Plans

I will be heading home with another NSA freshman, Stephen Sproul (not rhyming with "roll", but pronounced, as Nate Wilson will never let him forget, "Sprowl"), on Thursday morning, leaving around 5:00 A.M.

I should arrive home that night, and will be available for fish tacos and beer, wine and poetry, movie nights and church that weekend and the following week, but will most likely leave Saturday to return to NSA.

That is my most recent set of plans, as they change, I will know, and may inform someone else should I feel so inclined.

Evil

We had a nice discussion on the origin, nature, and end of evil today (Declamation in Lordship), and I have come to slightly modify my view.

The end of evil is nothingness, which I have held for a long time. The nature of evil is always progressing towards its end, the only variation being the rate: amble downhill or swan dive off a cliff?

The origin is somewhat new. I hadn't considered it until I hit the later portions of City of God, in which Augustin(e) discusses it to some rather considerable length. He was still obfuscating "round about a meaning" a hundred pages after my attention span had begun dwelling upon exactly what our carpet might taste like (rather dry; needs vacuuming).

It's somewhat of a chicken or the egg quandary, so let me try out a few axioms, a la Euclid, though it will probably work as well as a la Descartes: "cogito, ergo sum. Cogito? Cogito cogito, ergo...um...ergo cogito? Ita. Cogito, ergo cogito. Cogito. Cogito? Sed..." This is why Descartes started using heroin.

Axioms:
1). God freely and unalterably ordained whatsoever comes to pass.
2). Evil came to pass.
3). "aardvark" is one of the great words of the English language.
4). Creation was "all very good".

And here is one that I would propose, but may or may not fly with all of you. If you can disprove it, I'll think of something amusing to do when I feel like it.

5). All that exists is for the glory of God.

So, we know that God is responsible for evil, and we know that He is not the author of it.

We also know that it came to pass sometime between the initial creatio ex nihilo of Genesis 1:2 and the 2nd chapter of Genesis.

If we accept axim #5, and we go by Isaiah 14, then this is what we can say so far as Satan is concerned: He was created to glorify the infinite God, and chose, in the perfect plan and will of God, to glorify his finite self.

He failed.

The chicken or the egg (obviously the chicken) is here: God created Satan, and all of God's creation was all very good. Evil comes from evil desires (namely pride), but where do the evil desires come from? A shift of focus from God to self. Is that not evil in itself? Then where did it come from? Evil desires. And so on and on it goes. At this point, I'd like to mention that my brain is full, and Satan sinned, so tace, and we'll move on.

The movement of evil from infinite good to the absolute negation that it ends up with is not surprising, considering what the first movement of evil is: a decision to glorify the finite self over the infinite God.

This is all I feel like writing at the moment; interesting things to dwell upon are the distinctions between different types of evil: "natural" disasters, evil objects, evil actions, and evil desires.

Blessings.

Schedule

I have my final exams scheduled, and my last one appears to be over at 9:00 am on Wednesday. It is my hope to make it to church on Sunday at the Pierce's, and it looks quite feasible.

All other things are going well, save choir and Latin, which are going--well, which are going. I should be caught up in Latin by Monday, but, I shouldn't have ever gotten behind. If only learning didn't take work, I, well, even if it didn't take work I probably still wouldn't bother with it, but I need something to complain about. Gotta have a scapegoat. I learned that one from Girard, but it wasn't on purpose, so it doesn't count.

Sublimely Blessed

I would not have thought it possible, but I currently appear to be holding between an SCH and a CL in all of my classes, though Latin will take a great deal of work to maintain.

The readings I have not found to be too difficult; this week was the hardest yet with just under 500 pages in the City of God (now finished), along with 250 in rhetoric and another 100 or so in math, all within the same week, most within the same two days, one of which was an unpleasant day regardless.

I will be posting my rough draft on Augustine's view of Genesis 1:1-2 pretty soon.

All in all, I am delighted. I have rarely had as purely glorious a time as I have been having as of late. The one complaint is that I am here without all of you, instead of here with all of you. This can be easily solved, however. Just move.

Please continue to keep me in your prayers, and I thank you that you have done so thus far. My desire is to glorify God in my life, and He is Gracious and Compassionate in giving me this desire. Pray that I learn to be faithful and disciplined, so that I may be a better reflection of His Son. Also join my roommates in praying that I learn how to cook.

What more to say? This culture is a different world, one that glorifies life, joy and wisdom. It is very much like the church family in Ferndale, just a lot more people, all of whom slaughter me in basketball.

I love and miss you all more than I can say. I hope to be returning about Friday of finals week; I'm done a bit earlier than most. Four more weeks, and I hope to see my church again.

Thank you all again.

In Him,
Jesse Broussard

One for Brooke

This is a sample of my Rhetoric Professor's words of wisdom. Just pray that he never finds them...

(Speaking of some girls) They seem to think: "I don't really have to do well in my classes. I'm just here to find a mate".

and: "If you watch stupid movies, listen to stupid music, write a stupid blog, congratulations, you are stupid."

The last time I laughed in class as hard as I do in rhetoric class every week, I was bodily escorted from the room.

More from my commonplace book

If you haven't read "The Importance of Being Earnest" in the past week or so, your life is truly being wasted. Live a little. The movie is great too, save the momentary glimpse of the female nether regions being tattooed.

Here are a few snippets from the book. Enjoy!

I believe it (marriage) is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.

I don't really see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. The excitement is then over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

For Heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.

"Your brother Ernest is dead?"
"Quite dead."
"What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it."

A couple from Augustin(e)

You stir us up to take delight in your praise; for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you.

...seeking to gain nothing through my disgrace but disgrace alone.

Through my desires I suffered the most bitter struggles, and you looked mercifully upon me--all the more so in that you did not allow me to find sweetness in anything that was not you.

Woe to my reckless soul, which hoped, if it departed from you, to gain something better! It tossed and turned on to its back, its sides, its stomach, but the bed was hard throughout, and you alone are rest.

Free will (is) the reason why we commit evil, and your righteous judgment the reason why we suffer it.

Let no man say to him, "What is this?" or "Why is this?" Let him not say it. Let him not say it. He is a man.

All that is, then, is good. As for evil, whose origin I was seeking, it is not a substance, since if it were a substance, it would be good.

Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment. The fire which makes the gold shine makes the chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out by the same press...the wicked, under pressure of affliction, execrate God and blaspheme; the good, in the same affliction, offer up prayers and praises.

I am certain of this, that no one has died who was not going to die at some time, and the end of life reduces the longest life to the same condition as the shortest...The only thing that makes death an evil is what comes after death. Those who must inevitably die ought not to worry overmuch about what accident will cause their death, but about their destination after dying.

Thus you refuse to be held responsible for the evil that you do, while you hold the Christian era responsible for the evil which you suffer!...Prosperity depraved you, and adversity could not reform you...you have become the most wretched, and you have remained the most worthless, of mankind.

Stupidity glories in never yielding to the force of truth.

"Grant me chastity and continence", I had said, "but please, not yet."

How sweet it suddenly was to me to be deprived of all the sweets of frivolity, and what a joy to throw away what I had feared to lose.

And woe even to men who live a praiseworthy life, if you should sift them without mercy! But as you do not enquire relentlessly into our sins, we hope and trust to have some place in you. Bit if one should enumerate before you his true good deeds, what is he enumerating but your gifts to him? Would that men would learn that they are men, and that "he who boasts would boast in the Lord!"

We may pass over the speculations about the nature and origin of the human race that have been put forward by men who do not know what they are talking about.

No one therefore must try to get to know from me what I know that I do not know, unless, it may be, in order to learn not to know what must be known to be incapable of being known.

Couple racist jokes

Please forward these to Jonathan Ashbach. They are from the Foucachon family here at NSA.

"You've never heard of a French Army Knife? It has a dinner fork, a dessert fork, a cheese knife, and a napkin that doubles as a really small white flag."
--David Foucachon (he's 1st gen. French, so complain to him)

And a comment to the aforementioned Frenchman:

"You can't give blood. What if they gave it to a person who caught a cold? Every cell in their body would give up and die as soon as your blood touched them."

Abstractish thingy.

Jesse Broussard
Lordship
Jerusalem Term
Augustine Gen. 1:1, 2 Abstract



Augustine’s doctrine of the first two verses of Genesis seems to be as follows: for verse 1, he believes that God (Father, Son, and Spirit) eternally existed, and created all that is ("creatio ex nihilo" was coined by him). He holds the “heaven” in v.1 to be the spiritual heaven while holding the “earth” to be the earth of Gen. 1:2a (which he refers to as “raw matter”), and he states that the Son is the medium of the Father’s creation.

