Often you will find this image on car bumpers. The people presenting this image have a certain set of ideas which they would like to convey with this image. Recently I’ve been considering, taken on face value this image might mean something very different.

Examine for a moment the history of the original Icthys symbol. This was historically used as a secret sign/symbol that Christians, during persecution, could secretly signal their faith to other Christians. The fish was chosen because in Greek the word fish could be an acronym for Jesus Christ. So here is the meaning I might interpret this symbol to mean. Wiki tells us:

The use of the Ichthys symbol by early Christians. Ichthus (?????, Greek for fish) can be read as an acrostic, a word formed from the first letters of several words. It compiles to “Jesus Christ, God’s son, savior,” in ancient Greek “?????? ???????, ???? ????, ?????“, I?sous Khristos Theou Huios, S?t?r.

• Iota (i) is the first letter of I?sous (??????), Greek for Jesus.
• Chi (kh) is the first letter of Khristos (?????ó?), Greek for “Christ” or “anointed”.
• Theta (th) is the first letter of Theou (????), that means “God’s”, genitive case of ??ó?, Theos, “God”.
• Upsilon (u) is the first letter of huios (????), Greek for Son.
• Sigma (s) is the first letter of s?t?r (?????), Greek for Savior.

Historians say the twentieth century use of the ichthys motif is an adaptation based on an Early Christian symbol which included a small cross for the eye or the Greek letters “????C“.

The above symbol signifies that Jesus Christ God’s son and Saviour surrounds and encompasses our our scientific understanding of nature, as signified by Darwin here as well as the cute little feet. The feet indicate that the evolution of creatures, from sea to land and so on is surrounded and included in God’s plan. While I myself am indifferent to the ID vs not-ID debate, perhaps the ID movementmight take this symbol as their own, seeing how it describes concisely how many of them view evolution.

1. Contra syncretism.
2. Just the sort of thing to implement during a major recession. Putting it succinctly as felony stupidity.
3. What passes for argument from the left. Left leaning elitist propaganda here too.
4. Pie … now!!!
5. Of church and state in Morocco.
6. A strange argument indeed, in which political fitness is measured by pork, which I would think is a bad thing, not a good one.
7. Waste, done Democrat flavor.
8. Just a few kids and not a lot of money can produce remarkable results.
9. Yet another day, yet another boldfaced lie from the Administration.
10. A genuine adult film.
11. Future polymath projects.
12. Watching the DOJ.
13. Will there be any notice of this on the left?
14. Missile defense, is this more of Obama’s foreign policy strategy of coddling your enemies and rejecting your friends?
15. Taxonomy of NGO.
16. Now, I thought in my essays that sometimes I connect disparate ideas … but Nazi movies and the thoughts of dead fish … that’s noetic movement indeed.

James Hanley at Positive Liberty reflects on recent experience with lawyers and the law:

Despite the mythology surrounding our adversarial system of justice, it is a terrible way to pursue the truth. I already knew that, but it became ever more clear to me that one of the primary duties of the lawyer is to obscure the truth, to hide and dissemble about all facts that are not conducive to his case.

and

But I think there is a difference in incentives in our occupations. A lawyer, at least in certain fields, can be quite well-rewarded for purposefuly obfuscating the facts. And while for academics it can be rewarding to unintentionally obfuscate the truth, as long as enough others are also fooled, purposefully obscuring it can be treated as a serious offense.

I think Mr Hanley hits on an important point here. In an adversarial system of justice nobody involved is interested in discovering the truth, they are all interested in winning.

Chantal Delsol in Icarus Fallen has a chapter on Democracy, in which she locates doubting Democracy as something of a third rail in our culture. She writes:

So it is that contemporary democracy has become the only cornerstone considered to be untouchable. Lacking the inquisitorial methods that it condemns, it practices its own brand of intolerance through verbal ostracism. Whoever dares to criticize finds himself either scorned for weak or backward reasoning, or accused of barbarity, relegated to the darkness, and placed in the company of our historic enemies. All of which clearly demonstrates the sacralization of democratic thinking: its adversaries are doomed to ruination, diminshed by moral condemnation, and deprived of the right to take issue. The sacred is precisely that against which contradiction kills the contradictor.

