same person. Islam instead, in its inception and scripture, has an ordinary flesh-and-blood prophet slaughtering real people with real swords because they don't accept the prophet's revelations (what Aslan refers to obliquely as a "<a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/06/reza-real-reason-zealot.html">chilling new reality</a>"). No weird theological mumbo-jumbo like an old man in the sky impregnating a virgin so that He can torture His divine baby boy, as Aslan summarizes Christianity.<br />
<br />
When you hear Reza Aslan disclaiming that different religions are basically the same except for using different metaphors to describe the same spiritual reality, consider whether the differences Aslan sees really go deeper than employing this or that metaphor. If Aslan does not think Christianity is stupid, he is clearly bad at communicating the respect he has for those beliefs (which seems odd for someone who considers <b>communication </b>part of his particular expertise). I believe it makes more sense to think that Aslan sometimes has trouble hiding his contempt for <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/06/reza-real-reason-zealot.html">his personal (and poorly informed) concept of Christianity</a>. Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-50232587070998596612017-05-16T22:48:00.000-07:002017-07-06T17:59:06.025-07:00Larry Lea: An Agenda for Painting with a Broad Brush<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhVppEXHNRZj6uURkKzIuzfCxboYZce5l9xC7mf8zduF5t4OMbVcfXGatk42aotyl1djNJzqB9zN1qIAlV-kF_QytEDuJQDN1V6NvNqk1hREjd3I2Wki0MfP-ZuGrTnmMedyjar7-xcyQ/s1600/larrylea_primetime.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="438" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhVppEXHNRZj6uURkKzIuzfCxboYZce5l9xC7mf8zduF5t4OMbVcfXGatk42aotyl1djNJzqB9zN1qIAlV-kF_QytEDuJQDN1V6NvNqk1hREjd3I2Wki0MfP-ZuGrTnmMedyjar7-xcyQ/s320/larrylea_primetime.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
ABC should have been sued for slander, for damaging an innocent man's reputation. I believe Larry Lea got on somebody's radar, not primarily for any particular malfeasance on his part, but for energizing American Christians in praying for their nation. November 1991 was kicking off the year countdown to the '92 election, and the voting block responsible for 12 years of Republican presidential office needed to be shattered. Naturally, ABC could be counted on for a "smite the shepherd" strategy.<br />
<br />
Larry Lea's former wife Melva <a href="http://www.charismamag.com/life/relationships/558-a-journey-toward-healing?showall=1&limitstart=">recounts</a> why we should be worried about media agenda:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Before Larry did the interview, ABC told him that many people
considered him to be the next Billy Graham and that the interview was
going to be about "the new generation of preachers." When he got to the
studio, they completely changed the angle. From Diane Sawyer's first
word, the air just went out of the room. It was horrific.<br />
We later
were contacted by a senator who told us that the program was an ambush
for a political agenda--to take down a huge voting block of right-wing
conservative voters.
<br />
. . . What was devastating to me was that so many people in the body of Christ believed what they heard from a secular news reporter rather than believing someone who taught them how to pray and commune with God. For the most part everyone looked at us like we had leprosy.
<br />
After the interview we formed a committee of pastors to examine our practices. We invited EFICOM [Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission, a branch of the National Religious Broadcasters that certifies financial accountability] to come in and look at everything. One EFICOM member, who was a federal judge and clearly didn't like Larry, told him, "If I find anything wrong, you're in trouble."
<br />
Larry opened up everything to him. A few days later this man returned and said: "You have grounds to sue. There is absolutely nothing true about any of [ABC's] allegations."
<br />
Perception is everything, though. The damage had already been done. It destroyed our credibility.
</blockquote>
<br />
Through a guilt-by-association maneuver in which they associated Larry Lea's ministry to Robert Tilton's goofy prosperity infomercials and the Peter Poppoff-esque shenanigans of W.V. Grant, the Dallas Morning News was poised to label the three men "<b>a greedy,
unholy trinity schooled in using the cross crassly</b>." In spite of being guilty of writing a best-selling book about prayer, Lea's emphasis was always on prayer rather than prosperity. <br />
<br />
From <a href="http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=DM&p_theme=dm&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0ED56291649D24AC&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM">The Dallas Morning News</a>:
<br />
<blockquote>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 100%px;"><tbody>
<tr><td id="bitext"><b>1.) </b>
<b><a href="http://nl.newsbank.com/nojavascript.html">Judgment Day on `Prime Time Live'</a></b><br />
<b>Author: </b>Ed Bark THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS (DAL)<br />
<b>Publish Date: </b>NOVEMBER 21, 1991<br />
<b>Word Count: </b>749<br />
<b>Document ID: </b>0ED56291649D24AC</td></tr>
<tr><td id="bitext">Tell a friend to watch three Dallas area televangelists exposed as serpents on Thursday's exclusive Prime Time Live report.It's
good for the soul. And it may be very bad for the nationally televised
ministries of W.V. Grant, Larry Lea and Robert Tilton. Prime Time
co-anchor Diane Sawyer, aided by hidden cameras, exposes a greedy,
unholy trinity schooled in using the cross crassly. Yes, we've waded through this muck before. But televangelists continue to fold their hands and ...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</blockquote>
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-9973259753742091172016-11-01T13:03:00.000-07:002017-05-23T18:08:49.713-07:00Reza Aslan's Money-Making Marxism<div style="border-image: none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgikzN9DxwQp6LC0RBG9o9bWHp8pg4y9yH0OK7urK1EYQeEN1QRoHmCKxWN_mf48HMcS17HN_SXkItrCdVwP-Zpcn5yO-LOzEk8oU0yx72eXF5jTykk5Rubo8c19AkQp6xTVfFnZ2Ve5Os/s1600/richmarxist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgikzN9DxwQp6LC0RBG9o9bWHp8pg4y9yH0OK7urK1EYQeEN1QRoHmCKxWN_mf48HMcS17HN_SXkItrCdVwP-Zpcn5yO-LOzEk8oU0yx72eXF5jTykk5Rubo8c19AkQp6xTVfFnZ2Ve5Os/s1600/richmarxist.jpg" /></a>As of the beginning of the year, <a href="http://richestcelebrities.org/richest-authors/reza-aslan-net-worth/">Reza Aslan is worth $3 million</a>. Peddling secularism, quasi-Marxist philosophy, anti-Israel rhetoric, pseudo-mysticism, and popular pseudohistorical narratives has been very lucrative for this high-profile limousine liberal. And he has high hopes for the movie rights to <i>Zealot</i> making him even more of that filthy lucre, cashing in on the latest popularity of Jesus films.</div>
<br />
Regularly denouncing Christian conservatives for following an unhistorical Jesus and calling Joel Osteen a "charlatan" for having money and not condemning wealth, Reza Aslan claims that a fundamental aspect of Jesus' true identity was "his absolute hatred of wealth" and also claims to be a genuinely committed follower of the historical Jesus rather than the "detached celestial spirit" of Christianity who (in his keen reckoning) cares nothing for people's earthly plight unlike his entirely non-divine version of Jesus.<br />
<br />
Reza has repeatedly spoken highly of what he thinks is the real Jesus' calling for a bloody hyper-Marxist revolution--that progressive vision which Charles Manson called "helter skelter" and which Reza says would be "a chilling new reality" as the rich are made destitute and the destitute are made wealthy. So...when the revolution happens, how much of Reza's money will I be getting? Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-72542572529537892812016-07-06T20:02:00.000-07:002016-11-01T14:10:59.914-07:00Juergensmeyer's "Christian terrorism" and Breivik's paganism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHLFttMABw8pljr4lp9xFkX8gokROSg23M7O1hnSEv9DDW5pZjX76FyJSLZfxZKB7ohPrHNH-BKBkyyGbnlwlGEYmUm9Sep1BmcB3gzteNgPsgjJcntEiEFycRn6u8bNpc1R_KbwRnZs8/s1600/breivik13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHLFttMABw8pljr4lp9xFkX8gokROSg23M7O1hnSEv9DDW5pZjX76FyJSLZfxZKB7ohPrHNH-BKBkyyGbnlwlGEYmUm9Sep1BmcB3gzteNgPsgjJcntEiEFycRn6u8bNpc1R_KbwRnZs8/s400/breivik13.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Reza Aslan's <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/03/juergensmeyer.html">thesis advisor Mark Juergensmeyer</a> got some notice in Norway for calling Anders Breivik a "Christian terrorist":<br />
<blockquote>
The American terrorism researcher <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=no&tl=en&u=http://www.dagen.no/tag/mark_juergensmeyer&usg=ALkJrhhsUpFDBLiLpkZGKiYrpuw0_z4eow">Mark Juergensmeyer</a> believed however that Breivik was a Christian terrorist in <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=no&tl=en&u=http://www.nrk.no/verden/_-han-er-en-kristen-terrorist-1.7735739&usg=ALkJrhjyJx5r4WoTfUTd1Eio4niwyYEnZw">line with the Oklahoma bomber</a>, according to NRK. [Den amerikanske terrorforskeren <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=no&tl=en&u=http://www.dagen.no/tag/mark_juergensmeyer&usg=ALkJrhhsUpFDBLiLpkZGKiYrpuw0_z4eow"><span style="color: #0000cc;">Mark Juergensmeyer</span></a> mente derimot at Breivik var en kristen terrorist på <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=no&tl=en&u=http://www.nrk.no/verden/_-han-er-en-kristen-terrorist-1.7735739&usg=ALkJrhjyJx5r4WoTfUTd1Eio4niwyYEnZw"><span style="color: #0000cc;">linje med Oklahoma-bomberen</span></a>, ifølge NRK] <a href="http://bit.ly/BreivikOdinist">*</a> </blockquote>
Apparently, being raised in "flyover country" by a Catholic family makes one a Christian, just as growing up in Europe does for Breivik. <a href="http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Timothy-McVeigh-Was-Not-a-Christian-Terrorist?offset=1&max=1">Writing for Patheos</a> on the McVeigh-was-a-Christian meme, Jeremy Lott (editor of RealClearReligion.org) summarizes:<br />
<blockquote>
[McVeigh] <a href="http://www.time.com/time/reports/mcveigh/interview/interview2.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">told Time magazine</a> in 1996 that he believed in a deity but <span style="color: red;">had “lost</span><span style="color: red;"> touch with the religion” of his birth</span>. . . . We might call him spiritual but not religious. He <a href="http://www.getreligion.org/2010/09/st-timothy-mcveigh-strikes-again/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">claimed to be agnostic</a> but not an atheist. McVeigh believed in “science” and not “religion,” he said. (In fact, he said <span style="color: red;">his religion was science</span>.) His murky metaphysical notions included <span style="color: red;">some sort of Deistic creator who set things in motion, not the personal God of Christianity</span>. . . . [He] didn’t believe in an afterlife and he certainly didn’t believe in hell.</blockquote>
<br />
Supposedly, Breivik identified himself at one time as a "cultural Christian." But does that mean anything more than having grown up in the secular Europe with its historical roots in Christianity? Is Breivik's use of the symbols of ancient Scandinavian paganism merely a superficial cultural flourish? According to the same Norwegian article:<br />
<blockquote>
Now Breivik said that he "<span style="color: red;">is not and never has been - a Christian</span>," in a letter he sent to "interested or affected parties in comp. With 22/7" along with two other letters to, among other day. He describes himself as "<span style="color: red;">one of the more fanatical National Socialists in Northern Europe.</span>" <br />
During a point called "Odinisme" dismisses his Christianity and Jesus as follows: <br />
"<span style="color: red;">There are few things in the world that is more pathetic than the Jesus figure and his message, and I have always despised the weakness and the internationalism that the church represents.</span>" <br />
He stressed that he prays and sacrifices to God and receive strength from God, but that he calls him "<span style="color: red;">Odin, not Jesus or Jehovah</span>." </blockquote>
<br />
Sounds Christian to me. Could be that radical sect of Christianity that eschews the Biblical names for God and thinks little of "the Jesus figure and his message." Interesting sense of being "culturally Christian." Breivik seems culturally <em>pagan</em>, in addition to being religiously pagan. <br />
<br />
According to the article, Henrik Syse, "philosopher and senior researcher at the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO)," thinks people should be careful how they apply the phrase "Christian terrorist" to Anders Breivik, considering how he is not a Christian "in any meaningful sense." Not <em>being</em> a Christian <u>in any meaningful </u><u>sense</u> seems like an excellent reason not to be <em>called </em>a "Christian terrorist" at all. <strong>It doesn't seem that he could be Christian in any meaningful sense even if he claimed to be a Christian.</strong> <br />
<br />
<blockquote>
It is not entirely unnatural that people have characterized Breivik as a Christian, just as there are many Muslim terrorists as<span style="color: red;"> far removed</span> from what most people would think that <span style="color: red;">Islam stands for</span>, says Sysendammen. <br />
While it is clear a point that if he takes [sic] explicit distance from Christianity, one can not call him a Christian. <br />
<br />
The researcher stresses that the <span style="color: red;">Christian culture background</span> is not completely irrelevant, <span style="color: red;">because Breivik refers to it </span>and calls himself a crusader. <br />
His ideology and philosophy must be taken seriously because it is so dangerous and <br />
can inspire others. But philosophically it is a smear, as it is hardly worth taking seriously intellectually, and that is a <span style="color: red;">far </span><span style="color: red;">cry from Christian thought</span>, says Sysendammen. </blockquote>
<br />
True, the background is "not irrelevant" because, as Adolf Hitler did, Breivik was trying to sell his ideas to European cultures whose historical traditions are rooted in Christianity, not Islam. However, fascism, even paganistic fascism, has more in common with cultural Marxism than , the nationalistic tendencies of fascism notwithstanding. (Of course, fascist dictators have always respected national borders, right?) Fascism may be the illegitimate child of Marxism, but its paternity is clear, with its aims of the government shaping and controlling its people by undermining the roles of family and traditional institutions. Unlike communism, fascism paid lip service to the importance of the very institutions and it actively sought to subdue and control. The religious cultural background becomes very important to any ideology that claims to uphold the very cultural elements it seeks to radically refashion (or "fundamentally transform"). <br />
<br />
Syse's analogy to "Muslim terrorist" only holds with respect to terrorists who (1) are "far removed" from what most <em>Muslims </em>(rather than "most people") would think Islam stands for, and who (2) embrace an ideology that is "a far cry from" Islamic thought. Which begs the question, how do we determine how far something is removed from essential Christianity or essential Islam? <br />
<br />
Let's say Mahmoud is an Egyptian terrorist killing Arab Christians, and he said that he preferred to call his Allah by the name of the Egyptian god Horus, and he said that nothing was more pathetic than Mohammed and his message. Wouldn't anyone calling Mahmoud a Muslim terrorist be quickly corrected? Assuming, of course, that it could be argued in this case that Mahmoud was not a Muslim in any meaningful sense. In what sense would he be "culturally Muslim" other than having been exposed to Islam while growing up? President Obama could be considered culturally Muslim in that sense, having attended a Muslim school as a boy. <br />
<br />
In Reza Aslan's view of religion, we might have to call Ahmoud a Muslim terrorist as long as Ahmoud associates himself with Islamic culture, even if his appeal to Islam is shallow and opportunistic, since religious affiliation is entirely about identification and not about what you actually believe. <br />
<br />
Why would anyone need to associate an obvious pagan like Breivik with the "Jesus and his message" which he finds so miserably "pathetic"? Maybe for the same <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2016/02/hitler-and-christianity-oft-repeated-lie.html">reason people identify the pagan Adolf Hitler with Christianity</a>. But underneath the question of how a blatant non-Christian gets labeled a Christian is a <strong>deeper question: If "making explicit distance" from Christianity can disqualify one from the charge of being a Christian, how far can one drift from being a Christian "in any meaningful sense" so that the distance from Christianity no longer needs to be "explicit"?</strong><br />
