#400

Once upon a time, I believed reaching one hundred posts was a momentous occasion, one so memorable that I would want to do something, for myself, to mark it. The commemoration has become a personal tradition, and so, on this my four hundredth post, I offer you once again my favorite ten quotes from the previous ninety-nine posts.

10) An interview on Talking Philosophy with Alain de Botton proved to be my most interesting interaction with any atheist thinkers in the past hundred posts. His thoughts pointed to dangers in atheistic thinking and proposed, in deliberate critique of New Atheists, various senses in which religion was a good thing, even as an atheist. From Leading Atheist on What's Wrong with Atheism:

Attempting to prove the non-existence of god can be entertaining...Though this exercise has its satisfactions, the real issue is not whether god exists or not, but where one takes the argument to once one decides that he evidently doesn’t. The premise of my book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless to find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling – and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm.

9) I am deeply enamored of the thought of Eugene Genovese, a fact which will probably become evident over the next few weeks. In a criticism of southern support for American imperialism, I quoted Genovese, among others, to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Imperialism in the Imperialized South:

The history of the Old South is now often taught at leading universities, when it is taught at all, as a prolonged guilt-trip, not to say a prologue to the history of Nazi Germany...To speak positively about any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity - an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white southerners and arguably black southerners as well, of their heritage, and, therefore, their identity.

8) Of the critical series I have written in this cycle, the one I most enjoyed researching and producing was my exposition of complementarianism in response to Roger Olson. The great quote, on the other hand, likely came from the Founding Father's series. In Illusions of Innocence, I applied Richard T. Hughes and Leonerd Allen's thesis about primitivism in American Protestantism and applied it to American political primitivism. To conclude, I quoted their evaluation of Roger Williams primitivist thought, a historically unsustainable but ideologically more appealing variety:

For Williams, the radical finitude of human existence, entailing inevitable failures in understanding and action, makes restoration of necessity an open-ended concept. The absolute, universal ideal existed for Williams without question. But the gap between the universal and the particular, between the absolute and the finite, was so great that it precluded any one-on-one identification of the particular with the universal...the best one could do was approximate the universal, an approximation that occurred only through a diligent search for truth.

7) Though most of the series on Christianity and Jain occurred earlier, the day after the three hundredth post, I added to the comparative study Christ, Jain, and Mutual Forgiveness. Here is some wisdom from Mahavira on the subject:

If, during the retreat, among monks or nuns occurs a quarrel or dispute or dissension, the young monk should ask forgiveness of the superior, and the superior of the young monk. They should forgive and ask forgiveness, appease and be appeased, and converse without restraint.

6) Long overdue, I finally shared a selection of quotes in The Wisdom of the Pilgrim connecting my longstanding love of fourteenth century hesychasm with a more recent text:

[O]ne of the most lamentable things is the vanity of elementary knowledge which drives people to measure the Divine by a human yardstick.

5) For Easter--that is East Easter not West Easter--I shared a few notes from the Ecumenical Patriarch about the meaning of life in Christ made possible by his death and resurrection and the destructive attempts of people to secure life apart from him. From Christos Anesti!:

There is no need for some nations to be destroyed in order for other nations to survive. Nor is there any need to destroy defenseless human lives so that other human beings may live in greater comfort. Christ offers life to all people, on earth as in heaven. He is risen, and all those who so desire life may follow Him on the way of Resurrection. By contrast, all those who bring about death, whether indirectly or directly, believing that in this way they are prolonging or enhancing their own life, condemn themselves to eternal death.

4) Buried deep in the recesses of a response to a Fox News article, Invade Iran (et al) for Christ!, is perhaps one of my favorite short quotes from any of the early church fathers. Here is Justin Martyr's response to persecution:

You can kill us, but you can't hurt us.

3) Of all the wonderful cow stories--and I had options this time around--that have been shared here throughout the years, none had me more excited than finding an archival story about Grady, the cow who got stuck in a silo and captured the imagination of a nation. On This Day in Cow History celebrated her generations old story, and its very happy ending:

What's in store for Grady? "Well, I believe she's earned peace and quiet the rest of her life," Mach [her owner] said. "She's had more excitement than most cows."