(as an aside, I’m uncertain whether I understand what she’s saying in that last sentence, but I don’t think it consonant with a Christian meaning of sacred.) But getting back to the matter of hand. If the problem with an adversarial system of justice is that it is not optimized to find truth, but instead to provide an arena in which a noetic gladiatorial event transpires. An event not to find any underlying truth, i.e., did he do it, or who is right. It doesn’t help that the playing field itself is uneven, having been set by another gladiatorial event, the jousting for favor of elected officials who themselves are jousting for approval of the electorate. In our short American history, we have had the practice of electing to high office those military leaders who are successful (who run) after a war. While these men very often are very poor Presidents, the reason might be that leading civilians is as similar to leading soldiers as is herding cats and herding dogs. However, one of the main reasons on which their electoral success is based is that the test which they passed, leading men successfully, is seen a better test of their fitness to lead the state than rhetorical brilliance in the public forum, debating skills, or finding a good team to run a campaign.

Democracy, Ms Delsol suggests, is a system designed to optimize happiness. (As another aside, this might explain why a common flawed misreading of happiness as related to pleasure underlies the regretful decisions being made by our nominally democratic government today.) However this raises two important questions. The first is one I’ve asked before, namely, “Is our electoral process one which might reasonably expected to winnow out and discover a good leader?” This is related to Mr Hanley’s observation that our legal system is not one designed of fit to find truth, and that if it does occasionally find truth that discovery is more accidental than not. I’d offer, just as our conflict based judicial process is not one which is designed to find truth, I’d offer neither is our electoral procedure one which is designed to find good leaders. A second question arises from the observation of Ms Delsol’s of what is being optimized that is, “What should in fact be optimized by government?” If you are considering the fitness of various forms of the state and how government might best be constructed, it surely prior to engaging on that enterprise, one should consider what is it that should be maximized by our design?

I’d like to offer a non-intuitive stab at an answer to the second question.  I would offer that the thing which government should optimize is just authority. If I define the just authority of a state that authority which is freely granted by the people, then good government is a “straightforward” min-max problem. Maximize authority with a minimum of coercion. Straightforward is in scare quotes because the solution is almost certainly not crystal clear nor straightforward. In this view, Libertarians have it half right. Minimizing coercion is a key ingredient to government. But they also have it exactly half wrong, in that minimizing state authority is getting it exactly backwards. Authority should in fact be maximized …within the condition that coercion be minimal. A totalitarian state maximizes coercion and authority. In an ideal government, any and every act by the government performed would be seen by its citizens as within the authority they granted. Unlike a minimal authority state, it would also fill the roles expected of the state in accord with the desires of its people. It would be free to do anything it wished because it would not wish to do anything that its people did not desire.

What sorts of tentative suggestions might one make toward a system of government that tries to min/max coercion and authority. Two factors come to mind. One, the subsidiarity arises as a important factor a large state, where large regional and micro-regional differences exist regarding expectations of how far the authority of government and its role extends. If you are trying for a min/max solution the flexibility of local adjustments can find a tighter solution than a single global one. Secondly, the forms of government which are considered normally on the playing field, oligarchy, monarchy, democracy and republic are forms which were developed centuries ago. How might information technologies and the ease of transportation in the modern era permit new forms to be imagined (and tested)?

Let me know if you like the remarks or not or prefer the brief version.