<br />
PS: The Norwegian article sports these factoids about Odinism:<br />
<blockquote>
[Odinism:] <strong> Worship</strong> of Odin in Norse mythology. <br />
There is disagreement whether [Odin] is the same as Asatru. [<span class="notranslate"><span class="google-src-text" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">Det er uenighet om det er det samme som åsatru.]</span> </span> <br />
<span class="notranslate"><span class="google-src-text" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">In the US Odinism [is] often coupled with white supremacy and violence. [I USA er odinisme ofte koblet med hvit overlegenhet og vold.]</span> </span> <br />
<b>Vigrid</b> is e.g. a late modern form of Odinism mixed with Norse mythology and racial doctrine.<span class="notranslate"><span class="google-src-text" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;"> [Vigrid er f.eks en senmoderne form for odinisme med blanding av norrøn mytologi og raselære.]</span></span> </blockquote>
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-27448880484775728952016-04-01T22:07:00.000-07:002017-08-02T17:20:03.211-07:00Jesus' Color Brings Reza Doubletalk Into Relief<br />
Whatever the value of Megyn Kelly's claims about Jesus' appearance, they are not based on her being unable to imagine a darker Jesus, but are based on some very old, if questionable, documents. These documents are contested in terms of the authenticity or the pedigree is in question. I think it is ultimately hard to base anything definitively on them, any more than on even earlier documents claiming that Jesus was "small and ugly." Kelly believes that her image is a historical image. Ultimately it is probably no more historical than Reza Aslan's depictions in Zealot. But Aslan, in response to Kelly, greatly muddies the waters.<br />
<br />
People might be surprised at the role of religion growing up in the South. Southern churches are where I learned the song "Jesus Loves the Little Children." The purpose of the song didn't seem to be to categorize people into colors but to drive home this singular point: Nobody's color matters to Jesus. A theme repeated in the epistles of Paul. A theme repeated in the educational materials of the church-run school I attended. Reza Aslan's <i>Zealot</i> conveys a very different Jesus whose prescriptions of love are only meant between fellow Jews, and who is completely for a violent ousting of European occupiers from Palestine (is it Jesus or Reza that wants this?). In <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/12/12/reza-aslan-on-jesuss-skin-color-megyn-kelly-is-right-her-christ-is-white/">the following exchange</a>, Reza seems to say each socioeconomic group has its own Christ:<br />
<blockquote>
So, it's a much more interesting issue that arises from her statement: Megyn Kelly is right. <i>Her</i> Christ is white.<br />
<b>What is it about Christ, historically or religiously, that leads people to want to convey him in their own images?</b><br />
That is the entire point of the Christ. </blockquote>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh-i_v06N3dunxtwZKfz_P1tvxt5pyOgqp5LfK5LV_epl16wKZBGcO1kii1p7mcX2D_bQM-KemzHk2jzIpS9lJl_T241jmqgKkk8Fn1Px-9-l2_qWV4wJjwOJUZ-39ooQXOqm4uZm_YU0/s1600/killingjesus.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="272" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh-i_v06N3dunxtwZKfz_P1tvxt5pyOgqp5LfK5LV_epl16wKZBGcO1kii1p7mcX2D_bQM-KemzHk2jzIpS9lJl_T241jmqgKkk8Fn1Px-9-l2_qWV4wJjwOJUZ-39ooQXOqm4uZm_YU0/s200/killingjesus.PNG" width="127" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <i>Killing Jesus</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
No, Reza. That is not the entire point of the Messiah/Christ. The Christ of the apostles is something surprising. The point of the New Testament is not to have an unhistorical Messiah who can be made into whatever we want--it is a Messiah that is as uncomfortable to "white suburbanites" as he was to the Pharisees and Jewish zealots, and as he obviously is to Reza Aslan. The New Testament presents an unexpected sort of Messiah, who in a certain sense is "neither Jew nor Gentile nor barbarian" because these ethnic and socioeconomic distinctions disappear in him. Reza's Jesus is a small and uninteresting class warrior, not remotely as interesting as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., who both stand out as much more evocative of the transcendence of Jesus of Nazareth than a Che Guevara character.<br />
<br />
Reza's responses to Megyn Kelly do two things. They draw a red herring across the substance of her statements (the question of which historical assertions are credible), and they change the topic to Reza's tortured notion of Christ vs. Jesus. The oneness of the people joined in spirit to Jesus the Messiah is a central theme in the letters of Paul the Apostle. In Paul's integrated synagogues of the early church where Jews and Gentiles alike rejoiced in the Messiah together, the point of the Christ/Messiah (that Reza claims Paul invented) is not so the Greek can have a European Jesus while his Jewish brother has a Middle Eastern Jesus. The point is that this historical Galilean Jew was "the express image" of <b>one Father God who made all mankind in His image</b>. The point of Jesus removing the "division" and the "enmity" as stated in Paul's letter to Ephesus is lost completely in Reza's pseudo-historical Jesus. The "Jewish context" of Jesus and the Hebrew scriptures pervade the New Testament. <br />
<br />
Jesus, as Reza claims, might well have been the same color as Reza. Maybe darker, maybe lighter. That is more likely to me than that he was fair-skinned. But neither scenario makes Jesus any less an empathetic Savior for all peoples. Unless you are someone who defines people by their socioeconomic environment, or identifies "color" with such; unless you see everything through a lens of identity politics which ignores the extraordinary way in which the Resurrection started transcending ethnic and social boundaries, "first in Judaea, then in Samaria, and then in the uttermost parts of the earth." Ultimately, it is the "content of his character" (a pertinent MLK phrase) that defines Jesus, not the color of his skin, be it fairer than Kelly's or darker than Aslan's.<br />
<br />
Reza's comments about the "real" color of Jesus' skin put me in mind of <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/4/17/israeli-diversity-shown-even-among-leaders/">an article</a> by Harvard alumnus and native Israeli Natalie Portman:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Faisal Chaudhry writes . . . creatively framing the same article with a conversion into a “white” vs. “brown” struggle (<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=204991">Op-Ed, “An Ideology of Oppression,” April 11</a>). At one point, Chaudhry even compares the situation to apartheid. This is a distortion of the fact that most Israelis and Palestinians are indistinguishable physically.</blockquote>
Having visited Jerusalem on occasion I've noticed that there is considerably more ethnic or "racial" diversity among the Jewish than among the Arab. All the Arabs look Caucasian, if swarthy. The Jews look like Ethiopians and like European Caucasians and like Bedouins, and like everything in between. Some Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem bring identity politics into the gospel: In this revisionist take, Jesus is a <i>Palestinian </i>who is ethnically different from the Judaeans who deliver him to Pilate. It is an anachronistic reading into the tension between the Galileans of the Israelite North and the Judaeans, and something about it is disturbingly reminiscent of <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2016/02/hitler-and-christianity-oft-repeated-lie.html">Hitler's state church</a> of revisionist "<a href="http://individualismislonely.blogspot.com/2012/11/positive-christianity.html">Positive Christianity</a>" for whom Jesus was not Jewish but Aryan. (Incidentally, the non-Jewishness of Jesus is an idea categorically rejected by the American Fundamentalist movement--a movement much more interested in recognizing the distinct Jewishness of Jesus and the early church than the liberal movements it rebelled against.) <br />
<br />
Contrary to what Reza Aslan claims, Christianity is not about divorcing Jesus from his time and place and people; it simply doesn't see the need to define Jesus <i>solely</i> by his environment or color. We can't do that with Gandhi, nor with MLK Jr., nor with Bonhoeffer--and from a historical point of view, we have <b><i>every reason</i></b> not to do it with Jesus of Nazareth. Whether or not Reza Aslan is being deliberately obtuse about the motivation of New Testament theology, it is important to see how the very essence ("<a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/06/does-islam-have-true-nature.html">the fabric and nature</a>") of the NT is detrimental to his "Zealot" thesis. Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-49491049005172132622016-03-28T22:57:00.000-07:002017-07-06T18:00:56.032-07:00Resurrection: Is Reza an Expert in Judaeo-Christian History?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_9jRa7GqVnhRh-AradtJJXZD7GihnBzlplE2whXdEjQPo3fsuOMAv4bdOuoTuyb_9qWk_ZkidX70t6PJg0AJAFD2DpVbLWUGUwr1VK7w0zMFrWP7NjBKv9E4ky3hrokjPEEcxzA_fkA/s1600/Elisha-resurrects-the-great-womans-son.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_9jRa7GqVnhRh-AradtJJXZD7GihnBzlplE2whXdEjQPo3fsuOMAv4bdOuoTuyb_9qWk_ZkidX70t6PJg0AJAFD2DpVbLWUGUwr1VK7w0zMFrWP7NjBKv9E4ky3hrokjPEEcxzA_fkA/s200/Elisha-resurrects-the-great-womans-son.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elijah & the Widow's Son</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="border-image: none;">
Reza Aslan, famous for being questioned on Fox News, answered why a Muslim such as himself would choose Jesus as a topic for a book: “I am a <b>scholar of religions with four degrees</b> including one in the New Testament . . . I am an expert with a <b>Ph.D. in the history of religions</b> . . . I am a <b>professor of religions, including the New Testament</b> – that’s what I do for a living, actually . . . To be clear, I want to emphasize one more time,<b> I am a historian</b>, I am a <b>Ph.D. in the history of religions</b>.” [emphases mine] </div>
<br />
<div style="border-image: none;">
Matthew Facciani <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/accordingtomatthew/2015/08/stop-calling-reza-aslan-a-fraud-and-learn-how-academia-works/">posting to Patheos.com</a> thinks that critics are being too rash in dismissing Aslan's expertise. He writes, "What really matters is what area your research is in (i.e. your [PhD]dissertation)." </div>
<br />
What is the actual case about Reza Aslan's expertise? In <i>First Things</i>, <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/07/scholarly-misrepresentation/">Matthew J. Franck writes</a> after taking a very close look at Aslan's qualifications: <br />
<blockquote>
. . . He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="border-image: none;">
What about that Ph.D.? As already noted, it was in sociology. I have his dissertation in front of me. It is a 140-page work titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework.” If Aslan’s Ph.D. is the basis of a claim to scholarly credentials, he could plausibly claim to be an expert on social movements in twentieth-century Islam. He cannot plausibly claim, as he did to Lauren Green, that he is a “historian,” or is a “professor of religions” “for a living.” </div>
</blockquote>
<div style="border-image: none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihvULm-lmrLwUfwpjLgv3_OAuCCMHDYGwzb1eCNCpPh4gJQaidqBDKRPbAGOya6ChtX6gLvMal3lQ1F8fDPiOpmw5qFTE2MxKw0MYFQy6Ooxs3PctV85XpfwFo8Hcpx2IvLQqzzev2x7E/s1600/reza_judaismexpert2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="I have a BA, MA, and PhD in the history of Western Religions so yes, again, I am an ACTUAL expert in Judaism." border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihvULm-lmrLwUfwpjLgv3_OAuCCMHDYGwzb1eCNCpPh4gJQaidqBDKRPbAGOya6ChtX6gLvMal3lQ1F8fDPiOpmw5qFTE2MxKw0MYFQy6Ooxs3PctV85XpfwFo8Hcpx2IvLQqzzev2x7E/s320/reza_judaismexpert2.jpg" title="Reza Aslan, Judaism Expert" width="320" /></a>Reza Aslan doesn't seem to have taught any classes on the New Testament. His PhD dissertation was specific to Islam. Yet his tweet to @matanlurey pictured here seems to suggest that his sociology degree in jihadism that is somehow based on the <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2016/02/expert-in-history-of-religions.html">History-of-Religions school of thought</a> entitles him to claim (along with his two lesser religion-related degrees) <b><i>expertise as a historian of all three Western Religions</i>:<i> </i></b>Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. </div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
<br /></div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
That is indeed very impressive. A case in point: Aslan said some interesting things about <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/04/20/you_want_people_like_that_to_hate_you_reza_aslan_on_glenn_beck_that_fox_news_interview_and_who_gets_to_speak_for_jesus/">in response to an interviewer's question</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>You argue that it’s the story of resurrection that really set Jesus apart. What made resurrection such a novel idea?</b><br />
Well, it simply doesn’t exist in Judaism. The idea of<span style="color: black;"><span style="color: red;"> <u><span style="color: red;">an individual dying and rising from the dead absolutely has no basis in five thousand years of Jewish history, scripture or thought</span></u></span></span>.<br />
So, that’s the thing: No matter what you think about the resurrection, the thing that’s kind of fascinating from an historical perspective is that <span style="color: red;"><u>there is simply no Jewish context for it</u><span style="color: black;">.</span></span> </blockquote>
Christians know that there is a scene documented in the Book of Acts that speaks of some Pharisees siding with Paul the Apostle against the sect of Sadducees because they couldn't dismiss out of hand the idea of an individual being resurrected. Similar statements appear in the gospels concerning the Pharisees. Let's dig a little deeper.<br />
<br />
From Aish.com:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEJlZGFFnpHq1_zzUohXuVyoiYxP_4KT-AxCffwm5kgD_uWyQJgs4BuAmZmGRpdDDza0CVB7wq3Xr6NWviAfmWOynQ8FN_g3DAeD2aaDx16elzdAG9uG3ih01nj22L6W4ayisBrzalbg/s1600/aidh_resurrection_59.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEJlZGFFnpHq1_zzUohXuVyoiYxP_4KT-AxCffwm5kgD_uWyQJgs4BuAmZmGRpdDDza0CVB7wq3Xr6NWviAfmWOynQ8FN_g3DAeD2aaDx16elzdAG9uG3ih01nj22L6W4ayisBrzalbg/s400/aidh_resurrection_59.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Fundamental belief of Judaism? Let's look at Chabad.org:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>A basic tenet of the Jewish faith is the belief that those who have died will again be brought to life</b>. In fact, <i>Techiat HaMeitim</i>, "Vivification of the Dead" is one of the thirteen cardinal principles, or "foundations," of Judaism. . . . In this dark and imperfect world, we cannot yet behold and enjoy the fruits of our labor. But <b>in the Era of </b><a class="hl" href="http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?AID=332562"><b>Moshiach</b></a>, the accumulated attainments of all generations of history will reach their ultimate perfection. And since "G‑d does not deprive any creature of its due," all elements that have been involved in realizing His purpose in creation will be reunited to perceive and experience the perfect world that their combined effort has achieved. . . . </blockquote>
<br />
The article goes on to describe the "centrality of the Resurrection to the whole of Judaism". The Online Jewish Encyclopedia <a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12087-pharisees#anchor7">says this about the Pharisees</a>: <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<blockquote>
Josephus ("B. J." ii. 8, § 14; "Ant." xiii. 5, § 9; xviii. 1, § 3) carefully <b>avoids mentioning the most essential doctrine of the Pharisees, the Messianic hope</b>, which the Sadducees did not share with them; while for the Essenes time and conditions were predicted in their apocalyptic writings. . . . But it was not the immortality of the soul which the Pharisees believed in, as Josephus puts it, but the <b>resurrection of the body</b> as expressed in the liturgy (<a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12697-resurrection">see Resurrection</a>), and<b> this formed part of their Messianic hope</b> (<a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5849-eschatology">see Eschatology</a>).</blockquote>
<br />
And this <a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12697-resurrection#anchor4">about the Resurrection</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
As a matter of fact,<b> resurrection formed part of the Messianic hope</b> (Isa. xxiv. 19; Dan. xii. 2; Enoch, xxv. 5, li. 1, xc. 33; Jubilees, xxiii. 30). </blockquote>
<br />
It's not looking to great for Aslan as an expert. But if we look at the text of <i>Zealot</i>, we see that the importance of the word "individual" for him when he said "an <i>individual</i> dying and rising from the dead" for him to claim "there is no Jewish context for it":<br />
<blockquote>
To be clear, this was not the resurrection of the dead that the Pharisees expected at the end of days and the Sadducees denied. . . . This was a lone individual, dead and buried in rock for days, suddenly rising up and walking out of his tomb of his own accord, not as a spirit or ghost, but as a man of flesh and blood. . . . But the <b>concept of an individual dying and rising again</b>, in the flesh, into a life everlasting was extremely rare in the ancient world and <b>practically nonexistent in Judaism</b>. And yet what the followers of Jesus were arguing was not only that he rose from the dead, but that his resurrection confirmed <b>his status as messiah</b>, an <b>extraordinary claim without precedent in Jewish history</b>. Despite two millennia of Christian apologetics, the fact is that belief in a dying and rising messiah simply did not exist in Judaism. </blockquote>
Like so many passages in <i>Zealot</i>, this has that "don't you feel silly for being a Christian" vibe which reflects his bitter disillusionment he speaks of in the Author's Note. In order to explain away any Resurrection theology as a pagan contrivance, he uses the argument above to <b>dissociate the resurrection appearances of Jesus from any Messianic hope</b>. Yet the two ideas <i>were </i>linked in the Jewish context of the day, but we're still supposed to think that pagan theology was brought in because a man who resurrected himself, not resurrected through the anointing of another man as for Elijah and Elisha, had no significance in terms of the disciples' Messianic hopes. <br />
Elijah and Elisha both, prophets to the Northern Kingdom where Jesus later grew up, both <b>displayed the anointing of the Spirit of Elohim by resurrecting individuals</b> that had stopped breathing for a long time. (Elisha, who had been granted a "double portion" of the anointing on Elijah, displays this power in death through his dead bones.) These are outstanding <b>precedents</b> in the "Jewish context" and they show that resurrection is not limited to a final and universal event. <b>Aslan even calls Elijah "the paradigm of the wonder-working prophet." Why isn't individual resurrection considered part of the paradigm?</b><br />
<br />
Also playing into this dissociation is that Aslan's use of "Christ" to signify the divine Jesus as opposed to Jesus the man distracts from the fact that "Christ" is not simply a Christian epithet. <b>"Christ" is Mashiach/Messiah in the language of the Jewish Diaspora.</b> The only precedent it seems Aslan will accept is a clear prophecy in the Tanakh of "a dying and rising messiah." What else can he mean by a historical precedent for a resurrected Messiah.<br />
<br />
A concept that pops up a lot in the New Testament is "<b>first-fruits</b>." This is implicit in <a href="http://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/lesson-fig-tree/">the cursing of the fig tree</a>, and is applied in a different way in terms of the Resurrection and of the salvation and anointing that Peter, James, Paul, and John understood to available through the resurrection power of their Mashiach. Even the time of Pentecost had significance of an early harvest before autumn harvest, and this significance becomes important in the Book of Acts. There is a theme of first-fruits in the early church, and the idea of a Messiah who exhibits the first-fruits of Messianic Resurrection Hope by laying his life down and taking it back up does not seem like it would require resorting to paganism to explain. <br />
<br />
Is Aslan merely ignorant of this, or is he ignoring evidence that contradicts his talking points? Is all this because he is an amateur when it comes to these details, or is this because having acquainted himself with these details they don't serve the non-academic purpose he details in the Author's Note to <i>Zealot </i>("to spread the good news of the Jesus of history with the same fervor that I once applied to spreading the story of the Christ")?<br />
<br />
Those wanting to look more into this might be interesting in Pinchas Lapide's book <i>The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective</i> in which he describes, though he was not a Christian, why he thought Jesus was actually resurrected and why that was consistent with the Tanakh and his Jewish faith.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_9jRa7GqVnhRh-AradtJJXZD7GihnBzlplE2whXdEjQPo3fsuOMAv4bdOuoTuyb_9qWk_ZkidX70t6PJg0AJAFD2DpVbLWUGUwr1VK7w0zMFrWP7NjBKv9E4ky3hrokjPEEcxzA_fkA/s1600/Elisha-resurrects-the-great-womans-son.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_9jRa7GqVnhRh-AradtJJXZD7GihnBzlplE2whXdEjQPo3fsuOMAv4bdOuoTuyb_9qWk_ZkidX70t6PJg0AJAFD2DpVbLWUGUwr1VK7w0zMFrWP7NjBKv9E4ky3hrokjPEEcxzA_fkA/s200/Elisha-resurrects-the-great-womans-son.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elijah raises the dead.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-72774994935213192942016-03-26T09:38:00.000-07:002016-03-28T11:55:16.668-07:00Secularizing or Secularism?One of the many topics in which it is hard to understand what Reza Aslan really means is that of secularization and its meaning. <br />
<blockquote>
When politicians speak of bringing democracy to the Middle East, they mean specifically an American secular democracy, not an indigenous Islamic one.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
There exists a philosophical dispute in the Western world with regard to the concept of Islamic democracy: that is, that there can be no <em>a priori </em>moral framework in a modern democracy; that the foundation of a genuinely democratic society must be secularism. . . . As the Protestant theologian Harvey Cox notes, secularization is the process by which "<strong>certain responsibilities</strong> pass from ecclesiastical to political authorities," whereas secularism is an ideology based on the <strong>eradication of religion from public life</strong>. . . . neither human rights nor pluralism is the result of secularization; they are its root cause. Consequently, any democratic society -- Islamic or otherwise -- dedicated to the principles of pluralism and human rights <strong>must dedicate itself to following the unavoidable path</strong> toward political secularization.</blockquote>
This sounds like a philosophical backflip: first acknowledging that a people can't secularize themselves into a more free society, and then suggesting in ambiguous language that to remain "dedicated to the principles of pluralism and human rights" one must not stray from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/douthat-defining-religious-liberty-down.html?_r=0">the inexorable pull of secularization</a>, a path that is "unavoidable" provided a society "dedicates itself to following" it. In America's case, all we need is a Supreme Court to force our ignorant society of religious yokels to remain dedicated to it. Aslan at turns seems to be saying that Middle Eastern countries must find their way to democracy in their own way and their own time (in other words, we need to stop sanctions and ignore human rights violations), and then begs the question why unavoidable paths require dedication. If we interpret that last sentence as meaning that this dedication to secularization itself follows irrevocably, it still begs the question why any Islamic democracy would dedicate itself to "pluralism and human rights" in a way that would subordinate religious sensibilities to <em>higher principles</em>. This sounds like doubletalk. <br />
<br />
The main problem here is that it is hard to trust how some "prominent thinkers" distinguish an acceptable encroachment of "political authorities" into "ecclesiastical" life from "the eradication of religion from public life." Presumably, "ecclesiastical" voices (including any religious coalition) don't surrender these "responsibilities" easily; the real question is just what we mean by a voluntary surrender of these responsibilities. The vision of Marx and of every collectivism derived from Marxism (fascism, communism, socialism) has demanded a centralized authority that puts every ecclesiastical agency (and every familial and didactic agency) at its mercy fiscally, legally, politically. This is necessary for a centralized state to impose the <em>right</em> morality and vision of society (e.g. a specific interpretation of pluralism and human rights with which a free people might disagree <a href="https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/never-stop-lying"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">,</span><a href="https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/reza-aslan-blames-charlie-hebdo-massacre-on-frances-inability-to-tolerate-multiculturalism/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span></a>) that the religious sensibilities of the common folk are too backward to embrace willingly. It requires a power unaccountable to the people, like a dictator or (in America's case) a Supreme Court. Turkey is not a good example for Aslan because theirs was not a voluntary surrender. Which is why they don't wear hijabs. <br />
<br />
The work that Reza Aslan does with Mike Weinstein in undermining the prominent place that Christianity holds in America's military says a lot about what he really means by secularization. This sort of forced pluralism or involuntary pluralism is apparently seen as the passing of certain responsibilities in which it becomes . I wonder what Aslan would make of attempts to de-Islamicize the Iranian military, squelching Islam's prominent role in that society. This sort of thing is not necessary for pluralism, and is not traditional American pluralism. Traditional American pluralism is neither forcing a society to celebrate all views equally nor forcing a society to deny having a specific religious heritage. The former comes from a quasi-religious progressive vision of diversity as a sacrament; the latter comes from a tacit agreement between secularism and quasi-religious progressivism.<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-16365583936160951792016-03-23T20:23:00.000-07:002017-07-07T14:49:12.857-07:00Lauren Green's Real MistakeMany pieces critical of Reza Aslan's Zealot, and of his performance in the interview with Fox correspondent Lauren Green, seem to make a perfunctory jab at Fox (lest their colleagues mistake them for conservative sympathizers) and/or make an obligatory nod toward Green's terrible blunder, whether it's Islamophobia, bulverism, anti-intellectualism, "racism" (against the "Muslim race"?) or some such combination of unsavory prejudices and bigotry.<br />
<br />
<div style="border-image: none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE2GN4EmzjQONaKRc-WuvTdLBUE8p5DKL377F9hnpsJzfysbDfj6rC7hh8BmJQ5mb3oS3hFDIfQSZArozlk_pDpZwCBkykiPQU7DIDrhQOiaGUiomljZ_wLAMhh_4fOcgWr5UBaJ3VGXA/s1600/lauren-green.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE2GN4EmzjQONaKRc-WuvTdLBUE8p5DKL377F9hnpsJzfysbDfj6rC7hh8BmJQ5mb3oS3hFDIfQSZArozlk_pDpZwCBkykiPQU7DIDrhQOiaGUiomljZ_wLAMhh_4fOcgWr5UBaJ3VGXA/s200/lauren-green.jpg" width="200" /></a>The combination of Aslan's immediate display of offense and <strong>his line "a Muslim scholar's right to write about Jesus"</strong> set the stage for all sorts of pointless bloviation about Green's questioning his <em><strong>right </strong></em>to write a book about Jesus. Not only do I think this misses the mark, I think it would be going way past the facts to claim that Green questioned the <em><strong>propriety</strong> </em>(which is another thing entirely) of his writing this book. Despite his many repetitions of his credentials, he was not questioned on his <em><strong>qualifications</strong></em> for writing the book (but many have naturally questioned it since the interview).</div>
<br />
<div style="border-image: none;">
But Aslan displayed from the beginning of the interview his awareness of what he was <em>actually </em>being asked. He was being asked about his <em><strong>motivation</strong> </em>in writing the book, and immediately hid behind his credentials and his "job," <u>as though his qualifications entailed <em><strong>objectivity</strong></em></u>, and <strong>avoided the very explanation that frames his entire book</strong>. </div>
<br />
He has <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/06/reza-real-reason-zealot.html">elsewhere admitted that he wrote the book with a very strong personal, ideological bias</a>. It had nothing to do with his "job" as either a professor of creative writing or as visiting professor of contemporary religious issues. (The "job" he had in mind was apparently not his paid job as professor, but his calling, as he sees it, as a public intellectual.) As he states in his book, it had everything to do with his conversion into being a follower of a 2000-year-old political radical. He had an ideological bias, and it inspires, informs, and permeates his book. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Why would he, being a Muslim, write a book about Jesus? It's really very simple. When academic intellectuals in college made him realize his beloved Bible was a bunch of faerie tales, Aslan realized long ago that the materialism of Marx was much more relevant than some fictitious "<a href="http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/11/exclusive-loonwatch-interview-with-reza-aslan/">old man in the sky</a>." Any mysticism he embraces now sees as much divinity in a chair as in a human being. But his activism is informed by collectivist materialism without any apparent transcendent vision except as a narrative gloss. And it is convenient that "faith" in his jargon is always inexpressible, because even though he claims to be a polyglot in the symbolic languages of the transcendent (i.e. religions) he seems incapable of expressing a transcendent reality in any one of them. Whether or not he is serious about Sufism, mysticism seems to be the perfect mask for someone who sees a personal relationship with Transcendent Reality as a poor (sham) substitute for rationalism. <br />
<br />
Lauren Green was ill-prepared for Aslan. The agreement between Aslan's Jesus and Islam's Jesus is somewhat coincidental. The mere humanity of Islam's Jesus (the point of Islam's "radical unity of God") suits the materialism of Aslan's Jesus, but the materialism is metaphysically prior. Lauren Green depended too heavily on <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/07/22/liberal-media-love-new-jesus-book-zealot-fail-to-mention-author-is-muslim.html">Dickerson's review of <em>Zealot</em></a>, and didn't read that review closely enough. Dickerson took issue with how he saw <em>Zealot</em> being promoted, and Green assumed this was how Aslan was presenting his book. She needed to have done her homework. Green and Dickerson took Reza at his word that he was a Muslim. But to Reza, one is a Muslim simply if one identifies as such. How do you engage a professed Muslim who is without Muslim beliefs, when his beliefs and actions are dictated by another <em>Weltanschauung </em>entirely? <strong>Yet Reza ultimately vindicated Green's point about "disclosure" by evading disclosure of his anti-capitalist agenda.</strong> <br />
<br />
Green fumbled the ball. She could have consulted with several historians and theologians. That might have required waiting a few weeks, but I think it would have paid off. It <em>was</em> a ridiculous interview. But ultimately, not because of Lauren Green. <br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-10693921711401688722016-03-22T18:14:00.000-07:002016-03-25T18:02:54.029-07:00Reza Aslan: Religious Text Has No Intrinsic MeaningAccording to Reza Aslan, your religious text does not in any way inform your value system or your world view. Rather, your value system and world view are dependent entirely on other things and instead dictate your interpretation of your religious text. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9d7_JgHBMBo/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9d7_JgHBMBo?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-58985430428636817852016-03-01T18:13:00.000-08:002016-03-25T15:32:15.291-07:00How Did Fox News Surprise Reza Aslan?In many interviews Reza Aslan has repeated the refrain that Fox News has "spun" Islamophobia "into ratings gold." In the interview below, Aslan explained in more detail what he experienced during the famous interview that catapulted him into media stardom.
<br />
<blockquote>
<strong>When you first went through that now-viral Fox News interview, did you think the internet would notice?</strong> <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiMFYGKDpXVkjWcrdNfO_V076PnJFEQnPGChpA0TVIc4-fWV7zZ7b0nyBtscuWCqkuonnKfD6_ODSQPPqhZJ8N_LVVXn4E1KTuVwHn__bvswDwYQ-CfQQ6DebNn3CnJHdevNYXa2C2yjk/s1600/reza_surprise.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiMFYGKDpXVkjWcrdNfO_V076PnJFEQnPGChpA0TVIc4-fWV7zZ7b0nyBtscuWCqkuonnKfD6_ODSQPPqhZJ8N_LVVXn4E1KTuVwHn__bvswDwYQ-CfQQ6DebNn3CnJHdevNYXa2C2yjk/s200/reza_surprise.JPG" width="175" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reza looking shocked.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="border-image: none;">
Not at all. I understood what was happening about halfway through the interview, I’ll be honest. I went through the interview thinking that of course they’re going to come out swinging. That’s what Fox News does; that’s why they’re so successful. I expected one, maybe two, questions about my perceived Muslim bias in writing this book. I knew it was going to be an attempt to discredit the book and the academic work behind the book by trying to smear the author. I expected that. What I didn’t expect was ten solid minutes of it. <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/an-interview-with-reza-aslan-author-of-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth/">*</a></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="border-image: none;">
This is very interesting. </div>
<ol style="border-image: none;">
<li>First of all, why would Aslan give a Fox News online program the time of day if he never thought "the internet" would notice? </li>
<li>He says here that he expected Fox News to "come out swinging" with "questions about my perceived Muslim bias," and yet as several sympathetic articles have noted (in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/business/media/odd-fox-news-interview-lifts-reza-aslans-biography-on-jesus.html?_r=0">the NY Times</a>, <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2013/07/29/bulverizing-reza-aslan/">the American Conservative</a>, <a href="http://bigthink.com/think-tank/scholar-resa-aslan-has-a-cross-to-bear-and-its-fox-news">Big Think</a>, etc.), Aslan lifts his eyebrows high in apparent bewilderment when Green does exactly what he was expecting. It seems to be this gesture that many people took as barely contained umbrage, and indirectly as evidence of a mistreated scholar unfairly insulted (after all, he <em>looked</em> offended). And this perceived sleight frames Aslan's explanation about how he is a "prominent Muslim thinker" and how his academic credentials both entitle <em>and require</em> him to write this book about Jesus. (It is his <em>job</em> to do so, he explained.) </li>
<li>Presumably, the only surprise occurred halfway through the interview (about 5 minutes in). And presumably, this surprise was that this interview would be "ten solid minutes" of discrediting his book and its underlying scholarship. Yet Green let him explain how his academic views contradict orthodox Islam. Green asked him to talk about the claims of his book, and then let him present an overview of the argument in his book. Green then brought up another criticism of his book. While the interview was a flawed (even botched) attempt to corner a particularly slippery interviewee (and most of the attempts to discredit Green have been extremely flawed as well), to describe it as "ten solid minutes" of <em>ad hominem</em> is not just flawed, it's patently false. </li>
</ol>
French journalist Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry observed:
<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="border-image: none;">
. . . The interviewer quotes Aslan a bit of criticism of his book. Instead of responding, Aslan talks about how his book has a hundred pages of endnotes and is therefore a serious book. First of all, that’s silly. I mean, really. But second of all, <em>answer the damn question.</em> Aslan speaks as if the fact that he has a PhD somehow means that he is beyond criticism, at least from non-PhDs, and certainly from journalists.</div>
Then why go on the interview? <br />
I mean, think about it for a second. There’s about as much chance of Fox News’ audience buying Aslan’s book as there is of it buying <em>Yeezus.</em> So why do the interview?<br />
<div style="border-image: none;">
Well, for this, of course. The interview didn’t ever degenerate—it never “generated” to begin with. Oh sure, Fox News had its own agenda. But Aslan could have played it cool, or presumed good faith at least on the <em>first</em> question. That’s if he hadn’t been coming on the interview just for this. To assume bigotry on the part of Fox News, to talk about his academic bona fides, and therefore to generate a viral moment and juice his book sales.</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="border-image: none;">
Well said. </div>
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-8617761202977811832016-02-14T18:13:00.000-08:002016-11-01T12:17:13.380-07:00Expert in the History of Religions<div style="border-image: none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjihceo-8wan4e__leO-iLVxrr3tHdK3ASoN7IjBZ3yBs8glgRuP4KRjTXCgEPuOKzONKonEFA6HJ-Zcw8WGv3wl3K7k1BiNC_OwmPTK1oeKtA1rjHONyMS-RXNz4QyTj3W3Xt6XPUaCLQ/s1600/cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjihceo-8wan4e__leO-iLVxrr3tHdK3ASoN7IjBZ3yBs8glgRuP4KRjTXCgEPuOKzONKonEFA6HJ-Zcw8WGv3wl3K7k1BiNC_OwmPTK1oeKtA1rjHONyMS-RXNz4QyTj3W3Xt6XPUaCLQ/s320/cover.png" width="212" /></a><a href="http://barnard.edu/news/prof-elizabeth-castelli-pens-article-nation">Elizabeth Castelli</a>, a professor of religious studies, wrote <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/reza-aslan-historian/">an article for </a><em><a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/reza-aslan-historian/">The Nation</a> </em>about <em>Zealot</em>. After denouncing the Infamous Fox Interview, she took issue with Aslan's self characterization as a historian. She observes the probable, and potentially misleading, meaning of Aslan's self-description as an expert in the "history of religions":</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="border-image: none;">
Aslan’s claims concerning his academic degrees have led to some confusion: he uses the term “historian of religions” at times, “historian” at others. To people unfamiliar with the intellectual histories involved, the first term may not resonate. “History of religions” derives from the nineteenth-century German university context where the <em>Religionsgeschichtliche Schule</em> [<a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/Religionsgeschichtliche-Schule">history-of-religions school</a>] sought to place the phenomenon of religion—especially in its archaic and ancient iterations—<strong>in social and cultural context</strong>. It has since become the name for a particular disciplinary approach to the study of religion, most often associated in the United States with the <strong>University of Chicago </strong>and the University of California at Santa Barbara, <strong>where Aslan earned his PhD in sociology</strong>. To the extent that he did coursework in the UCSB Religious Studies department, <strong>he can certainly lay claim to preparation in the history-of-religions approach</strong>. Although this approach was influential on the study of the New Testament and early Christianity in the first two decades of the twentieth century, it has had little impact in the decades since. [emphases mine]</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Aslan's PhD advisor Jurgensmeyer confirmed this with "Though none of his 4 degrees are in history as such, he is a “historian of religion” <strong>in the way that that term is used at the Univ of Chicago to cover the field of comparative religion</strong>." <br />
<br />
According to his website, Aslan received a "Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University (Major focus: History of Religions)", which, while not a current option, was probably much in line . The current "Comparative Studies" option might be close or even identical to the erstwhile "History of Religions" option. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1qD__e7gFX7JNuE6IcN_8153LfNk45ZOD_IvPClNPRudOVjiLEbYog8DLON7fyEZNCKXGNANXAMGolZ4toYXQYzl6azEWvDiZdAIY6s9hgVhazR4SPKGXzO9ZYYnk7NcwHrmu4Xyj1O8/s1600/comparative_studies_harvard.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1qD__e7gFX7JNuE6IcN_8153LfNk45ZOD_IvPClNPRudOVjiLEbYog8DLON7fyEZNCKXGNANXAMGolZ4toYXQYzl6azEWvDiZdAIY6s9hgVhazR4SPKGXzO9ZYYnk7NcwHrmu4Xyj1O8/s400/comparative_studies_harvard.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The U of Chicago site <a href="https://divinity.uchicago.edu/history-religions">describes "history of religions" approach this way</a> (emphases mine): <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "dejavu serif" , serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">History of Religions pays self-conscious and explicit attention to problems of epistemology, terminology, category formation, method and motive. Irreverent by temperament and sometimes on principle, it insists that [a] the Western monotheisms should not be the only paradigms and/or objects of legitimate study, [b] <strong>religion cannot be reduced to belief</strong>, but also includes issues of practices, institutions, communities, habitus and other factors that often operate below the level of consciousness, and [c] <strong>interpretation involves critical probing and systematic interrogation of the idealized self-representations of any religious phenomenon</strong>.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "dejavu serif" , serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Those who work within the History of Religions are expected to become thoroughly acquainted with the development of the History of Religions as an academic discipline, and to have a sophisticated understanding of the theories and methods that are relevant to contemporary research in the field. Each student must deal creatively with the tension that results from an emphasis on the <strong>importance of historically contextualized studies </strong>on the one hand, and of wide-ranging theoretical and comparative research on the other. </span></blockquote>
<br />
Jonathan Askonas <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/07/digging-deeper-into-aslans-scholarship">wrote</a> on 7/29/13 in "Digging Deeper into Aslan's 'Scholarship'" (emphases mine)<strong>:</strong> <br />
<blockquote>
I’ve read [Reza Aslan's PhD] dissertation, and can report that it <strong>uses no historical methods or archival research</strong>. It solely focuses on the events and movements of the <strong>twentieth century</strong>, with the exception of one ten-page summary of the life and times of medieval Muslim theologian Ibn Taymiyyah. In the fields of sociology and political science, it seems like a rather unremarkable piece of work (it’s also unusually short for a PhD dissertation, at about 130 double-spaced pages. Dissertations usually run into the hundreds). It also seems likely that much of the research was later published for a popular audience (along with the usual current events punditry) as Aslan’s book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Fundamentalism-Confronting-Globalization-Originally/dp/0812978307" target="_blank"> Beyond Fundamentalism</a></i>. Absolutely <strong>nothing in the dissertation gives any indication that the author has any interest in, much less qualifications for, New Testament scholarship</strong>. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Aside from content, Aslan’s claim that he is a scholar at all is questionable given the publishers of his books. . . . Literally the only remotely academic article he’s published was a 2003 piece in an obscure UCLA law journal on <strong>the sociology of stoning in Islam</strong>. Again, Aslan has no scholarly work that would qualify him as an expert in New Testament studies by the standard practices of that field.</blockquote>
While Aslan has possibly imbibed demythologizing trends from the "History of Religions" school, that does not necessarily mean that his doctorate gives him any convincing expertise in New Testament history or nearly any kind of history.<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-60906435023056178682016-02-13T10:49:00.000-08:002016-11-01T12:24:32.317-07:00Reza on who gets to speak for JesusThe "right of a scholar" (Muslim or no) "to write about Jesus" is not and has never been at issue. Conservatives certainly <a href="http://individualismislonely.blogspot.com/2014/07/crap-prophet-maplethorpe-does-islam.html">may not like tax dollars supporting all kinds of freedom of expression</a>, and may disagree on what counts as freedom of expression, but writing popular books on all sorts of unusual theories has been commonplace. <br />
<blockquote>
In response to Pope Francis' [<a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/05/post-capitalist-pope-backpeddles.html">apostolic exhortation suggesting that certain economic freedoms might need to be sacrificed for <em>social justice</em></a>], these two paragons of the far right [Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin] – both of whom regularly invoke the teachings of Jesus to bolster their own political views – have <strong>suddenly </strong>turned their backs on the man <strong>whose actual job description is to speak for Jesus</strong>. </blockquote>
Neither of these "paragons" is Catholic, and <strong>as Reza is a expert in Western Religions, he should know that only Roman Catholics view the Pope as speaking for Jesus and only when he speaks <em>ex cathedra</em>. For someone who writes about the forthcoming "Protestantization of Islam" and has lauded Osama bin Laden as being a Luther-type reformer in this process, this is a profoundly unsophisticated bit of nonsense.</strong> His language conjures a picture of conservatives walking arm in arm with the Pope and "suddenly turning" on him. In the famous FOX News interview, it seemed that Reza was saying that is <em>his </em>actual job description as well to speak for Jesus, which according to his preface to <em>Zealot</em> is what he's all about. He seems to believe that all Protestants should stand at attention when the Pope gives Jesus' opinion on the free market, or when a supposedly objective scholar like Reza does so. <br />
<br />
He dismisses "the far right" (a politically loaded term) -- through the judicious picking of "paragons" -- as having "a profoundly unhistorical view of Jesus." If you've read <em>Zealot</em>, then you know that what Reza really means by "a profoundly unhistorical view of Jesus" is that thing Christians call the New Testament, which presents Jesus as "<a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/06/reza-real-reason-zealot.html">a detached celestial spirit with no interest in the affairs of this world</a>" instead of the truly compassionate revolutionary he actually was. Yes, the entire New Testament is <em>profoundly</em> (deeply and fundamentally) unhistorical according to Reza Aslan, except for the few bits and pieces he uses to support his "historical" view. (He does grant that the crucifixion happened, and that the original disciples actually did believe that Jesus healed people and believed he was resurrected; but he claims almost all the details of the gospels and theology of the epistles were completely made up.)<br />
<br />
Why would a main who praises reformation and 'Protestantization' for Islam, praise a centralized authority that purports to speak for all Christians?<br />
<br />
Does Reza Aslan really think that Protestants must accept the Pope's opinion of the free market as Jesus' own opinion? Or is he really just that full of himself that he depends now on people swallowing whole all his unchecked sophistry? <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieB3QyJJRldIRpOZwNIdlfPJmW0n4QG5p55aUI1OuONf5XvSlHC0ExNT0d0nEH3msa7MKwCY0-qaQob78XUONQkZMLBt3n-tgCqT2F6PRur9NVRFxr8NCY6HugvW-lHY1hO60pFXCraiU/s1600/papalthrone2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieB3QyJJRldIRpOZwNIdlfPJmW0n4QG5p55aUI1OuONf5XvSlHC0ExNT0d0nEH3msa7MKwCY0-qaQob78XUONQkZMLBt3n-tgCqT2F6PRur9NVRFxr8NCY6HugvW-lHY1hO60pFXCraiU/s1600/papalthrone2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Papal Throne</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtn7uF9cyXoQHNMYRRqNqc2E2dSvwJ_KjpkYG2kx_8ZkB-ZAlehpVIzojWmZIV8gl881vcf6sP7iPBH8yR8NFHjCz-sHe0Yf5kAWn2FVYFtiR2OmuD0EfjKIoveu8iCLHGRpwoJ1rBN_U/s1600/prostrate-to-pope2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtn7uF9cyXoQHNMYRRqNqc2E2dSvwJ_KjpkYG2kx_8ZkB-ZAlehpVIzojWmZIV8gl881vcf6sP7iPBH8yR8NFHjCz-sHe0Yf5kAWn2FVYFtiR2OmuD0EfjKIoveu8iCLHGRpwoJ1rBN_U/s1600/prostrate-to-pope2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reverence in the presence of the Pope</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-80243086708741641332016-02-07T16:18:00.000-08:002016-04-02T01:38:56.482-07:00Hitler and Christianity: An Oft-Repeated LieProbably no historical person prompts more universal disgust in Westerners than Adolf Hitler. Yet, in a conversation with Cenk Uyger (Young Turks), Reza Aslan states that Hitler must have been a Christian because he identified himself as such. To bolster Reza Aslan's point about how a religious view can't disown anyone who claims to be part of it, Cenk Uyger digs up a quote from <em>Mein Kampf</em> that secularists have long been championing as proof that Hitler was a Christian:
<br />
<blockquote>
The anti-Semitism of the new movement was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.</blockquote>
<div style="border-image: none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFlStwnzbuz1bx7KVercqNDAKzBtRDAEWMSyIXfUxzJyYs48nMlWO3S2DWOvseOXmexUtCa0dCz0odnfI-CZwQHbuwpYU3Two7LD_qTyrr4cGbNXv-DNuqc3jl4WgGRqHRSS_HaA2ff6Q/s1600/hitler_qu2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFlStwnzbuz1bx7KVercqNDAKzBtRDAEWMSyIXfUxzJyYs48nMlWO3S2DWOvseOXmexUtCa0dCz0odnfI-CZwQHbuwpYU3Two7LD_qTyrr4cGbNXv-DNuqc3jl4WgGRqHRSS_HaA2ff6Q/s200/hitler_qu2.png" width="200" /></a>Now, the charge of <strong>quote-mining</strong> is so overused, it almost "only does emotive work." And yet, one presumably had to read <em>Mein Kampf </em>to find this quote, and the context is not at all obscure in chapter 2. The Christian Socialist Party was a political party that tried to wed liberal Christian "higher criticism" ideas with both ethnic paranoia and socialism, and thus leveled its bigotry against the faith of Judaism (an almost Marcionite brand of supercessionism). Ultimately, a truly nationalistic movement, Hitler thought, could not possibly be based on fluffy spiritualities but on cold objective material (i.e. biological) realities. A Jewish person, in Hitler's mind, was a corrupt creature regardless of what he believed; an idea <strong>deeply</strong> antithetical to Christian canon and dogma in general. By <strong>not </strong>being based on "racial knowledge" (what is now called "scientific racism" was commonly justified by evolutionary thought), the CSP was necessarily "a sham anti-Semitism which was almost worse than none at all" in Hitler's account.</div>
<br />
<div style="border-image: none;">
In other words, the "new movement" "based on religious ideas" was not National Socialism, but so-called "Christian Socialism". The "old movement" in this context was Pan-Germanism, a movement Hitler believed was more on target in principle but off target in method. In fact, the CSP was so effective at convincing Hitler of the dangers posed by Jewish people that Hitler praised its methods rather than its principles, as it "recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents." To absorb any of CSP theological ideas (which were neither conservative nor orthodox) would at least have required Hitler to entertain the notion that anyone can be saved through the truth. And Hitler acknowledges in <em>Mein Kampf </em>that he would have none of this. There is, in fact, not even a half-hearted attempt to base his political ideas on any kind of Christian doctrine. </div>
<br />
He does make a vague reference to "true Christianity" once in chapter 11, but like a good politician does not elaborate on what that means other than insinuating that it is antithetical to <em>greed</em> (still popular in anticapitalist rants), and makes a perfunctory jab about how Jesus was rejected and betrayed by Jewish people in the 1st century--an image that had been used for years to drum up and justify anti-Semitic sentiment at the expense of New Testament teaching. Hitler brings this medieval passion play cliche into his book 9 chapters after explaining that the main thing he got from the Christian Socialists was how to use effective propaganda. This would be the perfect place to explain how his political <em>Weltanschauung </em>meshes with Christianity, and Hitler is emphatically silent. But there is no chance, according to secularists, that Hitler's appeal to religious imagery was cynically opportunistic rather than deep and heartfelt. I mean, it's not like he was a politician. <br />
<br />
Exactly how dedicated to the New Testament was Hitler's "National Reich Church"?<br />
<blockquote>
The National Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains or priests, but National Reich orators are to speak in them. The National Church demands <strong>immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible</strong> in Germany... The National Church declares that to it, and therefore to the German nation, it has been decided that the Fuehrer's <i>Mein Kampf</i> is the greatest of all documents. It ... not only contains the greatest but it embodies the <strong>purest and truest ethics</strong> for the present and future life of our nation. <strong>The National Church will clear away from its altars all crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of saints. On the altars there must be nothing but <i>Mein Kampf</i> (to the German national and therefore to God the most sacred book)</strong> and to the left of the altar a sword. On the day of its foundation, <strong>the Christian Cross must be removed</strong> from all churches, cathedrals and chapels... and <strong>it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika</strong>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reich_Church#cite_note-Shirer1990-1">*</a><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3ANational+Reich+Church&rft.aufirst=William+L.&rft.aulast=Shirer&rft.btitle=Rise+And+Fall+Of+The+Third+Reich%3A+A+History+of+Nazi+Germany&rft.date=1990&rft.genre=book&rft.isbn=9780671728687&rft.pages=240&rft.pub=Simon+and+Schuster&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span> </blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSAzDkGHRFC0p5k8kMytB2r4TU8Bq8a8v55IoxlEtR_d43QxF7Qc-WSJsqrFGDWIHcMnuS3w9-45WhVkJi2iWUkeESWxzlB_dSA_s5eS90NGqafuaW6qN3IghoNpcCtuWevAs_aAKQRiA/s1600/hitler_antichrist.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSAzDkGHRFC0p5k8kMytB2r4TU8Bq8a8v55IoxlEtR_d43QxF7Qc-WSJsqrFGDWIHcMnuS3w9-45WhVkJi2iWUkeESWxzlB_dSA_s5eS90NGqafuaW6qN3IghoNpcCtuWevAs_aAKQRiA/s400/hitler_antichrist.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-69847790051967274472015-12-19T20:09:00.000-08:002016-03-27T20:42:09.041-07:00PhD in Reagan: Reza Aslan's Tortured Analogy of ObjectivityIt's hard to find a perfect analogy for anything, but in the famous FOX News interview Lauren Green and Reza Aslan both took a few stabs at analogizing this "Muslim scholar's" situation in terms of writing a modern political biography.<br />
<blockquote>
<strong>Green: </strong>Taylor Kane just says, "So, your book is written with clear bias and you're trying to say that's academic. That's like having a Democrat write a book about why Reagan wasn't a good Republican. It just doesn't work." What do you say to that?<br />
<strong>Aslan: </strong>Well, it would be like a Democrat with a PhD in Reagan who has been studying his life and history for two decades writing a book about Reagan. </blockquote>
<br />
Ok, Aslan does not have a PhD in Jesus. He does not have a PhD in the New Testament. He does not have a PhD in in History. And even though his PhD does draw on religious studies with a History-of-Religion slant, his PhD is not in Religion or Religious Studies. His PhD is in the sociology of a violent religious phenomenon in modern Islam. He has claimed at times that his focus for his Harvard degree in religious studies was Islam from the start, and his formal training in New Testament studies seems to have mostly ended with his bachelor's degree (and <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/08/mark-of-blowhard.html">Margaret Mitchell's analysis</a> bears this out). Based on his PhD it seems his religious studies were focused into a dissertation on modern Islam and modern jihadism with some earlier Islamic history brought to bear on it. His dissertation is much more about the sociology of a particular religion than on the nature of any religion. <br />
<br />
So it would be as though Aslan had completed his PhD dissertation in how 19th century progressivism and how its sociological effects shaped the later presidency of Woodrow Wilson, and then wrote a popular book about how Ronald Reagan was really more of a Franklin Roosevelt progressive than a conservative, based on careful cherry-picking of quotes, referring the reader to an extended bibliography of the thousands of books he supposedly digested to get to this claim, instead of dealing seriously with the many problems that would inevitably haunt such a strained claim. Maybe in the introduction to this hypothetical book he cold mention an affiliation with the Southern Poverty Law Center that arose after being completely soured on conservatism, and how he wrote the book to make other people disciples of the <em>real </em>Ronald Reagan.
<br />
<br />
Not that that would at all raise any concerns about bias and objectivity.
