Nightingale’s song

Last Monday, and again yesterday, I discussed a colleague’s anecdote about the insistence of his students that human life has no purpose.  In amazement, he asked, “So, if I were to tell you that the Westminster Confession says the chief end of man is to glorify God and love him forever, you would say I was crazy?”

Another reader comments, “I found this post interesting for several reasons, most especially the resemblance of the Westminster Confession to the following passage:  ‘If I were a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan.  But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God.  This is my task.  I do it, and shall not desert this post, as long as it will be given me to fill it; and I exhort you to join me in this same song.’

He continues, “It comes from Epictetus (Discourses, 1.16.20).  I find it striking, and curiously moving, that a pagan philosopher with no investment in Judeo-Christian belief should find it natural as birdsong that the rational intellect be ordered not just to contemplation but to the praise of God, even allowing his notion of God to be seriously incomplete.  I wonder whether some of those students perched in their high-chairs might take off the spoon of the Stoics the same food they would spit if offered by the Christian tradition.”

Whether they are more troubled by the spoon or by the taste of the food itself – that is the question, isn’t it?  Epictetus says a little later (2.14.11), “Now the philosophers say that the first thing we must learn is this: That there is a God, and that He provides for the universe, and that it is impossible for a man to conceal from Him, not merely his actions, but even his purposes and his thoughts.”

I am still thinking about my friend’s anecdote about the students in his class who thought life had no meaning.

He adds, “there were two or three students who did not buy the nihilism line -- they thought that maybe, perhaps we had a purpose.  But they were either unable to articulate it, or unwilling to, due to the strong majority opinion.”

Does anything about the story strike you as strange?  Here’s what strikes me.  One would think that people who did think life has meaning and purpose would be more willing to confess their conviction than those who didn’t.  Yet they the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t speak up.

The explanation doesn’t lie in the Ursula Le Guin novel my friend had assigned them, for I find the same thing among my own students, and I don’t assign them Ursula Le Guin.  Fear of the majority, sure, but why should the nihilists be in the majority?  Historically, this is a novel situation.  Nihilism – and I speak as a former nihilist – is far from natural for human beings.

My own guess is that in our day, those who believe life has purpose are all too often ashamed to speak up because they aren’t living up to their belief.  Although those who deny the proposition generally have even more to be ashamed of, insisting on meaninglessness helps them pretend that they don’t.

Belief is a blade.  It can cut you.  Nonbelief is a cloak.  You can hide in it.

See also:  "If I Were a Nightingale"

Question:

How can any one religion be correct when each claims to be correct?

Reply:

I respect your question, but I don’t think you need my help to answer it.  Suppose you were an astronomy student.  How would you answer if someone asked, “How could one theory of planetary formation be correct, when each claims to be correct?”  Or, since you are in law school, how you would answer if someone asked, “How could one explanation of legislative intent be correct, when each claims to be correct?”

Disagreement does not invalidate the quest for the truth; it is the reason for the quest for the truth.  The fact that different answers are in competition with each other does not suggest that there is no answer, but that to find it we must seek it.

The most important prerequisite for the search – and the one most often overlooked – is really wanting to find what you are looking for.  Do you want to?

Pagan natural law theory is non-historical.  Human nature cannot change, and its condition has not changed.  We are what we are, and we are as we are, forever and ever.

Christian natural law theory is historical.  In itself human nature cannot change, but its condition can change, and it has.  We were created; we have lost our original integrity; the cure has been offered.

In the early modern era the playing field was altered.  Some tried to use natural law to deny, ignore, or marginalize salvation history.  Others tried to make profane history do the work of natural law, and the state do the work of God.

The first modern gambit is dead.  Variations on the second are still playing out.

It was not in your power not to be born of Adam: it is in your power to believe in Christ.

-- St. Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 71, Section 2