Superstition and Science

Posted on November 14, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

In July, 1819, up the Arkansas River several score miles from here, a remarkable conversation took place that could have only happened in the Old West of cowboys and Indians. The conversation involved an Indian, but not a cowboy, rather a scientist, a dandy from Liverpool, England. This transplanted Englishman in the early nineteenth-century American West was Thomas Nuttall, who conversed with a chief of the Osages, whose name was Clermont. Nuttall was out from Philadelphia, from whence he had departed nine months earlier, intent on journeying on foot and by boat across Pennsylvania to the Ohio River, down which to the Mississippi River, down which to the confluence with the Arkansas River, up which to the western prairies, eventually the southern Rocky Mountains. That was at least his intent. Having arrived at the Arkansas River in February, he had ascended the river with the help of traders and French boatmen, landing at Fort Smith in April. At Fort, Smith Nuttall had befriended the army physician, Thomas Russell, and had, on the invitation of the post’s commander Major William Bradford, journeyed with the troops to the Red River in May. Returning to the post in June, he had awaited passage up the Arkansas, had hitched a ride with French boatmen paddling a pirogue, and had arrived at Three Forks, at the confluence of the Arkansas, Verdigris, and Grand rivers, in July.

Nuttall was one of the premier naturalists of early America. He was an expert on America’s flora, having made numerous journeys throughout America beginning with his arrival from Liverpool to Philadelphia in 1808. He was, then, a young former newspaper apprentice who had began to teach himself about botany. In Philadelphia, Nuttall became the protege of Benjamin Smith Barton, one of the preeminent botanists of the early nineteenth century. Barton introduced Nuttall to the Philadelphia scientific community, honed his latent talent for identification and categorization of plants, and sent him on numerous journeys of discovery, the most significant lasting two years and taking Nuttall to the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi, and up the Missouri in the company of French and American fur traders. Nuttall sat out the War of 1812 in England, returning to America in 1815. His mentor Barton having died, Nuttall became the leading botanist in America, publishing in 1818 the Genera of North American Plants and a Catalogue of the Species to 1817. Restlessness and wanderlust, however, drove him forward. He departed Philadelphia in October, 1818, on a journey that would take him over a year. His goal was to make a complete examination of the flora of what had once been the southern Louisiana Territory: the lower Mississippi, the Arkansas and Red rivers, tributaries to these great rivers, and the eastern edges of the southern Rocky Mountains.

Nuttall wore many hats. He became a leading ornithologist in nineteenth-century America. The study of geology and zoology fascinated him. He had a great interest in the American Indian, and made it incumbent upon himself, whenever chance led him into their presence, to record their culture, customs, history, and habits. This he had faithfully done on his journey, meeting with and describing, in particular, the Quapaws and the Cherokees. Presently, in July, 1819, Nuttall met the Osages of the western Arkansas Territory and learned about their superstitions and science. Of the latter, Nuttall wrote that “habitual observation had taught [the Osages] that the pole star,” or north star, “remains stationary, and that all the others appear to revolve around it.” Examining the winter sky, the Indians had become “acquainted with the Pleiades,” the cluster of seven stars during winter in the northern hemisphere, “for which they had a peculiar name.” Nearby in the winter night sky, they “remarked the three stars of Orion’s belt.” Like many cultures past and present “they recognized [the planet Venus] as the . . . harbinger of day.” Familiar with the Milky Way galaxy, they called it “the heavenly path or celestial road.” The “filling and waning of the moon” guided their sense of time, “the concomitant phenomena of the seasons,” and “the natural duration of the year.” Beyond these simple astronomical observations, Nuttall said little else about the Osage’s proclivities toward rational thought.

He had much to say, however, about their proclivities toward superstition. They perceived the sun and the moon as spiritual beings. They considered dreams clear prognostications of reality, and would alter plans and behavior accordingly. They likewise believed in “the observance of omens, the wearing of amulets, and the dedication of offerings to invisible or miraculous agents, supposed to be represented in the accidental forms of natural objects.” They invoked in their prayers the “four quarters of the earth” according to the medicine wheel, and “before going out to war they raise the pipe towards heaven or the sun, and implore the assistance of the Great Spirit to favour them in their reprisals, in the stealing of horses, and the destruction of their enemies, &c.” “Their priests or elders” served as physicians, administering “charms” to the “sick.” “They fear, but do not adore bad spirits.” “Anticipating the contingencies of a future state of existence, they . . . inter with the warrior his bow and arrows.” Their anarchic lack of formal government, Nuttall argued, and “want of legal restraint,” kept the Osages from reaching the level of civilization of their white neighbors.

Nuttall discovered on his journey up the Arkansas that the Osage were not exceptional among American Indians in having far more superstition, and far less scientific thought, than their white American counterparts. “The Quapaws” of the Arkansas valley, he wrote, “are indeed slaves to superstition, and many of them live in continual fear of the operations of supernatural agencies.” The Cherokees, whom Nuttall perceived as happily approaching civilization, nevertheless continued to be overwhelmed with the typical Indian penchant toward blood vengeance to right perceived wrongs.

Nuttall’s experience of observing and communicating with the American Indians on his Arkansas journey, his growing understanding of their superstitious proclivities mitigated by sporadic hints of enlightenment, suggested their comparative place in relation to other human societies over the course of human history. Contemplating the Osages, Nuttall perceived a resemblance between their culture and that of the ancient peoples of Asia, as recorded in the Greek historian Herodotus’s Histories. Reflecting on other tribes, such as the ancient Natchez of the Mississippi valley, Nuttall believed that Indian ceremonies worshiping the sun and burying the dead were similar to those ascribed to the ancient Greeks by Homer in the Iliad. He thought that the customs of the Cherokees, on the road to civilization, were comparable to other “imperfectly civilized nations,” past and present.

The Indians were superstitious, yes, but Nuttall thought that they never quite embraced nonsense and irrationality to the fullest extreme. North American Indians refused to believe in sorcery, nor did they embrace “that kind of irrational adoration called idolatry.” Nuttall would disagree with exaggerated claims of some Americans that the Indians worshiped the devil. Rather, not altogether unlike their white counterparts, Nuttall wrote that “all the natives acknowledged the existence of a great, good, and indivisible Spirit, the author of all created being. Believing also in the immortality of the soul, and in the existence of invisible agencies, they were often subjected to superstitious fears, and the observance of omens and dreams, the workings of perturbed fancy. By these imaginary admonitions, they sometimes suffered themselves to be controlled in their most important undertakings, relinquishing every thing which was accidentally attended by any inauspicious presage of misfortune.” But Nuttall refused to allow their irrational belief in fate to mask the contrary observation that the Indians had a certain common sense, even elevated thought, in their perception of the deity.

All of this is to say that Nuttall, like other naturalists of his time who viewed the Indians with interest and understanding, while agreeing that Indian thought and society had not yet reached civilization, nevertheless perceived the Indians as moving toward a nascent state of civilization, similar to the ancestors of Western civilization and science, the ancient Greeks and Romans. The development of ancient Greek science two thousand five hundred years ago, for example, was superstitious and irrational at the same time as it began to approach the rational analysis and superb conceptualization of the natural world for which they are justly famous. It is well to remember that even the greatest Greek scientist, Aristotle, believed in the geocentric universe, thought that the planets of the solar system were perfect, god-like spheres, and thought that all forms of matter naturally tend toward the center. Even so great a scientist as the Roman physician Galen believed that dreams heralded reality. Greeks and Romans were just as credulous about fate, astrology, and magic as the American Indians. One of the great scientists of first-century Rome, the Elder Pliny, was convinced of the efficacy and reality of alchemy. Greek and Roman soothsayers read the future in the shape of a goat’s liver or the patterns in the flight of birds. Indeed, even more modern thinkers, such as the seventeenth-century European and American scientists Tyco Brahe, Isaac Newton, and John Winthrop, Jr., believed in the hidden powers of the supernatural world.

At the same time, the scientists of the late Renaissance and Enlightenment, from 1600 to 1800, were the ones to establish the bases of modern physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Their achievements in calculus, geological sciences, Newtonian physics, and human anatomy and physiology established a clear difference in rational, empirical science from their predecessors, the scientists of Medieval and Ancient Europe. English, French, Swiss, German, and American philosophers and scientists such Locke, Hume, Newton, Lavoisier, Voltaire, Linnaeus, Kant, Franklin, and Jefferson established such clear, apparently objective knowledge about the universe, world, and human existence that they moved far beyond the apparently primitive speculations of proto-civilized people such as Nuttall confronted on his Arkansas journey. This distinction would remain true if the there were such clear differences between the objective, scientific mind and the subjective, intuitive mind, the former represented by Euro-American science since the eighteenth century, the latter represented by Indians and other such primitive, tribal peoples worldwide. Twentieth-century anthropologists such as Robert Redfield, in his book The Primitive World and Its Transformations, were convinced, for example, in the clear distinctions between the primitive and scientific mindsets: the former, primitive mindset, is focused on the organic and alive, on feelings and beliefs, on the oneness of life and being, on nature as an extension of self, on the mythical and mystical, on the subjective; the latter, scientific mindset, is focused on the concrete, objective, rational, methodical, controlling, reducing, materialistic, and utilitarian.

Theorists of science, however, since the mid-twentieth century have challenged the notion of objective, positivist science. Thomas Kuhn, for example, in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued against the old perception of empirical science, where scientists worked collectively toward the common goal of absolute knowledge. Kuhn presented evidence of the subjective element of science. He and other theorists have posited that faith and intuition have quite a bit to do with science, that science is not so much the individual pursuit of a great mind pursuing absolute truth as a collective pursuit of people (university professors) who essentially indoctrinate others (graduate students) into a received belief in a group paradigm, which is defended as fervently by the devoted as would the religious an object of faith.

If we entertain the challenges to the notion of a clear distinction between subjective and objective knowledge, should we not also entertain the apparent distinction between superstition and science? Superstition refers to a non-rational, non-objective approach toward understanding nature. It is a belief in magical, irrational forces at play in cause and effect relationships in the natural world. The superstitious believer in magical, irrational, supernatural forces believes in an “Other” outside of the self; it is, in other words, a belief in outside forces, both natural and supernatural; and these forces have to be understood, used, and manipulated, by an expert or specialist, whether it be a magician, or medicine man, or shaman. This attempt to understand and to manipulate such outside supernatural forces is similar in principle to what a scientist does in attempting to understand and to manipulate natural forces. Indeed, historians of science argue that modern science owes much to the alchemists and practitioners of white magic in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. We may speculate that there were times in the past when the supernatural and natural merged, when superstition met reason in trial and error, and when the specialist, that is the medicine man or shaman, stumbled upon an actual rational and natural causal agent. For example, Indian medicine men often used hollow tubes to suck out evil spirits that caused sickness. The sucking might be directed toward a wound with pus. In sucking the wound to extract the evil spirit, the medicine man unwittingly sucked bacteria out of the wound, aiding the healing process.

The process from superstition to science involved trial and error, the formation of elementary hypotheses and similar elementary tests in the wild to arrive at a basic understanding from which more sophisticated knowledge might grow. The eighteenth-century explorer Jonathan Carver noted in his accounts of journeys in the upper Midwest that Indian healers, while superstitious, were experts in curing external wounds. “They exercise their art,” Carver wrote, “by principles which are founded on the knowledge of simples,” that is, elementary observation, “and on experience which they acquire by an indefatigable attention to their operations.” The Indian shaman observed what sick animals ate, and tried it out on humans accordingly. Thomas Nuttall’s mentor Benjamin Smith Barton, in his 1798 essay, “Collections for an Essay Towards a Materia Medica of the United States,” commented on what he perceived to be the simultaneous ignorance and knowledge of American Indians:  “what treasures of medicine may not be expected from a people, who although destitute of the lights of science, have discovered the properties of some of the most inestimable medicines with which we are acquainted?” These treasures, exploring naturalists such as Nuttall discovered, included the white oak, the bark of which steeped in tea was useful for its antiviral and antiseptic qualities. Indian healers brewed the leaves and bark of the American beech in tea or applied it as a poultice to treat burns, rashes, and asthma. Likewise, the leaves, pitch, and bark of the white pine helped with wounds, colds, and arthritis. The balsam fir was an important analgesic. Indians treated skin ailments, fevers, lung, and intestinal complaints with the hazelnut and witch hazel trees. Kidney stones were treated with the American elm. Hemlock, Indians discovered, was an analgesic and astrigent. Asthma was relieved by skunk cabbage. The sassafras tree, according to historian and naturalist Jeremy Belknap, “affords a valuable ingredient for beer as well as for medicinal purposes.” Indians used sassafras bark and root tea for intestinal complaints and to treat arthritis.

Nuttall discovered on his own journeys examples of the superstitious Indian having a materia medica that had clear healing properties. Journeying up the Missouri River in 1811, for example, he met and interviewed through an interpreter an Aricara medicine man whose satchel of healing herbs included kinnikinnick, which he used for religious smoking to invoke the Great Spirit. At the same time he carried “the ‘down” of the cattail (Typha latifolia), useful for treating burns and other skin problems; wormwood (Artemisia), useful for intestinal problems and malaria; and Rudbeckia (black eyed Susan and green headed coneflower), used to treat burns, skin irritations, [and] snake-bite.” At Three Forks eight years later, Nuttall learned that the Osage materia medica included “the nettle bush (Urtica), the leaves of which, steeped in hot water, form a tea that Indians and settlers alike used for ailments ranging from arthritis to intestinal and urinary problems.”

Over the course of his many journeys Nuttall discovered the subtlety of the Indian understanding of the environment. He learned the different levels of science and rational thought required to live on the frontier, ranging from the practical arts of hunting techniques, weapon development, and canoe and wigwam construction, to more sophisticated techniques of identifying healing plants and devising remedies that are efficacious in healing, to even more rational and objective forms of observation, such as elementary astronomy, mathematics, and communication. In all of these activities, from hunting and canoe building to mixing healing herbs to observing the constellations, Indians used their minds to rise above primitive magic and superstition.

But Indian science? Was there such a thing? Several years ago I edited a three volume encyclopedia on the history of science in America. In selecting the scores of topics that comprised the book, I focused naturally on mathematics, chemistry, physics, geology, medicine, biology, Nobel Laureates, devotees to the systems of Linnaeus and Newton, and some of the greatest thinkers of all time such as Franklin and Einstein. At one point in the editing process, it dawned on me that there might be room for an entry on the science of the American Indian, even though I was not entirely sure how users of the book and reviewers would greet such an entry. I acquired the services of a specialist, Clara Sue Kidwell, formerly of the University of Oklahoma and Bacone College, to write the essay. She wrote quite a convincing piece claiming that, yes, the Indians did practice science. Her argument fit in quite well with my previous studies on a variety of naturalists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries–besides Thomas Nuttall, the New Hampshire natural historian Jeremy Belknap, the traveler-physician John Josselyn, the geographer Jedidiah Morse, the English botanist John Bradbury, and the French-Mexican scientist Jean-Louis Berlandier. Belknap, for example, a historian, scientist, and clergyman who studied the indigenous people of New Hampshire, remarked in his History of New-Hampshire on the inherent, natural intelligence of the native peoples, whose “invention was chiefly employed either in providing for their subsistence, by hunting, fishing and planting, or in guarding against and surprising their enemies.” “Some of their modes and customs have been learned by our own people, and are still retained.” “We have . . .  learned from the natives,” he wrote, “to dress leather with the brains and fat of the animal, which render it extremely soft and pliable.” Their knowledge of herbs has been passed on, and “some of their medicinal operations are still practiced.” They knew how to prevent bites of venomous snakes and knew antidotes to snakebites. The Indians also devised intricate traps to take game. An example was the culheag, which, according to Belknap, who had examined one, “is a forceps, composed of two long sticks, one lying on the other, connected at one end, and open at the other. . . . In this enclosure is placed the bait, fastened to a round stick, which lies across the lower log, the upper log resting on the end of a perpendicular pointed stick. . . . The animal having scented the bait, finds no way to come at it, but by putting his head between the logs. As soon as he touches the bait, the round stick, on which it is fastened, rolls; the perpendicular gives way; the upper log falls, and crushes him to death in an instant, without injuring his skin.” The culheag allowed the Indian hunter to clothe himself and his family in the warm, durable furs of the ermine, raccoon, beaver, wolverine, rabbit, lynx, mink, and martin. Indian hunters traveled to hunting grounds using two of their inventions, snowshoes in winter and the birch-bark canoe at other times; the canoe, white settlers realized, was clearly the best conveyance over rivers and streams. John Bradbury, sometime traveling companion of Thomas Nuttall, noted in his Travels in the Interior of America that the Sauk and Fox Indians of the upper Mississippi had mastered the art of smelting lead ore.

Jean Louis Berlandier, who is little known today, was born in France and educated in Geneva, and traveled to Mexico in 1826, where he joined a military commission that journeyed to the Rio Grande and the Texas Gulf Coast in 1827. Berlandier ended up spending the remainder of his life in Matamoros, Mexico, just across from Brownsville. He was like Thomas Nuttall an explorer and jack-of-all-trades scientist, though by training a botanist. Berlandier actually came to know the American Indians much better than Nuttall. He befriended Kickapoo hunters and went hunting with Comanche warriors. Their practical, scientific knowledge astonished him. Their ability to reason, to conceptualize, to deduce, seemed as advanced as any white scientist who lived in a similar wilderness environment. Berlandier would not disagree with an argument today that the Indians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did indeed practice science.

In short, scientific thought is dependent upon the experience of the natural environment. That is to say, Indian science was limited, but sufficient for their needs; for their time and place, nothing more was needed to live well. Thomas Nuttall discovered this in Oklahoma in August, 1819, when he journeyed west across the prairies from Three Forks heading west toward the source of the Cimarron River. Accompanied by a hunter named Lee, Nuttall journeyed into lands hunted and protected by Cherokee and Osage hunters. If Nuttall had any doubts about the harshness of the environment, the difficulty of surviving in such an unforgiving land, they were quickly dispelled almost immediately, when he became terribly ill after drinking from a tepid pool of stagnant water. He spent several weeks following the hunter Lee trapping for beaver, following a tributary of the Canadian River, moving toward what is today Oklahoma City then north to the Cimarron River, all the while burning with fever, growing delirious, and coming very close to death. The hunter cared in a rough way for the ill scientist, feeding him honey and finding cool places next to beaver ponds to camp and rest. Lee built a dugout canoe, Indian style, to descend the Cimarron and the Arkansas to the Three Forks. Along the way the Osage pestered the hunter and his ill companion, but the wily Lee, thankfully for Nuttall, outwitted the similarly wily Osage warriors, and Nuttall returned. He made his way, eventually, to Fort Smith in September, 1819, where he stayed for several weeks while fever raged all about him, taking the lives of the garrison’s physician Dr. Russell and many other inhabitants. Nuttall learned first-hand the practical skills and applied science required to survive in the early nineteenth-century Arkansas Valley.

For more Nuttall, see my book,

Cover of The Land between the Rivers - Thomas Nuttall's Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819, published by University of Michigan Press, at:

https://press.umich.edu/Books/T/The-Land-between-the-Rivers

Also for a general treatment of the history of science, see my Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity to the Middles Ages, published in an affordable paperback on Jan 22, 2026, by Bloomsbury: find it at: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Ancient-World-Antiquity-through/dp/B0FSW74DKZ/ref=books_amazonstores_desktop_mfs_aufs_ap_sc_dsk_0?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=6oCC7&content-id=amzn1.sym.299f645c-0a78-440a-94a2-fb482e7cb326&pf_rd_p=299f645c-0a78-440a-94a2-fb482e7cb326&pf_rd_r=142-5197957-8175817&pd_rd_wg=Erb81&pd_rd_r=7cdd0d6a-0a38-49cf-a2ba-a

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The Crisis in American Politics

Posted on November 3, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

What the 18th century Framers of our government feared, abuse of power and corrupt politicians taking control of our system of government, has apparently come to pass, if this election season and those who are our choices for President, are any indication.

The Framers—people such as Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Hamilton, Dickinson—feared that Democracy would result in demagoguery, as it did in ancient Athens, and Republicanism, if not checked and balanced, would result in unbridled power, especially in the hands of the Executive.

The Framers were particularly influenced by the ancient Roman Republic, which was a very successful government for a time. The success of Rome was because of the checks and balances on executive power: two consuls were elected annually, could not be re-elected, and had the veto over the other; the Senate, the membership of which was comprised of former magistrates, also had a check on the power of the consuls, who were charged with enforcing laws and commanding the military—as does the President of the United States.

The Romans also had a worldview based on moral principles that seemed appropriate for Republican government. They believed in pietas: piety–respect for elders, respect for ancestors, following the ways of tradition; gravitas: gravity–seriousness, commanding respect, and stolidity; and virtus: virtue—prompt and effective action in the face of problems, tasks, and enemies.

Some of our Presidents have had these characteristics: Washington had gravitas; Roosevelt had virtus; Lincoln had pietas.

I wonder: what quality does our current President have that sets him apart from others? What quality does Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump have that would fit pietas, gravitas, and virtus? Clearly, it is difficult to answer these questions, in part because the highest office has increasing succumbed to arrogance, vanity, hubris, callousness, corruption, and demagoguery. The President of the United States is far too powerful a person to elect anyone who cannot show humility, restraint, wisdom, piety, dignity, strength of character, honesty, and foresight.

Based on our choices and who we have had for the past eight years, I would say that the American people have their work cut out for them, to find a solution to the demagoguery, corruption, political correctness, and subordination to special interests, that dominate our politics, and have effectively made the President and the Executive Branch a tool of ideologues and their political interests.

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The Answer Is: Power, Love, Self-Control

Posted on October 2, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

I once belonged to a group of men, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, most of whom were of the Anglican tradition, who met weekly to discuss Christianity, and to share a meal as well as Eucharist or Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. One day I read the scripture lesson, and presented my ideas and interpretation of four readings, two from the Old Testament, and two from the New Testament. I discussed Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy.

During the course of the discussion, one man asked how an older person should respond to a young person who has embraced atheism. The following was my answer:

Atheism is a philosophy that is a figment of the imagination. It derives from a lack of satisfaction, from unhappiness, from feeling unfulfilled, from fear of the many tragedies that befall humans. How can God allow, if he exists, the many disasters that we read about, experience, on a daily basis? How can God allow the random deaths of children, cancer coming to a person who is apparently healthy and happy, tornadoes that sweep through neighborhoods, terrorist attacks, random murders of the innocent, civil wars, fires sweeping through apartment buildings, the attacks of 9/11, and so on, and so on? There are too many disasters and tragedies and chance occurrences that kill and dismember to list them all. Think of the hunger that exists, the poverty, the disease, the drug abuse, the crime. One wonders: where is God in all of this? God, why have you forsaken us?

These questions have been asked for thousands of years by thoughtful and despairing people who question God even as they realize He exists. God is so much a part of our existence that to deny Him is to deny Self, to subject oneself to never-ending anxiety about what was, what is, and what will be. Jesus on the Cross quoted Psalm 22, God why have you forsaken me?, rhetorically, for he knew that God, Self, never forsakes.

We live in times of terror, disaster, crime, racial conflict, economic woes—but of course all times are alike, never has there been a time of peace, happiness, love, plenty, unending fair skies and full stomachs. So, because each moment has sufficient cause for worry, humans, indeed all animals, fear.

Fear, timidity, cowardice, one could say, is the natural state of humankind. For how can we confront each moment of uncertainty with certain courage and faith? It is quite impossible, because the next moment of uncertainty comes, followed by the next, and the next, and the next. It doesn’t end until death. The anxiety of each passing moment convinces some people that there is absolute uncertainty in the world, that is, there is no God.

In Paul of Tarsus’s s second letter to his friend Timothy, Paul, in one sentence, summed the human dilemma, summed Christianity, and summed why atheism is a philosophy that is based on fantasy. He told Timothy that God asks us to be fearless: fearlessness derives from power, love, and self-control. The Greek word for power, dynamis, is the same word used in the Gospels to describe Jesus’s power in healing others. It is the power of love. And a person can only use this power of love by means of self-control, that is, self-awareness, to realize that love is found in oneself. And this love is God, for as John truly said, God is Love.

Love is a universal, a constant throughout time and place, found wherever there is hate, despair, tragedy, suffering. Love is the universal, the transcendent, the eternal, the infinite. The atheist proclaims there is no God, then proclaims that love exists, not realizing the inherent contradiction.

To discipline oneself, to channel love toward others, is a work of great power. It is the means by which love combats hate.

There is much noise in our society: television, movies, videos, cell, tablets, pc, iphones, speakers, headphones—the list goes on and on. Humans are constantly talking and listening, though rarely is the communication relevant. If a person retreats to his or her own room, there he or she might find God. A wonderful example of this is the song by Thousand Foot Krutch, “In My Room,” the lyrics for which can be found at this link: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/thousandfootkrutch/inmyroom.html

See also my book, Metamorphosis: How Jesus of Nazareth Vanquished the Legion of Fear, available at https://ash-hill-publishing.square.site/product/metamorphosis-how-jesus-of-nazareth-vanquished-the-legion-of-fear-hardcover/ETEBDKWQ5QIVJBWDA4T6JD64?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

 

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Narrative History Rescues the Past

Posted on July 22, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

“Narrative History Rescues the Past”–You’re not likely to see this headlining the latest news feed, though subtle truth rarely makes the news.

Moreover, narrative history is rarely sensational, rarely fantastic, and is (unfortunately) not imaginary, rather based on real people and real places; reality rarely captivates the way fantasy and the unreal do. Yet fiction is not likely to rescue the past.

Doubtless I appear to be writing nonsense: how can people living in the present, anticipating the future, rescue something that has disappeared, gone, never to be relived? The past can be remembered, recollected, but rescued? Hardly.

Stubbornly, perhaps, I maintain that the past can be rescued, and that narrative history wrought by narrative historians is precisely the means to do it; a good narrative historian is a rescuer of the past.

Take my latest book, The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England. There have been many books written on John Smith, of course, and movies made, and poems written, and caricatures drawn, and monuments dedicated to—and more. Why would he need to be rescued, if by that obscure, if pithy, word rescue I mean to bring to awareness, to make known, in the present?

No, that’s not what I mean by rescue. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me define terms. First, what is meant by narrative history?

Narrative history is an account of sequence of events over time restricted to actual sources or implied events; it uses the historical imagination to re-create a particular episode (if consistent with sources); it uses quotes from writings as a replacement for dialogue; it does not manufacture or imagine a plot, rather the plot occurs as a matter of course based on what really happened; it re-creates scenes based on actual experiences; events and sources guide the imagination and storytelling (not vice-versa); and it relies on honesty: honest use of sources, honest presentation of past, honest evocation of human experience.

A narrative historian must write about a person or topic for which they wish to re-live, re-create, re-experience. Sources must exist to allow for this mental exercise, as well as the penchant to understand human nature, which is gained by reflection into self. Added to this is a good imagination: to imagine the past, imagine what happened, imagine the people, then conform the imagination to the sources, to what really happened. Empathy unites, organizes, creates the whole portrait of the past: as the historian researches and imagines, visits places, he/she must feel, must sense the past, must empathize with those who once lived.

Empathy is the means by which the past can, as it were, be rescued. Empathy with another, even another long dead, requires a vicarious dialogue to be created in one’s head. This dialogue with the past was perfected by a highly imaginative philosopher of the 14th century: Francesco Petrarca, who conversed by means of his pen and paper with past people, Cicero and Augustine: he asked them questions, and heard, in his mind, a response.

A dialogue with the past: this is how the historian rescues the past. This dialogue is a mixture of the subjective (feeling based on imagination) with the objective (reason based on sources); it is getting to know the past person: their habits, feelings, thoughts, interests, aims, emotions, accomplishments; it is dealing honestly with the past: the honest appraisal of person by not imposing one’s own point of view, one’s own preconceived notions, on the past, which is anachronistic.

To empathize with the past one must feel the past as well as feel the present. To understand the life of a past person, one must understand his/her own life. The historian’s own life helps to write the story of the past: the historian’s own feelings helps to understand past feelings; the historian’s thoughts helps to understand past thoughts; the historian’s experiences helps to understand past experiences.

In short, narrative history/biography is the story of two lives, one life explicitly told (the past person) and one life implicitly told (the historian or biographer). In studying these two lives, the life of the past person is rescued, comes alive in the present, to live again in the historian’s mind and in the words put on paper.

For an example, see

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And God Saw Every Thing that He had made, and Behold, it was Very Good

Posted on July 6, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

The title of this post comes from Genesis, 1:31, the final verse of the first chapter of the Old Testament. This final verse provides commentary on the sixth day of the Creation, in which God had, after the creation of humans, declared that they are masters of creation: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

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On this fifth day of Creation, God made humans “in His own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The implication is that other forms of life do not reflect the image of God. This is reinforced by God giving dominion over the Creation to humans. Later, in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, the power of humans to classify animals is given greater depth, and different animals are selected and chosen to be clean and unclean—notwithstanding, of course, that what is clean and appealing or beautiful is in the eye of the beholder.

During the course of the different days of Creation, God examined His work—the creation of heaven and earth, of light, of vegetation, of lights in the firmament, of creatures in the water, in the air, and on land—and “saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”

The Creation, therefore, is Good. Genesis, speaking for God the Creator, makes a moral, qualitative declaration and judgment that the Creation is good. Humans, as part of the Creation, are therefore good. The Creation is animate and inanimate, is alive as well as dead, but now, in its existential present, it is good. Goodness is something that occurs through time, just as humans occur, and exercise dominion, throughout time.

The implication in Genesis, Chapter One, is that humans have the moral obligation to treat all things, all of existence, as good, to cherish, to embrace, to love, to preserve.

After all, on the Fifth Day of Creation, God created “every living creature that moves” in the air, in the water, and on land, and “God saw that it was good.” The declaration that the creation before humans are created is good indicates that humans themselves are not the sine qua non of goodness in this creation, but just a part of the overall whole of goodness. God wishes not only humans to “be fruitful, and multiply,” but He commands the birds, fish, and crawling land creatures to do the same. All life is to be fruitful and multiply, not just human life.

It is true, as we humans like to point out, that in Genesis 1:28, God gave “dominion” over other forms of life: this dominion includes to “replenish the earth” as well as “to subdue it.” Humans can hardly replenish that which they subdue if by subdue it means to destroy. Rather, subdue means to cultivate, to encourage, to cause to grow and thrive.

The point behind replenishing and subduing is to provide food: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food.” In addition, “and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food.”

Hence, plant-life is to be cultivated for the sake of providing food for all animals, including humans.

Genesis Chapter One does not inform us that humans can kill at will, kill and destroy whenever the inclination occurs to us, cultivate food to such an extent that we destroy other parts of the goodness of creation—rather, the goodness of creation implies the goodness of life, that life is good, and is not something to destroy, that humans are not, by having dominion, given the right to kill, dismember, torture, pollute, waste, and destroy in all manner in which humans, particularly in the past century, have done.

Does not the world’s philosophy teach us that hubris is the key to self-destruction? Do we not find such teachings reflected in Greek philosophy, Chinese philosophy, and Indian philosophy? Human arrogance, to determine our own destiny, to seek more knowledge than is good for use, consistent with the goodness of Creation, is the moral of the story in Genesis, Chapter Two, where humans arrogantly disobey God, take the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and as a consequence suffer humiliation, pain, and death.

Genesis Chapters One and Two provide us with the essential lesson of how humans should treat each other, other forms of life, and the entire Creation itself.

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In Praise of Every[hu]man

Posted on June 7, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

Pre-eminent American historian Carl Becker in 1931 sounded a theme for the 1930s when he pronounced, “Everyman His Own Historian.” The great American composer Aaron Copland in 1942 composed “Fanfare for the Common Man,” a wonderful piece for horns and percussion that announced the greatness of the common person. As I am a very common man, these works have had a profound impact on my own writing. My research interests and my books tend to focus on everyman, every human, on the common man, the common person.

I have written about people in the past who are hardly household names: Jeremy Belknap, a New Hampshire minister; John Evans, a guide, mountaineer, and hunter; Thomas Nuttall, an explorer and botanist; Ebenezer Hazard, an early postal surveyor and businessman; Jean Louis Berlandier, an explorer, apothecary, and artist; and John Smith, a relatively obscure explorer and adventurer who through self-promotion and chance became quite famous.

Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington

I have typically eschewed writing about the rich and famous: I suppose I could have added another to the hundreds of biographies on Lincoln, but would I have anything different to say? Rather, I enjoy studying those who have not beem studied, people who are relatively unknown, people who were among the billions of humans who have lived on this earth, most of whom are anonymous, unknown, unremembered. Whenever I research and write about a person who is generally unknown, it is an act of rescue, in my mind, of rescuing from oblivion, and bringing their story to the present from which people can know and learn.

This is what I like about narrative history: the story of a person in the past. I find someone I can identify with, someone whose life intrigues me, a life that I wish to relive, as it were, re-create. I love to read memoirs, diaries, letters, and other personal reflections into a person’s feelings, beliefs, and soul. Often, when these sources are sparing, I rely on empathy, the ability to make sense of a person, of a past time, to use imagination to feel the past, feel what really happened. As I research and imagine, and visit the places where people once lived, I can sense the past, and write what I believe is an accurate portrayal of what once was.

This involves what I call the dialogue with the past, a mixture of the subjective (feeling based on imagination) and objective (reason based on sources), by which to get to know the past person: their habits, feelings, thoughts, interests, aims, emotions, accomplishments. I feel compelled to deal honestly with the past: to have an honest appraisal of a person by not imposing my point of view, my preconceived notions, on the past (which would be anachronistic). To feel the past, I must feel the present. To understand the life of a past person, I must understand my own life. History is autobiography. Reflection on my life helps me write the story of the past: my feelings help me understand past feelings; my thoughts help me understand past thoughts; my experiences help me understand past experiences.

In short, narrative history (and biography) is the story of two lives, one life explicitly told (the past person) and one life implicitly told (the life of the author).

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Alexander Posey and the Vernacular of Nature

Posted on May 27, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

Alexander Posey was a poet. His poems about nature are some of the most beautiful ever published. Growing up on a farm in the Creek Nation, near Eufaula, Posey’s native language was Creek, but his “vernacular,” as he once wrote about all American Indians, was poetry: “not necessarily the stilted poetry of books, but the free and untrammeled poetry of Nature, the poetry of the fields, the sky, the river, the sun and the stars.” Posey’s gift of poetry blossomed during the years, from 1889 to 1895, when he attended and worked at Indian University, the school founded by Almon Bacone in 1880. At Indian University, later called Bacone College, the young mixed-Creek studied, served as librarian, contributed to school publications, and discovered himself to be a gifted artist of the English language.

Raised by his Creek mother Pohas Harjo and Scotch-Irish father Lewis Posey, Alex spoke Creek growing up at home until one day, as he later related, his father forcefully requested that his son henceforth speak in English, which the young man embraced and mastered. Alex matriculated at Indian University in 1889, when the school had been located in Muskogee for four years. There was a single large academic building, Rockefeller Hall, that served as dormitory, classroom building, administrative building, dining facility, and chapel. Almon Bacone was a Baptist missionary from New York who had traveled west a decade earlier to teach Cherokees in Tahlequah; he envisioned a school for all North American Indians, and worked with the Creeks to create a campus on Creek land north of Muskogee. Alex’s mother was Baptist, and he was raised in a Christian household, so he found Indian University, a Christian school teaching the liberal arts to American Indians, a perfect fit.

Alex was a secondary school student in the “Academic Department” until 1891, when he became a college student and school librarian. A bookworm and literary artist, Alex was a natural librarian. He was a prolific writer and helped two of his teachers, history professor Marion L. Brown and science professor C. H. Maxson publish a weekly newsletter, the Bacone Indian University Instructor. In the only surviving issue, from May 20, 1893, Alex contributed a story on the mythical Creek anti-hero, Chinnubbie Harjo, and alter-ego and pseudonym who appeared in many of Posey’s writings.

Alex Posey at Indian University was typically very well dressed, charming and elegant; he made a fine orator, would in time be something of a statesman, and believed wholeheartedly in the means and ends Almon Bacone envisioned for Indian University. In a surviving photo from 1891, Alex sits in the front row with a carnation in his lapel and a book, characteristically, in his hand, not bothering to lift his gaze from the written word even for the photographer. Such studious manner enabled Alex to form sophisticated ideas about learning, human character, politics, and nature. In 1892, for example, in response to a call from the American Baptist Home Mission Society for students at Indian University to respond to the question, “Why do I want an education?”, A. L. Posey, “a Creek,” responded:

“The world’s noblest citizens are educated men and women; they are the ornaments of human society and the gems that adorn the sea-shores of human progression.  Nothing contributes more to the intellectual wealth of the world than the education of its inhabitants.  And nothing imparts more happiness to man than the consciousness of a well disciplined mind to govern and control the higher aims of life.”

With such a personal philosophy of lifelong learning, Posey, upon graduating from Indian University, became a leader in the Creek community, serving in the House of Warriors, as well as Superintendent in succession of the Creek Nation Orphan Asylum, of Public Instruction for the Creek Nation, of the National High School in Eufaula, and of the Wetumpka National School. Posey the man of letters worked for the Indian Journal in Eufaula and the Muskogee Times. He wrote a series of satirical letters, featuring Fus Fixico and his Creek friends, writing about the Dawes Commission, land allotments, and the tense relationship between Indians and the U. S. federal government. His bilingual ability served him well as a worker for the U. S. Indian Agency in Muskogee, during which he sought to administer fairly the allotments of land to Creeks as prescribed by the Dawes Commission. In 1905, Posey served as secretary for a convention of Indian Territory leaders who met in Muskogee to compose a constitution for the proposed state of Sequoyah. Posey suggested the name of the proposed state and wrote a good part of the constitution.

During his busy, short life Posey married and had children and worked a farm near Eufaula. Death came to him early, when he drowned in 1908 while attempting to cross the Canadian River. His poems suggest that he was not unprepared for his final moments on Earth.

When flowers fade, why does

    Their fragrance linger still?

Have they a spirit, too,

    That Death can never kill?

Is it their Judgment Day

    When from the dark, dark mould

Of April and of May

    Their blooms again unfold?

His, poem, “To a Daffodil,” suggests that Posey felt at one, in life and death, with all forms of life:

                When Death has shut the blue skies out from me,

                               Sweet Daffodil,

                                 And years roll on without my memory,

                                 Thou’lt reach thy tender fingers down to mine of clay,

                                      A true friend still,

                                 Although I’ll never know thee till the Judgment Day.

When Almon Bacone founded Indian University in 1880, he hoped that the Whites and Indians would be able to live and learn together. Posey, a mixed-race Indian, believed in, and represented, peoples coming together to live in Oklahoma:

I pledge you by the moon and sun,

As long as stars their course shall run,

Long as day shall meet my view,

Peace shall reign between us two.

I pledge you by those peaks of snow

As long as streams to ocean flow,

Long as years their youth renew,

Peace shall reign between us two.

I came from mother soil and cave,

You came from pathless sea and wave,

Strangers fought our battles through–

Peace shall reign between us two.

One can imagine a day in October in the 1890s, when a young Creek-American, Alex Posey, wandered the fields and meadows surrounding Indian University, pondering life:

In the dreamy silence

Of the afternoon, a

Cloth of gold is woven

Over wood and prairie;

And the jaybird, newly

Fallen from the heaven,

Scatters cordial greetings,

And the air is filled with

Scarlet leaves, that, dropping,

Rise again, as ever,

With a useless sigh for

Rest—and it is Autumn.

Amid the peace and quiet of Indian University, there was conflict in Oklahoma and the surrounding nation. Near the end of his career at Indian University, in 1895, Alex Posey declaimed before an audience of students and teachers his view on how a thoughtful, reflective person should act in a world filled with movement and change:

“If a calm sea never made a skillful mariner, a calm life never made a great man.  Time, toil and vicissitudes; these are the cost of success.  The world can use the man who is willing to pay this price.  Its progress is dependent upon just such men; verily, upon men who are the devotees of mental embellishment and excellence of character; upon men who scorn from their soul’s inmost recesses the vanity of fashion and the folly of luxury.”

In the end, Posey bridged the gap between the two cultures, White and Indian, and identified both as American, proclaiming that America gained her independence from England because of the “persistence and determination” of the “forest born sons of America,” both those indigenous to this land and those who had arrived to start a new life in the 1600s. Posey the American was “like the tree, he strikes root, grows, puts forth his leaves and becomes the giant of his surroundings before the world is aware.”

Posey’s widow Minnie published Alex’s collected works in 1910: The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey (Crank & Co., Topeka, Kansas).

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For more on Posey, see see Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years | Ash Hill Publishing

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Blessed are the Poor?

Posted on May 15, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus taught his disciples as well as others what he considered to be the most important lessons by which to live.

Matthew and Luke agree on the general scope of the Beatitudes, though they differ on some particulars. Matthew, for example, records Jesus as having initiated the sermon with the comment, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for of them is the kingdom of the heavens.” Luke records a terse, less confusing comment, stating simply, “Blessed are the poor, because yours is the kingdom of God.” Whereas Luke then records Jesus as saying, “Blessed are the ones hungering now, for you will be satisfied,” Matthew records a comment of more depth: “Blessed are those hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Luke’s gospel has Jesus say, “Blessed are those weeping now, for they shall laugh,” while Matthew’s gospel says, “Blessed are the mourning, for they shall be comforted.”

The Beatitudes are mystifying in today’s world because they contradict everything that our modern world culture is based on: materialism, power, wealth, comfort, pleasure, entertainment, indulgence. Jesus blesses the poor, the weak, the sorrowful, the meek, and proclaims, in Luke, woe to the wealthy, the full, the happy, and the self-satisfied. And yet what do we see today, but that the rich and powerful seem to be experiencing something very different from anguish.

How, indeed, can the poor be blessed? The New Testament Greek word for poor is ptochoi, plural of ptochos, to crouch like a beggar, straitened, to be distressed, to be a mendicant. Why would Jesus bless such people? Because the poor have not yet been rewarded while the rich have? Because the poor are more aware of the simple blessings in life? Because there is a connection between material and spiritual poverty and according to Matthew one is blessed if spiritually poor?

Pre-modern poverty was characterized by no modern conveniences, by periodic bouts of famine, by recurrent hunger . . . and consequent humility and acceptance, among some, in the face of such uncertainty.

Famine, hunger, and poverty have declined in the modern world, which is materialistic in so far that constantly more items are acquired, wanted, hence there is a growing restlessness, lack of acceptance, and growing hubris as possessions provide false and fleeting self-esteem. A society therefore that declines in poverty and increases in wealth will decline in humility and increase in hubris. The pre-modern poor were desperate for food and shelter; the modern poor are desperate for wealth and power.

Jesus said, “you will always have the poor.” Indeed, there have always been poor and notwithstanding the plans of countless Utopian thinkers there apparently always will be. Why? In part because human society will never have answers to the questions of humans, “who live for a day.” Time dooms humans to ongoing anguish, because the future is never settled and clear, hence humans live a life of foreboding and fear that the next moment will bring suffering, war, disaster, and so on. So those with the most fear make sure they will never know such a day. Hence they plan and save and exploit and steal and whatever else to ensure that they will not be in want. In so doing they will take or keep what could be or belongs to another. In some ways we live in a world of material limits where there is enough for everyone in a communist society, but humans because of our peculiar temporal situation will never allow such a society to work–hence there will always be abundance for some and want for others.

The Apostle Paul of Tarsus, in his second letter to the Corinthians, echoed the teachings of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, proclaiming that God’s power is perfected in weakness. “For whenever I am weak, then powerful I am.” How great is the gap between the message of Christianity and the message of modern society and culture! How can weakness be better than strength, poverty better than riches? The New Testament has a disconcerting teaching: Woe to the rich, the filled, the laughing, for God does not bless these people–the beautiful, confident, powerful, and secure. God blesses, rather, the hungry, sick, suffering, the ugly, insecure, and frightened. Jesus tells adults to act as children before God. His teachings contradict what humans naturally strive for, to feel important, to be strong, to be seen as beautiful, to gain wealth and power, to find security.

Jesus’s great gift as a healer was his ability to see deep within the human psyche, to see that humans profess but do not feel so important, strong, wealthy, and powerful, because there is always present the fear that riches, power, beauty, and youth will vanish. His was a message of acceptance. Life is about acceptance, not resistance. Accept, he told his listeners, your lot, your poverty, your weakness, your ignorance, your nakedness, the thorns of your flesh, your ugliness, your obesity, your fears, your mortality, the fleetingness of life, the movement of time, the coming of death.

Deep down inside we all are poor. But this is a blessing. Beware being filled, because then one becomes like a Pharisee, satisfied, knowing. No, remain empty, remain poor, always await the reward. Humans are becoming, always in each and every minute. We are never satisfied, never have, never know, never filled, never rich, always just becoming. As riches increase, hubris increases, humility decreases. The very poor are the most open to God. When I am weak, then I am strong.

For more on Jesus, see my book Metamorphosis: How Jesus of Nazareth Vanquished the Legion of Sin: https://ash-hill-publishing.square.site/product/metamorphosis-how-jesus-of-nazareth-vanquished-the-legion-of-fear-hardcover/ETEBDKWQ5QIVJBWDA4T6JD64?si=true

 

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The Sanctity of Life

Posted on April 30, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

In my last post, I discussed Just War. To continue…

The key to solving the issue, the plague, of war, just or unjust, is for humans to adapt a culture of life.

