More Dappled Thought

I once had a good friend, a fellow Episcopalian (at the time I was still an Episcopalian), with whom I often discussed interesting philosophical and theological questions. We were just amateurs, of course, a couple of graduate students in classics who thought that knowing Latin and Greek was a sufficient condition for knowing just about anything at all of any value (I, at least, remain both an amateur and an obnoxious know-it-all, but my friend has moved on to bigger and better things), but we had a good time and surely having a good time is at least part of what good conversation is for.

We had both toyed with the idea of converting to Roman Catholicism, though in the end I did and he did not. He often mentioned to me another friend of his who had converted and who prayed for his (my friend's) conversion daily, and I sometimes wonder whether I ought not to do the same, but I don't. I suppose one reason is because I respect his intellect and I believe that he is smart enough to figure out for himself what the right thing for him to do is, though I realize that isn't a particularly good reason for not praying for his conversion. I suspect sloth plays a rather major role in most of my failings, this one included, but God's will is somewhat mysterious, at least to me, and I can't claim to have a better idea of what's best for him than God does, so my prayer is always at most "God's will be done."

One thing that he said to me has stuck with me now for over 20 years. We were talking about transsubstantiation, and he said to me what a lot of Episcopalians and other Anglicans--not to mention Eastern Christians--have thought: the Real Presence is a Mystery. "It happens," he said; "don't worry about how it happens."

OK. Some things are mysterious. I suppose that one way of conceiving of the mysterious is as the set of things that either have no explanation or that have explanations that contradict either experience or each other. In the case of the Real Presence, I suspect that my friend was suggesting that there simply is no explanation for how it happens, though one might also say that any explanation of how it happens will contradict empirical evidence. My own view is that transsubstantiation, as a doctrine, is not actually an attempt to explain how the Real Presence is brought about--it is rather a re-description of what the Real Presence is, a description in metaphysical rather than theological language. At any rate, I have no trouble accepting both that the Real Presence "happens", as my friend put it, and that we may say what is happening by appealing to the doctrine of transsubstantiation, and that we do not thereby diminish the mysteriousness of the Real Presence. Transsubstantiation is pretty mysterious too, when you get right down to it.

There are some things, however, that are mysterious in a much more mundane way. It is a mystery to me, for example, why there are eight hot dog buns in a package of buns but 12 hot dogs in a package of hot dogs. I suppose it may have something to do with getting us to buy more of one or the other of these useless commodities, but I'm not interested in speculating about what the actual reason might be.

In between the Great Mysteries like the Real Presence and the uselessly mundane mysteries of the hot dog bun to hot dog ratios, there are some mysteries that seem rather mundane but that may actually be obscuring something more important. The thing that has prompted me to think that there might be such a category of mysteriousness, and indeed to write this entry, is this entry in Jim Tucker's blog Dappled Things. Tucker cites, apparently with some approval, a paper on the topic of tyrannicide in the 13th century. Now, Tucker basically describes himself as a libertarian of sorts, and tyrannicide has always been a popular topic among certain branches of libertarianism, so it should come as no surprise to find that this paper would seem interesting to a libertarian. But when that libertarian is also a priest who has not only come out against the death penalty but who also has criticized Pat Robertson for calling for a "hit" against a Central American, ummm, tyrant, well, that presents something of a mystery.

I must confess to a rather guilty pleasure, since I have something of a love-hate relationship with Tucker's blog: I love to hate it. I do feel rather guilty about hating it, because many of the folks whose opinions I value very highly, such decent and intelligent folks as Tom Kreitzberg of Disputations and Kathy Hutchins of Gathering Goat Eggs and the Reform Club, seem to like Dappled Things enough to blogroll it.

Blogrolling, obviously, does not always entail an endorsement. My own blogroll reflects only those blogs that I read and at least enjoy but often admire, but others put just about anything into their blogrolls. De gustibus non disputandum est. When I first started blogging, I noticed Dappled Things because my favorite blogs linked to it, and at first I did like it, and I blogrolled it--at least for a while. But over time I found the mysteriousness a little too, well, mysterious. My first discomfort came with Tucker's mysterious love for the Confederacy. There are lots of folks who mistakenly romanticize the culture of the Confederacy, but some do so more than others, and in some cases the romanticization borders on the pathological. I have a colleage here in the philosophy department at Ohio University, for example--who is also a self-proclaimed libertarian--who argued with me at great length over whether it was really morally right to bring an end to slavery by force. I agreed with him that the use of force was problematic, "But," I said, "At least, in the end, there was a positive outcome." His reply: "Well, for the blacks, anyway."

His view, apparently, is that the means that were employed to bring an end to slavery brought about a significant loss of "liberty" (whose? I imagine he means the propertied classes) that was simply not worth it. For me, the attitude that says giving up habeas corpus temporarily during time of war is too high a price to pay for freeing the slaves, is, in a word, mysterious. I can't even imagine having that kind of value system. In fact, the President is actually granted the right to temporarily suspend habeas corpus by the pre-war Constitution, so I'm not really even sure what the beef is supposed to be. But surely there can be no doubt that the South, in resorting to war, was endorsing a might-makes-right criterion that is thoroughly inimical not merely to republican government but to Christian moral theory.

This is just one example, of course, and I'm not trying to suggest that Tucker has the same attitude towards that issue that my colleague has, though from what he writes in his blog I have every reason to believe that he does. But if we combine this misplaced nostalgia for the Bad Old Days with an attitude towards the Jews that is, well, very mysterious indeed, then one begins to see why I continue to read DT with something like a morbid fascination, always wondering what new mystery will greet me there.

Some mysteries, like the Real Presence, are extremely Good Things. Others, like the ratios of buns to dogs, are trivial and meaningless. Others, like the dappled patterns of moral reasoning that one finds in some blogs, are probably more matters for amusement than concern, but the problem is that one just can't know whether what is going on is just due to the typical sort of goofiness that comes from Generation X's inablility to think things through in chunks more complex than an MTV video, or due to some more sinister cause. Fortunately, I've always enjoyed a good mystery. Perhaps if I keep reading, the answer to this one will become apparent. Or maybe I should just content myself with the fact that mysteriousness happens, and stop worrying about how it happens.