petermullen – Page 30 – All Things Considered

19 Jul

The religion of peace and love–part three

Muslim propagandists – ironically described as “scholars” – often put it about that the word Islam means “peace.” It doesn’t. It means “submit.” This is being interpreted very literally in Mosul in northern Iraq where those exceptional Islamic devotees in ISIS have ordered local Christians to convert to Islam. Like good representatives of peace and love, they have not left the Christians without options. If, for whatever perverseness of intellect and spirit, Christians decline this kind invitation to give up their faith in Jesus Christ and instead espouse barbarism, they must pay the ancient tax on infidels known as the jiziya. ISIS’ generosity of spirit knows no bounds. Those Christians who elect not to pay to this protection racket must give up their homes and all their possessions and leave. If they persist in their obtuse rejection of all these generous options, they will be put to death. ISIS’ official proclamation ends, “…or else nothing awaits you but the sword.”

Before the loving Muslims in ISIS took over in Mosul, there were 3000 Christians in the city. Most have now fled. All the churches as well as the shops belonging to Christians have been destroyed.

Truly, God is great!

14 Jul

Saint Matthew 24:15

This at last is the day when the Church of England will decide to consecrate women as bishops. A great day for equality. A marvel of emancipation. A triumph for democracy. The very paradigm of diversity. What it all means is that the church is content to order its theology and ecclesiology according to secular principles. There really is no difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury and David Cameron. Both are agreed on the superior righteousness of secular enlightenment and all things progressive. It is truly a wondrous thing to see the Church of England being brought up to date at last.

But consider for a moment, over your fit of enlightened rejoicing at this brave new dawn. that theology might still reserve to itself some vestige of meaning. What if the arrangement of divine orders in the church of God is not a secular matter? What if there are fundamentals which, if they were to be shaken, would bring down the whole and presage disastrous consequences for the church, for society, for humanity, for our sanity?

Despite what the modernising pigmies such as the faultlessly-plausible PR man Welby would say, there are things here which matter. And they are theological things. That is to say they are not about diversity and getting the balance right. It is to say that these matters are about God and his frequently-declared intentions for humankind

God has set his pattern before us in a wonderful order. Male and female created he them. Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride. Women priests and bishops invert this whole order of things. This order has prevailed for the last 2000 years. Use you imagination: can you really – and leave the religion, leave human psychology unchanged – have a woman standing in sacerdotal robes at the altar and speaking for the masculine Christ “outos estin ten soma mou” – this is my body? You may wish to have things otherwise than Christian tradition allows. And after today’s vote, you will get them otherwise under the glib, grinning monkey face of Justin Welby, with all his clever fixes, compromises and done deals

When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place…

01 Jul

God is (still) love

I am coming in for some flak after my yesterday’s outrageously callous declaration that God loves us. What, I hear the strangled cry, has Mr Nastiman, the fascist reactionary Mullen, finally gone soft? What are these semblances of the milk of human kindness which, so late in the day, seem to seep out from his putrescent and malevolent soul? What has become of his accustomed misanthropy?

For the record, I have never believed in the vengeful God and my reasoning is plain and simple: for I have so often been the recipient of God’s mercy. I know with utter certainty, from entirely undeserved experience, what the love of God feels like. I know I am a justified and forgiven sinner. And there’s an end on’t.

Thus, I am unable, quite, to psyche myself up into the foaming, fulminating apparition of the apoplectic caricature of the Old Testament prophet: that blazing-eyed, stormy-cheeked delirious rabble-rouser, that Elmer Gantry, that Bible-whacking preacher come to tell us the good news of our damnation. I’m sorry, but I’m just not up for it. The whole gospel speaks to me of a God whose property is always to have mercy. God hates sin but he is in love with us sinners.

We may yet go to hell, but we go there by our own devices and desires when these are at odds with the pattern which God has set out for us. God does not and, I would even say by his nature, cannot consign his creatures to hell. He hateth nothing that he hath made. Aquinas, when asked, replied that there is certainly a hell: “But there’s no one in it.”

Anyway, we have enough hell on earth without need of further torture.

One of the more amusing reports from the 19th century is of the acquittal of the editors of Essays and Reviews (1860) for their alleged heresy in denying the reality of eternal punishment: “The Lord Chancellor dismissed hell with costs and took away from orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting damnation.”

There is such a thing as the wrath of God – his orge – for those with the smattering of Greek. But the wrath of God is distinct from the will of God and the love of God. The wrath of God is the natural consequence of our disobedience and sin. (For connoisseurs there is an explanation of this in C.H. Dodd’s commentary on Romans)

From our first and perpetual disobedience, sin and death, God has redeemed us in Jesus Christ. Rejoice. Alleluia. Bloody well cheer up!

Or what’s a gospel for?

30 Jun

God Is Love

I am getting pretty fed up with some common articulations of theology – particularly the notion that God does or will punish us. God does not and will not punish us. He is not the sadistic schoolmaster or the punitive Beak. The image of God as retributive judge is the entirely understandable existential, anthropomorphic fiction of an over-enthusiastic Old Testament prophet. Of course in a sense the prophet was right. We do suffer and might even feel we are damned. But the truth is that we go to hell in the handcarts of our own making. That is to say, we suffer when we go against the will God expresses for us and which is exemplified in his laws.

All this is relatively simple. But – next question – why are things so ordered as to be peculiarly difficult for us? The answer is in God’s omniscience: because his way of ordering things is the best way and all other ways he considered and rejected

Why do you not believe that God loves you? That not one hair of your head perishes without his noticing? He has told you so many times that he loves you. What more do you want him to do – to die for you? Well, let’s not get into that…

We fallible creatures know something of what love is. It is what we prize above all. Do you think God’s love is weaker than yours? We can only love because God first loved us. All our human love – ecstatic and deep as it can be – is but a pale copy of God’s love for us. We could not even think these things outside of God’s love.

God is love and nothing else

As the Collect for Ash Wednesday has it, he hateth nothing that he hath made. If you will overlook the romantic flourish, do you think for a minute that God would condemn what he has fashioned by his own beautiful and holy hands? Consider the heavens, the works of his fingers, the moon and the stars which he hath made. Man is and God is mindful of him. That’s us.

But nasty things happen. Yes. So what? The loving Creator knows what he is about. It doesn’t matter. Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore or whether we die, we are the Lord’s

For God’s sake, Peter, cheer up!

29 Jun

Mind yer grammer

A BBC documentary informs us that Prince Charles has often tried to influence government policy. He was even courageous enough to talk sense to David Blunkett, telling him he should bring back grammar schools – those institutions sometimes referred to by The Times Educational Supplement as “grammer schools.” Blunkett comments:

“I would explain that our policy was not to expand grammar schools, and he didn’t like that. He was very keen that we should go back to a different era where youngsters had what he would have seen as the opportunity to escape from their background, whereas I wanted to change their background.”

Just the sort of remark you would expect from an old class warrior. Actually, it is indisputable that grammar schools did enable youngsters to rise above their origins. The opportunities provided by grammar schools were real and not fictitious, whereas Blunkett’s airy talk about “changing their background” is so nebulous as to be void of all meaning. What we have to understand is that socialists favour equality. They want to assign everyone to the same level. Unfortunately this always means levelling down: the perfect example of socialist levelling is the prison uniform. It is also indisputable that not everyone is suited to an academic education. There is nothing “elitist” about this. It’s horses for courses. Some people are not suited to a practical education. I wasn’t. The woodwork master slung me out of his class for creating a three-legged stool so palpably atrocious that I was not allowed (as the other lads were allowed) to stain and varnish it, but was ordered to paint it red as an awful warning. And I was held up to mockery and scorn for making a Horlicks of the paint job. Once, before one of my regular canings for truancy, the headmaster said, “You know, Mullen, I sometimes think you come to school only to play cricket and enter the poetry competition.” He wasn’t far wrong. Though I did like the girls in their candy stripes who used to sit around the field and watch us play cricket.

What a pity that Blunkett and all the other socialist ideologues were not permitted by their class prejudice to notice that grammar schools were a way – perhaps the only way – of improving the prospects of the poor. What is beyond doubt is that the system of universal comprehensive schooling has massively failed the poor. The department of Education’s own figures admit that, after eleven years of full time, compulsory education, 43% of our children leave school unable to read, write and count efficiently.

That is the consequence of the politics of envy.

28 Jun

Talk and double-talk

The Church of England has this week published a discussion paper to be used as part of its fresh “conversations on sexuality.” I am left wondering what more there is to be discussed. Also this week, the Roman Catholic Church has expressed its disquiet about the fact that so many of its adherents dislike the church’s traditional teaching on sexuality.

So what’s new? Sinners don’t like to be reminded of the fact that they are sinners. I will rephrase that: we sinners don’t like to be reminded of the fact that we are sinners.

What the bishops and the enlightened synodical bureaucrats are trying to do of course is, if you will pardon the expression, to find some wriggle-room: to discover a form of words which will say that the unanimous scriptural and traditional teaching of the church over 2000 years is really no longer appropriate for emancipated modern types, persuaded as they are of the higher authority of “diversity.” And naturally, it’s the economy, stupid! The secularised, atheistic church throughout Europe, Catholic and Protestant, can’t afford to alienate all those thrusting, prosperous permissive types and the well-off homosexual metro-political fashionistas.

There is no such form of words which amounts to anything other than a repudiation of the teaching of Christ. The teaching of Christ is definite and compassionate. It sets out the rules and then extends the most profound forgiveness to those who break the rules – as we all do. It proclaims, Go And Sin No More. What it does not do is to say that sin is not sin. But this is the foul, duplicitous, mealy-mouthed, bureaucratic fudge that the church is looking for. under the euphemism of “conversations.” Let me provide the ultimate conversation stopper:

“Matrimony was ordained as a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication, that those who have not the gift of continency might marry and so keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s Body.”

24 Jun

Do the arithmetic, Your Grace

1 + 1 = 2; 2 + 1 = 3; 2 + 2 = 4…….

The Archbishop of York is outraged by the fact that there are so many of what he describes as “working poor.” He is talking about low pay. He says men should not live by the minimum wage alone but should instead receive 20% more than that basic stipend in the form of “a living wage.”

“Should” is an interesting word, necessarily implying a moral judgement. But morality, if it is to mean anything, must be located in the world of facts and practical results. Moreover, every “should” also implies a responsibi9ity: who should? In this case the responsibility is clearly with the employers, those who pay the wages. I am sure the employers are grateful for the gift of the Archbishop’s superior moral insights and to be elevated, if only temporarily, on to his higher ethical plane. But let us come down to earth just for a moment and consider likely consequences. These are far removed from what obtains on the Church of England’s socialist fantasy island.

The employer needs to balance his books and to make a profit in order to sustain his business. Thus he calculates costs – including the amount he can reckon economically to pay in wages. If, in accordance with Dr Sentamu’s blue sky utopianism and infinite kindness, he is suddenly required to pay 20% over the odds, then (I suggest) in the real world one of two sets of consequences will follow: either he will employ fewer workers or his business will become unprofitable owing to the additional costs and it will fail. Then all will be out of work

Does the Archbishop intend either of these outcomes? Is it not better that more are employed even on low wages than that some are sacked to increase the wages of some others? Is it not preferable, on the whole, that companies stay in business?

But I am talking about the real world and not the C. of E’s. economic neverland

23 Jun

Prophets & Visionaries, a new book by Peter Mullen

Prophets & Visionaries: Writers of Judgement by Peter Mullen (Published by RoperPenberthy £9.99)

Prophets & Visionaries consists of eight extended critical essays on eight acknowledged thinkers and masters of English prose: Samuel Johnson; S.T Coleridge; John Henry Newman; G.K. Chesterton; T.E. Hulme; T.S. Eliot; R.G. Collingwood and C.H. Sisson. (2014 is the centenary of Sisson’s birth). Each chapter is an introduction and commentary on its subject’s contribution to English literature, philosophy and theology. But these essays are not merely historical studies detailing things which belong in the past. Rather they bring out the extraordinary relevance of these great writers to contemporary life, thought and politics.

“This is a book written by one who has so mastered the material that he can go to the heart of the matter. In truth, learning worn lightly” – Rev’d Dr Aidan Nichols OP

“In his own perceptive and inimitable way, Peter Mullen has produced a compendium of British thinkers of the first rank. All of these, in one way or another, have upheld the vital importance of the Judaeo-Christian tradition for all that is true and good about these islands and the people who live in them. The distortions of the tradition, over the course of history, and its more recent abandonment, should not blind us to its reality as the ground and informing principle of the State, Law, values and virtues in this nation. Its reaffirmation is undoubtedly needed for the moral and spiritual renewal which is so necessary if we are to resist the dangers with which we are beset” – The Rt Rev’d Dr Michael Nazir-Ali

“The kind of modernity here scrutinised through the eyes of some of its most mordant and insightful critics, from Coleridge to Sisson, claims to be self-consciously reflective, creative and boundary-breaking, whereas it is in practice a new Establishment peddling its own taken for granted assumptions by rote and setting limits on the things one is allowed to think and say. The word for this is hegemony and Peter Mullen’s lively and engaging study, by judicious selection and wide-ranging quotation, provides a thematic index or aide-memoire on how to puncture its pretensions” – Professor Rev’d David Martin

Rev’d Dr Peter Mullen in a Church of England priest with experience in town, country, schools and university, most recently as Rector of St Michael’s Cornhill in the City of London. He is Chaplain to several City livery companies. The author of more than forty books, including poems, novels and short stories as well as theology, philosophy and music criticism, Peter Mullen is available for interviews and may be contacted through his publisher or directly at: 3 Naomi Close Eastbourne BN20 7UU

Phone: 01323-655832 peter77mullen@gmail.com

22 Jun

Allah, the poor moderate Muslim house-slaves

What an affecting scene! The British Muslim woman on TV weeping over her psychopathic son who has gone to Iraq to kill reasonable people. She begged this “highly intelligent” son of hers who had aspirations, we hear, to be our first Muslim prime minister to come back to Britain. As for his becoming the first Muslim prime minister – well he could easily be an improvement on Cameron. But frankly. mother-under-the Halloween-costume, we don’t want your beloved son to come back and kill English children. We Christians – in the interests of interfaith dialogue – would much rather he stayed out there in Iraq and slaughtered as many other of his co-religionists as possible.

Is there any difference in meaning between the normal (I should say abnormal) word “Islamic” and the BBC hybrid term “Islamist” ? I mean, and I am only a philosopher, are there any Islamists who are not Islamic?

The civilised world is facing the biggest threat to its survival since the dark ages when this ministration of death conquering by the sword swept across Europe. This barbarism was put down then by Christian knights, by Charles Martel, by the papal states, by the heroes of Lepanto and Malta. This diseased affliction was three centuries ago at the gates of Vienna. It is inside these gates now, with the welcome of the EU nomenklatura and the bien pensant, wishful thinkers who are the real enemies of our civilisation. As T.E. Hulme said, “A civilisation is not defeated until it has taken into itself the beliefs of it enemies.”

Well said, Tom

We are all going to die from pre-emptive self-abasement and political correctness. Why are we so unconfident in our civilisation? Such moral and physical cowards?

Fire needs to be fought with fire. We are fighting fire by appeasement, that is by pouring oil on the flames

09 Jun

Are you interested in morality?

Half a dozen times over the last fortnight I’ve come across newspaper and magazine articles in which writers, on the subject of politics and morality, speak of a choice between “morals” and “interests.” All these writers insisted that individuals and nations should act from moral principles rather than from perceived interests. There are several points to be made about this.

First I believe it is a false distinction. Why can it not be moral to act out of self-interest? Any father or mother who did not act in the family’s interest would rightly be described as irresponsible. Surely the leaders of nations are justified when they act in the nation’s interest. National politicians are elected precisely for this purpose.

This is where the discussion takes a sinister turn. For what is this “morality” which, it is alleged, should be preferred over interest? To uproot moral principle from interest is to commit oneself to abstractions. And of course different parties are bound to prefer differing abstractions, so how is the word “moral” to be defined? Really, when these political advocates of morality speak, they usually assume – entirely without justification, in my view – that acting morally means acting according to abstract concepts – such as equality, diversity and universal human rights. No reasoning is ever provided to demonstrate that such abstract principles are cogent and valid, let alone that they should be be accepted as normative.

The so-called international debate about morality in public life and foreign policy has effectually been settled in favour of something very much like the ethical dogmas of the French Revolution. This is pernicious.

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

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