1. Ob-Wings is a liberal blog and I haven’t thought about it enough to figure out if I agree or disagrees with the main thrust of this piece. “Second, if colleges ultimately shift to an on-demand model, students will be missing what I consider to be the best parts of “college.”  The aggregation of years of dining hall conversations, tavern debates, and dorm room bull sessions are my most valuable memories.” This makes no sense to me. I mean, I enjoyed bull sessions. But they weren’t in any sense better or ultimately more valuable than my classes. This must be the clearest demonstration that a comparing a non-science/non-technical higher education to a science/math/engineering education is like comparing apples and rocks.
2. ACORN should in any reasonable universe, taking a fatal blow. My guess is that business as usual will continue unabated.
3. Water we are told is the resource more threatened than petroleum, which itself might have passed the point of no return. I would like to note (brag?) that about a month ago we installed a dual/low flush toilet in our house (this one: Kohler K-3654-0).
4. Three simple rules for Afghanistan. Mr Easterly has some questions. I’d add, another. Wasn’t David Petraeus sent to Afghanistan. He seemed to grok COIN. Where is he now?
5. I don’t get it. This notion that the tea party is the “last gasp/stand” of the demographically waning rural/small town Christian white demographic seems to have
6. So it’s over. If you didn’t lose your job you’ve figured that out … and are likely working a lot harder than you were a year ago. I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing (that is the working harder part). The unemployment will likely ease on its own over the next year. Too bad we wasted 800 billions on an unnecessary stimulus package that had to be passed in the dark of the night as an emergency measure.
7. Mostly foreign policy links. I can’t figure Mr Obama’s foreign policy ideas out. He’s nasty to our allies, mushy to those who don’t like us, who still don’t like us, but now they don’t respect us either. And then there’s Honduras.
8. Mr Boudreaux asks how Mr Obama can call the financial sector “reckless”. Well, many a drunk can recognize another man to be drunk. I don’t see how that’s a problem. Ms McArdle, however, has repeatedly pointed out regarding the prior crisis for any indication that this was a regulatory failure, for it seems pretty clear the regulators were egging the whole mortgage bubble on.
9. A mother’s choice celebrated.
10. I read that book some years ago (before I began blogging). It should be in the scholastic canon, by which I mean everybody should have read that book. Recalling the linked notes on the Dostoevsky/Tolstoy (false?) choice … I’d offer that this one (The Death of Ivan Ilyich) is superlative and short.
11. Saving the whales … at what expense. Mr Kuznicki once offered that issues on the front burner don’t necessarily push others out of the limelight. That, in his case, even if SSM is on the front burner, we’ll all be attentive and paying attention to the myriad other issues. That there is no bandwidth problem for activism. This is, I think, clearly false as Mr Carter’s example demonstrates. Sudan/Darfur and the Congo is another example. Attention to the one, where the other is worse but not in the limelight … is a common problem. And yes, I realize that was not the main thrust of Mr Carter’s essay, but I’d offer it as a side matter.

“We want you to engage honestly on the issues in this debate on healthcare” … “but if you oppose the healthcare bill, you are a racist.”

“This healthcare bill will not raise taxes or deficits at all” … but Mr Wilson is “officially” reprimanded for accusing the “One” of lying and an apology is demanded (although it was already tendered within hours of the speech) … this in a bill the CBO flat out says will raise spending and for a bill which specifically includes new taxes.

We’re not going to have any death-panels … We want this instead. It’s not a panel, it’s a formula.

So, let’s attempt some more rational discussions on healthcare. Hopefully, some progressives will be able, unlike the President, to engage in actual debate that isn’t accompanied by poisoning the well.

An eminent not-so-directly politically connected (Nobel winning) economist has an interesting offering here. He concludes:

Why is it that although the average age of onset of disabilities has been delayed by ten years, and that these disabilities have become milder than they used to be, the share of GDP spent on health is rising? One factor is the increase in the proportion of the population that is elderly. However, such changes in age structure account for a minor part of rising expenditures, on the order of 10 percent.

The main factor is that the long-term income elasticity of the demand for healthcare is 1.6—for every 1 percent increase in a family’s income, the family wants to increase its expenditures on healthcare by 1.6 percent. This is not a new trend. Between 1875 and 1995, the share of family income spent on food, clothing, and shelter declined from 87 percent to just 30 percent, despite the fact that we eat more food, own more clothes, and have better and larger homes today than we had in 1875. All of this has been made possible by the growth in the productivity of traditional commodities. In the last quarter of the 19th century, it took 1,700 hours of labor to purchase the annual food supply for a family. Today it requires just 260 hours, and it is likely that by 2040, a family’s food supply will be purchased with about 160 hours of labor.¹²

Consequently, there is no need to suppress the demand for healthcare. Expenditures on healthcare are driven by demand, which is spurred by income and by advances in biotechnology that make health interventions increasingly effective. Just as electricity and manufacturing were the industries that stimulated the growth of the rest of the economy at the beginning of the 20th century, healthcare is the growth industry of the 21st century. It is a leading sector, which means that expenditures on healthcare will pull forward a wide array of other industries including manufacturing, education, financial services, communications, and construction. [Ed: Emphasis mine]

So, my argument all along has been that if you want to increase the availability of healthcare and to increase the quality you need to encourage and advance ways of making the healthcare product we consume today an easier and more available commodity. That will take a radical restructuring and a heavy reliance on automation which is not available today. Entrenching the current system in heavier and ever more layers of bureaucratic burdens is exactly the wrong way to go about reshaping healthcare for the future. Regulation is not the means by which innovation is found. The only innovation heavy regulation and control achieves are innovative ways to get around said innovations.

All of the industrial commodities and consumable items today which have been reduced in price over the past decades have achieved their price reduction via automation. From the humble tractor to automated robotic lines and CAD/CAM processes. Computer automation and information technology are going to be a big part of the innovations that we will need in order for the price to drop by an order of magnitude or more. We are famously told that since the mid-80s the capabilities of biotechnology have been increasing exponentially faster than our computing power (Moore’s Law). Much of the computer industry derived its innovations from very small scale startups and single individuals. Yet it is impossible to imagine a single individual or small group in today’s regulatory environment getting a new drug, therapy, or diagnostic device to market. If it is impossible to imagine … it won’t happen. If Congress gets its hands on managing (and likely micro-managing) healthcare for the nation, innovation will require an act of Congress.

Congress can fix healthcare. By taking its hands off, letting go. By simply burning the as many regulations as it can and lighting the a fire of innovation into the field. Put cost and accountability and choice in the hands of the consumer. Release restrictions and let the market reward successful innovation.

1. Mr Borlaugh … climate sceptic?
2. The Dems pull the race card … yawn. A reply here.
3. Truth to power?
4. You are a cyclist if …
5. The big five.
6. How many at the tea party … getting closer to real numbers, which I might add might also be a weather vane for the bias of your sources. When the MSM calls identical crowds between 1.5 to 5 million when they are for Mr Obama’s inauguration and as low as 30-60k for a tea party … bias seems the only plausible explanation.
7. A van, not unrelated.
8. I guess if you say, he lied, that would be racist (or true).
9. Ethics and the Old Testament.
10. The tire tariff, political pandering? More here.
11. Ms McArdle rebuts Mr Sullivan.
12. Lasers explained.
13. I think this is a very important point made about American healthcare spending.
14. Why is that an either or question? (the original article is here)
15. The Tueller drill.
16. A book recommended. Looks very good to me.
17. Wow. That is very cool.

The Tree of Liberty. Don’t Tread on Me.

The left today sees these as threatening. They only see the tree of liberty in the context of Jefferson’s quote about the blood of patriots. They see the NRA connections of the right combined with that quote and trees in abundance on poster as tantamount to assault, i.e., a direct armed threat in the legal sense. However that is not really tenable.

When one puts this symbolism in a historical context the threat to the established Democratic party rule is purely electoral. Look at the results of a little historical research. In David Hackett Fisher’s book Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas one finds copious examples of liberty trees, bells, snakes and the like … which are to be now found in the tea party posters. They are not hinting at violence but instead are unconsciously (and likely consciously in some cases) tapping the collective visual signs and symbols of our American heritage. While these symbols trace to the revolutionary period, which understandably makes the party in power nervous. They are not exclusively from that period, nor were (historically) used to tie back to that era. That it is to say they are no long primarily tied to revolution and overthrow but are in fact national symbols tied to freedom and liberty. To restate, they are primarily American symbols of freedom and liberty.

If Democrats today are nervous at the thought of liberty and freedom, that is a depressing and unfortunate turn of events. That 30% of this country is so enamoured of statist solutions that ideas of liberty and personal independence scares them.

The November 12th tea party is an political opportunity for those who might capitalize on it. The size of the gatherings alone indicate a large groundswell support. The Democratic party has been long tied to bigger and more intrusive government. The GOP has paid lip service and one might argue recently paid heavily at the polls for their hypocrisy in that matter regarding smaller government. Democrats have argued that people pay lip service themselves to liberty but “really want” the comfortable entitlements that they promote. Yet the tea party movement and the GOP electoral defeats in 2008 might indicate that this is not the case. There are a goodly number of people that really want less from the Feds. It remains to be seen if any number GOP candidates with both seize this opportunity in campaign rhetoric and more importantly follow through once in office.

The linked post and associated picture ask “Can you imagine the outrage if this sign showed up at a MoveOn rally instead of Saturday’s tea party?”

I’m not getting it. What is there to be outraged about?

Help me out here, what outrage and about what?

And what would be a “trigger” related MoveOn rally poster even say that would be objectionable?

1. In favor of auto-expire in legislation.
2. Mr Sullivan’s case considered, more here. The real issue.
3. One view of the Mr Wilson address outcry kerfuffle.
4. Philosophy, well, there you go.
5. Pretty pretty.
6. Some conservative links.
7. A stacked deck.
8. Notes from the tea party. More here and here. And as seen from the other side of the world.
9. MMA and the gospel, and a question asked.
10. Of Bangles and bikes (doing “bike like an Egyptian”).
11. Moving toward a 1 liter (that is 1 liter/100km) car.
12. On our economic woes.
13. Untruth in advertising (although it might be noted that it if you take “stoned” literally instead of a figure for execution, it might be true).
14. Self as illusion, modern science and religion.