<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-image: none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVASe3czzD8dZSkR4P6lBsaDPCddJinfynPeAw3ZkoX3ZSIUxYnajOwNm1KSlE_932QL0xerLYpgErJkW-EmZidyRie44dSLFv6-kfKRshLxEd25paOhrD4oXVyKHlBkXcC9lVXnlW6Mk/s1600/reaganobama.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVASe3czzD8dZSkR4P6lBsaDPCddJinfynPeAw3ZkoX3ZSIUxYnajOwNm1KSlE_932QL0xerLYpgErJkW-EmZidyRie44dSLFv6-kfKRshLxEd25paOhrD4oXVyKHlBkXcC9lVXnlW6Mk/s1600/reaganobama.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wouldn't be the first time an icon was conveniently appropriated.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-28930775768027428972015-11-26T22:48:00.000-08:002016-03-31T15:25:43.053-07:00Reza Aslan on Authentic Christianity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNBxW2dMBwahc8LOVXBHQ3dXHbmSsSSBzxLCsh0US9Qfn5ZBtvmuzVaqX0Irzv25DNGYLBjMy3ZEpA0XQXHZlpFl7kqU1soJUACMmxj_RB_ZTBdbEfN7r78wLqdu5zb5Tcsu2JXNPUmc/s1600/glenn-beck-as-jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNBxW2dMBwahc8LOVXBHQ3dXHbmSsSSBzxLCsh0US9Qfn5ZBtvmuzVaqX0Irzv25DNGYLBjMy3ZEpA0XQXHZlpFl7kqU1soJUACMmxj_RB_ZTBdbEfN7r78wLqdu5zb5Tcsu2JXNPUmc/s320/glenn-beck-as-jesus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
In his <em>NY Times </em>op-ed urging people to have a more sophisticated view of religion, Reza Aslan starts talking about varied perspectives in a religion with these examples of Christianity:<br />
<blockquote>
What a member of a <strong>suburban megachurch in Texas </strong>calls Christianity may be radically different from what an impoverished coffee picker in the <strong>hills of Guatemala</strong> calls Christianity.</blockquote>
I think many Christians who have traveled or otherwise engaged different cultures have seen their faith transcend cultural and socioeconomic barriers. (There are such barriers to be transcended even within a "suburban megachurch.") Given though the centrality of Reza places on "social justice" and a hyper-Marxist "chilling new reality," Guatemala seems like this is a veiled reference to the "liberation theology" advocated or supported by many Jesuits in Latin America. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I was introduced to the historical Jesus at Santa Clara University [in California] by a group of brilliant, academically trained Jesuits. The Jesuits see Jesus through the lens of his preferential option for the poor. Now I also tend to believe that there is <strong>really no way to read the Gospels</strong> either as a person of faith or as a historian without recognizing Jesus’ preferential option for the poor. But some people — for example, [megachurch pastors] Joel Olsteen and T.D. Jakes, and frankly a great many Republicans in the U.S. Congress — would disagree because they are<strong> using the Gospel in an attempt to do away with food stamps and welfare</strong>, which <strong>blows my mind</strong>.<a href="http://www.ucobserver.org/interviews/2014/05/reza_aslan/">*</a></blockquote>
<br />
First of all, as far as I know neither Joel Osteen nor most conservatives I've talked to are attempting to do away with food stamps and welfare. A more fair generalization would be that conservatives question the explosion of food stamp use in the last 8 years and its efficacy in fighting poverty, and progressives are opposed to it being questioned, content to dismiss it as an unavoidable consequence of the recession. There is a growing movement to draw deep principles of balancing accountability and liberty in a Christian context, but that is largely orthogonal to the "prosperity gospel," something that cannot be understood in isolation from the "healing gospel."<br />
<blockquote>
"The argument of the prosperity gospel, if I can put it flippantly, is that Jesus wants you to drive a Bentley. That is basically what the argument is.<a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/megachurch-preacher-creflo-dollar-says-theres-no-such-thing-as-the-prosperity-gospel-says-money-in-my-pocket-its-gods-137818">*</a> </blockquote>
<br />
Aside from how lucrative the gospel of redistribution has been for this apostle of neo-Marxism, this is pure caricature. It should be beneath a "scholar of religion" though it is par for the course with a political pundit. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="copy-paste-block">
Reza, who balks at lumping in jihadis with other radical Muslim groups, does not mind painting with a broad brush here. It may not be deliberate as he does not have the most sophisticated views of Christianity or Judaism, his expensive education notwithstanding. Since so much of his understanding of religion seems to be understood through a lens of "class struggle," it is hardly surprising that the nuances of various theologies are lost on him.</div>
Even lumping in T.D. Jakes with theologically similar preachers misses the point; the outlandishness of Rev. Jakes makes him a convenient poster boy for any form of Christianity that doesn't espouse the "absolute hatred of wealth" that characterizes Aslan's revisionist Messiah. <br />
Let's revisit Aslan's words: <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now I also tend to believe that there is really no [legitimate] way to read the Gospels either as a person of faith or as a historian without recognizing Jesus’ preferential option for the poor. </blockquote>
<br />
<div style="border-image: none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT7kemNA311lM7gceNu3kZGbSFXN3GkC8MXApvHtiDVDJODOhLLRqcPuZo44rHFYrrpTzFOgpNunnXfVXa5cyKL-1jSzP-C1CHeHd4P8sViFCuHsoO2aYS6pXI0v3ehT18nGxCmE4ySTs/s1600/Lenin_Mickey_Jesus_240.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT7kemNA311lM7gceNu3kZGbSFXN3GkC8MXApvHtiDVDJODOhLLRqcPuZo44rHFYrrpTzFOgpNunnXfVXa5cyKL-1jSzP-C1CHeHd4P8sViFCuHsoO2aYS6pXI0v3ehT18nGxCmE4ySTs/s200/Lenin_Mickey_Jesus_240.jpg" width="200" /></a>The "preferential option for the poor" is a modern Roman Catholic phrase (coined by a Jesuit) that embodies a relatively recent development in Catholic thought. The Jesuits perhaps "see Jesus through the lens of" <em><strong>their</strong> </em>"preferential option," not necessarily <em><strong>Jesus's</strong></em>. If anyone should understand this distinction it is Aslan. It is an anachronistic for a scholar to apply this (or "Marxism" for that matter) to Jesus' teachings, and in Aslan's case it's a theological interpretation masquerading as historical science—at least, to the degree that he has liberation theology in mind rather than Pope John Paul's or Pope Benedict's interpretation of this phrase. There are certainly people of faith and historians that don't understand Jesus' elevation of the powerless in "class struggle" terms, even if Aslan doesn't consider this legitimate. And there have certainly been Popes whose understanding of <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__PU.HTM">canon "social justice</a>" is not what progressives have meant by it.</div>
<br />
<br />
But how is one form of Christianity more authentic or legitimate than another, if one takes the approach that one's form of Christianity is simply a reflection of one's personal and cultural values? By lumping together, he seems to be redefining the "prosperity gospel" to mean any view of the New Testament in which God isn't judging Christians for prospering like Abraham, David, and Solomon prospered. In other venues, Reza has denigrated his two favored icons for this view (Osteen and Jakes) "charlatans."<br />
<br />
Since Aslan is judging these ministers publicly, I'd be interested to know exactly how Reza is a devoted follower of the man who announced the blessedness of the meek and poor, and how he participates in that sacrament of poverty. As I understand it, Aslan fought for the house and business that he had with his domestic partner at the time--seemingly thinking that she didn't contribute enough to either to be deserving of any part of them. Where is the re-distribution of wealth? <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";"></span><br />
<div align="LEFT">
<span style="font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">“It is astonishing that centuries of biblical scholarship have miscast these words [“render unto God what is God's”] as an appeal by Jesus to put aside “the things of this world”—taxes and tributes—and focus one’s heart instead on the only things that matter: worship and obedience to God. Such an interpretation<strong> perfectly accommodates the perception of Jesus as a detached, celestial spirit wholly unconcerned with material matters,</strong> a curious assertion about a man who not only lived in one of the <strong>most politically charged periods</strong> in Israel’s history, but who claimed to be the promised messiah </span><span style="font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">sent to liberate the Jews from Roman occupation.”</span></div>
<br /></blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiywVzSsqua-CGXV5j1qxMjSdyPaajpgo9iERLGFEBBuXOXHRu8jSc505aC_4qG615td9349zUK4E-Q3jGiVmuhM8_vTsvGEh6f1F4WsUJly0um9Q01EUguUVB4OaJEQeKbTbEgU-EQdqg/s1600/radicaljesus2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiywVzSsqua-CGXV5j1qxMjSdyPaajpgo9iERLGFEBBuXOXHRu8jSc505aC_4qG615td9349zUK4E-Q3jGiVmuhM8_vTsvGEh6f1F4WsUJly0um9Q01EUguUVB4OaJEQeKbTbEgU-EQdqg/s200/radicaljesus2.jpg" width="152" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jesus as Guevera iconography</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="border-image: none;">
So (1) Jesus was a political revolutionary since he lived in a time of political revolutionaries, and (2) <strong>people who think Jesus is a "detached, celestial spirit wholly unconcerned with material matters" are predisposed to not caring about people's physical needs in favor of a more detached piety</strong>. (Which begs the question, how divine is the Jesus of the Jesuits?) The underlying idea behind (2) is that God is Himself "detached" and "wholly unconcerned with material matters," the Torah notwithstanding, since He is a spirit. And as he argues in the Inside the Studio session and elsewhere, if Jesus is "also God" in addition to being a man, we miss his humanity completely and his care for humanity as well. It may surprise Reza to know that in the New Testament writings, the divinity of Jesus was taken as proof that God is not "wholly unconcerned with material matters."</div>
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
. . . they are using the Gospel in an attempt to do away with food stamps and welfare, which <strong>blows my mind. I don’t understand how you can arrive at that interpretation</strong>, but people do.</blockquote>
This seems very strange seeing that Dr. Aslan has said elsewhere that people can and do read any interpretation in to scripture because that is how religion and scripture works. Speaking at the Indian Summer Festival, Aslan called the 'prosperity gospel' "honestly the fastest growing version of Protestant evangelical Christianity in North America. That's because Jesus can be whatever you want Him to be, and the Christian message can be whatever you want it to be."<a href="http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/10/reza-aslan-on-what-the-new-atheists-get-wrong.html">1</a>,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz2zhh8-UPs#t=3975">2</a> <br />
<br />
Earlier in that speech, Aslan replayed his recurring theme of the "infinite malleability" of a religion: "what I have been talking about all along, which is the <strong>incredible malleability </strong>of the Christ story, the way that it can become whatever you want it to become.”<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz2zhh8-UPs#t=3975">*</a> Since people always read their cultural values into their religious narrative?<br />
Here is Reza's view in an <a href="http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/10/reza-aslan-on-what-the-new-atheists-get-wrong.html">interview with Jesse Singal</a> about the New Atheists (emphases added):
<br />
<blockquote>
People don’t derive their values from their religion — they bring their values to their religion. Which is why religions like Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, [and] Islam, are experienced in such profound, wide diversity. Two individuals can look at the exact same text and come away with radically different interpretations. Those <strong>interpretations have nothing to do with the text</strong>, which is, after all, just words on a page, and everything to do with the cultural, nationalistic, ethnic, political prejudices and preconceived notions that the individual brings to the text. . . . [I]f you are just a person who doesn’t know much about the history, philosophy, sociology of religion — it seems like a logical thing to say that people get their values from their scriptures. It’s just intrinsically false. That’s not what happens. <strong>People do not derive their values from their scriptures</strong> — <strong>they insert their values into their scriptures</strong>. . . . [Before the Civil War] both slave owners and abolitionists not only used the same Bible to justify their conflicting viewpoints, they used the exact same verses. That’s the <strong>power of scripture, it’s the power of religion: It’s infinitely malleable</strong>. We do not read scriptures that were written 5000 years ago still because they’re true — we read them because they’re malleable, because they can address the ever-evolving need of a community, of an individual, because <strong>they can be shaped to whatever one’s political ideology is</strong>.<a href="http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/10/reza-aslan-on-what-the-new-atheists-get-wrong.html">*</a></blockquote>
Wait. That doesn't sound like the Reza who said, "What fascinates me is the way that the political Right in this country has absorbed Jesus and <strong>made Jesus their own icon</strong>."<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2014/11/religious-scholar-refutes-bill-oreillys-republican-jesus/">*</a> There should be nothing particularly fascinating about it, if that were the case, given what Reza says he thinks. This also doesn't sound like the Reza from the Indian Summer Festival<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz2zhh8-UPs#t=3975">*</a> talking about "infinite malleability": <br />
<blockquote>
. . . The fastest growing version of Protestant evangelical Christianity in North America is this movement called the 'prosperity gospel' . . . The gospel preached by, you know, people like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes--and when I say "people" I mean "<strong>charlatans</strong>"-- This [prosperity gospel] is as <strong>profoundly an unscriptural interpretation of Jesus' message </strong>that exists. I mean, if there is one thing that is <strong>just so clear-cut</strong> and just [note: Aslan raises his voice here] <strong>not open to interpretation of any kind</strong>, when it comes to Jesus's message, is this condemnation of wealth. . . . That's because Jesus can be whatever you want him to be, and the Christian message can be whatever you want it to be.</blockquote>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJBMcy43FHYv8zyQ1RRWEbcbHDTIqZCH-Ind5gmMxzpcDbbv8CYiGlS-LcRFl-8uR5blD2gbUa9TJtMQcBIfXKXrFtInPBkLMKOI4HyIG4a0WnJKc8J7wIfXYSkvNwRvqsDJV3onJXDx0/s1600/GYQ8ES19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJBMcy43FHYv8zyQ1RRWEbcbHDTIqZCH-Ind5gmMxzpcDbbv8CYiGlS-LcRFl-8uR5blD2gbUa9TJtMQcBIfXKXrFtInPBkLMKOI4HyIG4a0WnJKc8J7wIfXYSkvNwRvqsDJV3onJXDx0/s1600/GYQ8ES19.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How Reza sees the Religious Right</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="border-image: none;">
Sounds to me like he's saying that this "movement" as he calls it is not true to the religious text, is insincere, and much less authentic than its alternatives—you get the idea (whether he's right or wrong) that it takes a lot of extra torturing of the Christian text and its inherent message to get this belief. You might say that it is (as he has said about Islam) against the "nature and fabric" of the religion. Let's go back now and continue with what he was saying to Jesse Singal: </div>
<blockquote>
. . . [Scriptures] can be shaped to <strong>whatever one’s political ideology is</strong>. You have Christians in the <strong>hills of Guatemala who view Jesus as a liberating warrior</strong> who takes up arms against the oppressor, and Christians in midwestern Chicago who <strong>believe that Jesus wants you to drive a Bentley. Who’s right? They both are! </strong>That’s why Jesus matters.</blockquote>
<br />
They're <strong><em>both</em></strong> right? Does Reza really believe they are both equally right? When Rush Limbaugh suggested that Pope Francis' statements were so Marxist that "someone must have gotten to" him, Aslan commented, "Limbaugh is right. Somebody did get to Pope Francis. It was Jesus." <em>Whose </em>Jesus? Apparently the "Real Jesus" that the Jesuits introduced him to.<br />
<blockquote>
While <strong>modern Christianity has tried to spiritualize this [radical materialist] message of Jesus, transforming his revolutionary social teachings into abstract ethical principles</strong>, it is impossible to overlook the unflinching condemnation of the wealthy and powerful that permeate Jesus’ teachings. </blockquote>
<br />
I've read Reza's book <em>Zealot</em>, and it seemed to me that the book forcefully argues that it wasn't <em>modern</em> Christianity that did this, but the earliest Christianity. According to Aslan, the Apostle Paul and his lackeys invented Christianity precisely to spiritualize Jesus' message into "seeker-friendly" abstract ethical principles accessible to the Roman world. <br />
<br />
Last of all, Reza Aslan's many caricatures of the political right and of conservative Christianity are heavily influenced by the trope caricatures denounced by Rod Leher in his article "When Liberalism Hurts People." It seems like Reza is promoting the view that a Christianity not based on progressive values is both an inauthentic Christianity and one that is based on rationalizing greed. <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/jaywrichards/2013/03/10/how-should-christians-respond-to-government-growth-and-spending-n1528089/page/full">Jay Richards has written a thoughtful article</a> discussing the lessons of scripture in terms of government control. A <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/17/food-stamp-cuts-bible-debate_n_3293982.html">HuffPost article provides a somewhat more nuanced view of the food stamp battle</a> in which it doesn't seem that the Right is making Jesus an "icon" any more than the Left; if anything, it gets tricky to play the WWJD game with other people's money.<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-84483231781470350542015-08-23T18:03:00.002-07:002016-03-22T21:01:48.816-07:00University of Chicago Exposes Reza Aslan as "Blowhard"<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="border-image: none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCx0CjIF_aTVGELzSuwiC_yH3oYw6sTUvQEhSlU54Ey4CHS3oay04iFpDZ_unW5YvsIK2VKlDWDPuAAjYIzRk1sOCkTIxzzO4XWn4I4QXFUlx3WlVGVCzAjw7cmIuCUvz3SgdFdgRzQSg/s1600/margmmitchell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCx0CjIF_aTVGELzSuwiC_yH3oYw6sTUvQEhSlU54Ey4CHS3oay04iFpDZ_unW5YvsIK2VKlDWDPuAAjYIzRk1sOCkTIxzzO4XWn4I4QXFUlx3WlVGVCzAjw7cmIuCUvz3SgdFdgRzQSg/s1600/margmmitchell.jpg" /></a><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.52px; line-height: 20.28px;">“The mark of the blowhard is not simply to comment on areas outside his competence, but to do so publicly, with the weight of his reputation behind him, while not doing the appropriate background reading and refusing to seek the opinions of actual experts in the field before publishing. In doing so, the blowhard frequently makes </span><b style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.52px; line-height: 20.28px;">mistakes that would be embarrassing even for those equipped with an undergraduate's knowledge</b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.52px; line-height: 20.28px;"> of the area.”</span></div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"> -- </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://tertiumq.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-complex-subject-of-blowhards.html#dyson">Jeffrey Shallit</a></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"> [emphasis mine]</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div style="border-image: none;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.19px; line-height: 18.47px;"><strong>Prof. </strong><a href="https://divinity.uchicago.edu/margaret-m-mitchell"><strong>Margaret M. Mitchell</strong></a><strong> (pictured) of the University of Chicago</strong> <strong>has </strong></span><a href="http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/publications/criterion/Criterion%20Spring%202015.pdf" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.19px; line-height: 18.47px; text-decoration: none;"><u><strong>written a scholarly assessment</strong></u></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.19px; line-height: 18.47px;"><strong> of the scholarly merits of the book </strong></span><strong><em>Zealot </em></strong><strong><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">in the article </span></strong><strong><em>"L'Affaire Aslan</em></strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.19px; line-height: 18.47px;"><strong>." </strong> It is very well stated, very succinct. While the description above isn't necessarily the dictionary meaning of "blowhard", Mitchell's "L'Affaire Aslan" points out problems with <em>Zealot </em>that educated people should have spoke up about long ago, and casts serious doubt on Reza Aslan's claim to expertise in the field of New Testament history and Second Temple Judaism. Of course, it is another question entirely whether Aslan's <em>Zealot </em>would have value as the work of an amateur. Having demanded that the public treat his book as the objective and critical scholarship of an expert in the subject matter, Aslan doesn't have the luxury of being judged by that lower standard. "L'Affaire Aslan" was written by a someone who can more credibly be taken as an expert in the relevant topics. </span></div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
<br /></div>
Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-77943092110517023502015-07-11T09:35:00.005-07:002015-07-11T09:35:49.399-07:00Gay and Jesuit: New "Liberation" Theology?<br />
The male head of the theology department <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6659">of a Jesuit university</a> decide to marry a man. Boy, those Jesuits sure seem to be better at "diversity" than they are at defending the values of the Catholic Church.<br />
<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-69690433544511463652015-06-24T21:31:00.001-07:002015-07-06T18:53:48.950-07:00Why ask why?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVDmK1EErJsuqCARblkmA2dg13yRCtlEfC-T1HZBL1cw7khOO5-334YxdYtbTobZwJQ9pjWQWfsyE44Gwtu8yxapBTyIzv0pi4VJc6x9nMbIxa3H8Q0NRX9ZXXJ7tOStKXfHeC6tA-WsI/s1600/reza.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVDmK1EErJsuqCARblkmA2dg13yRCtlEfC-T1HZBL1cw7khOO5-334YxdYtbTobZwJQ9pjWQWfsyE44Gwtu8yxapBTyIzv0pi4VJc6x9nMbIxa3H8Q0NRX9ZXXJ7tOStKXfHeC6tA-WsI/s200/reza.PNG" width="184" /></a>Does it matter that so many people are getting their ideas about religion from this guy? Is he promoting confusion over what religion is and what it may properly be in our lives?<br />
<br />
And if what he is saying about religion in general and Islam in particular is largely sophistry and doubletalk, does that mean that we should be careful about the political advice he offers to the Council on Foreign Relations and to his American audience? <br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-37904914413049288712015-06-18T16:23:00.000-07:002016-03-20T20:59:57.039-07:00Askonas Digging Deeper - Is Reza a Scholar of Religious History?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStm8t6Ux9HQlSEOv0XbIgKBHEPQU-WL_NprCTINbg2bnd12cSvjaT6DnVbF6pFf0K7CJ__CLE8Ea1x04r_ZoTsfdv0g7GjNgq5jjz_8cTLRpNrzBoVpK7Z3-rM40W1eqbEI_NJq7XrBo/s1600/digging.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStm8t6Ux9HQlSEOv0XbIgKBHEPQU-WL_NprCTINbg2bnd12cSvjaT6DnVbF6pFf0K7CJ__CLE8Ea1x04r_ZoTsfdv0g7GjNgq5jjz_8cTLRpNrzBoVpK7Z3-rM40W1eqbEI_NJq7XrBo/s1600/digging.jpg" /></a></div>
Jonathan Askonas <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/07/digging-deeper-into-aslans-scholarship">writes</a> on 7/29/13 in "Digging Deeper into Aslan's 'Scholarship'"<strong>:</strong> <br />
<blockquote>
I’ve read the dissertation, and can report that it uses no historical methods or archival research. It solely focuses on the events and movements of the twentieth century, with the exception of one ten-page summary of the life and times of medieval Muslim theologian Ibn Taymiyyah. In the fields of sociology and political science, it seems like a rather unremarkable piece of work (it’s also unusually short for a PhD dissertation, at about 130 double-spaced pages. Dissertations usually run into the hundreds). It also seems likely that much of the research was later published for a popular audience (along with the usual current events punditry) as Aslan’s book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Fundamentalism-Confronting-Globalization-Originally/dp/0812978307" target="_blank"> Beyond Fundamentalism</a></i>. Absolutely nothing in the dissertation gives any indication that the author has any interest in, much less qualifications for, New Testament scholarship. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Aside from content, Aslan’s claim that he is a scholar at all is questionable given the publishers of his books. <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=author%3Areza+aslan&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C33&as_sdtp=" target="_blank"> A Google Scholar search </a> for Aslan’s bibliography shows the author’s trade books (as opposed to books from university presses, the standard for scholarship), newspaper articles, blog posts, and lectures. He has a couple of articles in a “current affairs journal” (normally called a newspaper). His single citation from an academic press is for a forthcoming chapter in an Oxford University Press book <a href="http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-religion-and-violence-9780199759996?cc=us&lang=en&tab=toc" target="_blank"><i> The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence </i></a> —a volume edited by his dissertation advisor at UC-Santa Barbara. Literally the only remotely academic article he’s published was a 2003 piece in an obscure UCLA law journal on the sociology of stoning in Islam. Again, Aslan has no scholarly work that would qualify him as an expert in New Testament studies by the standard practices of that field.</blockquote>
Askonas goes on to question Aslan's claim to special expertise in Greek. He argues that Aslan simply doesn't have the academic background, although given Margaret Mitchell's unforgiving assessment of the evidence in Zealot of knowledge of <em>Koine </em>Greek (not published until <a href="http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/publications/criterion/Criterion%20Spring%202015%205-18-15.pdf">recently in Harvard's <em>Criterion </em>periodical</a>), it would seem that his grasp of <em>Koine </em>is even less than what his academic credentials might lead us to expect.<br />
<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-2514190424325816592015-06-13T14:02:00.000-07:002017-07-07T15:00:29.494-07:00Why *Did* Reza Write About Jesus?<div class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLPE0dks36dyEk7EraMqvNqRyr24FRU3GdLK3tRB-3aKNOmWtrmmERm5Mc2x-TaJomt6OdwdHoOHnQbCdzmrRQTOFALau1lRmX6KtfOMzwyIsVGNMKXxz85gD4xg1nXpFZ8kl97KBcn4Y/s1600/zealot_cnn.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLPE0dks36dyEk7EraMqvNqRyr24FRU3GdLK3tRB-3aKNOmWtrmmERm5Mc2x-TaJomt6OdwdHoOHnQbCdzmrRQTOFALau1lRmX6KtfOMzwyIsVGNMKXxz85gD4xg1nXpFZ8kl97KBcn4Y/s1600/zealot_cnn.png" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>"separate the man from the deity"</b></span></div>
<br />
Why would Reza Aslan, a Muslim, write about the founder of Christianity? He gave an answer to Lauren Green (in the famous Fox News interview) that was very different from the answer he gave in <a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/20/losing-christ-and-finding-jesus/">his post "Why I write about Jesus</a>," written July 20th, 2013, only six days prior to the interview (emphases are my own):</div>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 0.2em; margin-top: 0.9em; padding: 2px 0px 4px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The Jewish peasant and revolutionary who challenged the rule of the most powerful empire the world had ever known became so much more real to me than the <b>detached, unearthly being</b> I had been introduced to in church. <span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 0.2em; margin-top: 0.2em; padding: 2px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Today, I can confidently say that two decades of rigorous academic research into the origins of Christianity has <b>made me a more genuinely committed disciple</b> of Jesus of Nazareth than I ever was of Jesus Christ.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 0.2em; margin-top: 0.2em; padding: 4px 0px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I have <b>modeled my life,</b> not after the <b>celestial spirit</b> whom many Christians believe sacrificed himself for our sins, but rather after the illiterate, marginal Jew who gave his life fighting an unwinnable battle against the religious and political powers of his day on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed – those his society deemed unworthy of saving. <span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 0.2em; margin-top: 0.2em; padding: 4px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I wrote my newest book, "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" <b>in order to spread the good news </b>of the Jesus of history with <b>the same fervor</b> that I once applied to spreading the story of the Christ.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.2em; padding: 2px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Because I am convinced that one can be a <b>devoted follower of Jesus without being a Christian</b>, just as I know that one can be a Christian without being a follower of Jesus.</blockquote>
To Lauren Green, his answer to why he wrote about Jesus was because it's his <i>job</i>, what he makes his living doing, whereas the answer in <i>Zealot </i>(in the introduction) and in this opinion piece was "<b>to spread the good news</b>" of the real Jesus. (Note: In terms of Green's original question, he didn't correct her that he hadn't, in his opinion, written about the founder of Christianity, though he doesn't believe that Christianity is truly based on Jesus' message.) Why is Aslan's message in <i>Zealot </i><b>good news</b>? Because the Jesus of the Christians is a <i>detached, unearthly, celestial spirit</i>, <i>unconcerned </i>(as he puts it in many other writings and interviews) <i>with the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4010319.htm">cares of this world</a></i>, while Aslan's Real Jesus was actually concerned with people's earthly circumstances. Zealot was written so that more people will follow Reza's <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/09/as-close-to-marxism-as-it-gets-muslim-author-who-argued-jesus-never-said-he-was-god-slams-prosperity-preachers-says-christ-had-absolute-hatred-of-wealth/">hyper-Marxist</a> version of Jesus "<b>without being a Christian.</b>" <br />
<br />
Even though he was on fire for Christ as a kid, now he is more "genuinely committed" in following <i>Real Jesus</i>™. Is this because his previous commitment to religion wasn't as genuine a commitment, or because he is committed to something/someone more genuine (since his Jesus is the real Jesus)? <br />
<br />
Now, Reza Aslan depicts himself as someone who, as a comparative religion theologian (or history-of-religion scholar), is fluent in various religions as a polyglot linguist is fluent in several languages; religions are, as he puts it in some of his interviews, simply symbolic languages for communicating the Ineffable Mystery. If that were true, <strong>why couldn't he write an ecumenical work that translates a caring, non-detached God into the "symbols" of the three main Western religions? Why does Reza's gospel require a "biography of Jesus" that devotes many, many pages to debunking Christianity?</strong><br />
<br />
Part of the problem here, see, is that a great deal of the New Testament, gospels and epistles, are precisely concerned with the divine majesty of the Christ/Messiah <b><i>not </i></b>being a detached spiritual entity with no interest in the earthly state of human beings. In fact, in the First Epistle of John, being <a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/passage/?q=1-john+3:18-23;+1-john+4:1-3">hardened against the earthly predicament of one's brother</a> is of that spirit which denies that "Jesus is come in the flesh," a manifestation of "the antichrist spirit." It is almost as though Reza doesn't know the difference between orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism, which would be strange indeed for someone who <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2016/03/resurrection-is-reza-expert-in-judaeo.html">touts himself as an expert in all Western religions</a>.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, I once <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8087402179805477637#radicalunity" name="radicalunity">attended</a> a presentation (at UCLA, if I recall) in which a Muslim was explaining what is emphatically wrong about the Incarnation doctrine. The "radical unity" of God, as this man had it, meant that God was too holy and detached from creation to have a human body with all its dirty biological waste processes and such. I think this interpretation of "radical unity" is much more central to the origins and history and orthodoxy of Islam than Reza's mystical, panentheistic interpretation. Whereas orthodox Islam thinks that it is blasphemous to consider Jesus divine, Reza Aslan thinks that it is wrongheaded to think that Jesus was any more or less divine than a rock or a chair. Curiously, in some of his other work, he does acknowledge that Mohammed's understanding of Christianity was based on Gnostic Christianity.<br />
<br />
Prof. Margaret M. Mitchell of the University of Chicago has <a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2015/08/mark-of-blowhard.html">written a scholarly</a> <a href="http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/publications/criterion/Criterion%20Spring%202015.pdf">assessment</a> of the scholarly merits of <i>Zealot</i> (of which assessments there have been too few) and in it has also noted the irrelevance of Aslan's appeal to authority (his own) instead of an honest and direct answer to Lauren Green about why he wrote the book:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Not all scholars of religion (or of any sub-discipline
within it) choose to make their own religious biography an
explicit part of their work . . . , but when one chooses
to do so <b>it is hardly unfair to engage that aspect of the
book or to ask how the biography and the arguments and
the methodology interact</b> (if at all). On this point <strong>Aslan
cannot have it both ways</strong> [i.e. frame the book as a vehicle for his personal beliefs but still expect his personal biases to be off limits for discussion] <strong>and should not expect to</strong>. [emphases mine] </blockquote>
<a href="http://problemwithreza.blogspot.com/2016/03/lauren-greens-real-mistake.html">Green's error</a> was to suppose that the personal beliefs that Aslan is proselytizing for in Zealot were whatever Muslim beliefs he holds. He opens up <a href="http://www.scu.edu/scm/winter2014/also.cfm?b=439&c=17987">in a Santa Clara interview</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My <b>Muslim faith plays a zero role</b> in this book or frankly, in any of my academic work. <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">That is not to say that this is a purely objective look at Jesus.</span></b> There’s no such thing. <b>I am bringing my own personal perceptions and even biases into this text</b>, as we all do when we deal with sacred history. But that bias has <b>nothing to do with Islam.</b> <b>It has everything [instead] to do with</b>, again, you darn Jesuits, because the Jesus whom I was taught at Santa Clara University is the Jesus who is founded upon the preferential option for the poor, the Jesus whose entire ministry is predicated on <b>the reversal of the social order</b> . . . [emphases mine]</blockquote>
<i>Zealot</i> has everything to do with the "historical Jesus" that he claims he was introduced to by the Jesuits as he was introduced to liberation theology. It has everything to do with a Jesus that wanted to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/reza-aslan-jesus-marxist_n_5786932.html">take things even further than Karl Marx, a "reversal of the social order</a>," a bloody revolution that he calls "<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2013/11/muslim-scholar-reza-aslan-rush-limbaugh-and-sarah-palin-would-call-jesus-a-marxist/">a chilling new reality</a>" in <i>Zealot </i>and in various anti-capitalist speeches. It is to this revisionist Jesus that Reza Aslan is a "<a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/20/losing-christ-and-finding-jesus/">more genuinely committed disciple" than he ever was to the Jesus of the New Testament</a>. This is the reason for Aslan's "<a href="http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/05/27/religion-gone-global/">straight-up biography</a>" of Jesus.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLPE0dks36dyEk7EraMqvNqRyr24FRU3GdLK3tRB-3aKNOmWtrmmERm5Mc2x-TaJomt6OdwdHoOHnQbCdzmrRQTOFALau1lRmX6KtfOMzwyIsVGNMKXxz85gD4xg1nXpFZ8kl97KBcn4Y/s1600/zealot_cnn.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLPE0dks36dyEk7EraMqvNqRyr24FRU3GdLK3tRB-3aKNOmWtrmmERm5Mc2x-TaJomt6OdwdHoOHnQbCdzmrRQTOFALau1lRmX6KtfOMzwyIsVGNMKXxz85gD4xg1nXpFZ8kl97KBcn4Y/s1600/zealot_cnn.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"separate the man from the deity"</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-68588986044615942792015-06-07T15:16:00.000-07:002016-03-22T16:03:07.153-07:00Does Islam Have a True Nature?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCsiPvo91gdEFV9NL9aAHl1Ju-rPhUjYLFrddBfGHKUUHQxExh-fYi5kX38jM2ZsFTr5JBsHMBEtL9wsnYvA0oHf_cI-W_KQFVa8vR7KBq_sMtCkSIKcy928fRlDYUdE-QIsEdHCXM-04/s1600/reallikeness.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCsiPvo91gdEFV9NL9aAHl1Ju-rPhUjYLFrddBfGHKUUHQxExh-fYi5kX38jM2ZsFTr5JBsHMBEtL9wsnYvA0oHf_cI-W_KQFVa8vR7KBq_sMtCkSIKcy928fRlDYUdE-QIsEdHCXM-04/s1600/reallikeness.JPG" /></a></div>
<br />
Reza <a href="http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/putrajaya-should-not-dictate-muslims-beliefs-says-reza-aslan">speaks as a "theologian</a>" with <em>The Malaysian Insider</em> on 12/22/14 about the <b><i>true nature </i></b>of Islam:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The very notion that a group of old men gets to decide for me or for you what is the proper interpretation of my faith, that goes against the very fabric and nature of Islam,” Reza told The Malaysian Insider in a phone interview. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He questioned as to why Malaysia should have a single official version of Islam for its citizens to follow, given that Islam is one of the most diverse religions in the world.</blockquote>
If each religion is only a mirror for our prejudices, as he seems to believe elsewhere, how does Islam <b><i>have </i></b>a "very fabric and nature"? <br />
<br />
Here Islam doesn't need to be "protestantized" because its very "fabric and nature" is protestantized. By this logic almost <b><i>every </i></b>religion's nature is "protestant."<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Malaysians are free, democratic citizens of a modern, diverse nation-state. They are not children who need to be told how to protect their identity, how to protect their faith by a bunch of bureaucrats.”</blockquote>
Which nations' citizens need to be told "how to protect their faith"? If Malaysia is an example of a democratic Muslim country, why is it telling people which theological concept "Allah"can refer to? And in that case, why does he need to appeal to not telling Muslims how to protect their faith rather than not telling non-Muslims what epithets they can apply to their god?<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/putrajaya-should-not-dictate-muslims-beliefs-says-reza-aslan">http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/putrajaya-should-not-dictate-muslims-beliefs-says-reza-aslan</a><br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-15336833163773717082015-06-06T15:03:00.000-07:002016-03-20T19:20:40.725-07:00Timeline<br />
'87/'88 - Conversion at 15 years in Youth Life<br />
'88/'89 - Reads <em>Brothers Karamazov </em>on a dare<br />
'91/'92 - Starts college, probably at Santa Clara U<br />
Spends 4-5 years "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/reza-aslan-a-jesus-scholar-whos-hard-to-pin-down/2013/08/08/2b6eee80-002b-11e3-9a3e-916de805f65d_story.html">missionizing</a>" at schools and camps<br />
'95 - B.A. in Religion (Major Focus: N.T.; Minor: Greek) at SCU<br />
"apologists for atheism"<br />
'99 - MThS in (Major Focus: History of Religions) at Harvard<br />
'02 - MFA in Fiction at Univ. of Iowa<br />
'09 - PhD in Sociology ("of Religions") at UCSB<br />
<br /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPorobOYvm_0clsWiyzdYpaT-VYG-95mwyBlNk-pQ8fvNMOSi9UxFIAL98HGNnR4jMiCwo0Bs1GDvLWjgzAizOLXOL7ZRwMLWCotQ9A1mUfeXNIWXuBcUtxSEdu2Yp_nssnGuRuOdL5BM/s1600/young_reza2.jpg" /></div>
<br /><br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-74625323580009506382015-05-31T17:02:00.000-07:002015-08-23T18:05:41.675-07:00deus otiosus<span lang=""><br /></span>
<span lang=""></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span lang=""><br /></span><br />
<span lang=""> First there is the setting of the stage. What is the central problems? What does it mean to understand or misunderstand what religion is? Aslan seems to thingk that is an attempt to communicate the transcendant in a language based on human experience. <br />
<br />
Aslan comes closest to metaphors when he tries to distinguish "faith" from "religion". Ther is a metaphor of religion as shell that must be broken to get at faith. There is a metaphor of religion as well that leads to faith. How does dig a deep well if one is immediately trying to break the shell? Aslan's typical example of Christianity as religious symbolism is "washed in the blood of the lamb"; but how can one be washed in the blood of the lamb, if Jesus was only a miserable failure of a revolutionary? <br />
<br />
There is another common metaphor for the mystical divide between religion and faith out there in terms of a finger pointing at the moon. One may say religion is the finger and faith is the moon. But if this is an appropriate metaphor, then religion can also point away from the moon. But Aslan seems to argue that religion doesn't intrinsically point anywhere; it is rather our cultural realities that make our religion point this way or that. <br />
<br />
His book seems to be entirely devoted to explaining why we should believe in Aslan's version of the Real Jesus (or Historical Jesus) instead of the Anointed (i.e. Mashiach/Christ) of the New Testament. It is Christ (which Aslan tends to describe as a "detached" and "celestial spirit") vs. ARJ (i.e. Aslan's <i>Real </i>Jesus). ARJ isn't so interested in the heavenly realm. ARJ mainly cares about political revolution. Aslan claims emphatically that the book is not an attack on Christianity (he has after all Christian family and friends), and yet his book is aimed at convincing the reader that the New Testament is almost entirely an intentionally ahistorical fabrication. <br />
<br />
There is an astounding bit of logic behind this. Aslan seems to think that there is no way to get at Jesus' humanity than totally bracketing any sort of divinity (i.e. denying any New Testament claims that he is especially divine), and then argues on the basis of this bracketing that anything that doesn't define Jesus as being wholly like Aslan's version of his sociocultural environment is made up. <br />
<br />
There is necessarily "absolutely nothing special" about ARJ. He was supposedly saying nothing unique or extraordinary against the backdrop of militant apocalyptic magicians, except possibly that he offered his miracl services free of charge. He goes around inciting revolution by speaking in a code that is supposedly so transparent that everybody knows what he means. He is such a nobody that it is ludicrous to think that Pilate would pay him any notice, yet such a critical threat to Roman rule that there was no way he couldn't have been executed. He obviously believes the kingdom of God will be accomplished through brute physical force because he is "no fool," and yet he thinks he can overthrow Roman rule with only 72 dedicated followers and 2 swords. ARJ is only noteworthy as a socioeconomic reformer, and Aslan admits he seems to have absolutely no plan about how this new economy will work. The only thing that seems extraordinary about ARJ is his extreme foolishness. But unlike Christ, ARJ seems concerned with the cares of this life whereas Christ is far removed, any special calim to divinity makes him <i>deus otiosus</i>. <br />
<br />
PHD in Reagan , credentials, 4 degrees in the history of political parties <br />
<br />
Jesuit politics and the infancy narratives of conversion<br />
<br />
in religion, one man's contradiction is another man's paradox<br />
<br />
Black Swan fallacy<br />
<br />
errors in logic, errors in fact, problems in how it is being sold; the basis on which Aslan claims to have expertise presents a real problem. either it is possible that Aslan's education hasn't given him the sort of expertise he seems to claim, or it has failed him, or being a historian-of-religion does not necessarily confer such expertise. Is this a general problem with our universities, is it a problem with Gechult-related terms, or is it a problem with a particularl man's academic career? </span>Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8087402179805477637.post-37410983266139967752015-05-20T18:41:00.000-07:002016-03-28T13:09:46.774-07:00Post-Capitalist Pope Backpeddles<div class="tr_bq">
One commentator <a href="http://wdtprs.com/blog/2013/12/pope-francis-new-interview-damage-control-on-trickle-down-economics/">discusses the Pope's "damage control</a>" on his criticism in his <i>Evangelii Gaudium</i> of the reliance on capitalism as a panacea for "social justice"; his quote of the Pope's interview are echoed below with his editorial comments are in red. Reza Aslan and many other leftists jumped at the chance to enlist the Pope in their war against capitalism. </div>
<blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Some passages in Evangelii gaudium attracted accusations from American ultra-conservatives. <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[For an Italian journalist, even for this publication, not being a socialist makes you an ultra-conservative.]</span></strong><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> What effect does it have on a Pope to hear himself called a “Marxist”?</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span>Marxist ideology is wrong. In my life I have known many marxists who are good as people, and because of this I don’t take offense.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The words that struck the most were those about an economy that “kills”…<span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[And the Pope pounces. He was waiting for this question.]</span></span></strong><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><br />
<a name='more'></a></blockquote>
<blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></strong>In the exhortation there is nothing that can’t be found in the social doctrine of the Church. <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[This is called “damage control”. At least I think it is damage control. Let’s find out…]</span></strong> I didn’t speak from a technical point of view, I sought to present a snapshot <span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[una fotografia]</strong></span> of what is going on. The only specific passage was on “trickle-down” theories, <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[le teorie della “ricaduta favorevole”]</span></strong> according to which every economic growth, favored by the free market, results in producing on its own <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[di per sé]</span></strong> a greater equity and social inclusion in the world. There was the promise that when the <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">glass was full</strong>, it would be transferred over and the poor would benefit from it. <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Instead what happens when it is full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing comes forth for the poor</strong>. <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[WHOA! That doesn’t follow, does it. </span><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What the Pope presents here is a picture of the pie growing, or here a glass, but as the glass grows it contains the water within, and never allows the water to spill over the edge. It doesn’t follow that the growing glass automatically contains all the water. Leaving aside <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367682/trickle-down-lie-thomas-sowell">the problem of the term “trickle down”, which is a disparaging political label</a>, is there a good alternative to “trickle down”? A free market which <span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">grows</span> the pie, <span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">grows</span> the glass, is </span>preferable<span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> to a model wherein when I get something, you are therefore deprived of having it as well. While this is a brief comment on the Pope’s part, it conveys to me a mistaken notion. What’s the alternative? A glass that doesn’t grow? Bad situation, that. Zero sum.]</span></span></strong> This was the sole reference to a specific theory. I repeat, I didn’t speak as an expert on economy <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[da technico]</span></strong>, but according to the social doctrine of the Church. And this doesn’t mean being a Marxist. <strong style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: none; border-image: none; border: 0px currentColor; color: red; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[True, none of what he says here is Marxist.]</span></strong></blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEb5Brk1XTE6LoJM7i8A341pdzD7aiXSniX5cnmVoUcP4UTuCmwmnbLLhR08lODqinWNUIkMm_0mEngENn-gA74yz0wJ5wlZJlpN44qcVC-GcK2sdCWjmteKgLbO0J-xoL4357ckO8Uak/s1600/Evagelii-Gaudium-212x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEb5Brk1XTE6LoJM7i8A341pdzD7aiXSniX5cnmVoUcP4UTuCmwmnbLLhR08lODqinWNUIkMm_0mEngENn-gA74yz0wJ5wlZJlpN44qcVC-GcK2sdCWjmteKgLbO0J-xoL4357ckO8Uak/s1600/Evagelii-Gaudium-212x300.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />Tertium Quidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11101541218439239169noreply@blogger.com0