Monthly Archives: September 2026

What Happens when Germans Go Nuts?

by Dave Mathwin

They make a rational, thoroughly scientific, argument for the existence of Atlantis, located in the Atlantic (right where Plato said it was) destroyed cataclysmically somewhere around 9000 B.C. (apologies to one of my favorite ad campaigns).

I have written before about the likelihood of advanced civilizations that existed long before their so-called beginning around 4000 B.C.  But it is so much easier to propound vague ideas then to make a concrete case for a specific civilization, let alone one for which we (seemingly) have no evidence for except Plato’s account in one of his dialogues.  And then you realize that one of the more credible arguments for the existence of Atlantis was written by Otto Muck . . . who invented the U-boat schnorkel for the Germans in W.W. II.  Yes, he came over to the U.S. like many other former German scientists after the war, but still, it does not help the case that he worked for the Nazis.

But first, Muck reminds us that Plato discussed Atlantis in two dialogues, not one, the Timaeus and Critias.  Plato has Socrates relate many myths throughout his work, but he speaks of Atlantis in strictly factual terms.  Like many others, I suppose, I had never actually read the full account of Atlantis in the dialogues and Muck makes a good point.  Plato, at least, seems to believe in the historicity of Atlantis, or certainly, Critias does, and he gives a lengthy description filling at least 15 pages of its size, location, topography, plants, and the like.  Critias talked about how the Greeks first learned of Atlantis from the Egyptians, still considered quite wise by the Greeks even in Plato’s day, via the great legislator Solon–Athens’ George Washington.  Plato invests a lot of heavy-hitters in his account of Atlantis.

It makes perfect sense to me to believe in a cataclysmic flood, as it is spoken of in every major religion of the ancient world.  I expect to find, along with Graham Hancock and others, the existence of civilizations that long predate the fertile crescent of 4000 B.C.  I delight in Jon Anthony West’s interpretation of Egypt’s history, for example, and find it persuasive.  But I cracked the cover of Muck’s book skeptically.  I don’t approach questions like this even primarily scientifically, let alone entirely so.  Still, with Atlantis, even I needed something to hold onto besides stories.  With other sites, you have megalithic architecture, for example.  For Atlantis, I need more than Plato’s account.

I give Muck credit.  He understands skepticism as a scientist and confronts head-on, piece by piece, in methodical fashion.  Some of what Muck wrote I found very intriguing, and other stuff, not so much.

To begin, Muck asks where the Atlantic ocean got its name.  Well, obviously from the Atlantis story, but this means very, very little.  Slightly more intriguing is Muck’s examination of the very similar phonetics between the god Atlas (apparently spelled out ‘Atlants’), who stood at the middle of the world upholding it, and the name “Atlantis” and its topography, which Plato tells us had a large mountain.  Well . . . ok, but . . . ?

He moves on.

If we look closely at Plato’s description of the topography he tells of a huge variety of plants and food that one could find there.  It seems almost fantastical. We assume the variety couldn’t really exist, given the size and location Plato mentions.  But if we consider the gulf stream moving across the Atlantic, then match it with the mountains described by Plato as well as the location, it matches.  You would have warm air from the south-east, with a large mountain in the center impacting the Arctic air, and the variety described by Plato is possible.  What makes this more intriguing is that Plato probably did not have the biological and topographical knowledge to make this up.

More interesting is the Gulf Stream itself.  If you compare latitudes for northwestern Europe and its overseas counterpart, you know that Europe is a lot warmer than the upper reaches of North America.  The Gulf Stream makes this possible.  But we also know that thousands of years ago Europe was much colder.  Then, around the time of Atlantis’ supposed destruction, it started to warm up.  What if the Gulf Stream did not always flow across to Europe, but instead was diverted by a continent in the middle of the ocean?  That could account for the temperature difference at first, and the shift after.

Perhaps the most bizarre, yet intriguing, argument Muck makes involves the habits of eels.

Apparently, a breed of eels exists that spawns in the Sargasso Sea (located just to the east of Atlantis on the map above).  For the longest time scientists could never understand why these eels undertook a long and dangerous migration across the Atlantic.  The females find European rivers, the males sit and wait in the ocean while the female eels fix their hair.  Ok, ok . . . observers discovered that the females can only come to sexual maturity in fresh water, hence their need for rivers.  But why travel east across the Atlantic.  It makes much more sense, from an evolutionary perspective and every other perspective, to go west from the Sargasoo.  The existence of Atlantis, however, would explain this.  For who knows how long the eels would go east for only a short distance from the Sargasso to the rivers of Atlantis.  The destruction of Atlantis did not alter their genetic memory.  They still swim east, and no doubt suppose that when they hit the coast of Europe they are back in Atlantis, more or less.

Plato considered Atlantis a bridge of sorts between land on either side of the ocean, and Muck explores some of the connections between the Americas and the world of Plato’s day.  He considers possible racial connections, considering that the typical look of the Basque people would fit well for a possible Atlantean type, since that “look” could fit in the western parts of Europe, north Africa, and Meso-America–the old sphere of Atlantean influence.  Muck makes you think hard throughout his work, but I think this the most ridiculous of Muck’s arguments.  Maybe I am just squeamish when an ex-Nazi helper-guy talks about race, but it seems that if the Atlantis story is true, 10,000 years of post-Atlantis destruction intermarriage would dilute the racial stock.

Perhaps more interesting are the ancient pyramids built by the Egyptians and Meso-Americans.  Muck seems to argue that both cultures acted as preservers of some kind of Atlantean legacy even thousands later in the post-apocalyptic reboot of civilization.  Perhaps the pyramid shape was meant to recall Atlas and Atlantis’ great mountain. This is more convincing than the racial argument, but I still think it fairly weak.  Both cultures built their structures thousands of years apart, and it seems they had different purposes in mind.  Muck’s earlier arguments about climate, topography, and the gulf stream stand on much more solid footing.  His analysis about the mapping of the ocean floor of the Atlantic indicates the possibility of an Atlantean like form still lying on the ocean floor.

As for the cataclysmic end, Muck has an answer for that as well.  Plato’s description has Atlantis lying right around the mid-Atlantic ridge, a potentially volcanic region.  The diagram below right shows the ridge shows the newest ocean floor crust in red:

Muck believes that a very large asteroid struck earth right around 9000 B.C., which matches remarkably with the chronology offered by Plato’s account.  Here is one of a variety of articles on the subject, with impact dates ranging between 10,000 to 13,000 years ago.  Some argue that this asteroid or comet struck the polar ice caps.  Muck argues that it struck somewhere around the mid-Atlantic ridge.  If Atlantis existed, and if a very large asteroid struck near the mid-atlantic ridge, you could easily have had a gigantically massive subterranean volcanic eruption that literally could have had Atlantis sink into the sea in a single night.

Muck doesn’t need the asteroid to hit the mid-Atlantic ridge necessarily.  If it did strike the polar ice-caps, it would have caused the destruction of Atlantis in a global deluge not overnight, but within a week or so at the most.

I have left out a great deal of technical information Muck includes, and must content myself with a general summary.

Muck knows he cannot absolutely prove his case one way or another.

I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt’s work with Heterodox Academy, which encourages more ideological diversity on campus.  Haidt readily acknowledges his liberal beliefs–he has never voted Republican–but even he agrees that the situation has gotten dangerously imbalanced in many departments across many campuses.  He has discovered some interesting links, not surprisingly, between religious belief, psychological temperament, and political affiliations.  You can take various fun tests at his link here.

Just as political leanings often come from moral and religious beliefs, I think what one thinks of Muck’s book will depend on a variety of factors that go a bit deeper than the evidence itself.

If you look to disagree with Muck, most likely . . .

  • You are a committed ‘gradualist’ in all things geological
  • You are strictly scientific in deciding about the past and would hardly value Plato’s account as evidence of any kind.
  • You probably hesitate in part because you don’t want to be associated with various new age crazy people who believe in the existence of Atlantis for all the wrong reasons.
  • You need “hard” evidence like clay tablets, pots with markings, the stuff that archaeologists would find, before you would acquiesece to Muck

If you look to agree with Muck, most likely . . .

  • You are a contrarian by temperment
  • You weigh lots of different kinds of evidence much more equally than those committed to a particular field
  • You think it would be “cool” if Atlantis once existed (an attitude most abhorred by the strict scientific type, who would see this feeling as meaning absolutely nothing.  I think they are right, but only about 90% right in their approbation of this attitude).
  • You admit the possibility of great catastrophe’s altering the fabric of human history as well as geology.

I fall in the latter category, but hope that I have been fair to the former.  Again,some parts of Muck’s book I found nearly persuasive, and others not so much.

To illustrate some of the above differences, we can examine Jon Anthony West’s work in Egyptology.  He got famous/infamous for suggesting that erosion patterns on the Sphinx suggested that it was much older than was commonly believed, and was likely built by a civilization that predated Egypt perhaps by a thousands of years.  Dr. Robert Schoch, who earned his Ph.D in geology at Yale, analyzed the Sphinx and agreed with him.  You can see the video–narrated by Charlton Heston!:)–here.

When Schoch presented his findings at a conference, Egyptologists present could say little about the actual data he presented.  But one retorted, “Well, you say that the Sphinx was built thousands of years before, but if another civilization built it, where is the evidence?  Where are their tools?  Where is their writing?”  Schoch could only stare back rather dumbfounded. Hadn’t he just presented evidence in the form of the Sphinx?  Perhaps they did not accept the fact of the Sphinx itself as evidence because it did not fit into their preconceived notions of what constitutes evidence, which has to be in the form of writing, pottery, etc.  Of course, if a highly developed civilization did exist somewhere around 10,000 B.C., it would have suffered catastrophic collapse as a result of the asteroids that struck Earth around that time.  If they did have a written language and if they made pottery, it would have been washed away almost immediately.

We see how these different areas of belief work together.

So I say, let the Germans go nuts.  Let them make far-fetched claims.  It beats some other avenues they have taken in the past . . .

6th Grade: Welcome to the Jungle

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings All,

This week we continued with seismic changes brought about by the Reformation, which started as a religious movement, and then quickly morphed into vehicle for altering the entire cultural and political landscape of Europe. For better or worse, a new world emerged in the wake of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli.

At the end of last week we summed up the differences between the different thinkers and movements in the following manner:

  • The Magisterial Reformation (Luther, Calvin, etc.) saw the church as corrupt, but the state as a secure bulwark either against the church or as a platform upon which to build a new society. Luther, for example, sympathized with the peasants who rebelled in 1524 but urged them to be crushed without mercy. Calvin wanted the state to work with the church to change laws and to use the force of law to enforce church teachings.
  • The Radicat Reformation (Anabaptists mostly) saw the church as corrupt, but also the government and the “world” as a whole. Everything needed torn down and rebuilt from the ground floor. They saw earthly powers just as much a part of the problem as the Catholic church. Everyone, be they Catholics, Lutherans, or Calvinists, saw the Anabaptists as enemies and persecuted them. To be fair, when Anabaptists had a chance, they did engage in some persecution themselves.

But the Lutherans and Calvinists also disagreed amongst themselves and persecuted each other. They agreed on the nature of salvation, but disagreed on how to apply their doctrines in everyday life.

  • Lutherans focused on freedom in Christ from the Law. The best thing we can do as Christians is to simply trust in the love of God and stop thinking about yourself. If you sin, that happens, use it to help draw you closer to God. Focusing on your sins, where you have been good, and where you have been bad, is just another means to keep thinking aobut yourself instead of God.
  • Calvinists saw Lutherans as taking the grace of God for granted. Christ saved us not to whatever we liked but to obey God and follow his commandments. God takes how we live seriously, and we should to. Being mindful of ourselves and our behavior is how we show how we love God.

I asked students how they would seek to resolve these dilemmas and choose who was right, or at least, more right than the others. They did a wonderful job of suggesting solutions and then adjusting them when others commented. It is certainly fine to be unsure about question like this, as these are deep and difficult questions. We will tackle why everyone persecuted everyone else for their beliefs later on, but Europe descended into chaos. Nobody had clean hands.

This week we looked at the English Reformation, inaugerated by Henry VIII, and continued especially via his daughter Elizabeth I.

As always, to understand the English Reformation we have to know what preceded it. We we see a particular swing of the pendulum we best understand it by knowing about the swing to the other side. In the early 1300’s, England stood poised to become the dominant power in Europe. They had a popular and successful king, they were winning a war with France, and they had more overall political and cultural unity than most any other European power. But over the next 100 years, they experienced a period of convulsive events that upended most everything:

  • The onset of the Black Plague (which also impacted the rest of Europe)
  • The death of the heir to the throne
  • A complete reversal of fortune in their protracted war with France
  • The abdication and mysterious death of Richard II
  • The unexpected early death of Henry V, victor at Agincourt.
  • The War of the Roses (1455-85) between the aristocratic houses of Lancaster and York, which saw the untimely deaths of Henry VI as well as Richard III.

Henry VII was actually a relatively minor Lancastrian nobleman who came to power in part because he was the last man standing. England needed and craved stability, and when Henry married Elizabeth of York, people were satisfied. England could move forward.

Henry VII had two sons, Arthur and Henry. Arthur died as a young man, leaving his son Henry the only bridge between future stability and political chaos once again. Henry was never supposed to be Henry VIII, but . . . these things happen, and they change the course of history.

Wherever the Reformation took root, it did so for slightly different reasons and took different forms.  Some say that the English Reformation was driven more by personality and nationality than theology, and there may be truth to this.  In time, Anglicanism would develop a distinct theological voice, but in the beginning the marriages of the monarch determined much of the course of events.

When we think of Henry VIII we often think of a domineering and abusive man, perhaps too much in love with his own power.  This may capture much of the truth of who Henry was, but he did not necessarily begin that way.  He had great intelligence.  He spoke fluently in perhaps three different languages.  He was an accomplished musician and dancer. He wrote a legitimate and scholarly treatise on the sacraments and he had He had a love for crowds and spectacle, and England adored him in the early years of his reign. He seemed genuinely in love with his wife Queen Catherine, who bore him a daughter named Mary.

But the fact that he had no son, and his wife was getting on in years, gnawed at him. In addition, he found himself head over heels smitten with another woman named Anne Boleyn. Henry insissted that his marriage to Catherine had no validity, because Catherine had been briefly married to his elder brother. The Church disagreed and refused to grant a divorce or an annulment. So Henry broke from the Catholic faith (he had made arguments against Luther years earlier) and made himself the head of the Church of England. After that, he could divorce Catherine and marry Anne rather easily. 🙂 Of course not everyone went along with this, and some (such as the Catholic martyrs John Fisher and Thomas More) lost their lives for refusing to sign on to the new order.

Had Anne bore Henry a son, who can say what might have happened, but Elizabeth was her only surviving child. Henry eventually accused her of adultery and witchcraft and had her beheaded. Anne protested her innocence to no avail. His next wife, Jane, died in childbirth. He divorced his fourth wife Anne of Cleve, and also executed his fifth wife, Cehterine Howard. His sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, managed to outlive Henry. By the look of her, she may have been made of sterner stuff than his previous wives, having mastered the ‘stern library’ look. 🙂 Many credit her with guiding Henry’s son Edward (from his brief marriage to Jane Seymour) in the Protestant faith and making sure he held the Protestant line after Henry’s death.

No English king, with the possible exception of Henry II, had weilded more power than Henry VIII. And yet, I think that his grasping was not driven by strength but weakness. Many of his portraits cannot help but reveal a suspicious, gnawing insecurity. Here is a portrait of him as a young man, perhaps in the very earliest days of his reign:

And him in middle age well into his time in power. The wary eyes are still there:

Six years after the death of Edward VI (who died at age 14) his oldest half-sister Mary became queen.  History knows her as “Bloody Mary,” because of her persecution of Protestants.  In many ways she deserved this epithet, but we must try and sympathize with her.  Henry unjustly divorced and banished her mother Catherine of Aragon.  She had little contact with Protestants, and plenty of time to nurse a grudge, to plan to right the wrongs of the past.  We might understand better if we we realize that she thought that Henry had “ruined the country,” and God placed her in authority to bring England back to the faith and right previous wrongs.

To this psychological motivation we should add that neither Henry or Mary’s mother lived very long. What if she felt that she had precious little time to accomplish her goals before her death? As the saying goes, “Beware of an old man (or woman) in a hurry.” In this image to the right we see the same gnawing insecurity her father could not hide. Like Henry she knew she needed a son if her attempt at reform would last, but as an older woman nearly past childbearing years, she had little hope of a suitor actually appearing. We can lament the tragic nature of her life without condoning her actions. When we see her portrait nearly at the end of her life and reign, we see the same wary countenance as her father.

unframed presentation

It would be left to the daughter whose birth must have dramatically disappointed Henry, the daughter of Anne Boley, Elizabeth, to attempt to consolidate the turbulence of the realm. We will look at her efforts next week.

Dave

8th Grade Civics: Aristotelian Fractals

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings All,

In the first post of the year, we talked about the debate various theologians and political scientists have had about whether or not government is a byproduct of sin, or would have existed regardless of whether or not we live in a fallen world. Part of this debate involves what we think the proper function of government should be, and how we arrive at government in the first place.

Aristotle developed a philosophy that supports the idea that the state is “natural,” that is, the state arises from what it means to be human apart from the reality of sin. He writes,

Because it is the completion of associations that exist by nature, every city exists by nature, having itself the same quality from which it grew. It is the logical end to which natural associations move, and the nature of things exists in their “end,” or purpose. Now self-sufficiency of a state is its proper end, and so the best place for a city to aim.

He who is without a city [community] is either a poor sort of being, like one whom Homer wrote about when he said,

‘Clanless and lawless and heartless is he.’

The man who is by such nature unable to join a city at once plunges into a passion for conflict, war, and strife. He cannot bond with his fellows, and only seeks to chop down rather than to plant.

Aristotle saw the family as the natural result of the family. When we think of our identity, we might assume that we are “ourselves” in a completely isolated way. But if we pull back, we see that we are who we are because of a variety of factors completely outside our control. Biologically, we inherit our DNA from our parents. Culturally, we are influenced by our families, our neighborhoods, and things that happen to us. Whenever we use the word “I” we cannot escape the reality of “Thou.”

If we define the self by those around us, Aristotle found it perfectly reasonable to argue that we need connections to others to realize our humanity in general, and our individual identities specifically. The state arises from the need for families to come together not so much to decide matters of right and wrong, but to expand our identity. Those without connections to others will become bestial, and lose something crucial to themselves. Just as our identity comes from others as people, so too families need to find their place among a larger group of familes.

Aristotle’s ideas might be more than mere theory. This development of family, to clan, to state, might actually have taken place in the Greek and Roman world, among other places.

Part of understanding Aristotle’s concept involves grasping the nature of “fractals.” We can define a “fractal” as a pattern that repeats itself at different scales, with smaller fractals containing the essence of the carrier of the pattern.

We should ask ourselves if

  • The family is a fractal of the state

Or

  • The state is a fractal of the family.

The difference is subtle, but has importance. If we prefer the former, the state gives legitmacy/support to the family. If the latter, the state derives its legitimacy/support from the family. But whichever side we might prefer, a relationship between the two remains. We all see, for example, political polarization, and a decline of our political culture. If we beleive in Aristotle’s connection between the state and family, this decline should not surprise us. The family has been in crisis for some time in our country. One is a fractal of the other.

The ripple effectes of our decision about priority has expanding fractals of consequences. On the one hand, radical individualism makes no metaphysical sense.

  • We did not create ourselves
  • Who we are has a strong relation to our parental DNA
  • Where we grow up, those around us, etc., all do much to shape our identity.

So it is obvious that our identity comes from outside of ourselves.

But we cannot swing in the opposite direction and declare that no such thing as personal identity exists. Societies that assert that no one has any identity outside of the collective are primed to become totalitarian monsters. Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Mao’s China all prove this out. Such regimes wreak havoc on the world, as WW II bears out.

Dave

9th Grade: Egypt’s Desert Formation

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings to all,

I hope you have had a good week, and I hope too that you will enjoy the weekend before us.

This week we began our unit on Egypt, and first considered the influence of geography on the formation of their civilization.  I wanted to ask the following of the students:

1. What is the central feature of Egyptian geography, and why might this promote civilization?

2. What about Egyptian geography might influence it towards strong centralized government?

3. How might Egyptian geography have influenced their religion?

I do not believe geography exercises an absolute authority over humankind.  We are always left with choice & responsibility for those choices.  Having said that, we should not neglect the impact our surroundings may have upon us.  I do also stress to the students that the heart of any civilization is not its surroundings, resources, etc., but what it worships.  What a civilization worships is, in its turn, often reflected in its architecture.  With that in mind, I anticipate us taking a hard look at the pyramids next week.

When we think about Geography and its connections to Egypt, we noted the following:
1. The extremes of Egyptian geography: Only somewhere between 5-10% of their land was arable, but that land was some of the best farmland in the ancient world due to the yearly Nile floods.  Lush farm land backed right up against barren desert (as seen in the picture below).  This geographical tension probably produced psychological tension.  We see in Egypt, for example, the duality between the worship of almost any life whatsoever, and the reign of death just beyond.  The pictures of the Nile river valley below illustrate this stark contrast.
Nile River Valley
This tension had to be resolved in either a positive or negative way.  As time went by, death gained the upper hand.  Here is an early Egyptian poem that reflects this.  Some of these sentiments may ring true from a Christian perspective, and some lines resemble aspects of Biblical Wisdom literature. I think, however, that the overall imbalance towards death as an escape from the “claustrophobia” of life rather than a source of redemption is evident.
Egypt and Death: An Early Poem
To whom can I speak today?
One’s fellows are evil;
The friends of today do not love.
To whom can I speak today?
The gentle man has perished,
But the violent man has access to all.
To whom can I speak today?
No one remembers the past;
No one at this time does good in return for good.
Death stands before me today
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going outside after being confined.
Death stands before me today
Like the fragrance of myrrh,
Like sitting under the shade on a breezy day.
Death stands before me today
As a man longs to see his house,
After he has spent many years in captivity.
The Nile River valley had to serve as the center of Egyptian civilization, and in turn, we note that the Egyptians had an unusual inward focus.  They did not interact with many other peoples in the ancient near east.  Some geographies push people out of their settings, but we might imagine the Nile river as a giant vacuum, sucking everyone towards it.
  • The extremes may have led to Egypt’s focus on ‘Ma’at,’ or keeping things in balance. When one lives in between stark images of life and death constantly, it should not surprise us to see an inordinate focus on the concept of “balance.”  Keeping the order of things (ma’at) was the central job of the pharaoh, and of course this is a semi-divine task.  No problem per se for the Egyptians, as in their mind  the pharaoh’s were divine, or perhaps semi-divine, themselves.  When we look at the Exodus in a little bit we should keep in mind that among other things, God exposes Pharaoh’s complete inability to maintain “ma’at.”  God uses the plagues as a means to free His people, but also a message to the Egyptians to come join the Israelites.  Pharaoh’s inability to maintain harmony and balance gets decisively exposed.
  • The relative sameness and flatness of Egypt contributed to the political centralization of Egypt.  Egyptian society could not exist without fair and equitable distribution of the Nile floodwaters, and this would have required executive oversight.  But it may also have psychologically contributed to the eventual rigidity of thought that eventually overtook Egypt from about 1800 B.C. onward.

With this emphasis on Ma’at we get confronted with a very different way of thinking, and a very different set of priorities.  A president who wanted to look successful in his memoirs would probably highlight the great changes he brought to America.  In Egypt, Pharaoh’s “memoirs” focused on how they kept things exactly the same, in just the proper proportion (for those interested one can read this post on Ma’at and Pharaoh Userkaf).

Next week we began our look at Thutmose III and the Battle of Meggido.  We will continue that next week as well examine the Book of the Dead and the monotheistic Pharaoh Ikhneton.

Blessings,

Dave

9th Grade: An Introduction to Civilizations

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

I hope the school is going well for you and your family. Here is our first of many updates that I will send to parents and students throughout the year.

This class resets our four year cycle of our study of different time periods, which will culminate at the end of their senior year. At the beginning of any endeavor, it’s important to define the terms and the parameters for how we will examine the past.

We should understand the study of history as

  • The examination of human action,
  • Within the world God made, that God also inhabits (God is not just “up there” in Heaven but among and within us). There are some things that every human being that has ever lived has experienced in much the same way.
  • Within specific contexts of climate and geography.

I emphasized to the students that human choices do not happen in vaccuums, that context matters.

Romans 1 shows us that our experience of the world should help us know God, and we are left without excuse. Genesis 1 shows us world where things are distinct but also in harmony. We see

  • Darkness and Light
  • Water and Land, or the fluidity/change and order/stability
  • Rest and Work
  • Man and Woman

all in proper proportion. When we live rightly within these different elements of creation, we will flourish–the train is running on its tracks. When we venture beyond the red line on either side—we have too much change too rapidly, or too much emphasis on either men or women–we can expect to run aground rather quickly.

Before we move into the actual study of certain civilizations, I thought it appropriate to think of what we mean by the term ‘civilization,’ and what this might have to do with a Christian worldview.  I gave the students an example of a desert island divided into two halves.  Both halves have a government (a despotic king), religion (worship of a bloodthirsty god), laws and a way of life, (everyone pick up a stick and try and bash in the head of someone on the other side of the island).  They have a large enough group of people and a defined location, if one happens to believe that these are important criteria.

We discussed whether or not  this be could be termed ‘civilization.’  Even if it was a place where you would not want to live, was it ‘civilization?’  While I acknowledge that defining the concept is a bit slippery, in the end I think we can give a clear answer in the negative.

The definition I am using for civilization in this class is from historian Will Durant, who stated that civilization is, “Social order that promotes cultural creation.”  Life on our hypothetical island could not allow for ‘cultural creation.’ No buildings could be built, no books written, not even advances in weaponry could be made if everyone’s daily life consisted entirely of sleeping, eating, and fighting.

I believe the definition we are using is a good one because human society should help us live out what it means to be made in God’s image.  The first thing we see about God is that He creates.  A society that did not allow for human creation would deny a fundamental tenet of what it means to be human. Being made in God’s image means many things, but surely it must include something of what J.R.R. Tolkien called ‘sub-creation’ on our part.   If we look back on the island example, is the life lived there really human life?  Even beavers build dams, and otters make water slides for themselves.  Living just to eat, sleep, and fight would put us below many animals.

This week we also looked at the basic elements of all civilizations.  What purpose do civilizations serve, and how do they function?  Ultimately, civilizations exist to provide a means of human interaction, a structure that allows us to live out God’s image and call on our lives.  While none of the civilizations we will study will be ‘Christian’ civilizations (if such a thing is even possible), the closer one gets to this goal, the better off people are.  While we may not need civilizations per se, we do need each other.  God Himself is a kind of Community (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) and as we are created in His image, so too we need to live in community with one another to make us fully human.

We examined what I call the Five Elements of Civilization:

Geography

Suppose that you and your friends wish to do something together.  You would need to agree on a location to meet.  For there to be profitable human interaction, we need a defined physical space to do so.  Obviously, the geography must provide a minimum of food, water, etc. for civilization to exist.  But as we discussed, ideal geographies do not tend to foster civilizations.  When things are too easy, we never need to learn, invent, or progress.  Historically speaking, we need a challenge to thrive.  On the flip side, some geographies present such an extraordinary challenge that man’s nearly heroic adaptation to them binds them into such narrow confines as to stunt the growth of civilizations (one might think of desert nomads or Eskimo peoples in the Arctic).

Over the course of the year we will see the subtle influence of geography on the way people live.

Economics

No one can be completely self-sufficient. “No man is an island.”  We neither know all or can do all things well.  We need others to help us, but also need to have a means of exchanging goods and services fairly so these beneficial trades can take place.

A strict barter economy makes perfect sense.  I have apples, you have wood.  If we trade we both get something we easily know to have a direct value.  With one I can build a house, with the other I can avoid hunger.  Barter economies have the great advantage of simplicity, but the great burden of a complete lack of flexibility.  Imagine doing your weekly shopping, having to load up the wagon with bushels of grain, a few pigs, etc.  Then, you can only get what you need in return only if someone needs what you have.

A money economy helps solve some of these problems, and money began with precious metals.  But who made the first exchange of a shiny metal for a bushel of wheat?  You cannot eat, wear, or live in shiny metal.  The same is true of paper money.  In itself, it’s only a piece of paper.  You could write on it, or perhaps burn it for a few seconds of heat.  The money has value not for anything in itself, but because of our agreed upon belief about what it represents. Hence, the link between the health of our economy and the trust we place in our government and those around us.

A good economy will foster helpful and just exchanges of goods and services, which in turn fosters honoring social interaction.

Politics

Or — what I call the outward structure of civilization.  We need an agreed upon way of making decisions, and we need to know what is expected of us.  For example, we must decide if we are to drive on the right hand side or the left, or no one would drive at all.  We must also have an agreed upon way of deciding what side of the road we drive on, or nothing can ever get accomplished.

Laws serve a good purpose if they help grow helpful interaction between people.  They oppress if they stifle such social interaction.

Religion

Or – what I call the inward structure of civilization.  Since no one can write a law code that covers every situation, if we are to interact with others successfully we need a strong set of unwritten rules that everyone follows.  If someone cuts in line at the grocery store, we do not have the option of calling the police, for example.  This unwritten code comes ultimately from our religious beliefs.  We don’t cut in line in the final analysis because we believe in Justice.

I encouraged the class to think about religion more broadly than just what happens on ‘Sunday,’ in a given civilization.  As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” or to put it another way, “You are what you worship.”

Religion is in a broad sense what we give ourselves to truly, not merely our lip service.  A society might outwardly worship God, gods, or possibly even ideals and values like freedom, and so on.  Everyone worships something, and we cannot help but be conformed to the object of our worship.  This ultimate devotion becomes the main spring of our values.

Many modern historians often make materialistic arguments for the origin of civilization.  They will say things such as, “When river valley ‘x’ began to dry up the people came together to maximize their food input and begin to specialize.  From this early social organization governments arose, and then these governments codified religious belief to enforce their power.”

And so on, and so on.

I entirely disagree with these kinds of explanations, at least as the primary explanatory concept.  Such theories completely misunderstand human nature.  Why do relationships happen?  We do not enter into a relationship with people based on the need to survive.  We are made for relationship (“It is not good for man to be alone”).  We are drawn together by our common loves, by our common worship.  We were made for worship, and this is why religion forms the heart of any civilization.

Culture

In the narrow sense, culture is what we do with our free time.  A person’s hobbies are often a better insight into who they are than their jobs.   In a broader sense, culture is about how we interact with God’s creation, and how we outwardly express our inner values and strengths.  Broadly then, culture speaks to our values, and a bit more narrowly, culture is that which makes life enjoyable (reading books, playing games, etc.), and sets us apart from the rest of creation.

Of course every culture can and should have room for purely “fun” activities, but ideally our recreation truly engages in “re-creation,” whereby we image the God who creates.

My goal through all this was to try and show how each element is not an island, but impacts other areas.  These elements are interconnected and depend on one another. For example, I asked the students to think about American culture, and clearly, we value sports very highly. We put a great deal of time, attention, and money into sports. What might this say about us, and what might be the connections to other areas of our society?

Some students suggested that it means that we love competition, and I thought this an excellent insight. Indeed, we see competition baked into our political system (candidates compete for votes against each other), and our economic system as well. Some of you may be old enough to remember Hechinger hardware stores, and Crown Books, both of whom lost out in competition with other companies. These are just the kind of connections I want students to make. Well done!

Next week we will begin looking at actual civilizations, and begin applying this theoretical interpretative model to reality.  We will begin to look for the patterns and truths that history reveals to us.  Below I include the famous set of paintings by Thomas Cole called The Course of Empire.  I do not necessarily agree with everything regarding Cole’s interpretation of history, but it is a wonderful visual image of a thought provoking theory, from a civilization’s beginning to its end.

Thank you again for all your support.

Blessings,

Dave Mathwin

8th Grade Civics: Machiavelli and Janus

by Dave Mathwin

This week we began our first reading of Machiavelli, one of the more controversial and intriguing political thinkers in history. I hope that the students will find him enjoyable and thought provoking.

Machiavelli comes with a reputation. To say that someone is “Machiavellian,” means that they are conniving, amoral, and without scruple. His most famous work, The Prince seems to famously advocate that “the ends justify the means,” another phrase from which many of us shrink.

Students are welcome to their opinion of Machiavelli, whatever that might be. But first we have to make sure we understand him if we want to reject his approach.

We can begin tackling the troubling phrase, “the ends justify the means.” As a categorical absolute, this statement makes no sense. It makes as little sense as its opposite, “No ends justify the means.” This phrase usually means means that anything that one does to achieve a legitimate goal is justified. But even the most extreme devotee of this idea would not say that anything one does to achieve a goal be within bounds. When faced with an “end,” such as discovering buried treasure, we realize that some means would be justified to find it, and some would not. So context matters.

For example, if a single guy on sabbatical from his job with some money to burn wanted to take a few weeks to run around the globe in search of treasure, most would think that fine. If a family man on a tight budget did the same thing, we would raise an eyebrow and question the proportionality of the end and its means.

Machiavelli never directly said, “the ends justify the means,” but it is true that, while he recognized context and limits, he willingly expanded the boundaries of ends and means in ways not explored previously.*

Machiavelli did not invent poltical science as a discipline, but he did found its modern incarnation. Previous to Machiavelli, political thinkers started with an “absolute,” a particular idea of the good. They then sought to have the state in question molded to that absolute idea. For Plato, this meant the world of the Forms. For Aristotle, this was the golden mean revealed in nature and experience. But other civilizations followed along this model. Medieval society, for example, had as its guiding star the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven,” and sought to model their political order around the heavenly order of seraphim, archangels, angels, and the like. Ancient Egypt looked back to a mythic past of harmony and balance, and Pharaoh’s ruled in attempt to recreate this balance, which they called Ma’at. Many other examples exist.

Machiavelli started from the other end. He wanted rulers to look at the situation they faced in real time first and not concern themselves with ideals not immediately relevant to their experience. But Machiavelli definitely had a goal in view. He wanted the Prince to stay in power, not, I think, for the sake of power itself, but to bring about stability. Stability in itself was a worthy aim, because its lack would almost assuredly usher in violence on a broad scale.

In The Prince Machiavelli deals with various scenarios in which a ruler might strengthen or jeopardize his ability to stay in power.

Our first example involved what Machiavelli described as a “Mixed State.” Let us suppose you have a country (Redland) in which you have a Redland ruler with Redland people. Unfortunately their king is incompetent or destructive in his rule in some way. This leads to some in Redland to conspire with the king of Blueland to come in to Redland, and take over Redland for himself. Taking Redland would be relatively easy. After all, the fight is not fair, and it is not fair in your favor. Blueland’s army has to fight Redland’s army, but Blueland also has the assistance those within Redland who actively conspire to get you to take over, so your victory is quite likely.

But once Blueland takes over Redland, Blueland’s ruler will face many problems quickly, in fact, more problems than if they defeated them “straight up.”

For one, Blueland has to reward those in Redland who helped you to win. But how much should one trust such people? If you don’t reward them, they will turn against you just as they turned against their previous ruler. If you reward them too much, you will alienate your own army, as well as strengthen those who have already proved untrustworthy to their ruler.

If Redland has a different culture, customs, and language than Blueland, you will face additional problems (Machiavelli cites the example of Louis XII of France who quickly conquered, and then quickly lost, the city-state of Milan). Ideally, you can get away with changing as little as possible (mimicking the general policy of the Romans and Cyrus the Great of Persia). If you make the mistake of introducing new forms of taxation on the conquered people to pay for your conquest, you start the clock on your expiration date as the new king of Redland.

So far Machiavelli merely analyzes the problems. This aspect of Machiavelli is not what makes him controversial.

The controversy comes in what follows. A commentator from another era might have then said, “So, we see that Blueland should not conquer Redland even if invited in by a Redland faction.” Machiavelli essentially says, “If you find yourself in a position akin to the king of Blueland, how do you then maintain your power?” He does not concern himself with the morality of the conquest, but supposes the conquest as a thing that happened. The question then becomes, “What do I do now?” rather than “What should I have done?” Some argue he goes farther, and in effect tells rulers how to do the wrong thing and get away with it. Personally I don’t go this far in my reading of Machiavelli, but I understand how others might. Regardless of what we think of what Machiavelli is doing, he certainly puts the emphasis on the pragmatic over the ideal.

He lays out the options:

  • If you withdraw entirely from Redland and effectively say, “Whoops, my mistake,” there will be chaos not only in Redland but also among your own people in Blueland, as you will look like an idiot who puts his hand to the plow but doesn’t see it through. You might lose power in both places. Again, rulers might want to keep their power for selfish reasons, but amidst political chaos, violence increases and many suffer. So withdrawal from Redland would likely help no one.
  • What most attempt is some kind of half-measure, where you try to govern your new territory from Blueland and find yourself continually frustrated. This would be akin to trying to babysit toddlers via Zoom. It wouldn’t go so well.
  • Most are not willing to do one of the two things that at this point must be done. You can either 1) Occupy Redland, or 2) Destroy Redland and repopulate it with people from Blueland.

Both paths come with problems. Occupying Redland will be expensive, and requires a great deal of energy and determination. Do you have the money and patience for this? Most do not.**

The quickest and easiest solution is to burn the territory and scatter the populace. Then, you resettle the land with your own people. This saves you the cost of paying your army for years on end, and gets all the bad stuff out of the way right at the start. The Normal Conquest of 1066, for example, largely fits this pattern. This obviously involves a lot pain and suffering for people in the short term. But it actually creates long term stability. Better to rip off the band-aid in one go than to prolong uncertainty and instability for decades.

Is this “the ends justifies the means?” Yes, and no. He does not counsel that Blueland should have invaded in the first place. He does argue that once Blueland has gotten their hands on a “Mixed State,” they have only bad choices in front of them. The best of the bad choices is the “morally correct” one, the choice that 1) Preserves stability in the long run, and 2) Deals quickly and decisively with the problem.

Again, Machiavelli differs from previous political theorists in that, while those before Machiavelli directed their ideas toward a particular end or goal, Machiavelli has it both ways. Like the Roman god Janus, he has two faces.

I look forward to seeing how the students will react to Machiavelli’s approach as the year continues.

Dave

*Our squeamishness about “the ends justify the means” is exposed somewhat in our love of stories where a man has something horrible happen to his friends or family, and then goes on a rampage to get his daughter back, or avenge his partner’s death, or something like this. Most often these movie heroes cause a great deal more destruction than they themselves experienced, but we cheer them on anyway.

**The Romans grew their power in Italy largely through this method, which requires extraordinary patience and conviction of purpose, something Machiavelli does not mention, though perhaps he does elsewhere.

Communism and Gnosticism

by Dave Mathwin

I have written before that I think the best historians are always part-time philosophers and theologians.  For events to have meaning, they can’t just “be,” they need a context.  If we have no interpretive framework, we have no meaning.

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Eric Voegelin may not be a historian by some definitions, but he certainly qualifies as a philosopher/theologian.  His short pamphlet Science, Politics, and Gnosticism gives the reader a lot to digest, and provides a framework for understanding modern political movements.

First he gives his working definition of “Gnosticism.”  At root, gnostics believe that “God,” the “Demiurge,” or whatever goodness that exists had nothing to do with the creation of the physical world.  The world in fact separates us from true goodness, and to “get back” to our original, pure, and spiritual state we must somehow escape creation and its ill effects.  Of course, only a select few will have the will, but most importantly, the knowledge, (or the “gnosis”) to do this. Salvation comes only for the soul, not the body.

Every political philosopher must decide what to do with creation.  Should we seek to accommodate ourselves to it, have dominion over it, or seek to transcend or abolish it altogether?  While these choices may not always come directly from our conscious selves, we make these choices in one way or another.  Voegelin shows that even so-called materialistic ideologies like Marxism and Nazism have strong gnostic roots.

On the surface at least, Marxism appears to be all about this world.  It has a materialistic cause for the changes in history (economics and class struggle). It argues for an abolition of traditional religion.  It seems to preach an earthly utopia of sorts.  Nazism also focused on racial purity.  Hitler wanted a 1000 year Reich on earth.  He wanted to transform the world politically and aesthetically.  But Voegelin helps us look behind the mask.

To take an “anti-science” stance is to take a stand fundamentally against the created order.  Part of our humanity is the desire to grow in wisdom and understanding, to seek, to knock (Lk. 2:52, Mt. 7:7).  Science itself demands a continual re-evaluation of even its basic principles.  But Marxism, along with all totalitarian societies, demands an end to questioning. Voegelin quotes Marx,

When you inquire about the nature of creation and man, you abstract nature and man.  Give up your abstraction and you will give up your questions along with it.  For socialist man, [such a question] becomes a practical impossibility.

Thus, in denying the right to questions, the supposedly scientific basis of Marxism breaks down.

Many focus on Marx’s view of class warfare and an oppressive industrial capitalism–more “material” factors.  He and other devotees expected the Revolution to start in England or Germany, where such political and economic systems had developed farthest.  But the fact that it started in Russia, the most religious country in Europe at the time, strongly testifies to the religious roots of communist ideology.  “History” for Marx was nothing but a mistake.  Humanity’s experience in and with creation offered nothing but a universal negative of oppression.  Again we see this desire to break free from the created order, to transcend it, rather than transform it.

Gnosticism had appeal mainly to the intellectual elite of late antiquity, possibly because it told the elite what they wanted to hear.  “This knowledge is not available to all, or easy to see or understand.  How clever of you to have found it!”  Gnostic religions create a distance between the elite and the rest of humanity, with the “knowledgeable” able to dictate to the rest of us.  However much Marx may have hoped for a people’s dictatorship, the movement never got past the party-elite enjoying privileges they specifically denied the people themselves.  If Voegelin is right, communists movements never could have advanced beyond this because of their essential gnostic roots.

For Nazism (Communism and Nazism formed the immediate context of Voegelin’s writing in the early 1950’s) some of the same truths emerge.  They claimed a “scientific” basis for much of their theories involving race.  But in the end their totalitarian society naturally denied individual freedoms, but also desired escape from creation through death. Whether through Hitler’s obsession with Wagner, the killing-squads of the SS, or blitzkrieg, itself, I think more than enough evidence exists to see the Nazi hatred for creation.  For them as well, redemption can only come via escape from creation.

We can see the gnostic impulse in other areas of Marxist thought, such as their attempt to escape suffering. Marx saw that the end of fuedalism meant the breakdown of local communities. Capitalism seeks and achieves efficiency, which leads to a higher standard of life. But one does not have to be a Marxist to see that capitalism results in a degree of alienation and estrangement from one another in pursuit of these goals. One only needs to look at suburbia, or ask ourselves how many of our neighbors we know, to see this reality. Marx’s solution, however, involved abolishing private property altogether. This would result in an unprecedented coming together of humanity, which would then bring about, as Marx writes,

the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, between man and man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and being, between freedom and necessity, between objectification and self-affirmation, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the resolution.

One can say that Marx had good intentions, but good intentions pave many dark roads. The misery and oppression under communist leaders in Russia, China, Cambodia, Romania, Venenzuela, etc., etc. speak for itself. We will tackle why communism fails, and why it still appeals to us, in future weeks.

All this offers more evidence for the historian to see economics, politics, etc. as downstream from religious ideology.

Have a great weekend,

Dave

9th Grade: Civilization and the Garments of Skin

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings all, I hope that you will enjoy these updates and that you will find them helpful throughout the year.

We began our Ancient History class this week by looking at a biblical framework for understanding what a civilization is and how they function in our lives. Scripture does not spell this out directly, but if we find some illuminating details if we read the early chapters of Genesis closely.

We see in Genesis 2 that Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed” before God and each other. I urged the students not to understand “nakedness” primarily in physical terms, but in spiritual and psychological terms. They were unclothed (whatever that might have meant), yes, but they lived without masks and artifice. They experienced God, each other, and creation around them directly.

After their sin Adam and Eve hide from God and wear fig leaves. They need a barrier between themselves and God, each other, and the world. In Genesis 3:21 we read that God made for them “garments of skin” as they left Eden. Whatever the nature of these garments might have been, they are obviously a more extensive covering than fig leaves. These garments may have been skins from animals in Eden, meaning that they were clothed in death. We note further that these garments are given

  • As a result of the fall, but
  • Not as part of the curse of the fall.

These garments are, in a sense, a gift from God to help them cope with exile from Eden.

We then see Cain murder his brother Abel. Cain was a farmer, Abel a shepherd. Certainly there is nothing wrong with either occupation. But there varying occupations meant that Abel wandered with his flock while Cain stayed put and worked the ground. When God disciplines us, He does so to draw us back to Him, to reconnect with Him and those around us. This obviously holds true for God’s punishment for Cain.

Cain is told to wander. Why might this be?

  • Cain murdered Abel, and so now God is trying to get Cain to become a wanderer like Abel. He needs to identify with his murdered brother.
  • Cain needs to be “naked” again, to return to something like a paradisal state. In other words, he needs to come to know God again, to become dependant on Him. Cain needs to remove all of his “coverings,” all the barriers he has erected between himself and God.

But Cain clearly does not accept his punishment or obey. Instead, he builds a city! He stays put. First, we have fig leaves, then garments, and now, the biggest covering of all in the form of buildings and other civilizational trappings. Strange as it may seem, Genesis 4 clearly shows us that the implements of civilization come from the line of Cain. We have no connection to the ancient world, but ancient readers would have seen the clues more easily.

  • The lyre (4:21) was a small harp, the strings of which were made from animal intestines.
  • Pipes were often made from the horns of animals

So we see that this “covering” of civilization comes from death, just as the original garments of skin.

Tubal-cain was the father of those who forge bronze and iron, which fits into the general pattern of further exile from Eden in the following ways.

  • First, we know that Eden was on a mountain (Ez. 28:13-14). Exile from Eden meant coming down the mountain of God.
  • There is nothing wrong with farming, obviously. But we should note that farming involves digging into the earth, i.e., descending further into the earth, moving down from the heights. Most of the best farmland is in vallyes, of course, down the mountain slopes.
  • To get the material to forge metal instruments, one has to go much deeper into the earth. We should see this as as Cain’s descendants not just going all the way down the mountain of God, but going under the earth–going further away from God.

