FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - St Barack

Rant Number 376 15 December 2009

The Nobel Peace Prize to War President Obama reminds me of what St Paul says of the Peace of God: ‘it passes all understanding’. Still, never mind. Obama is a man of surprises. The priest is genuinely chuffed. St Barack the Theologian, no less. I mean, in his acceptance speech he has published his metaphysical beliefs. And, stone me, they are right up my street. They really are. Well, in principle....

Three things bowled me over in the President’s peroration. First, evil. ‘Evil exists in the world’, St Barack stated. Indeed, it does. He did not mean physical or natural evil, like tsunamis and avalanches. Because he went on to instance a human agent, Hitler. Clearly, by ‘evil’ the Theologian intended moral evil or sin. The evil deliberately caused by human beings. Evil – ‘the dirt to be washed out of the world’, as Josiah Royce said. Jolly good. Another famous American, Mrs Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of ‘Christian Science’, maintained that ‘evil is the illusion of mortal minds’. Silly lady! Al hamdulillah, St Barack believes evil is real.

‘Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda leaders to lay down their arms’. Not clear whether he has tried but...no matter. You get his drift. War is just, or justified, to combat evil – a bellicose Islamist movement. He even quotes the hoary doctrine of a just war. (The subject of the priest’s unfinished doctoral dissertation – groan... fault of Aristotle’s akrasia, what else?) Excellent. Rooted in the teachings of Christian luminaries like St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Victoria and Suarez. He even seemed to allude to the evil of war going back to Cain and Abel. On that fateful primeval conflict, look up, pray, Rubens’ painting in London’s Courtauld Gallery. Fab! Splendid! Three cheers for the Theologian.

Second, ‘the imperfection of man’. Better and better. The saintly President could not bring himself to say it but...what the hell is that if not original sin? An essential Christian category. Regarded with contempt, fear and loathing by our stupid age - even preachers dread mentioning it - and yet essential to understanding humanity comme il faut. Unlike God, man is imperfect. Flawed. Gauche. Like a new-born baby, man cannot stand on his own two feet. He needs his Creator to walk. To become adult. To grow into what God destined him to be. God’s laws and ordinances and sacraments are needed to obviate and palliate the outworking of our mythical ancestors’ aboriginal fault. That means war is sometimes necessary – to check evil. ‘It is lawful for Christian men...to bear weapons and serve in the wars’, says Article XXXVII of the Prayer Book. Solid, unsentimental, classical Anglican rule. Illustrates and complements the tough Article IX, on ‘Original or Birth-Sin’.

Third, ‘the limits of reason’. This is stupendous. Because, together with the rest, it implies that Obama at heart is in opposition to the Enlightenment. Yes, the President of America, allegedly a child of le siècle des Lumieres, here reveals his anti-rationalistic creed. Key to the Enlightenment thinkers was their fanatical belief in human reason. In the power of man’s unaided, natural faculties to lift himself up by its own bootstraps, to grasp reality in a rational manner, to climb to the summit, whilst at the same time denigrating God’s revelation and God’s grace – indeed, suppressing God’s Church. But St Barack speaks not of reason’s triumphs but of reason’s limits. Superb. To speak thus is not to despise reason – a self-defeating, self-refuting task - but to acknowledge reason’s limitations. As the policeman Valentin says in Chesterton’s The Blue Cross, ‘exactly because Valentin understood reason, he also understood the limits of reason.’ The best theology. Indeed, in Christianity high doctrines like the Trinity and the Incarnation are beyond reason, though not against it. Hard? Yes but, you see, God knows something which you do not and cannot know...

Thus far all is kosher. (Or halal.) St Barack’s theology is right. The problems come, as always, in its concrete application.

Al Qaeda and the Taleban are evil, the President says. But they, Qur’an in hand, disagree. America is evil, they say, quoting chapter and verse. What are the infidels doing, invading our land, a Muslim land? Supporting a corrupt, puppet ruler? A few hundred millions Muslims worldwide would go along with that, I suspect. Who decides who is right?

Israel is also...ahem, yes, evil, some believe. Because it occupies Palestine. And it oppresses Arabs. But America and its allies, such as Germany, disagree. They stand by the Jewish state. It is just the evil of anti-Semitism – the mad Fuhrer all over again. Israel is sacred. The Arabs really seek another holocaust. Huh! Where does truth lie?

Dare I mention that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez compared Bush to Satan? Iran...you get my drift. And North Korea’s Kim Jong ain’t no fun of America, either. Russia’s top military general Baluyevski is of the same opinion. Putin once accused US foreign policy to ape the Third Reich. All bad, very bad guys, St Barack swears, but...he would say that, wouldn’t he? To make your enemies evil by definition is just a little too pat.

America’s finance: is that satanic too? In Matt Taibbi’s immortal phrase, Goldman Sachs, the world’s most powerful investment bank, ‘is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity’. This evil vampire, this blood-sucker engineered all catastrophic market manipulations, all bubbles, from the Internet and Housing busts, from pension scams to oil futures debacles...you name them. The current economic and financial crisis goes back to banks like Goldman Sachs, in other words. The same was a leading private donor to St Barack’s presidential campaign. Goldmanites now have the President’s ear. Of course, virtuous Goldman Sachs swears they are innocent. As pure as the driven snow. Committed to being ‘a force for good’. Taibbi’s stories are just ‘conspiracy theories’. Evil nonsense. With a whiff of anti-Semitism, to boot. Once again, who is right?

Leibniz, a supreme philosopher, once wrote of ‘the labyrinths of evil and grace’. Quite. Recognising that evil exists, that man is imperfect, that human reason is limited is meritorious, right and proper. Identifying where evil lies is a trickier thing. Saints, of course, real saints, are empowered by God’s grace to discern the Devil’s paw. This War President, I am afraid, however saintly, falls a bit short of that.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli