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

Responding to this op-ed, a person remarked,

Perhaps because God is not a liberal???

I remarked:

As you know, your point applies the other way also. Underneath that reality is one that continually irks me, that honorable and useful words — such as liberal and gay and conservative and normal — get dishonored and abused by fanatics who, being estranged from their center and ground — who is God — grasp this word and that to identify themselves fractionally and very far from that center, which is their self.

Since philosophers, poets and theologians in all periods, so far as I can tell, are at pains to both generate and rehabilitate words so that honored and useful meanings are available for communication, I am trying — it is hard — to resign myself to this being a never-ending situation. It does, in fact, present us with equally never-ending opportunity to rediscover, through work with words, the depth of grandeur and the height of sublimity in which we are to the manner born.

Liberals today are justly suspected of affections that are seditious and Conservatives of affections that are tyrannical. These affections, of course, are at opposite extremes from the center of life, which is love, the fostering of which requires both liberality and conservation, both extrinsic and intrinsic activity.

Perhaps we can benefit from applying in our thinking and activity the insight from philosophy that the structure of being itself comprises polarities — the fundamental ones are individualization and participation, dynamics and form and freedom and destiny — which are inseparable, inalienable and continually in tension that is creative, or perhaps better put, expansive.

Thus, what we really dislike — and justly, since we anticipate the contraction and destruction of life in its wake — is not the polar structure of existence, which is the creative ground of life, but an assertion of exclusive validity for any pole of any inalienable polarity. Or in other terms, we justly dislike the creation of faction for the appeasement of ego, aka self-promotion.

To which the person responded,

Perhaps we can agree on what the Holy Bible says about them (liberals):

God’s Definition of a Liberal:

Based Biblically on

What our Holy Bible says about Liberals

God himself gave the definition of a liberal when he said in an Old Testament prophecy, The vile person shall be no more called liberal. He was speaking of a time to come when vile people will no longer be allowed to hide behind the label of liberal–thinking themselves sophisticated and modern and open minded. But they will be shown for what they really are — vile.

Isaiah 32:5-8
5. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.
6. For the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail
7. The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.
8. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.

The word Liberal by itself when looked up in dictionaries has mostly a desirable definition. But the scripture is clear that vile people are being referred to as liberal. God said there would come a time when the vile would no more be called liberal. This shows that right now vile people are being called liberal and God says he will stop this practice some time in the future. He also said the churl (rude and stingy) are being called bountiful.

There is another scripture in Isaiah 5:20 that addresses this. It says, Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

In Isaiah 32:8 (quoted above) it says But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand. I think he is saying that the truly liberal or noble person will do truly noble things and stand. You only have to examine the behavior of the liberals today to see that they are not noble or princely. They are the people who want abortion on demand which is gruesome and horrid — not noble. So we know the scripture is true that vile people are being called liberal.

English Definitions:

Liberal – marked by generosity; given or provided in a generous and openhanded way; broadminded; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms. Also: lacking moral restraint, licentious

Vile – Morally base, shamefully wicked, despicable, vicious, loathsome, disgusting.

Villainy – Conduct characteristic of a villain.

From Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries by James Strong

H5081 Liberal
From H5068; properly voluntary, that is, generous; hence, magnanimous; as noun, a grandee (sometimes a tyrant): translated to English as–free, liberal (things), noble, prince, willing ([hearted]).

H5036 Vile
From H5034; stupid; wicked (especially impious): translated to English as — fool, foolish, foolish man, foolish woman, vile person.

Amen.

To which I responded:

Many thanks, I can see where you are coming from and heading with these translations from Hebrew. The technical word, from the vocabulary of theology, for vile and liberal in the sense you are picking up from these translations is profane. Profane means “in front of the holy, the Presence of God,” meaning, not inside it. The words vile and liberal both indicate qualities of a something whereas the word profane indicates a relationship, which is why theology is comfortable using it as a technical term. Theology is interested in phenomena, which are given by relationships, and only secondarily in conditions, which are given as qualities.

Vile and liberal as your translation of the Hebrew is using them certainly describe the condition of something which is profane, of a profanity. Vile on its own right only indicates a profanity. The vile is so because it stands outside the holy, usually with a factor of intention and thus often irreconcilably, irredeemably. Liberal, however, as you point out, is ambiguous in this regard because it can indicate a condition of profanity, generally when made to indicate that condition by a context or a translator, or one of holiness, such as when it indicates magnanimity, open-heartedness, open-mindedness, etc. The customary meaning of liberal is the latter, indicating liberality as evidence of an estate of Grace and therefore Faith and Love.

I have not studied the Hebrew or the Vulgate — which is generally a better indicator — for which the translator of your text is using liberal. Nor have I studied that translator’s work in general. I do not even know who he/they is. Nor am I a Hebrew or a Greek specialist. I have studied Hebrew but am hardly an expert, have not studied Greek, and have a better than average background in Latin, though again hardly that of an expert.

But none of that really matters because the evangelical responsibility of the Faith has been carried out for centuries by theologians/poets, using exegesis, rather than by exegetes and, if truth were known, this situation probably underlies development of the Scriptures themselves. For example, Jesus as the Christ broke through the morbid exegesis of First Century Palestine with a twin theological principle/principal — the universality of God and the familial solidarity of man. He took this action as a theologian supported by exegesis, not as an exegete. Exegesis itself was complicit in the problem he resolved to conquer. There is considerable reason to believe, for example, that He Himself composed the Gospel According to John.

So, yes, we agree that modern liberal protagonists in the sense of being profane are vile. By definition! We also need to examine whether modern conservative protagonists who are profane qualify for the same assessment, including in the terms meant by the Hebrew passages you indicate. I believe that, again by definition, they are.

Update 1: Fred Siegel: The Godfather Of American Liberalism

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA