It Takes a Monk to Save a Civilization

Art historian and critic Kenneth Clark wrote, “It is hard to believe that for quite a long time—almost a hundred years—western Christianity survived by clinging to places like Skellig Michael, rising seven hundred feet out of the sea.” Skellig Michael is a rocky island located off the southwestern coast of Ireland. It was one of the outposts of early Irish Christians who in the 5th and 6th centuries rescued European civilization.

This took place in a time when the old order and power of the Roman Empire had completely disintegrated and when illiterate, pagan, barbaric hordes, who were devoid of understanding the Greco-Roman heritage, were rearranging Europe. While Greece lay in ruins and Rome was being pillaged and plundered, the best of their accomplishments were preserved only in books.

But books too are perishable. Great libraries, like that of ancient Alexandria, were vulnerable to destruction, and with the destruction of books, the knowledge, thought, and poetry of whole cultures were subject to extinction.

For a time, about all that stood between the preservation of European civilization or its descent into a true dark age was a hardy band of Irish monks who were dedicated to copying books and evangelizing people. Usually we think of the Irish as the victims of colonization and oppression. In their later history, English policy toward the Irish ranged from trying to absorb them to trying to obliterate them. Just as the Emerald Isle is on the edge of Europe, so the Irish have been on the edge of the progress and forward tug of history—most of the time.

Although there was never a time when Irish armies occupied Europe or Irish leaders dominated the councils of power, there was a time when Ireland did save civilization. We recognize the name of Patrick, but most know little about his successors, like Columcille and Columbanus, who spread the Christian message beyond Ireland to Britain and then to continental Europe. Thomas Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, is a delightful account of this history.

Two things were done primarily by the Irish during the 5th and 6th centuries. First, they carefully copied and preserved the books that fell into their hands. Latin literature would have been lost without the Irish; furthermore, as Cahill points out, “…there would have perished in the west not only literacy but all the habits of mind that encourage thought.” Second, they established monasteries all over Europe that were devoted to preaching, teaching, and ministering to the local populations. These two activities point out the way for Christians to take dominion over the future.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who teaches history at a junior college. He was bemoaning the fact that his college students could not locate key American cities on United States maps. I smiled and said, “Well, my tenth graders are struggling to understand Augustine’s City of God.” Literature has faced extinction in our own era, but in a way different from the past. In the ancient world, rare manuscripts were destroyed; in our age they have been crowded out by the abundance of technology and paper and by philosophies of education that oppose knowledge. But in Christian school and home school settings, books have been rediscovered.

There have been some useful textbooks written in the past several decades since the Christian education movement emerged. But more important, students are now reading books in the junior high and high school levels that I never read even in college. I repeatedly learned about The Federalist Papers, but only after I taught in a Christian school did I began actually studying The Federalist Papers. At its best, much of my education seemed to better train me to watch “Jeopardy” or to play “Trivial Pursuit” than to think.

In this modern reformation, Christian educators debate whether it is best to read the ancient pagans or the early church fathers. Further debates occur between those who favor Cromwell’s secretary, John Milton, and those who favor the Italian Catholic poet Dante; advocates for Shakespeare lock horns with devotees of Spenser; and some even assign Hemingway and Faulkner to the disgust of those who prefer Tolkien and Lewis. We more eclectic types try to assign them all. But the debates continue amongst Christian educators. In language, disagreements break out over whether to teach Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or some modern language. Even logic teachers differ over whether you begin with fallacies or syllogistic validity. Isn’t this great? Isn’t this fun?

In the Christian education community, we are producing a generation of graduates who are well read in Greek and Roman classics, Patristic theology, Reformed treatises, the Great Books tradition, the Medieval Trivium, and much more. There is no uniformity imposed by a statist decree telling these students what to read and telling teachers what to teach. Instead, we are experiencing the rise of a generation of thinking students who have traveled all over the intellectual globe. They will have achieved Mortimer Adler’s ideal of having read the best ideas that men have thought and written. In one sense of the word, they will be Renaissance men and women. But in another sense, because they are viewing these books through Scriptural lenses, they are Reformation men and women.

Imagine an iron-sharpened generation of people who go beyond “Trivial Pursuit” to actually discuss issues. Imagine political debate where Christians grounded in Hamilton’s and Madison’s views of the Constitution are sparring with other Christians holding to Patrick Henry’s objections to the Constitution. Imagine your children fighting over whether Calvin or Augustine was the greatest theologian. Imagine young people who will be in awe of us who lived in the same era as Rushdoony, Van Til, and Bahnsen.

Some of us struggle to resist watching the evening political talk shows. When we give in to the temptation and watch the shows, we rejoice in seeing conservative Christian spokesmen locking horns with liberals in debate. Such a witness and voice is good, but a few Christian ideas touted by talking heads squeezed in between toothpaste commercials in a national debate will not change the culture. Books will do that.

Today’s Monasteries

Likewise, churches will change our culture. Church should strive to be the monasteries of today. Monasteries are not well understood in our culture. We picture drab, dark places where hooded monks went about singing chants. Instead monasteries were centers of Christian activism. J. O. Westwood describes monasteries as:

“schools, all the way from kindergarten to university, hospitals, hotels, publishing houses, libraries, law courts, art academies, and conservatories of music. They were houses of refuge, places of pilgrimage, marts for barter and exchange, centers of culture, social foci, newspaper offices, and distilleries. A score of other public and practical things were they: garrison, granary, orphan asylum, frontier fort, post office, savings bank, and general store for surrounding agricultural districts. We carelessly imagine the early monasteries as charnel-houses of cant and ritual—whereas they were the best-oiled machines for the advancement of science, the living accelerators of human thinking, precedent to the University of Paris.”

Referring to the works of the monks in the Middle Ages in his book The Making of Europe, Christopher Dawson said, “The greatest names of the age are the names of monks—St. Benedict and St. Gregory, the two Columbas, Bede and Boniface, Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, and Dunstan, and it is to the monks that the great cultural achievements of the age are due, whether we look at the preservation of ancient culture, the conversion of new peoples or the formation of new centres of culture in Ireland and Northumbria and the Carolingian Empire.”

Christian churches actually are doing the work of monasteries today, without the baggage of some of the errors of the Medieval time. Christian churches and voluntary agencies provide the best social services for our society today. Without endorsing President Bush’s program for aiding faith-based organization, it is reassuring that the national debate recognizes that Christian organizations are the most effective means of dealing with poverty, drug abuse, and family problems. Christians are the ones providing the educational reforms (at no cost to taxpayers), music instruction, marriage counseling, English language instruction, and other needs of society.

There remains those churches that are merely stained glass edifices open to the public only for a few hours on Sunday mornings. But, some great Christian works are being done in places that do not look like traditional churches. The news coverage of the recent hurricane relief efforts in Louisiana and surrounding states could not help but highlight Christian ministries to the evacuees.

The greatest events going on in our day are not happening in cabinet meetings at the White House or in caucuses on Capital Hill or in executive board rooms on Wall Street. Civilization is being saved by faithful pastors, dedicated Christian teachers, moms and dads who are teaching their children about Jesus, small name book publishers, newsletters, magazines, and web sites dedicated to Christian causes, and to a host of other Samaritine-type works happening across the land.

Thomas Cahill contrasted the Romans, who were unable to save or salvage their once grand civilization, with the Irish saints, who changed the direction of history. Cahill says, “The twenty-first century, prophesied Malraux, will be spiritual or it will not be. If our civilization is to be saved—forget about our civilization, which, as Patrick would say, may pass ‘in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scattered by the wind’—if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints.”

We could spend a lot of time bemoaning the legion of dangers to our republic, our civilization, and our way of life. Hilliary just might get elected in 2008, the economy might implode, and gay marriages might become the rage. Congress might not pass and the President might not sign some mythical piece of legislation ending all bad things and promoting all good things. Don’t despair. Instead, teach a Sunday School class, support a Christian school or mission work, buy some Christian books, give away some Christian books, go to prayer meeting, witness to someone, encourage a faithful minister, and pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Arend van Leeuwen’s book Christianity in World History ends with this note: “We live in a time of crisis: and krisis is a biblical word. In the Bible it signifies ‘judgment’, but along with that, ‘justice’ and ‘salvation’. The Servant of the Lord ‘will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice (krisis) in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his torah,’ (Is. 42.1ff.; Mt. 12:18ff.). Holding on to a few acres of rocky and jagged islands, Christians once persevered for a century, laboring to see the faith spread. We here in this land have so much more.

Hunting Successes

I envy the comaraderie of hunters. I can vicariously sense the thrill of getting the gear packed for the hunt, sitting in the tree or blind watching for the game, bagging the trophy animal, and even more than that, sitting around the fire with the other hunters slugging hot coffee and eating stew and recounting the kill. I love hunting so much that I rank William Faulkner's novella The Bear as one of my favorite books. I seeth at the gun control fanatics and even more so at the animal rights goofs for their opposition to this most basic, most manly, most American, most Southern of...not pastimes...but quests.

With all this adoration of hunting, I just don't personally have any interest or liking or attraction to actually going hunting. I don't like getting up early; I don't like sitting in trees; I don't like being quiet and still in freezing weather; I don't really want to kill an animal; I surely don't want to have to field dress an animal; and I don't want to be mistaken for game and end up being shot and field dressed before the mistake is discovered. I do miss the fellowship around the campfire, but can easily get over that by propping up on the couch with a book.

So, I confine my hunting to one particular kind--book hunting. The internet has both made this hunt much more successful and much less exciting. It is akin to going to those game reserves where the deer are fed in range of the hunters.

Nevertheless, many an out-of-print book has been found over the net. Used books and discounted books are now quite easily acquired. There is still the excitement of waiting for the sight of the postman or UPS man delivering the trophy into my hands.

The big book store chains are also fun to visit, but the finds are too numerous and the prices too much limit the results.

All of this leads up to some recent great finds. I love estate sales. For the book hunter, these are grand hunts. In recent months, I have found some wonderful selections at such sales. Sometimes you come across the estate of one who was a great collector and reader. Coming away from those kinds of sales resembles Theodore Roosevelt's safaris in terms of the massive amount of gain. One of my favorite cases concerns a Saturday when my wife, Stephanie, and I were looking around at a sale in its final hours when the prices were cut in half. Stephanie found a beautiful large mirror, but more important, in the midst of a poor selection of books--mainly on playing bridge--I found a nice older hardback edition (maybe a first edition) of C.S. Lewis' Surprised By Joy. I think I paid a grand total of 50 cents for that prize. Almost as much fun as finding the book was seeing my students and friends cringe with envy over my hunting trophy.

I have wanted to get the books of Ann Coulter, but have refused to buy them new. I picked up a really nice copy of Slander for just a dollar at an estate sale recently. At another sale, for a few dollars, I picked up a fat volume containing religious quotes and another book of selections by great Christian writers, such as J. Gresham Machen.

This past weekend, I scored one of my great coups. Here is how the hunt began: My son, Nicholas, and I headed out on the trail of an estate sale. Fighting heavy traffic, we came to a sign pointing to the sale. Not much was there; nothing I had to have. (Most people have few books and even fewer that I want.) I thought we would return home empty-handed. But something of the hunter's instinct reared up in my blood. "We must press on," I told Nicholas. Driving on down the road we came to the second estate sale, which was the one I intended to go to originally. So I had followed a false lead--a red herring of a sort! This second house was a veritable labyrinth of rooms filled with furniture, glassware, and other items. I picked up a set of milkglass plates for my wife. (The good hunters always brings something home to the wife to either woo or appease her.) As I started out, Nicholas came to me and said, "There is a room full of books back here." (He is developing a good nose for books.) I went into the room and started scanning the shelves: Not really anything there I wanted. I glanced down and saw a set of encyclopedias--no interest in such. But lo...I glanced again and saw a flash of movement--a great classic was in the bush. But more! I looked closely and saw that it was a box filled with the Brittanica Great Books Series. I reached down and snatched the price tag to secure the find. Then I noticed that the collection consisted of two over-filled boxes--a complete set of the 54 books. AND, most of the books had never been opened--the plastic wrap was still on the books. (Do I deserve my own hunting show or what?) Nick and I raced to the tent outside to pay for the books. Having bagged our game, I loaded it into the car headed home. I kept thinking I needed a picture of me in my book hunting gear with the newly acquired set.

Before this, I had a random selection of about 30 or more older and worn volumes out of that set. I never expected to find all the missing volumes. Now I have the whole set and it is in mint condition. And I cannot reveal how good a deal I got, lest you fellow hunters stumble.

Now in the course of a year, I have acquired the 38 volume Church Fathers set and the 54 volume Great Books Set. If I ever have to go to a desert island with only 2,163 books, both of these sets will be there with me.

The Second Thanksgiving

Plymouth Plantation, 1622, A Year Later

The second harvest was our time of sorrow.
The fruit and scattered memories of the seasons before:
Of Wampanoag grins
Tossing five fresh killed bucks before the women cooking,
Of men leaned against trees with drinks and loud laughter,
The militia’s firing of guns and games of chasing and wrestling,
Faded with the light of the third evening’s blazing fire.
Winter hit hard, freezing the burying grounds
And darkening the sky for months
Overcast and lacking even the hope found in bird feathers.
And the sea in waves of empty promises
Washing against the jagged rocks,
Drowned our prayers and cries, but
Brought misfortune, disguised under a different name.
In spring we planted, the sun warming our weakened frames,
Thawing the vision we had in Scrooby and later Amsterdam,
And the rocky ground yielded up chilled dirt to the plows.
(We remembered what Squanto had taught us so well.)
Summer came with gnats and disappointments:
We built more cabins, but more joined the other village
Preferring their grass covered earthen dwellings.
That fall our harvest broke our spirits—
Storing our corn, we turned to the howling ravenous forests.
In wailing lamentation, we huddled against the approach of winter.
What about our faith? Did our love of God see us through it all?
Did we questioned why Christ didn’t multiply our mouldy loaves?
For the redeemed the crushing weight of rock is not an issue.
Light piercing beyond the crashed entrance of this cave
Gave us reason to gasp for one more breath.
Shivering and feverish, our mouths watered for heaven
And Plymouth’s communion crumbs exceeded
The finest feast to be had with noble bishops in England.

Train Songs and Greek Syntax

Douglas Wilson has said that pastors might be better served by closing their books on Greek syntax and trying to figure out why Johnny Cash wrote train songs. At some point in my theological education, I realized that my struggles with English syntax precluded my ever mastering Greek syntax. Besides, my main problem has always been obeying the clear passages, rather than exegeting the unclear. So I found myself in much accord with this Douglas Wilson statement.

I have another reason for favoring this approach to theology: I like Johnny Cash and I like train songs. Although, he was not the perfect model to follow, I am glad that in my childhood days that I listened to “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison” rather than some group of long-haired hippies playing on electric guitars. I lost track of Johnny Cash’s music through the years, but picked up the last record he released—“The Man Comes Around.” Certainly the late Johnny Cash reached a wide audience with his range of songs. Whether he was singing about love, sin, God, or even trains, something of his heart went out in every song.

So why did Johnny Cash write and sing train songs? In short, because train songs are part of the country music tradition. That only broadens rather than answers the question. Why were train songs a part of the country music tradition?

First, a few words about country music. Unbelievably, in the 1940s, a governor of Tennessee allowed that country music was an embarrassment to the state. It pert near cost him his job. Country singer Roy Acuff, later proclaimed the king of country music, ran against him, but lost only because he ran as a Republican in a Yellow Dog Democrat state during the heyday of the Roosevelt Democratic coalition.

Country music is a wide-ranging category of music in the modern world. There are battles between the purist traditions and the popularizers. These battles, like any conflict arising among predominantly Southerner groups, is quite bitter and nasty. Without trying to stray away too far, purists would include George I and George II, that is Jones and Strait. Purists would include the Bluegrass musicians from the late Bill Monroe to Ralph Stanley (and the Stanley Brothers)—both of whom were in the ‘founding stage’ of bluegrass music to Ricky Skaggs and Allison Krauss. Popularizers would include those like Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks; popularizers are those who are willing to use non-country instruments and styles, non-country methods, and non-country promotional gimmicks. CMT, the country music video network, caters largely to the popularizer crowds; the Saturday night Grand Ole Opry or your local bluegrass festival caters to the purists.

The older country music, or traditional or purist country music, struck chords with human experience. Country music is memory oriented; it is community and family oriented; it assumes a pilgrimage often from sin to salvation, with the sequence being repeated often this side of heaven; country music indicates a better past—when a more godly culture prevailed—and a better future—when either a more godly culture prevails or at least the circle will be unbroken in heaven. Country music presupposes Christianity, faithful mothers, true love, heaven, and the goodness of America. Country music recognizes the existence of sin, drinking, marital unfaithfulness, killings (often resulting from the last two mentioned items), and wicked people.

It affirms the Saturday night grand ole time at the local honky tonk and the Sunday morning worship service. Both happen. Both represent human needs and failures. Both are part of the real human condition and predicament.

Granted that out of the large corpus of country songs, many are theologically atrocious, morally stupid, hopelessly sentimental, lyrically irritating, emotionally nauseating, amorously idolatrous, and sapid, banal, and ignorant. Yet the corpus contains many great works of lower cultural poetry: Songs, or lyrics or poems, that tell the essence of love and loneliness, the pleasures and pain of wine, women, and songs, the ties to home and family, and a depth of religious experience rivaling the poetry of John Donne.

[At the risk of losing all credibility, I will maintain that had John Donne been born in Alabama or Arkansas in the 20th century, given his propensity to write really sensual love poetry and really deep religious poetry, that he would have been right up there with Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Although this is true, don't try to sing Donne's sonnet "Batter My Heart Three Person God" to the tune of "Daddy Sang Bass."]

All of which brings us back to train songs. We live in an age that is now either bored or unimpressed with machinery, mechanization, computerization, with things digitalized, mass produced, plastic, or glitzy. We live in an age of franchises, making every city look alike, an age of malls and chain stores, and via Internet, every item you ever wanted it available with a few clicks.

But Johnny Cash was born in a world closer to the earth, a farm in Arkansas; he was born in a time closer to a world where mechanization was fascinating attractive, but optional; a world where the city was tempting, but not fulfilling; a world where the train was both metaphor and reality. The train brought relief and pleasure and ‘the world’ to life on the farm. But the train was also a threat to the peacefulness and assuredness of home and hearth.

The greater world was way off yonder—in the cities, cities an uncle or cousin had perhaps visited, cities that a few had wandered off to and never returned. This greater world was a draw: It was filled with wonder and with real wonders. Most important, thanks to trains, the city was something you go to and it was something you could return from. Home was a constant, home with the girl next door, the hills and creeks, the little country church. However fast the train might go leaving the valley or returning to the valley, life in the valley stayed the same, or so it seemed, or so we still continue to wish. (I have recurring dreams of such a place and have not found it.)

Trains in the older rural South were like quests for knights of old. A train might take you toward love, adventure, and wealth. It might take you away from sorrow, danger, and poverty. The goal might be where the quest takes you, or it might be the journey itself. Some knights were drawn on quests for noble ideas; others for less noble goals. Likewise, the train could carry one toward greater things or away from the things that matter most.

Trains, like the future, could not be confined to any simple category or definite experience. In the Stanley Brothers’ song “Midnight Train,” the train was a means of escaping lost love and depression: “I’m ridin’ on that midnight train; my head’s hangin’ low; these awful blues will follow me, wherever I may go.” But in Roy Acuff’s “Sunshine Special” the train reunited lovers: “I’ll meet her at the station this morning at nine, Sunshine Special will be right on time.” In the recent big hit “The Long Black Train,” Josh Turner sees the train as an extended metaphor for sin and temptation, but in the old country gospel song “Life is like a Mountain Railroad,” the train and railway was a Pilgrim’s Progress through the ups and downs of life, successful from ‘the cradle to the grave” only for those who were guided by the Savior. Sometimes the songs, like Acuff’s hit ‘The Wabash Cannonball’ celebrated the power and beauty of the trains: “She’s mighty tall and handsome and known quite well by all; She’s a combination on the Wabash Cannonball.” Sometimes the songs, like ‘Wreck of Old 97’, lamented the romantic danger facing those glamorous engineers of the modern world of trains.

The Great Depression, which began earlier and lasted longer for the South, highlighted another aspect of trains. Hopping a freight was a means of escaping the poverty and hopelessness of many a Southerners situation. Often, the promise of success off somewhere else led to even greater despair. Hence the singer in the song “Detroit City” decides that he will put away his foolish pride and hop on a train and ride back home. So once again, the train that took you away from home was a means of getting home.

The beginnings of recorded country music largely grew out of the songs of Mississippian Jimmie Rogers, known as ‘the Singing Brakeman.’ Rogers helped develop the white Southern country side of the music called the Blues. He sings of being ‘a thousand miles away from home, just a waitin’ for a train.’

That same sense of longing and emptiness comes out in Johnny Cash’s famous prison song “Folsom Prison Blues.” It is the sound of the train ‘rolling around the bend’ that causes the singer to lament his being stuck in Folsom Prison while rich folks are drinking coffee and smoking big cigars and enjoying their freedom. Quite different is the celebration of returning to the South in Cash’s early hit “Hey Porter,” in which he instructs the porter to have everybody stand up and yell when the train crossed the Mason-Dixon line.

Trains represented the potential, the hope, the anticipation, the excitement of something that might change life as it is. People seek such; man longs for something beyond his 9 to 5 job. C.S. Lewis wrote the classic account of this search for something, specifically for joy, this longing for something.

People have attempted fulfillment in drugs (which was a particular demon for Cash), alcohol, fame (which Cash experienced), wealth (yes, his name was fittingly Cash), and other things as minor as diets and self-help books.

For Johnny Cash and so many others, the fulfillment was not in the train that was leaving, but the train that was going back. In his wonderful marriage to June Carter, in his baritone faith in Christ (see note), in his love of his calling, in his security in his roots, and in his songs about trains, Johnny Cash must have succeeded in the trip home.

[Baritone Faith: Defined as faith in Christ as exhibited by the voice and timbre of Johnny Cash’s singing; that is, faith that is manly, rugged, struggling, filled with pain as well as joy, and sure of priorities, God, wife, family, calling, and country.]

While I am thankful that God sets apart some men, according to His grace and their intellectual gifts, to seek out Greek syntax, I feel particularly blessed that God called one person to be Johnny Cash.

A War Like No Other

Victor Davis Hanson is one of the more brilliant thinkers, historians, and commentators of our age. He understands the current war against terrorism and Islam better than most. In general, due to his grounding in the ancient classics, he understands the nature of war and its political and social implications in ways that never fail to astound the reader. His book Carnage and Culture is an invaluable history of warfare in the Western world with analyses of why the Western world has triumphed over the rest of the planet. His sequel, Ripples of Battle, shows how war and battles contain far reaching consequences that no one could know from simply seeing who won and who lost the military engagement itself. He is a leading expert on warfare of the Ancient Greeks and the author of numerous studies on Greek warfare. And along with John Heath, he wrote a book called The Death of Homer, which details the importance of a Classical education and why such an education is in such short supply today.

Those of us who are laboring in the trenches to restore Classical Christian education owe a debt to people like Dr. Hanson. He does not share all of our vision; he does not, to the best of my knowledge, share our commitment to the heritage of Christendom; yet, at key points, he is fighting the same enemies and providing wonder inspiration and examples.

He recently made the following comments in an essay on his retirement from a California university:

One tactic that the university has not attempted is a return to the kind of universal and rigorous liberal-arts education that would challenge students. I had little if any success in convincing anyone that Latin, for example, rather than bilingual studies would improve migrant students’ test scores — even though, as a classics professor who taught Greek and Latin to such students for two decades, I believed that to be the case. Most of the time, it was hard enough for principled faculty to fight off such politically motivated absurdities as allowing a course on slavery to be substituted for a required core class in American history, or introducing “Star Trek and the Humanities” into the curriculum. That curriculum fails to emphasize grammar; traditional composition skills; oral presentation and the defense of one’s ideas during rigorous questioning; memorization of facts, dates, and concepts; and attention to history, literature, music, and art. From my own limited experience of seeing minority students of classics and ancient history excel after graduation, I believe such an emphasis on basic education would allow us to graduate once-disadvantaged students with enough verbal and analytical skills to compete with anyone in the cutthroat marketplace.

Thanks to the Classical Christian education movement, there are students, quite of few of whom are minorities, who are now learning Latin and are being grounded in grammar, traditional composition skills, oral presentation (in our rhetoric classes), and the defense of one's ideas. Dr. Hanson labored at the university for a type of student we are now producing at the elementary through high school level. I am thankful for those lonely professors, like Hanson, who have battled for similar ideals. I wish I had had the benefits of teachers like Hanson in the classroom. But I can enjoy the benefits of the Classicists, even though I may be confined to reading their modern English publications and not the ancient works in original languages.

I am excited that Dr. Hanson's new book on the Peloponnesian War has been published. After all, don't we all get quite excited when such books come out? It is titled A War Like No Other : How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War .

My main readings this year are on Medieval topics, since that is the course of studies for my Humanities class. But along with reading Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur and Augustine's City of God, I will try to leave some room for some dessert reading, and that dessert will soon be the new Hanson book.

To read more by and about Victor Davis Hanson, follow this link to visit Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers.

Could Jesus not find better choices?

The Alternatives

I wonder if there were late night talks by campfires
When they mistook your closed eyes and silence for sleep,
Arguing radical political desires,
Like shepherds lacking wisdom to tend their sheep.

Their dull-minded full-certainty of mystery,
Only you knowing which one would die full of years,
Rambling men whose preaching would change all history,
Even yet with blurred vision and near deaf ears.

The parables missed; the dozing during prayer;
The quarrels and cutting eyes and willingness to kill;
Such a discordant chord, with understanding rare:
Such fish-handling hands to capture the holy hill.

Greece would offer men of mountains and seas noble,
Longing for Hercules to break Alcestis’ grave,
Weary of the cold Olympian gods’ trouble,
With columned logic and truth and beauty to save.

And minds sharpened on bronze spear-point of Homer’s war;
Their bodies sleek with olive oil, and like Apollo,
Minds of academe trained to question and explore
Thoughts philosophic with schools for Greeks to follow.

Imagine calling twelve Greeks: Socrates, Plato,
Alexander, Aristotle, Euripides,
And rhetors, poets, and dramatists who would know
How to adorn your message with choice words that please

Raising carpenter preaching to speculation
With idols of stone and idols sung most handsome;
Macedonian phalanx hurled against reaction.
The unwilling submitting to your blood ransom.

Yet you saw beyond their Olympian nakedness,
Seeing Aegean monsters spewing vile poison.
So dark Greece would sleep on in depraved emptiness.
Not many wise Corinthians would be chosen.

Greece would wait to awaken with the waving hands
Of a Macedonian bidding invasion,
A Jewish Alexander conquering new lands
Proclaiming your life-paid blood-bought wrath’s retraction.

Roman organization would take up your sword.
Legions of soldiers, not mere commoners, would rise,
Firmly grounded on the republic, at your word,
Decreeing beatitudes; they would brutalize

All those who did not love as themselves their neighbor;
The Senate legislating parables as law;
Conquering lands and building roads with slave labor;
Efficient force bending the world to holy awe.

Crowning you the Augustus Christ Caesar Divine,
To your imaged coins all men would tribute render.
Roman philosophers would your teachings refine
With the hammered correction of grace too tender

But Roman offers to pilot the gospel would be rejected;
Her monstrous salty body slated to be stone-ground;
The mighty Caesars by barbarian graces ejected.
With some officials and slaves in home churches found.

Tentmaker, fisherman, and exiled islander
Captured what eluded Carthage’s great Hannibal,
Leaving Gibbon to rave and others to wonder
How so perished the once thought imperishable.

Learned Pharisees marveled at the stupid lot
While professing God and lusting for blood,
With flea choking searches for a tittle’s jot,
For love of God they would kill God if they could.

With their hidden salvation by circumcision
Proudly proclaimed by blinded lights,
Investing good silver in Judas’ decision,
With only a few seekers saved on natal nights.

You chose weak men of a doubly enslaved nation--
Men who provoked you to be more lion-like than lamb;
They were too few and dull and mortal to make a new creation;
They were too fleeting to represent the “I Am.”


One would think you’ve learned your lesson—
Having eleven weak ones and one betrayer;
Still appointing stammering men lacking reason,
Who deny you by fireside and sleep in prayer.

Still you build with flimsy walls on rock foundation,
Tax collector joining revolutionary
With mild burdens issued from your right hand station:
“Fill the world with my disciples; do not tarry.”