This summer, as regular readers of this blog likely know, I took a spirituality class this summer. The reading was extensive and there were no papers or written work to submit during the class. As a final effort however, we have been asked to produce a short paper (which is below the fold) listing some short quotes from the readings that had personal relevance along with short remarks about that included quote. And so we begin. Read the rest of this entry

1. Market watch on carbon credits.
2. Some middle of the road observations on Obama’s health address.
3. And finally, from a libertarian.
4. And some from the right.
5. A reporter fails to use some highly technical research tools, i.e., google.
6. Eve-teasing, India and bloggers.
7. Protests and response in Minsk. (note I used google translate Russian -> English)
8. And a student address in Michigan from 1988 recalled. (note I used google translate Russian -> English here too)
9. Looking at prosecutorial abuse.
10. half full/empty and cinema.
11. Education and psychology.
12. On the elimination of waste and fraud as a gambit.
13. Moscow and Kyiv.
14. Sir Thomas and Mr Kennedy.
15. Abiogenic oil, the significance of which would imply that there might exist large untapped (deeper) oil reserves.
16. Two explanations for economists recent failures.
17. Mr Carter notices an ACORN expose.
18. The “short arm” of the law.

The The Notorious ŒV offers a bland suggestion that the left remains sympathetic to keeping The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century yet unlearned. Having finished the class (except for a final paper which I plan to write this weekend) now I have the chance to return to reading Chantal Delsol’s two books that have been translated into English (the first linked above). The second, which actually was published first, is titled Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in a Uncertain World. In the forward by the series editor, an surprising fact is asserted. The secular left and liberalism has had a little known assault which has been highly successful in the debate between left and right in the field of translation. They have managed to give the impression that outside of the Anglo-American world leftist thinkers are the dominant default. In turn, the Continent has been assailed in the main by liberal authors from the Americas, badly skewing our impressions of the status of the other. He gives a list of about a dozen or so French, South American, Italian, and German conservative thinkers and writers, each heard in their language but not translated. Chantal Delsol is another of these individuals. The editor notes the obvious, that one would have considered a distinguished influential woman political scientist/political philosopher (and in a field in which women are not just a little rare) would be a thing that feminists would celebrate. Yet, because her political philosophy is not left leaning … wham. No translations. No celebrations. No recognition (except perhaps a tacit nod to hypocrisy).

Ms Delsol is writing about the failed aspirations of the majority in the last century. She terms our age late modernity to strike a chord with late antiquity. For the last two centuries the progressive vision has been to stamp out poverty, injustice, war, disease and arrive at a radiant future. Even today, the left wing in American thinks that, yes, if only we pass this next reform (healthcare) then there will be no people dying for lack of care in America. There are two results to that sort of thinking. First, since, even if that passes, people will still be dying, injustice, poverty and disease will remain … yet another major reform will be critically required. And second eventually many will become disillusioned. Ms Delsol begins her book with an image of an Icarus who actually manages to survive. And asks, “he falls back into the labyrinth, where he finds himself horribly bruised but still alive. And let us try to imagine what goes on in his life after having thought himself capable of attaining the sun, the supreme good. How will he get over his disappointment?”

There are some who think that the mistakes of the past century to solve those problems were technical. That Icarus just “didn’t” get it right, like the hopey/changey Obamanoids who think that just if “smart people” get to make the right “wonky” decisions then the sun will be attained. Asymmetrical information problems are not the least of their errors. The problems go deeper. Others are less optimistic, instead having an existential crises. Having rejected the foundational beliefs of the prior age and embarking on ambitious projects to save the world, finding that it is not a tenable project, leaves many in the late modernity grasping for alternatives.

In the upcoming weeks, one of the recurring themes will be to raise and discuss the points and arguments raised by Ms Delsol in her two books noted above, starting with Icarus Fallen. I’d encourage you to get them from a library and skim or read them yourselves (of failing that, tip me a few dimes and buy it with the provided links). It would at the very least enliven the discussion.

