John Cornell

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A PARABLE OF SCANDAL: SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE WHEAT AND THE TARES IN MATTHEW 13 John F. Cornell St. John's College, NM I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret since the foundation of die world" (Matthew 13:35) The title ofone of René Girard's path-breaking books, Things Hidden since the Foundation ofthe World, is of course drawn from this passage. Few scholarly writings compare to this discussion ofmimetic rivalry and collective persecution for conveying a sense of the Bible's depths and secrecy, and for deciphering the wisdom inscribed in its images. Yet it is curious that Girard eschews the parables said to be the repositories of scriptural secrets. Both in Things Hidden (189) and in Quand ces choses commenceront (171-172), he distances himself from the parables as conceding too much to the human desire for a mythical God ofretribution. In light of all we have learned from Girard about our traditional misreadings of the Gospel, we might well question even the strongest impressions left by some of its figures. Might the parables' language of apocalyptic vengeance conceal a different revelation, just as an innocent death on a cross should disclose not the bloodlust ofa deity but the violence ofmen? Matthew's Jesus tells a story about a sowerwhose crop was infested by his enemy's weeds, weeds to be uprooted and destroyed at the harvest. And, granted, when Jesus translates the parable for the disciples he describes divine violence at the end ofhistory. The enemy is the devil and the sower is the Son ofMan who sends out his angels to discern the unrighteous ofhumanity and cast them into the furnace. But something does not seem quite right. Isn't Jesus' reduction of his own parable a little too obvious? And is there not John F. Cornell99 something grotesque—or at least simple-minded—about the teacher who warned about dirowing pearls ofwisdom now turning around and broadcasting the solution to one of the great mysteries? If we look closely at the very parable that surrounds the suggestion of "things hidden since the foundation ofthe world," we may see, however, that something is indeed hidden, hidden in the text. And what is hidden there confirms Girard's insight about the dominion ofmimetic rivalry since the world began. The Wheat and Tares is more than amyth ofdivine punishment. It is a parable ofthe essential human malady, a parable ofscandal. Here is the main text of the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, from Matthew chapter 13, in the New King James Version.1 "The kingdom ofheaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field (agroi) but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grainhad sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the [master of the house] (oikodespotou) came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed inyourfield? How then does it have tares?' He said to diem, 'An enemy, [a man,] has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Do you want us then to go and gather them up?' But he said, 1No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time ofharvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to bum them, but gather the wheat into my bam.'"" (Matthew 13: 24-30) Andhere is the explanation ofdie Wheat and die Tares that follows soon after: All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying: "1 will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret [since] the foundation ofthe world." 1 Minor corrections, necessary to reflect the Greek, are indicated by brackets. The source for the Greek text is the Nestle-Almond Novum Testamentum Graece. 100A Parable ofScandal Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house (oikiari). And His...

The proofs of the existence of God in part 4 of Descartes’s Discourse on Method may yet surprise us. These arguments appear to be crafted with such ambiguity that their deeper import has rarely been suspected. This essay proposes that, in spite of the text’s conventional appearance, Descartes exposes the error of scholastic metaphysics, namely, that it mistakes the perfectibility of the human mind for a transcendent perfect being. Superficially, the thinker’s “idea of a more perfect being” serves to ground the traditional theology; but surreptitiously, this idea refers to human possibility and supplies the metaphysical basis for scientific progress, freed from theology altogether. This ironic result is obtained not by speculating on Descartes’s irony directly, but by submitting the “idea of a more perfect being” itself to the Cartesian test of truth and falsehood. In that light, the text’s proofs of God reveal their skeptical, philanthropic intent.

It is natural for us — living after the Darwinian Revolution and the neo-Darwinian synthesis — to consider the adoption of evolution by natural selection as unconditionally rational, because it now seems the best theory or explanation of many phenomena. Nonetheless, if we take historical inquiry seriously, as allowing us to probe into the ground of our knowledge, the roots of even this “rational” Darwinism might be unearthed. Darwinian doctrine betrays a deceptive desire for unity and simplicity of principle, and belief that the mechanistic aspect of nature is of the highest significance. Such crucial but questionable presuppositions are more easily discerned historically, insofar as they chronologically preceded Darwin's particular theoretical conviction and were even set off as a metaphysics of divine law.We have seen how Darwin's teaching about nature emerged within that theistic metaphysics. It emerged in a prior metaphysical debate in his mind between the contemporary belief in special creations and the belief in a designed hierarchy of physical laws. One can hardly deny that Darwin favored the superior side in this contest; but the contest was a narrow one whose basic premises he never clearly criticized. On the one hand, of course, his conviction about a lawful genesis inspired him to take a broad view of things and to seek out important general phenomena. But, on the other hand, it ensured that his new empirical notions would be easily drawn into the preferred cosmology. Historically, this seems to have occurred in Darwin's adoption of Malthus' principle of population and his extension of it to the whole account of descent: Malthusianism was readily attached to an ultimate scheme of things. Consequently, the key concepts that Darwin developed out of his Malthusian views — “perfect adaptation” and “selection” — reflect his cosmological prepossession, his desire to express a total and teleological process of creation. Perhaps our most valuable, and most undervalued, token of Darwin's metaphysical orientation is his reliance on a human technique (selective breeding) to explain “Nature's” way. In sum, to understand Darwin's faith in his “grand view of life,” we should not ignore the metaphysics that preceded and structured it, the metaphysics that linked the principles of contemporary science to primordial creation. Nor should we fail to see that such a metaphysics leads natural philosophy into a shadowy realm, where system can come to look like science, and one insight like an absolute.

von Goethe was a daring and wide-ranging biologist as well as a great playwright. His work was a whole: for him, theory and theatre were both based on keen observation of life. Even ‘Faustian’ striving, the blind upward urge of life, can be found in significant details of organisms and their evolution, according to Goethe. Such observations cannot be dismissed as sheer poetry. On the contrary, his teleology provides a broad empirical background for the organismic approach in bio-medical science, while exposing inconsistencies in strict reductionist doctrines. Keywords: anastomosis, anatomical type, dialectic, Faustian, Platonic idealism, serial homology, sociobiology, teleology CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?