Regarding verse 2b, he is very cautious and fears to cause division, confessing the difficulty of the text, but seems to hold to the literal truth of the text while not dwelling on it extensively, but rather focusing on the analogous work of the Holy Spirit in the human life: brooding over that which is formless and dark (the LXX “skotos” also has a connotation of evil or sin which the Hebrew equivalent does not seem to have) in preparation for its transformation into that which is beautiful and wholly good.

Cow?

Within one week, I will have read Augustin's "Confessions", Cicero's "Ad Herennium", Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death", someone's response to it called "Everything Bad is Good For You", a book on the history of math called "Math through the Ages", the intro and beginning to another book on math about its effects on American culture, Athanasius "On the Incarnation" (Lewis's intro, of course), the First ten books of "City of God" (also Augustin); I will have written 75 entries (acceptable to Nate Wilson entries) in my commonplace book, read some other book on the techniques of writing, some book on how to read a book (followed by one called "How to Read a Book Slowly", which should take about three hours...), as well as doing Latin, choir, rugby (huzzah! Oh wait...I'm not British), and writing a four page paper (30% of my Lordship grade) on Augustin's interpretation of the first two verses of Genesis.

So why am I writing to all (two) of you?

I am waiting for my homework binder to be returned.

Take as Bear

An interesting note that I will not attempt to defend or anything productive like that; I'll just be blithely asserting for a good bit of time, take it or leave it.

It seems to me that "take" in Ex. 20 is not to be interpreted as we generally interpret it, rather, it is to be interpreted as "bear".

Nothing more for the moment; I should be reading Latin.

Blessings!
J. Broussard

NSA

Well, I have yet newer news. I am in a duplex (604 East "E" St, Moscow, ID, 83843) with as of yet one roommate, a 26 year old named Travis, also a beginning NSA student.

Things have been very fun so far, and my first assignment is tomorrow night. I am almost all done with bureaucratic paperwork, and am having a jolly good time with Latin (Marcus ridet Julii. Marcus is a jerk, etc.).

Have no idea when I will next be entering an entry.

NSA update

Well, I have a place to live.

I will (most likely) be sharing a five-bedroom house with seven other masochistic, bibliophilic freaks who pay money to let people make us read lots of books in rapid succesion and start spouting Latin and Greek while inserting phrases along the lines of "the infralapsarian worldview is clearly inconsistent with the Van Tillian Transcendentalistic argumentative methods which have demonstrated that Toyota is superior to Nissan, so no, I won't take a ride, thank you", or some such rot. There are six juniors and one senior, and all are roughly my age. They have promised me enough wall space for my books. We shall see...

Apparently all are musicians, save one, who is in the process of repenting. We'll start him on an electric accordian as punishment. With headphones, of course...we only want to punish him.

I will be leaving this upcoming Monday, crashing with my brothers in Oregon, and hopefully arriving in Moscow on Tuesday night. I will be returning in nine years, give or take six hours, forty-three minutes and a bathroom break, by which time girls will have excuses to be in love with me beyond my ruggedly masculine good looks, chiseled features, staggering breath, and suave debonaire spirit, such as even cooler handwriting and being so abstract that no one can tell what I'm talking about, or if I'm actually talking at all. That will be difficult to deal with. It's already hard enough, what with all the feminine attention I've been getting as of late (except today, as Becky has a birth to go to, Brooke is at school or something, and the wee pink ones are not to be found underfoot). God will give me strength. If not, a reality check should do it.

I'm actually not yet sure about the nine year program, but the four year one is pretty definite. I do have lots of breaks, though, and should be able to inflict my presence upon some of you fairly often.

I believe that there is some sort of going-awayish thing for me at some point in the vaguely near, Aslanian soon ("I call all times soon...) time frame. It might also be this upcoming Saturday at Caleb and Missie's house, potluck style, bring your own cigars, pipes and beer, starting roughly at 6:00.

That is about it. My posting will be drastically slowing down, but I plan on posting some of my papers along with a note saying whether or not I'm dead, etc.

God Bless!

Book Review: James Jordan

Jordan has a book out called "Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis".