1. Well, Ms Paglia ruffled the ‘sphere, but signifying … what?
2. Incentives essential … not essential. Hint: the former is right, knuckleheads on the Administration notwithstanding.
3. Nose surgery patterns.
4. That green jobs fella.
5. Has anyone defended Mr Obama’s Honduras policy?
6. For the Muslim in Egypt.
7. A book reviewed, the 10,000 year explosion.
8. Hmmm. That should help Congress tank their popularity even more.
9. A problem for Mr Obama’s credibility. Why would anyone believe anything that man says any longer? Has he done anything at all that he said he would if it wasn’t also to his advantage?
10. Problems with the public option.
11. This brings to mind my favorite frog saying, “Eat a live frog first thing every morning, it will be the worst thing all day for both of you.”
12. Watching the top court.
13. A new site for media bias analysis.
14. Literature … one for the ages.
15. Imagine that, going into politics for personal greed and aggrandizement.

1. Bicycle thief gets his.
2. As we keep giving more and more power to government … hmmmm.
3. A Liberal wakes up (HT: Mr Leiter)
4. That notion as a trend noted here.
5. Two voices now being heard.
6. Mr Bernanke’s influences.
7. Count me as interested.
8. More DS-9 discussion and alas it still hasn’t gotten to the dollar theatre so I haven’t seen it yet … but I will.
9. Old Testament ethics.
10. On healthcare, Ms McArdle notes, ” Health care reform has not survived the worst Republicans can throw at it.  It’s survived–barely–the opening volley.”
11. On that same topic, this will be discussed ad infinitum (or ad nasueam).
12. On Anathem a short discussion, which book launguishes on my floor waiting for me to get ’round toit.
13. Upping the ante.
14. A cup of cold water.
15. In the “ask not what” theme.
16. For myself, I don’t think he gets it. I suggest that Mr Obama being himself a radical progressive is just playing to type.
17. Smoke, mirrors, and the gospel.
18. Ms Parks and the Christian life, a hint.

David at (as?) the Thirsty Theologian writes on sex (while married) and the Puritans. I had written an mid-length reply to our short conversation on that, which got lost. Or so I thought … as my reply did in fact show up (as I check later as I write this). To clarify what is being discussed here.

• David’s post is about how the Puritans have been misread by history (as is so common in history) the “conventional wisdom” regarding the Puritan attitude toward sex has it backwards. That is, that Puritans enthusiastically encouraged and celebrated sex within marriage. I think this is right and is right. That is to say, I think that it is correct that the historical reading has it wrong and that celebration of sex within marriage is the right attitude. I would only temper that with what Fr. Isaiah taught this summer, that as marriage continues into old age the (Orthodox) expectation is that the seeking of dispassion by the married couple will lead ultimately to celibacy within marriage.
• David starts (as well) pointing out Augustine, who he feels is highly regarded (?) within the Reformed community, felt that celibacy was a higher calling … and that this was wrong. David feels that Sola Scriptura is the only criteria by which normative Christian behaviour is to be measured.

David in his last exchange writes:

Since you claim to agree with the patristic tradition because it agrees with scripture, then you’re not really going counter to my statement dismissing tradition “if scripture says something else,” are you? We just disagree about what scripture says. So, if the fathers could really argue the superiority of celibacy from scripture, you should be able to do the same.

And on this I wish to write a little more. The full argument for the superiority of the monastic life and celibacy in particular from Scripture is derivative, for indeed the New Testament itself (obviously) does not lay out anything like the monastic example or teachings like St. John Cassian, St. Basil the Great, or St. John Climacus. So how did this conclusion come about. For this I think the key point is not to specifically single out celibacy or any other particular other monastic practice but the general practice of apatheia (dispassion) within the ascetic life (to which we are all called but the monastics single out as their primary focus in life). The writers noted just previously all assumed the necessity of apatheia. Apatheia in Christian writings and teaching is found as early as in Clement (AD 30-100) Stromata. At Clement’s time gnosticism and stoic influences were readily apparent, but by the time of those noted above that had long since gone through the wringer and the non-Christian influence weeded out. Take for example the later writer, Evagrius, and look at his work Praktikos. The Protestant claim is that this writing does not follow Scripture, yet scan the opening pages of the Praktikos, you will not find references to Scripture a rare thing. He uses Scripture to support and explain why dispassion is necessary and how to come by it. Once you have accepted dispassion as necessary to the Christian life … celibacy as a higher calling and exceptional way of life is unavoidable. Look at any of the early Christian writers. These writings form and explain Christian tradition and, lo, they are in fact heavily if not “solely” dependent on Scripture for inspiration.