2) My commentary on J. W. McGarvey's sermons offered throughout the month of his birth was littered with excellent quotes. McGarvey was, however, perhaps most poetic and profound when he recorded his thoughts On Prayer:

If God was a God who did not hear our prayers, or care anything about our prayers, He might as well be made of ice. He is a living God; a God who has friends, and loves His friends; and this is the reason that He will do something for them when they cry to Him. Don't think of God as mere abstraction, or as a being who keeps Himself beyond the sky; but think of Him as one who lives with you, who is round about you, who lays His hand under your head when you lie down to rest. So in praying, pray with the confidence of little children...Pray in the morning; pray at the noontide; pray when you lie down to sleep…Pray often; pray earnestly; and in order that your prayer may amount to anything, be righteous men and women.

1) The Anarchy in May series is perhaps the most fun I have ever had here, and selecting a single quote from a month of my favorite thinkers is exceedingly difficult. More than anything, this selection from Tolstoy on Moral Culpability, is appropriate because of Tolstoy's preeminent place in the history of anarchism:

[W]e are responsible for our own misdeeds. And the misdeeds of our rulers become our own, if we, knowing that they are misdeeds, assist in carrying, them out. Those who suppose that they are bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers, deceive themselves.

I can only hope that the next hundred posts flow as easily and are as much fun to write as the last hundred were.

Christ, Jain, and the Nature of Ethics

In one of the previous examinations of Jain and Christianity, there was an affinity observed between the way both Christ and the teachers of Jain both moved the ethic of violence beyond mere action into the heart of the moral agent. In this final comparative look at the two faiths, it will be interesting to notice that this shift in morality beyond the realm of action extends beyond just questions of violence. In fact, that may be the most potent quality of both ethical systems. In each, what makes a good or bad person (or more precisely a moral or immoral person) is more than merely the incidental fact of good or bad actions. The measure of a person is the heart (taken metaphorically) from which flows a wellspring of not only right action but right thought and right disposition. This is exemplified in the Mahavrata, or Five Great Vows, of Jain. These vows--intended as binding on Jain monks and as an ideal for the Jain laity--were handed down by Mahavira and form the core ethical canon for Jain. Briefly stated, they are:

1. Renunciation of violence
2. Renunciation of lying
3. Renunciation of stealing
4. Renunciation of sex
5. Renunciation of attachment/possession

There are a number of interesting points of contact here with the Christian faith. Most obviously, they appear to form a kind of atheistic distillation Decalogue, with its laws against murder, dishonesty, theft, sexual impropriety, and covetousness. Beyond this lies a more basic commitment of each faith to ethical behavior, because both insist that what someone does in this life has eternal repercussions. The most interesting parallel, however, requires a fuller, closer reading of the text of the vows. Take the first vow, as an example:

I renounce all killing of living beings, whether subtle or gross, whether movable or immovable. Nor shall I myself kill living beings (nor cause others to do it, no consent to it). As long as I live, I confess and blame, repent and exempt myself of these sins, in the thrice threefold way, in mind, speech, and body.

Each of the vows conforms to this same basic pattern: "I shall neither speak lies, nor cause others to speak lies, nor consent to the speaking of lies by others," "I shall neither take myself what is not given, nor cause others to take it, nor consent to their taking it," and so on even down to attachment to material things, so that the Jain monk commits never to offer even consent to others being attached to worldly possessions. For the practitioner of Jain, it is not enough merely to avoid theft with the body. Theft must be excised from the mind. It is not enough to merely avoid dishonesty in speech. Dishonesty within oneself or dishonesty with one's actions are no less lies than those which are spoken. Chastity is more than merely going one's whole life without having sexual intercourse. The Jain monk must be chaste not only at his own core, but he must also not incite or consent to impropriety in anyone else.

Taking this final example, we can see that--in a less concisely stated way--Christianity offers a similar picture of ethics. The New Testament presents a very definite picture of an ethical system which is committed to a very narrow definition of sexual propriety. Overemphasized as it is today within the larger scheme of Christian moral thought, it is still undeniable that there is a basic vision of sexual ethics in Christianity which is indisputable: sex belongs between a single consenting man and a single consenting woman within the institution of marriage. This, in behavioral terms, excludes a host of sexual sins, including but not limited to rape, premarital sex, homosexual sex, and extramarital sex. These, however, are only the bodily manifestations of sexual impurity. As with Jain, the chastity extends far beyond that. For Christ, sexual purity is no less important in the mind. In fact, Jesus famously insists that the desire to have sex with a woman in a way which is inappropriate is the same as committing the act. The moment the heart wills the sinful behavior, whatever prevents it from actualizing that will is incidental. What is necessary of thoughts and actions Paul will expand to include speech as well, counseling Christians against engaging in any kind of lewd talk. As with Jain, Christianity takes the commitment to chastity and applies it to body, mind, and speech, or, more appropriately given the obvious merism at work, the entire human person.

The Christian understanding of sexual propriety, as with Jain, extends beyond merely the individual moral agent as well. The New Testament also presents an ideal of Christian behavior which echoes the Jain commitment to neither incite nor consent to sin. In fact, much of the commitment to modesty in Christian ethics should be understood in these terms (though it should be noted that "modesty" in the New Testament has a much broader meaning and application which does not always neatly collapse into a rejection of sexually provocative dress and behavior). Christians commit not only to resisting the temptation to be sexually inappropriate but commit to not being that temptation for others. What is more, out of a concern for communal purity, Paul makes it very clear that Christians cannot offer their tacit approval (their "consent" in Mahavira's terms) to improper sexual behavior in their midst. It must be opposed, at least as it appears in the context of a church.

Christianity suffers (if that is not, perhaps, too strong a term) from not having the comprehensiveness of its ethic as neatly concentrated as does Jain. Nevertheless, it is important for Christians to realize that, for example, a Christian sexual ethic is not just being faithful to one's wife or taking a purity pledge as a teenager. It certainly isn't making sure that you scream the loudest to prevent homosexuals from getting married. It is a holistic understanding of ethics which grasps that God created sex with a purpose, and that the church is a place in which that purpose is both joyously celebrated and fiercely guarded. The same spiritual process of cutting to the heart of an ethical concern and then marveling at the depth and breadth of its impact can and should be carried out on any of the above moral maxims or any moral impulse within Christianity. Taking the cue from Jain, Christians need to realize that a commitment to honesty, chastity, non-violence, charity, or any other guiding ethical principle of the faith is more than just a legal concern, a commitment to compliance. It is a richer statement about the way the world was intended by the One whose intentions formed it. In broadening the understanding of Christian ethics, their scope and their interrelatedness, Christians can better understand that the moral precepts of Christ are not a guidebook to technical propriety but an invitation into a perfect kingdom in which all people are at harmony with themselves, with each other, with creation, and with the Creator.

Christ, Jain, and Mutual Forgiveness

The previous conversation between Jain and Christian thought focused almost entirely on the negative aspects of Jain's approach to the material world as it related to the transcendent and life's ultimate destiny. As a counter balance, the question of forgiveness and particularly the universal stress on mutual forgiveness offers a delightful point of overlap between Christianity and Jain. The Jain focus on forgiveness is an extension of the goal of practitioners to be at harmony with other living beings. There is a semi-liturgical rite known as the Vandana Formula in which a member of the Jain laity approaches a monk and has the following interchange:

Layperson: I wish to reverence you, ascetic who suffers with equanimity, with
intense concentration.
Monk: So be it.
Layperson: You will have passed the day auspiciously with little disturbance.
Monk: Yes
Layperson: You make spiritual progress
Monk: And you also.
Layperson: I wish to ask pardon for transgressions.
Monk: I ask for it too.
Layperson: I must confess, ascetic who suffers with equanimity, for lack of
respect and day-to-day transgressions of the mind, speech, or body;
through anger, pride, deceit, or greed; false behavior and neglect of the
Teaching; and whatever offense I have committed I here confess, repudiate
and repent of it and set aside my past deeds.