It is, as might be expected, quite good. It is a small book, and portions of it are covered in his "Through New Eyes", but it is still a very worthwhile read. Took two days, but I am lazy and took several Kettle Chips breaks, as well as an Ashbach movie night. Probably would be three or four days if one was gainfully employed.

Yet More: 2001

YARE ELOHIYM

After all is said and done,
Our battle fought, our race been run,
Each deed in life, each fear of death,
Fulfilled? Anulled? By one last breath.
Fear God.

More Old Poems: 2002

TRUTHS UNTOLD

The black of night
may cause great fright,
Though night itself is not the foe,
But what the light of day would surely show.

And suns may rise
on tear-filled eyes,
But through the day, pain’s pushed inside,
As shadows from the sun will always hide.

Poor Poetry: Mine, for H, 2004

Seductive wisps of lethal fog reach out, caress with lies—
The moonlit white belies the night, veils whisp’ring Siren sighs

And songs to the Sirens, sung by the damned, who, hopeless, still would hope
For death as sweet as mortals meet: with dreamless sleeps, elope.

Now languid eternities, elaborate symphonies, a moaning, delirious moon
Chanting over, above our winter, of falling; fall—and swoon.

More Jordan: Nimrodian Spawn

"As we begin the story of the Tower of Babel we read, "Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words"...the word translated 'language' in this verse actually means 'lip'. The phrase 'same words' refers to language, but the phrase 'same lip'--literally 'one lip'--refers to religion"...

"What happened at the Tower of Babel was not first and foremost a division of languages, but rather a division of religious belief..."

Jordan makes some other excellent points in this section, equating the bricks cemented with tar with the unified rebellion of the wicked men with Nimrod (man is made of earth, as are the bricks) as well as referring to the protevangelium (religious belief is the head, the ruler, of every person, and here you have the shattering of the formerly unified "head" of the seed of the serpent), as well as a few other simply great points, but the book is only about ten bucks and takes two days (if you're lazy or gainfully employed) to read, whereas I'm supposed to be moving in a week, so I'm going to leave you to read the book.

Revamping Noah: Give Ham the Bronx Cheer

James Jordan's "Primeval Saints" has a few great points on the topic Gen. 9's account of naked Noah and Ham.

"(Ham's sin) consisted of something far more fundamental: rebellion against authority. This can be seen from the actions of Shem and Japheth. What they did was disigned to undo what Ham had done, and all they did was refuse to look upon their father's nakedness while upholding his office by robing him..."

He makes the point that Noah's robe is almost indubitably his robe of office, his mantle, his symbol of authority. Whether this is or no, clothing does represent one's vocational authority (a woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man, Elijah's mantle, David cutting the hem of Saul's robe, etc), and Shem and Japheth did cover their father with a robe in response to Ham, so his point is valid, regardless of which particular robe was used.

Jordan continues: "Ham 'saw the nakedness of his father'. How could he? His father was inside a tent--not just some little tee-pee but a real, house-sized tent. Ham had to invade Noah's privacy without permission. Ham was seeking to uncover a fault in his superior so that he could tear down his authority..."

A bit later: "Back in the garden, Satan had said to Adam and Eve, 'You can make yourselves gods by taking the forbidden fruit.' Satan now said to the heart of Ham, who repeated it to his brothers, 'You can make yourselves kings by stealing the robe of office'."

This point is dependent entirely upon the robe being the robe of office, which must be imported into the text. It is a sober importation, but not a necessary one, so I am rather hesitant to sell the house. It is an interesting point that I would hesitate to base anything on but would unhesitatingly publicize.

He makes a further comment: "Nor did they (Shem and Japheth) have to go to the trouble of putting the garment on their shoulders and walking backward. They did this for a symbolic reason. The shoulders are associated with pillars of support, and by putting the garment on their shoulders (instead of carrying it in their hands), they were symbolically upholding Noah's office. Since nakedness is associated with shame in fallen men (Gen. 2:25; 3:7), they refused to look at their father. They refused to shame or embarrass him in any way..."

All in all, pretty fascinating.

Recentish Poetry: Yet More Jack

As the Ruin Falls
--on the death of his wife


All this is flashy rhetoric about me loving you;
I never had one selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self seeking, through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Only that now you have shown me (but how late!)
My lack, I see the chasm. And everything you are
Was making my heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls:
The pains you give me are greater than all other gains.