Revenge Religion, Part 2

 Revenge Religion, Part 2 
continued from here
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gasparthegreat@whatmail.edu
to T Riich crabbiolio@gmail.com

“Where am I going? Help me,” you said.
     With what? I can’t help you with the snow. I understand that it went away and now it has come again. Didn’t you describe it once as “frozen bat guano”? – there were millions, billions, gazillions of ice-bats circling above your poor Valley, dropping gelid waste onto your lawns, your sidewalks, your streets. You couldn’t go outside, the stench would fill your nose, scrape its way down your throat, shut down your lungs, and you would die. I can’t help with that. Your shrink, perhaps?
     About “righteous anger,” I can say – with you, I take it – that among human beings it doesn’t exist. If the gods are angry ... No, specifically, if God of Israel is angry, His anger must be righteous because He is righteous – always! So the Rabbis insist.
     Their Scriptures have eight or eleven or sixteen different words for it, divine wrath, the most prominent of which is nose [אף]. The people get up God’s nose; he snorts them out. In the New Testament, these 11 (or 8 or 16) different angers have been reduced to two (θυμός and ỏγρή) – actually by the LXX, there are just these two, which suggests, the nuances, the distinctions, the numbers of ways to be angry may not be an OT vs NT thing; it may be a Middle Eastern vs Mediterranean thing. In Jerusalem there are at least eight ways to get pissed off (for God or “man,” either one); in Athens there are only two.

Philo

Consider Philo, who is caught somewhere in between, and whose position I find myself in sympathy with. Basically, it is this: We may get angry, though we really shouldn’t because anger is among the passions reasonable people ought to have under control.  But our anger is nothing like God’s “anger,”  not because his anger is righteous and ours is petty, but because God doesn’t get angry at all. God doesn’t get anything. God is απάθης. What we call God’s “anger” is not a reality but a case of anthropomorphism (or, more accurately, anthropopathism). It gives us a motive for actions God doesn’t need a motive for. God doesn’t have motives. God is God.
     Jesus is human as well (as divine), at least according to Chalcedon, but while he may weep, he doesn’t get angry either – ever! There is no place in the NT that says he does, not even in that story of the cleansing of the temple (from John’s lunatic gospel). Read it again if you don’t believe me. When his disciples tell the story, they remember the “prophecy that zeal for God’s house will consume him.” Zeal, ζηλος! He is motivated; but zeal doesn’t mean anger, does it?.
     As for the rest of us, if you ask me, we should take his advice:  “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire. Blessed are the meek.” Or, if you can’t listen to Jesus, listen to the wise of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, where the wise are forbearing, leaving anger to the fool; or listen to James, who advises us to be quick to hear and slow to speak, to be slow to anger because, in effect, the ỏγρή of men (and women) doesn’t have anything to do with – it never furthers – the righteousness of God.
     Because, frankly, what do we know about that.? When we get mad, we just get mad. We can blame the sinners. But it just ain’t their fault. We can think of ourselves as righteous, but we’re just pissed off that somebody got something they didn’t deserve or got away with something and God let them.
     But I could be wrong. (I know I am about some of the damn Greek; I just can’t get my email to do what I want it to with accents and shit. I should know how to do this by now. Sorry.)

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crabbiolio@gmail.com
to G Stephens gasparthegreat@whatmail.edu

Yeah, so you could. (Apology accepted, not that I could tell.)

 01.17.22