Clash of Titans

by Tom Pratt

  “Benevolence” as a descriptive for a universe that produces as much “stupidity” (evil) as it appears to do seems to be a misnomer, but we will not quibble for the moment. Nevertheless, perhaps the most troubling moment for many, maybe most, critics of Rand’s ethical construct is the disaster in the tunnel that takes so many apparently “innocent” people to an early retribution of sorts. This “payback,” as we might name it, is severe and unrelenting, and as we have documented in the quotations, is the kind of settling of accounts that disturbs the sensibilities of sophisticates and romanticists and the uncultured alike in all climes and walks of life. Surely this is too much! As the critics have said, “It’s hateful!” Rand, however, maintained that she was portraying the reality of the universe we have, not the one we wish it to be. Even the apparently benign lack of decision for or against a monstrous “evil” working itself out in the world has its ultimate, life-or-death, consequences.

  Christians who read the story frequently have the same kind of emotions and mixed feelings, and many will conclude that this cannot be a true rendering of the facts in evidence in the world we know. This form of revulsion and incomprehension will be based on the conviction that only someone who espoused atheism and disliked Christianity could posit such outcomes for such benign behavior as those in the train cars exhibited. Yes, real punishment is due those who caused the disaster directly, but those who were simply living out their lives mostly oblivious to the consequences of their presuppositions and mixed decision-making cannot be held accountable--especially in a world where the God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, has revealed the love of God.

  It is just at this point where those who call themselves Christian must cease from romantic notions of the nature of God, who reveals Himself in His Son and the written word. The world is in fact benevolent in a biblical way, because the God of the Bible “loves the cosmos” (Jn 3:16) in such a way that He “gave His unique and only Son.” Those who “believe in Him” receive “life,” but those who do not “perish.” No alternatives to Jesus for life, period! And the entire Gospel of John is an exposition of what this “believing” business is all about. It is clearly not the mere attendance at church meetings or the praying of a prayer or the signing of a card or talking to a counselor at an 800 number. It is the kind of commitment with which we closed the last chapter. John follows the most famous verse in the Bible we have quoted here with,

  18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. (Jn. 3:18-20)

  These words express the nature of the benevolence that comes from the love of God. The shorthand proposition here is that everybody on this earth who has not come to Jesus Christ in repentance from sin and faith in His sin-bearing death on a cross is headed into that tunnel of disaster with absolutely no hope of return just as the most evil monsters on earth have gone down it before. There is no remedy. The friendliest, nicest people on earth are headed to the same fate as Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot, unless and until they make a decisive break with what Paul calls “the law of sin and death” and put their entire confidence and trust for life and death in Jesus Christ to save and preserve them. To know this is to be accountable for it, and the only rational thing to do is seek God through Jesus Christ for salvation from a horrible consequence that comes with inaction. With this principle as a given fact of “life” and death in this universe (act quickly or perish) Rand and the Bible and Jesus Christ are in complete agreement.

  What Rand would call “stupidity” and “evil” the Bible calls “sin.” The Bible says that “sin” precedes “stupidity” and irrationality because it blinds men and women and represents a willful intent to ignore an area of knowledge, God, that is the answer to what is “wrong with the world” and what will make everything “right with the world.” Two propositions, both making ultimate claims requiring rational assessment and either-or decisions. Christians need to press the claims of Christ with urgency and sweet reasonableness without being turned off by the stark choices and separations caused by presenting a Gospel that truly saves. The community of those who reject and/or ignore the claims of Christianity about Jesus Christ and His God and Father need to be very clear who and what you are spurning.

  * * *

  [1] For the best take on Krugman the economic leftist, see Donald Luskin & Andrew Greta, I Am John Galt: Today's Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Kindle Edition, 2011), Chapter 2.

  [2] Opinions herein from the Wikipedia site.

  [3] Ibid., 7

  [4] National Review, August 23, 2010.

  [5] Marvin Olasky, “Take a Stand Against Rand,” WORLDmag.com, July 16, 2011.

  [6] Watching recently the first installment of the film from Hollywood re-enforces this sense that we are in a world of almost science fiction.