This ritual ought to resonate strongly with Christians, particularly as it so nearly resembles the practice of some traditions with regard to confession. There is a clear sense of the inequality of the two people with regard to spiritual progress, and at the same time they meet on the level playing field of their mutual inadequacy. The laity ask for forgiveness and the monk responds "I ask for it too." There is no illusion that one can come to the other for forgiveness, and yet there is spiritual power in the act of seeking it from one another.

The Vandana Formula is by no means peculiar in Jain. In the Kalpasutra, the teachings of Mahavira once again speak to this central place of mutual forbearance and forgiveness among practitioners of Jain. In this text, it arises in the context of a yearly retreat for monks and nuns. Knowing that such a congregation will ultimately give rise to conflict, Mahavira gave the ascetics the following advice:

If, during the retreat, among monks or nuns occurs a quarrel or dispute or dissension, the young monk should ask forgiveness of the superior, and the superior of the young monk. They should forgive and ask forgiveness, appease and be appeased, and converse without restraint.

It is almost too easy to find parallel concepts in Christianity. Jesus' hyperbolic reply to Peter that we ought to forgive one another seventy times seven times springs immediately to mind, as does the command in the Sermon on the Mount to seek forgiveness before making a gift to God. More interesting than merely an emphasis on forgiveness, however, is the parallel idea that exists in both religions that mutual forgiveness is not ultimately about our ability to expiate one another's sins. There is something else going on in each. For Jain, the forgiveness is an attempt to live at harmony with other living beings, to be released from the burden of the illusion of guilt and the corruption of anger. In Christianity, we forgive not because our forgiveness is somehow necessary in order to free one another from sin but because we serve a God who forgives. It is ultimately Christians' own attempt at harmony, but not necessarily with one another (though that is a penultimate goal) but with a God who is overflowing with forgiveness.

The unfortunate truth, I suspect, is that both Jain and Christianity suffer from the same flaw: confession and mutual forgiveness are more readily found in their holy texts than in the lives of modern practitioners.

#300

In keeping with time honored tradition, this three hundredth post commemorates the great quotes that have appeared here over the last hundred entries. Below are my personal top ten notable quotables, though you are welcome and encouraged to disagree.

10) The last hundred posts began with one of my first comparative series, this one examining points of contact between Christianity and absurdism. As a near rabid fan of Albert Camus, it was difficult to select only one quote. Nevertheless, here is a thought of his from The Absurd and Science:

And here are the trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes -how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel? Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanisms and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts? The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning. I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot, for all that, apprehend the world.

9) More recently, we find ourselves int he midst of a comparative examination of Christianity and Jain. While there are still many great quotes yet to come in this series, the following excellent excerpt could have easily been from any number of Byzantine Christian mystics but is in fact a saying of Mahavira, posted in Christ, Jain, and the Material World:

...there is no analogy whereby to know the transcendent; its essence is without form; there is no condition of the unconditioned. There is no sound, no color, no smell, no taste, not touch--nothing of that kind. Thus I say.

8) The past hundred posts has seen an unusual output of advice to parents, including from such notable figures as Stephen Prothero and the inimitable David Bentley Hart. Still, none left quite the impression as J. C. Ryle, who proved that some child-rearing wisdom is timeless. While there is much to commend the meat of his teaching, the most memorable quote came from The Wisdom of J. C. Ryle: An Appendix:

Never listen to those who tell you your children are good, and well brought up, and can be trusted.

7) I find the news deeply frustrating, as so many of us do. No story has so grated against my sensibilities for the last hundred posts than has the unceremonious dismissal of Joe Paterno. Still, the best quote here has come from the relatively minor Rep. Brad Drake, with this profoundly nonsensical, self-defeating comment posted in the Oct. 19th edition of In Other News:

I have no desire to humanely respect those that are inhumane.

6) I never seem to be lacking in pithy, inspirational thoughts from great pacifists. Last time around it was J. W. McGarvey. This time, let me offer one from J. D. Tant in The Wisdom of J. D. Tant:

I would as soon risk my chance of heaven to die drunk in a bawdy house as to die on the battlefield, with murder in my heart, trying to kill my fellow man.

5) Without a doubt, the past six months in the United States has been completely dominated by the American electoral process. More important than anything the candidates might be saying is this sentiment from Stephen Prothero offered in Knowledge and Franchise:

Few Americans are able to challenge claims made by politicians or pundits about Islam’s place in the war on terrorism or what the Bible says about homosexuality. This ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads and effectively transferring power from the third estate (the people) to the fourth (the press).

4) Pope Benedict XVI has done more shocking things this year than kissing an imam. In addition to renewing the Catholic Church's stand against capital punishment, he had this to say about the Christian use of war in history, in Pope Shocks World by Doing the Right Thing:

"As a Christian I want to say at this point: yes, it is true, in the course of history, force has also been used in the name of the Christian faith," he said in his address to the delegations in an Assisi basilica.

"We acknowledge it with great shame. But it is utterly clear that this was an abuse of the Christian faith, one that evidently contradicts its true nature."

3) In a post which happened to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks which launched the world headlong into two prolonged multinational wars, I shared a Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower, a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

And after it became obvious that the strange rain would never stop and that Old Soldiers never drown and that roses in the rain had forgotten the word for bloom and that perverted pollen blown on sunless seas was eaten by irradiated fish who spawned up cloudleaf streams and fell on our dinnerplates

And after it became obvious that the President was doing everything in his power to make the world safe for nationalism his brilliant military mind never realized that nationalism itself was the idiotic superstition which would blow up the world

...The President himself came in

Took one look around and said

We Resign

2) On an anniversary which personally touched me a little more dearly, On the Anniversary of David Lipscomb's Death, I shared these thoughts of Price Billingsley on the great man who was so influential in his own day and continues to touch the hearts and minds of Christians who read his works:

I then got my first sight of the dear old Brother Lipscomb dead. I was amazed to see how fine looking and tall he was when straightened out in the casket. I saw him when he was dying, and a more abject object of decaying senility I never before beheld - body and soul distraught in the parting! But did I pity him? I pitied myself for not being as ready to die as he!

1) The recent past has had more than its fair share of high profile deaths, from entertainment stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Harry Morgan, to intellectual celebrities like Christopher Hitchens. The more important loss for many, however, was a completely overlooked Bible professor at a small Arkansas university. Before offering my own eulogy concurrent with his memorial service, I shared this quote from Amelia Burr on the day of his passing:

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

Here's looking forward to another eventful hundred posts with even more memorable thoughts to share in the months to come.

Christ, Jain, and the Material World

Perhaps the most constant--and, in the opinion of many, damning--critique leveled against Eastern religions by Westerners is their negative view of the world and their apparently escapist approach to soteriology, borrowing from Christian theological jargon. There is a perception, right or wrong, that Eastern religions see the world as a fundamentally broken place which must be fled and that flight from the world involves the absorption of the self into a cosmic consciousness or nothingness or both. Jain is certainly at least as open to this criticism as any other Eastern faith. While the commitment to life that is apparent in ahimsa would suggest a profound respect for the world, Jain religion does not actually protect life because it believes it is in some sense enduring, sacred, and intrinsically valuable. Instead, the respect for life is, in some sense, merely a subtle act of self-interest, a necessary ethical step on the path toward liberation, an escape from the cycle of death and reincarnation. Included in this escape is an escape also from the confines of materiality and anything which is in any sense associated with the world. In the Acaranga Sutra, the reader encounters once again the teachings of Mahavira which here describe the nature of existence after liberation is finally achieved:

The liberated is not long nor small nor round nor triangular nor quadrangular nor circular; he is not black nor blue nor red nor green nor white; neither of good nor bad smell; nor bitter nor pungent nor astringent nor sweet; neither rough nor soft; neither heavy nor light; neither cold nor hot; neither harsh nor smooth; he is without body, without resurrection, without contact of matter, he is not feminine nor masculine nor neuter; he perceives, he knows, but there is no analogy whereby to know the transcendent; its essence is without form; there is no condition of the unconditioned. There is no sound, no color, no smell, no taste, not touch--nothing of that kind. Thus I say.

