Nothing like a New Day

5/15/15

Biblical Heritage (Genesis 1-11)
Over these next few weeks, our goal as readers of a variety of texts such as the Bible, the foundation of our faith, to accounts of those that share our beliefs, like the Israelites, A Week in the Life of Corinth, and the Lost Letters of Pergamum, is to flesh out an overarching context of their stories. We begin with the Creation story as we get our introduction to the nature of God, humans, and nature. God is described as a powerful, intelligent, and personal presence as he speaks things into existence, making room for intelligent design, and directly interacts with his people like Adam and Eve, as he maintains a fatherly role by investing in their well-being as people on His world. He created it “ex nilo” without the constraints of preexisting conditions, allowing for an untainted goodness to prevail before the Fall. This event speaks to the nature of humans, although created by a flawless God, are themselves flawed through their yearning to be like Him. Seduced by the serpent to eat the fruit of knowledge, Adam and Eve become not only aware of the good and evil of the world but also become intimately familiar with both. The free will that is born from this knowledge of good and evil defeats the ability of God to protect them from themselves, and here we see the beginning of a necessity for a moral code. Jumping forward several thousand years, the Israelites mentions the Jewish impact on ethics. In Chapter Five, we encounter many of the laws and rules found in the Torah that continue to protect the people from themselves to allow for a sense of justice and right and wrong.

Social World I (Prince 12-24)

So often in America we are inclined to separate church and state. However, if we were to truly do this, many of the virtues and morals we ascribe to religion, such as charity, mercy, and justice, would not be necessary to apply to the government. Machiavelli’s Prince follows this perspective by unapologetically acknowledging that successful rulers should not wholeheartedly follow these virtues from a traditional perspective but rather they should master when to exercise these virtues in measure with their vices. If the ultimate purpose is to maintain power, Machiavelli calls means to this end “virtu”, referring the balance between opposites such as miserly and generosity, cruelty and mercy, intelligence and faith. To make his point further, he argues against the Old Testament and says that it is actually better to appear to have these traits like honesty, mercy, and humanity, than to actually have them because that way he can keep the love of the people while using prudence to be pragmatic about maintaining his power for his self-interest. Public acts to cultivate good will in his citizens, such as the well that we saw outside Topkapi Palace, keep them indebted and grateful to their leader. In the case of the well in Istanbul, people would come from all over the city to collect their water here and would inevitably attribute the availability of the water to the emperor whose palace’s gates were just yards away. Machiavelli’s Prince further draws connections to Turkey as he applauded the Turks for their well-ordered empire and strong army.