The connection between these actions and violence becomes clear directly following this description of the origins of civilization. Lamech, who as the seventh generation from Adam should have represented completeness and rest,* instead stands for a celebration of vengeance and murder. It is telling that in the godly line of Seth in the following chapter, nothing is mentioned about the implements of civilization. Origin stories recorded from other civilizations, such as Hesiod and Ovid, also link metalurgy with violence and war.

This does not mean that civilization is evil, any more than farming, music, or mining is evil. But we should see civilization as another layer of the garments of skin, a “supplement” we now need to get by in the world and interact with one another.

We can perhaps understand the idea of a supplement working both for and against us if we think of something we use every day, such as makeup. Wearing makeup is not wrong. If used in the right way, it can reveal and accentuate beauty. But if you overuse it, makeup becomes a mask we wear to hide ourselves from others–such a person disappears behind the mask they create. What can work for us now works against us. To take an example with guys . . . I go to the gym most mornings before school. Most of the guys I see are there to lose some extra baggage, or get a modest workout. Occassionally, one sees someone so dedicated to improving themselves physically that they no longer look quite normal. Finally, to take an example all of us may relate to, the same can be true of caffeine. We feel tired and we need to get things done, so we drink some coffee. We feel great and can move on with our day. But if we take it too far, coffee becomes something we need even for normal functioning. What once aided us now binds us.

Makeup can be a good thing, and so can coffee. But we might consider that possibly, might it be best of all to use neither? So too, civilization provides many good things for us. It has been the default form of existence for almost everyone who has ever lived. Civilization provides, shelter, social organization, and protection. The specialization inherent in civilization can dramatically increase our standard of living and allows us to build incredible buildings.**

But . . . speaking of buildings, we also have the Tower of Babel. Civilization can do so much for us, in fact, that we can lose our “nakedness” and our dependance on God. To take one example, we don’t feel the need to pray for rain, because if the crops don’t grow where we live, the store can get food from somewhere else. We can easily light a match to make fire, but at the same time, we lose the skill of creating fire on our own. This trade-off happens with many aspects of civilized life.

Just about every city we encounter in the Old Testament is viewed negatively. We have mentioned Cain’s city, and the Tower of Babel, but there is also Abraham’s time in Egypt, Sodom, Jericho, Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, etc., etc. In fact, I can think of only one viewed differently, Salem, which later becomes Jerusalem. It is Jerusalem which begins the process of the redemption of cities, the incorporation of the garments of skin into the New Heavens and New Earth (Rev. 21).

My goal with introducing this material is to help orient us in our study of the many great civilizations of the past. We should neither get too enamored of them, nor see them as a curse or blight. Rather, we should view them as a blessing that is part of a fallen world, that can become a curse if we’re not careful.

Enjoy the weekend,

Dave

*Compare Lamech to Enoch in Genesis 5, also a seventh generation descendant from Adam through Seth.

**To reinforce the idea of the dual nature of the Garments of Skin, we can see the Tabernacle as a covering akin to a city. God commanded that it be built. It is interesting that the same (or perhaps a very similar word) to describe the main builder of the Tabernacle, Bezalel, is also used to describe Tubal-Cain–a craftsman. Bezalel is a good guy, Tubal-Cain a bad guy. They both used similar skills with similar tools to do similar things towards very different ends.

8th Grade Civics: Name and Fact

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings Everyone,

This year, before we delve into specifics about America towards the spring semester, we want to take time to examine the big questions about culture and governance that apply to all civilizations everywhere.

To that end, we spent time this week with Aristotle’s thoughts on what makes a state. We looked at an excerpt from his Politics which reads,

It must be the case that only a shared sense of goodness and justice amongst its citizens can make a state. Merely occupying the same territory together with other men cannot make a state, as can be shown through example. If the citizens of Megara and Corinth [bitter rivals, but very close geographically] were put under one government together, that would not make them one in fact. 

Nor can a state be made merely through common association and interest. Suppose a group of people with different professions—a carpenter, a farmer, a merchant— all living together exchanging goods under a common system of law. Imagine their number to be in excess of 10,000 [a very big number for ancient Greeks]. Imagine these people had nothing in common other than the necessities of living and obedience to the law. 

The members of this group all might come together in a common place to exchange goods and services, but if each person treated their own house and their own person as a state unto itself, how could they be a state, even  if they happened to occupy the same geography?

It is clear, therefore, that a city is not only people occupying the same geography under the same law. Their true unity must come from their common purpose and common life together. True– no state can exist without a sufficient number of people living under the same law. But this in itself cannot make a state.

Aristotle wants us to distinguish between “name” and “fact.” We can all understand, for example, that if I held up a pencil and called it a pen, that would not in fact make it so. Even if I made this assertion for years, the pencil would not be any closer to a pen than when I started.

We can take this a bit deeper. Imagine someone made a robot that looked just like you. It talked like you, walked like you, and more or less mimicked you perfectly. We might even call this robot by your name. But the robot is not you. Among other things, it lacks what we cannot directly see or observe, such as a soul, a conscience, thoughts and beliefs, and so forth. Calling it “you” would not make it so. In other words, we properly name things not just by what they are made of, but by their purpose, their “telos” or end. What a thing is made from is not what a thing “is.”

If we apply this concept to country’s, we may find ourselves a bit uncomfortable. Aristotle pushes us to think of a state as more than a group of people following the same laws, within a defined border, exchanging goods and services. This, he argued, may be a country in name but not in fact. It may look like a country from the outside, but from the inside, nothing exists to bind the people together. The people have no shared purpose, no shared “telos,” no shared love.

Some may remember CS Lewis; The Dawn Treader, where the characters meet an old man (Ramandu) who is in fact a retired star. Eustace remarks that in his world, starts are not people but huge balls of flaming gas. Ramandu corrects him, saying that, “Even in your world, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.” In other words, mere physical composition does not determine being. So too, a state cannot be defined merely as people living in a place on a map.

I asked the students to think about whether or not Aristotle would call the United States today a country in fact, or in name only.

In favor of the “name only” position some argued that

  • We do not share a common religion
  • We do not share a common culture
  • We do not have a common point of attention with movies, music, or other media
  • We are deeply divided politically, with many not trusting our basic institutions
  • We have essentially become “states unto ourselves.” With online shopping, we don’t even need to interact with each other to buy and sell things

But others countered that

  • Sports provide us a way to come together across cultural, religious, and polticial divides
  • American ideals of freedom and self-determination still unite (almost) all Americans
  • When we have to, as in the case of natural disaster or war, we can still “rally round the flag.”
  • Sure, Americans fight with each other, but we always have. Think of our nation’s identity like a big, noisy family that argues with each other but still gets together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We find a way to “hug it out.”

As always, the students are encouraged to take whatever position they think correct and defend it as best they can.

We also started the “History” portion of our class, and began where the class left off last year after the 1920’s. During the 1930’s the world experienced a great deal of suffering. As individuals, how we respond to suffering forms a crucial part of our well being. Some degree of suffering is inevitable, and learning how to handle it appropriately is a crucial skill, not only for individuals, but nations as well.

The rise of Fascism, especially in Germany and Japan, came about mainly because they failed to handle suffering in anything approaching a Christian manner.

For a Christian, suffering comes sometimes as a direct result of our own actions, sometimes as a result of the fault of others, and sometimes for no direct causal reason. Whatever the cause, our suffering should always spur on reflection, humility, and a turning to God. Following this path can be difficult, but . . . this is the path. Possibly Germany, and especially Japan, could make a good case that they had been mistreated by England, France, and the United States. They chose the path of blaming others (Jews, or westerners, etc.) and vowed never to be mistreated again.

They used this impetus to swing way too far in the direction of Unity (racial unity, cultural unity, etc.) and Purity. They created societies that had a great deal of rage, and received power drawn from that rage. For a time, they were formidable military foes.

Thanks so much for your support, and have a great weekend,

Dave

6th Grade: Hierarchical Collapse

by Dave Mathwin

Last week we discussed in class some of the key values and concepts of the pre-modern world. One crucial aspect of the medieval world involved their relationship to hierarchy. Most moderns understand that we need some form of hierarchy to allow us to have a society. But we tend to see these hierarchies as artificial and transient. We have an abundance of stories where those with power get humbled and even humiliated by the little guy. It’s built into our cultural DNA.

Medieval people thought differently. They did not automatically assume that those higher than you in status were better people, but they believed their status had a reality to it beyond mere earthly contingency. They thought this for a variety of reasons, among them:

  • Scripture has a host of examples of God choosing, either directly or indirectly, the leaders of His people. We can recall the example of Moses, Samuel, the prophets, the apostles, etc.
  • The earliest Christian writings after the first century, such as “The Didache” and the letters of St. Ignatius, speak of church hiearchy
  • Many early Christians interpreted the words of the Lord’s Prayer, “thy will be done on Earth as in Heaven,” as meaning that we should attempt to imitate the pattern and ‘life’ of Heaven here on Earth.

Possibly the most influential voice on the subject were the writings of St. Dionysius the Areopogite.* His short treatise On the Celestial Hiearchy described the ranks and orders of angels in Heaven, and he then applied this reality to our life on earth. We looked at a quote from this text in class, which reads,

Hierarchy is, in my judgment, a sacred order and science and operation, assimilated, as far as attainable, to the likeness of God, and conducted to the illuminations granted to it from God, according to capacity, with a view to the Divine imitation. The purpose, then, of Hierarchy is the assimilation and union, as far as attainable, with God . . .

In other words, hierarchy on earth does not exist merely to keep order. We have hiearchy on earth to imitate heaven, to be drawn into the life of God, and to become more like Christ. Thus, living within a God-appointed hierarchy was a crucial aspect of one’s spiritual life. Living outside of hierarchy was therefore a metaphysical and spiritual impossibility.

But what happens when the hierarchy strays and abuses their position? Can there ever come a time when one separates oneself from that hierarchy? And—are you sure you have the right hierarchy? These questions formed the background to the the first significant event we will study this year, the Reformation.

The Reformation was a complicated event that involved many historical factors. Forces such as economic and political change, the Black Death, and so forth all had a part to play in the Reformation. But for a few reasons, I want to focus on the people involved with the students. First, while acknowledging complexity is important, I don’t want to overcomplicate things for sixth graders. Secondly, while economic forces, for example, have importance, “economic forces” do not make decisions. People make decisions, and we should put our focus there.

The Church existed as essentially one physical institution for the first 1000 years of its existence. Then, in 1054 (though in fairness this date is disputed by some, others would put the date at 1204 when the Crusaders sacked Constantinople), the Church split between the east (Orthodoxy) and the west (Catholicism). Still, if you lived in the west, your life essentially remained unchanged after this split. Everyone was Catholic, and the Church thrived in the Middle Ages. One only has to look at the magnificent gothic cathedrals, and the lives of luminaries such as Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assissi, Catherine of Siena, and many others to see a vibrant spiritual life.

However, by the late 15th century, much of this had disappeared, at least in the leadership/hierarchy of the church. Many of course lived vibrant Christian lives but starting in at least the 1370’s, the church was wracked with a succession of poor leaders that lacked spiritual vision and wisdom. The start of 1500’s saw the western church beset by corruption. Many had advocated for reforms, and many had tried various means to improve the church, but these efforts had not gained enough momentum.

No one expected that an unknown German monk named Martin Luther would upset the entire apple cart, not even Luther himself.

It is important to note that no Catholic church historian would deny that the church had grave problems leading up to the Reformation. The difference between Luther, his followers, and the Catholic church was not that one side saw problems and the other didn’t. They often (though not always) agreed on what the problem was. They disagreed on what the problem meant.**

When Luther, an Augustinian monk, published his 95 Theses he did not intend to start a revolt. He sought debate and discussion on points of Church doctrine and practice. Many within his monastic order agreed with him about what he wrote. Pope Leo X himself agreed with some of what Luther wrote and tried to put a stop to some of the abuses Luther pointed out in Germany.

How this snowballed into a full-blown religious revolution is complicated, and my goal is to make it intelligible for the students. Luther posted his theses in 1517 with general support from many. By 1521 he was excommunicated. What happened? I focused on what I see as the central dividing line between those that supported Luther and those that stuck with the church.

  • Luther believed that Scripture had authority over Church tradition and church hierarchy. Luther was convinced that his reading of Scripture was correct. For him, the issue involved putting God’s word above human authority.
  • The Catholic church obviously believed in the authority of Scripture. They wanted Luther to submit his ideas to the Church. He had taken vows of obedience as a monk. Before debating any particulars, they wanted Luther to affirm that he would live according to the vows he took. Luther’s denial of the Church’s authority, and his casting off of his monastic habit, looked to them like a married man wanting a divorce, or a private telling the joint chiefs that he did not need to obey their orders.

The question of Luther’s obedience relates particularly to his vocation. Luther became a monk, and every monk took a vow to Go of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Of course, not everyone needs to become a monk or should. We can compare this in some ways to joining the military. Not everyone can or should join. But if you do join, every recruit needs to obey the orders of their superiors.

Imagine a private writing a long treatise about problems in the high command and making his concerns public. This in itself could be viewed as a problem. Now, suppose that the generals agreed with the private about some things, maybe disgareed with him about others. They tell him to sit tight and be quiet while they consider.

The Catholic hierarchy basically chose this path. They focused on Luther’s vow of obedience, and his need to submit to authority. But increasingly, Luther started not to view the Catholic hierachy as a legitimate authority, and thus, his vows were not binding.

Finally, I would suggest that Catholics believed the best way to serve God was within the hierarchy He established, and Luther thought the only way to serve God was to separate himself from it. Catholics do not say that every pope and every bishop is godly or even a Christian. Israel had some good kings and many bad ones. In Israel, one was not supposed to rebel against even the worst of kings. Nor did anyone ever rebel against corrupt priests. In turn, Luther made a sharp contrast between church hierarchy and civil authority. Church hierarchy had the higher authority of Scripture over them, whereas civil leaders were, on earth at least, accountable only to God.

Many joined Luther in his bold and courageous stance. He inspired many. But Luther was a volatile man–a great revolutionary, but not a good diplomat. Many who agreed with a variety of his beliefs could not join him in separating themselves from the institutional church, such as Erasmus. We looked at a collection of quotes from Luther that show him at his best and worst.

Some may have familiarity with the myth of Cronos/Saturn and his children. Saturn, rebelled against the Titan Uranus, castrating him and freeing his siblings. He then became the supreme power in the cosmos. But he worried, realizing that he had established a precedent, whereby his own children could overthrow him. To prevent this, he ate his own children. But he could not stop what he had put in motion, and later his own children, freed from his belly, overthrew him as well.

Luther faced a similar challenge. His actions moved the locus of authority from the universal institution to local communities and individuals. Many peasants had grievances against the nobility. Luther agreed with them that they had legitimate reasons for their concerns. But when the peasants rose in armed rebellion against the nobility, Luther was horrified, and urged that the rebels be crushed without mercy. Luther did not have a high view of Church authority, but did have a very high view of political authority. Others failed to agree with the distinction Luther made.

Soon various other Protestants emerged, many with much more radical ideas than Luther. Which ideas would win out? How could society hold together? This would be one of the key problems that would shape the next century in Europe.

Have a good weekend,

Dave

*The dating of his life is much disputed, with some believing he lived in the late first or early second century AD, and others arguing for a date much later in the sixth century.

**This is akin to disputes about the meaning of Scripture. People generally agree on what the Bible says. They disagree about what the Bible means.