  [7] Kirsti Minsaas, “Ayn Rand’s Recasting of Ancient Myths in Atlas Shrugged,” in Edward W. Younkins, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Kindle Locations 1380-1383).

  [8] Burns, 109.

  [9] Jeffrey Britting, Ayn Rand (New York: Overlook Hardcover, 2004), 16. Citation from a paper by David S. Kotter of Indiana Wesleyan University. Further articles on economics are available at www.davidkotter.com.

  [10] Information in these paragraphs on biographical information may be found in Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition) Plume. Kindle Edition loc. 26,800. See also Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), and Anne C. Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (New York: Random House, 2009).

  [11] See Eugene Lyons, The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1941).

  [12] Ibid., loc. 26,831.

  [13] Ibid., loc. 26,784.

  [14] Stephen Cox, “Atlas and ‘the Bible’: Rand’s Debt to Isabel Paterson,” in Edward W. Younkins, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion, Kindle Edition, loc. 4725-4785.

  [15] She and Branden collaborated for years on her work until she abruptly broke off the entire relationship.

  [16] Donald Luskin & Andrew Greta, 14.

  [17] By now the reader should be able to discern that Rand does not speak of the kind of vacuous “happiness” bandied about in modern discourse. It might be analogous to that mentioned in the preamble to the US Constitution, but it is a weighty term in her philosophy. We will take up the subject of familial and fraternal relationship when we deal specifically with altruism.

  [18] It is not a willy-nilly tit-for-tat thing, but it does work itself out and proves that to get more of something you deregulate it and to get less of it you tax it. Phil Gramm, Wall Street Journal, 8/30/2012, “Reagan and Obama, A Tale of Two Recoveries,” shows clearly the staggering difference between attempts to “stimulate” a recovery and simply getting government out of the way.

  [19] The theme of benefiting “the needy, not the greedy” as a tax scheme was first used in the days of World War II when changes in war time tax rates were being contemplated, and New Dealers, specifically FDR, seized the opportunity to divide the electorate into these categories. See James T. Sparrow, Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 123.

  [20] The fascists of this and other ages going back to Rome manipulate state power by any means available, as Jonah Goldberg has shown us in Liberal Fascism, and R. E. Tyrell has kindly supplied the word (Kultursmog) for that dense fog o
f obscurity produced by such activity.

  [21] Centennial, 315.

  [22] In a free society where one is not forced to work, if the tax rate is high enough to discourage working, they will not work beyond a certain level. That is why the scheme must be coercive in some way. This is why Ronald Reagan became sold on the Laffer Curve analysis. He knew that he had no incentive to make any more movies after a certain point of income because the tax rates confiscated his money and gave it to someone else.

  [23] For those too young to have this memory, this was a commercial for a “buttery-tasting spread” that was so close to the real thing that it angered Mother Nature.

  [24] Centennial Edition, “Essentials of Objectivism.”

  [25] This is the practical world of “post-modern” thought being taught in the 21st century.

  [26] This is in contrasting support of the portrait of the ideal man in The Fountainhead.

  [27] For a more detailed description and critique of Rand’s philosophy of wealth and money see Steven Horowitz, “Francisco d’Anconia on Money: A Socio-Economic Analysis,” in Younkins, Chap. 21.

  [28] For a full discussion of the history of these issues see our forthcoming Seeking the City, from Kregel, Spring 2013.

  [29] Rand saw the USA as the first society on earth to thoroughly incorporate this ideal into its economic fabric of life and the first to coin the phrase, “making money.” She goes on to say through Francisco that Americans were the first to understand that wealth had to be created, not pillaged from others, taken by stealth, looted through taxation, passed back and forth by “redistribution,” etc.

  [30] The words come from the Greek, and both have the root agon at the center, root for “agony,” the word for struggle in the arena, such as wrestling in the ancient world. It is clear that the clash of the titans and the looters is an agony of suffering for both in different ways. One is toward the life they seek and the other is a death spiral.

  [31] This very idea (forced rule) seems to have been introduced by Plato in The Republic. For a discussion see Roderick T. Long, “Forced to Rule: Atlas Shrugged as a Response to Plato’s Republic,” Younkins, Chapter 8.

  [32] If you think this is extreme, research the 2012 Democratic National Convention and their video presentation promoting the idea that government is the only thing to which we all belong.

  [33] Orwell’s 1984 is a classic treatment of this issue. See also Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning and Gene Edward Veith, Modern Fascism: The Threat to the Judeo-Christian Worldview. The writings of Saul Alinsky show the leftist intent and practice and the 2012 presidential campaign is rife with its use.

  [34] Ron Sider actually takes this position (that “factories” are among the fundamental rights to be classified as “needs”) in some of his latest writings. See our Seeking the City from Kregel, Spring, 2013.

  [35] For the full treatment of these issues, see our Seeking the City, from Kregel, Spring, 2013.

  [36] To assure yourself that you are reading the various parts in their context, get a good annotated study Bible like the English Standard Bible or the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

  [37] August Comte, Catéchisme positiviste (1852) or Catechism of Positivism, trans. R. Congreve, (London: Kegan Paul, 1891).

  [38] Quoted on Wikipedia site. This is a general statement that many would agree is accurate and Rand is reacting to this characterization.

  [39] This is clearly the mandate against the right of the societal or political collective to demand loyalty in an evil matter.

  [40] The admonition to each church that begins “he that overcomes” is always a singular grammatically.

  [41] This Greek term can mean “carpenter” in the common rendering, but it is not restricted simply to wood-working.

  [42] We refer the reader once again to our Seeking the City from Kregel for the full discussion and documentation on this chapter’s subject.

  [43] See Rodney Stark, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (New York: HaperOne, 2007) and The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (New York: HarperOne, 2011).

  [44] Richard Kraut, “Plato,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed., Robert Audi, gen. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 710.

  [45] Plato, Republic, Complete Works. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, eds. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 7.5.

  [46] Plato, Republic, 2.3-3.4.

  [47] Plato, Republic, 3.4, 4.8, and throughout. See discussion in W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy: IV. Plato: The Man and His Dialogues, Earlier Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 434-68.

  [48] Richard McKeon, Introduction to Aristotle, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), xii-xiii.

  [49] Douglas B. Rasmussen, “The Aristotelian Significance of the Section Titles of Atlas Shrugged: A Brief Consideration of Rand’s View of Logic and Reality,” in Younkins, ed., Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, 34.

  [50] Richard Purtill, “Principle of Excluded Middle,” in Audi, ed., Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 738.

  [51] Rasmussen, “Aristotelian Significance,” 35.

  [52] Homer, The Iliad, Samuel Butler, trans. (CreateSpace, 2010), Book 2.

  [53] For a condensed version of this, see McKeon, Introduction to Aristotle, 592-659. For the complete text, see Aristotle, The Politics and the Constitutions of Athens, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Stephen Everson, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 61-118).

  [54] Quoted in Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York: Random House, 2005), 7.

  [55] Augustine, The Trinity, Stephen McKenna, trans. (New York: Catholic University Press of America, 1963), 8.9.13.

  [56] Quoted in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 72.

  [57] Cited in Vladimir Lossky, “Apophasis and Trinitarian Theology,” in Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 13.

  [58] Maximus the Confessor, Book of Ambiguities, 20, cited in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 32-33.

  [59] The one exception is John of Damascus’s (d. 754) Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.

  [60] Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 53.

  [61] Richard Rubenstein, Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims and Jews Discovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages (New York: Harvest, 2004), 15.

  [62] Rubenstein, Aristotle’s Children, 9.

  [63] Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 241.

  [64] McGrath, Historical Theology, 241.

  [65] See, for instance, David W. Hall, Calvin in the Public Square: Liberal Democracies, Rights, and Civil Liberties (Philipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2009).

  [66] Aristotle, for all his greatness in the areas of logic and metaphysics, was no empirical scientist.

  [67] Stark, Victory of Reason, 12, italics in original.

  [68] Stark, Victory of Reason, 12.

  [69] Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 279.

  [70] Stark, Victory of Reason, 14.

  [71] See the excellent discussion of this in Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994).