We are raised from infancy in a culture of death. Whenever anything is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or fearsome, we kill. So if a spider appears, I kill it. If a fly is on my hamburger, I swat it. My hamburger itself, of course, comes from a dead animal that was killed for my convenience. Because my culture is so advanced, I can eat anything I want anytime I want from a variety of forms of life killed for my convenience. If my yard is being destroyed by a mole, poison will do the trick. If a mouse is haunting my pantry, a mousetrap will stop it cold.

Death is all around us, and death caused by the human propensity to kill at will. We have few compunctions about taking life for our own purposes. Girls and women are taught that if a pregnancy is inconvenient, that it can be terminated—i. e., the fetus, a life, is killed. Some prospective parents will terminate pregnancy because the fetus has been determined to be “deformed,” hence kill and try again.

War is just an extension of the human propensity to kill other forms of life, now brought to the same life-form, ourselves. Because a person looks or acts differently, they are fearsome, and humans have long figured out that the easiest way to deal with fear is to cut it off at its apparent source—of course, the fear remains, often now combined with guilt.

Fear of the other combined with narcissism leads us to assume that we have a right to our possessions, have a right to defend ourselves (defensive war has long been the explanation for going to war), have a right to take another life to preserve our own life or our culture. Life as a thing of wonder and beauty is lost when all we can think about is me: my convenience, my safety, my rights, my possessions.

Jesus taught in the Gospels that life is to be treasured, life is sanctified. God concerned himself with even lowly forms of life such as birds. How much so does God concern himself with human life? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”—that last word, life, is the essence of the Creation, the essence of God, the essence of who we are.

Who, in short, has given us the right to determine who should live and who should die?

For more, see my book on the incarnation of Jesus, Metamorphosis: How Jesus of Nazareth Vanquished the Legion of Fear available at https://ash-hill-publishing.square.site/product/metamorphosis-how-jesus-of-nazareth-vanquished-the-legion-of-fear-hardcover/ETEBDKWQ5QIVJBWDA4T6JD64?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

 

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The Seduction of Time

Posted on April 11, 2016 by theamericanplutarch

In Mark 8:33 of the New Testament, Jesus tells his disciple Peter, “Go behind me, Satan,” because Peter has suggested that Jesus was not going to suffer as the Son of Man. What does this verse tell us about Satan, about Jesus, about evil, about time?

Satan here and in Matthew is Satanas (as opposed to Satan, devil), which (according to Strong’s Dictionary) is Aramaic/Chaldean in origin and means accuser. Devil, or diabolos, means false accuser, slanderer, traducer (to humiliate or disgrace). Satan is called or referred to in the New Testament as adversary, enemy, accuser, serpent, dragon, author of evil, beguiler of Eve, tempter. A synonym of tempter is seducer.

Mark 8:33 is comparable to Matthew 4:10, in which Jesus uses the same verb (Go, ypage) and says, “Go, Satan,” in response to Satan’s tempting in the wilderness.

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In Matthew 4 (and Luke 4), Satan is an apparent being, but in Mark 8:33, Satan is not a being, but is personified by a person, in this case Peter, who doubts and denies the truth. Peter is thinking only about the present, the acceptable and predictable, rather than the unexpected, the fearful, the contrary to logic.

Peter is, in short, thinking about himself, and his connection to the Messiah. That he is willing to rebuke (admonish, censure) Jesus shows that Jesus’s prediction of his coming humiliation and death has hit Peter to the quick, has challenged his conception of the present and the future, his conception of time.

Jesus says that if you seek to save your life, you will lose it, which of course is a contradiction. The world says not to deny self, to save life, but Jesus says one must deny self, lose life, for the sake of something else, something beyond self. Peter, however, has refused to accept this teaching.

You don’t need an actual evil force personified, like Satan tempting in the wilderness, when you have humans who are seducers all around you.

Satan, the Seducer, in Matthew and Luke tempted Christ, attempted to seduce Christ, with images of personal pain and security and food and comfort in the present moment. Satan could have been many things rather than an evil being: The seducer could have been a fantasy, a person or persons (like Peter), the subconscious mind, or the conscience.

The Seducer seduces people then uses these seduced people to seduce others. The implication in Mark 8:33 is that someone or something has seduced Peter and he is attempting to seduce Jesus. To seduce is to turn away from oneself and what one believes and stands for. The mere act of seduction is evil.

To seduce is evil. But to be seduced and to allow it, not to resist, is evil too. To be seduced and to allow it is a way to become a seducer, because you accept the seduction and make it a part of you so that anyone you come into contact with is influenced by your seduction.

Seduction means to overwhelm reason with awe and wonder, to mystify, to grab the senses, to convince otherwise, to kidnap the mind and body, to imprison one’s sense of normality, one’s sense of rightness and goodness, one’s sense of time. The present moment becomes enlarged, more important than the past or future.

Seduction involves an other, an outside force, who seeks to impose their will on your will. The implication is that their attempted imposition is malevolent in nature, an attempt to capture, take over, conquer.

A seducer is therefore an invader of another person’s freedom, privacy, reason, feelings, and sense of self.

A seducer is apparently not content with him/herself, but lacking something that makes them seek to invade. They want something that they see in you, or they seek to accomplish something through you.

So a seducer, and to be seduced, is evil. But why does a person seduce, and why does a person allow himself to be seduced? One word: fear.

Evil is not just a moral phenomenon, but a psychic phenomenon as well, involving overwhelming fear.

Fear is the foundation for evil in all of its seductive forms.

Evil seduces with fear.

A person fears the future, fears what they are and will remain or become, fears boredom, fears pain, fears death. Momentary pleasure, momentary glory, momentary satisfaction of hunger, can stifle the pain, the fear of the future, if just for a moment. The seduction of momentary pleasure rids one temporarily of the constant overwhelming fear of life.

But Christ seduces evil with love.

Love knows no fear.

With love there is no seduction by evil.

However, love works in time and so it will be imperfect and never absolute.

Christ is the presence of love, He is the absolute, in time working to redeem us from evil in time.

Love is not a metaphysical with Christ but an emotional, physical, and psychic reality in time.

Love is therefore a historical process in each year of our Lord (Anno Domini).

How does love combat evil?

The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is Love.

Love is a transcendent truth but an everyday temporal reality as well.

Evil is not transcendent but found in the everyday temptations of life.

Love is also found in the everyday but it is more lasting and fulfilling since it is transcendent.

We have free will within the confines of grace, which means that God’s will for us is revealed through His love, which is both transcendent and everyday.

When we accept and willingly respond to God’s love we do so through free will while at the same time conforming to His will.

Hence we are fighting the seduction of evil with love.

What I write here is Christian but it doesn’t have to be, exclusively, because love is not just Christian and the transcendence of love, while a constant and a human truth and, I would consider a divine truth, is countered by the everyday temporality of evil. All religions, I believe, consider evil to be mostly dwelling in the everyday, the momentary, in time.

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