The idea certainly has an aesthetic appeal. The idea of a conscious, non-corporeal existence has such an appeal to the Christian mind that it has been adopted (from Greek philosophy rather than Jain) into Christianity's own escapist soteriology in the form of the soul's flight to heaven. While that expression of Christian thought is deeply suspect, there is admittedly a strong affinity between the way Mahavira speaks of the transcendent and the way orthodox Christian thinkers have spoken of it. Consider this roughly parallel thought of Gregory Palamas:

Every nature is utterly remote and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature: just as he is not a being, if others are beings; and if he is a being, the others are not being. If you accept this as true also for wisdom and goodness and generally all the things around God or said about God, then your theology will be correct and in accord with the saints.

Gregory describes transcendent reality--in this case, God--in many of the same terms as Mahavira: real and aware, but invisible, non-corporeal, and fundamentally indescribable. There is, in both, the bare minimum agreement that philosophical materialism must be rejected. It is part of an intuitive function of human psychology that scientists explain as evolutionary attempt to grapple with and quantify the unknown but which theologians more liberally suggest may be an innate sense of the divine common to the species. Beyond this, Jain and Christianity diverge in their understanding of the relationship of the transcendent to the divine. In spite of what many Christians have suggested about Orthodox theology, for example, there are no Christian bodies which believe that humanity's ultimate goal is to become that transcendent reality which is non-corporeal and indescribable. The essence of the transcendent God, in Christianity, is what all reality is defined against; at the moment when the creation is absorbed wholesale into the Creator, both cease to exist in any meaningful sense as Christians conceive them.

More importantly, and with significantly less flavor of the esoteric, the Christian view of the transcendent and its relationship to the material world reveals an essential disagreement with Jain about the value of material existence. In creating the material world, God declared it good, and, whatever evil occurs in it, His handiwork has never ceased to be good at its core. That would explain why the Christian picture of redemption is not one of the transcendent calling people out of the material but of the immaterial taking on physical form in order to redeem creation. The Christian story of salvation has never been one of Christ leading people out of the world (in the sense of material existence). Just the opposite: the promise of Christian salvation centers around the idea that humanity will be resurrected into a new body to enjoy the presence of God on a new earth. A Christian respect for life and for creation is centered, therefore, not on a self-serving ethic but on a commitment to the eternal value of God's creation. Christian liberation is not a liberation from the world (again, in the sense of materiality) but liberation for the world. Christians have been freed from sin so that they might free the rest of the creation from the consequences of sin and so that all creation might then share in the experience the transcendent, not in ceasing to be creatures but as creatures were intended to experience the Creator.

Christ, Jain, and the Perennial Allure of Vomit

I confess a strange amusement with the way certain idioms transcend time and space, keeping their relevance throughout history and across cultures. Though it is by no means the first time, I found one such saying while reading through one of the sacred discourses of Jain, a teaching by Indrabhuti Gautama entitled Uttaradhyayana (which, curiously, is a word too often neglected at spelling bees). In this passage, Indrabhuti Gautama is recording the deathbed discourse of his master, Mahavira, who is concerned that Gautama loves him too much. After musing for a time on the nature of reincarnation, Mahavira gives this curious advice:

Give up your wealth and your wife; you have entered the state of the houseless; do not, as it were, return to your vomit; Gautama, be careful all the while!

The regular reader of Scripture--or for that matter, anyone familiar with Western culture which has been so influenced by the language of the Bible--should immediately think of the famous biblical proverb: "Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly." The parallel is striking and not at all, as it might first appear, entirely superficial. There is a strong sense in both Jain and Christianity of progress and of the profound sense of loss that comes from moving backward. Especially telling is that in both instances there is a sense in which it is better to have never been purified than to have been once cleansed and then again defiled. This is particularly pronounced when Peter takes up the proverb in his epistle, but first let us examine more deeply how the image functions in the Jain text.

