Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

It is all right to talk about Matthew writing this and Mark that so long as you have their autographs as the literature bearing their names. But you don’t know that you do. You accept that you do and you can argue from this and that that you do but you really don’t know that you do. And there are very many who insist downrightly that you don’t. And they’ve been saying this for over 200 years and it hasn’t gone away. Nor will it.

Fortunately, as you imply, there is soteriological benefit from this literature even though we do not know that we have it in autograph. The work stands on its own and in this way, among others, testifies to the splendor or apostolic authority of its authors and, more to the point, redactors. This implies, incidentally, that there is the possibility of apostolic authority — meaning, soteriological puissance — apart from any certain knowledge of autograph, and this implies, in turn, that there is or at least may be such apostolic authority in people other than the accepted Apostles. And that implies, as you no doubt realize, that the canon is always de facto open and expanding/contracting … breathing, if you like.

The Original Exemplars or Autographs we have are stochastic structures. Someone made them. They have soteriological puissance, some of them. The evidence for that is overwhelming. To say that they are not autographs is not to say that they are useless soteriologically, which is, of course, the concern of all of us. It is to expand the awareness of what apostolic authority is and even and especially where and who it is. It is to expand our awareness of what is in fact soteriologically puissant.

That, ultimately, is my point.

Update 1: Glenn Greenwald, when he’s right, he’s right:

The parallels between the U.K.’s shocking approval of the Brexit referendum in June and the U.S.’ even more shocking election of Donald Trump as president last night are overwhelming.  Elites (outside of populist right-wing circles) aggressively unified across ideological lines in opposition to both.  Supporters of Brexit and Trump were continually maligned by the dominant media narrative (validly or otherwise) as primitive, stupid, racist, xenophobic, and irrational.  In each case, journalists who spend all day chatting with one another on Twitter and congregating in exclusive social circles in national capitals — constantly re-affirming their own wisdom in an endless feedback loop — were certain of victory.  Afterward, the elites whose entitlement to prevail was crushed devoted their energies to blaming everyone they could find except for themselves, while doubling down on their unbridled contempt for those who defied them, steadfastly refusing to examine what drove their insubordination.  The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. . . .  Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate (for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently.

Update 2: Professor Roberto de Mattei: Resistance And Fidelity To The Church In Times Of Crisis

Update 3: Over the past two years the increasingly skeptical citizenry of the United States and Europe has been treated to a stream of op-eds and television appearances lamenting the looming collapse of the liberal world order, to be accompanied by a surge of illiberalism, nationalism, and fringe politics. Rarely, however, does such hand-wringing stray beyond shopworn comparisons of the “complex interdependence” of the glorious past and the parochialism and narrow-mindedness of the current era. In truth, we are not witnessing a dramatic systemic change driven by conniving external forces, but a meltdown of political authority in the West caused by the relatively straightforward indolence of its political class. Our troubles are less about liberalism’s decline or the ascendancy of left or right politics. Simply put, the citizenry in the West has been frustrated for decades with its elites’ inability to deliver workable solutions to the problems of slow growth, deindustrialization, immigration, and the overall decline of self-confidence across the West.

The legitimacy, and hence stability, of the international system rests to a degree on the ability of the leading powers to deliver at home—or, simply put, to govern. The increasing volatility of international politics is in part a byproduct of systemic dysfunction across the West at the level of domestic politics. Americans and Europeans alike are running out of patience with the governing class. In Europe, the government’s inability to control mass migration or develop effective solutions to domestic terrorism are two important drivers of the growing public discontent. In the United States the middle and working classes have been frustrated for decades with the government’s inability to remedy de-industrialization, urban decay, and declining economic opportunity.

Glenn Reynolds comments: And in both places, as the “elite” has grown demonstrably less competent and honest, it has also grown visibly more contemptuous of the people it purports to govern. That contempt is, I think, the most poisonous part of the whole equation.

My essays on the question of authority are here.

Update 4: As stated in the first sentence of this post, the question of authority and its location is the central one of this era.  Here from Glenn Reynolds is more evidence of the accuracy of that observation.

AUM NAMA SHIVAYA