Perhaps the crucial purpose of Mahavira's speech is to convey to Gautama the rarity (though not the singularity) of human life. Mahavira explains in protracted detail just how fortunate one is to exist on earth at all, even as a speck of dust, a state in which the soul may remain "as long as an aeon." And if it is fortunate, it may someday be reborn into a drop of water, where it can stay "as long as an aeon." Mahavira continues this formula through rebirth into a flame, the wind, a vegetable, and various forms of advancing life until finally he speaks of the great fortune of being born as a human and then as an Aryan (as opposed to a barbarian). Mahavira even observes that not all are fortunate enough to ascend directly up this path, as "the soul which suffers for its carelessness is driven about in the round of rebirth by its good and bad karma." But Gautama is even more fortunate still, because not only is he a human but a human who has had the karmic good fortune to be instructed in the sacred teachings and to believe the sacred teachings.

All this building of tension toward the climax is intended to indicate to Gautama just how blessed he is to be in a position where he literally stands on the cusp of enlightenment if only he would seize it. His existence--this particular life in this particular body with its nearness toward perfection--has been aeons in the making, the result of countless previous lives of karmic struggle toward this precise moment when he finally has the opportunity to break the vicious cycle of reincarnation and ascend into the eternal heavens. Given that this is true, how can Gautama still be distracted by inconsequential illusions. Mahavira insists, "Cast aside from you all attachments...Give up your wealth and your wife; you have entered the state of the houseless...Leave your friends and relations, the large fortune you have amassed; do not desire the a second time." It would be worse to squander the opportunity for perfection so nearly grasped than to have never crawled up out of the mire to begin with. Or, in biblical parlance, "to whom much was given, of him much will be required."

Peter will make the concept even clearer in his second epistle in a rant about the presence of false teachers leading Christians astray:

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire."

The passage offers a very similar message to that of the Jain text. In both, those who have made that all important progress on the path toward perfection are being tempted by a host of apparent pleasures when the true goal lies just ahead of them. Peter exhorts them to fight on because "the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials," and to remember that those sins to which they are now drawn are the very things which they have labored so hard in Christ to be freed from. Having known the truth that freedom comes in Christ, how much more foolish would it be for them to return to slavery because it appeared to them to be liberty? Paul will make much the same point about the new life versus the old in Ephesians.

This is not to say that Christian and Jain ideas of progress, regress, salvation, and apostasy are in any sense the same, though clearly they have affinities which converse well with one another. The Jain concept of perfection is intimately tied to a much more extreme rejection of the world than Christ ever advocated, which is a matter for another text on another day. A greater difference still is the way Christianity relates the goal to progress. There is a sense, in Christ, in which we are truly liberated first and then are expected to progress and be sanctified. In Jain liberation is an end which precludes the possibility of further progress. The most interesting point of contrast, however, also bears the richest fruits for thought about Christianity. In spite of startling statistics that suggest this is changing, Christians do not traditionally believe in reincarnation, an idea which is central to the Jain understanding of progress. Mahavira's aim, as already established, is to instill in his pupil a sense of the enormity of the task before him based on the aeons of karmic labor which led him to his current life and the prospect of ages more in the eternal cycle of rebirth should he fail. The importance of this life and this chance for liberation is based on the great struggle represented in reincarnation.

It strikes me then that Christianity should have an even greater sense of urgency than Mahavira does when we speak about the prospect of what we are to achieve in this life. Quite unlike the Jain system, there is no opportunity to struggle through the aeons to achieve a second shot at salvation in Christ. We are given this one life--of which Mahavira says "As the fallow leaf of the tree falls to the ground when its days are gone, even so the life of men" and of which Peter writes "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls." As earnest as Mahavira's pleas are to Gautama that he should get it right now while the opportunity is before him, how much more intense ought our own resolve be as Christians, when we know that we are given but one life and one opportunity to turn ourselves away from the world, to put off the old, and to clothe ourselves in Christ for all eternity?