The Irresistible Incarnation for a Weary World
Plus, Harry and Meghan's moral exile and ChatGPT vs. humanity.
Why Christmas is Bigger Than Easter
Fred Sanders on how the incarnation includes everyone.
Last Saturday, I (Phillip) helped lead a Christmas carol service in the drafty ruins of a thirteenth-century church. Forty minutes of back-to-back singing by candlelight in the bitter cold—and it was packed. Year by year, people show up to this little service who would never come to church on a Sunday morning. There we all were, belting out theologically rigorous lines like “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; /
hail th'incarnate Deity”, our breath like puffs of smoke.
It’s common to chalk this up to nostalgia, but theologian Fred Sanders suggests that something much more profound is happening. Christmas is the annual celebration of the Incarnation—and this is good news for every person.
[The Son of God’s] goal was to save real people, of course, not just the idea of people. But his method was not to reach down and deal individually with here a person, there a person, or even with particular groups. Instead, the Son of God’s first step in carrying out the plan of salvation was to move into human nature itself, the nature that makes all humans human. He took that nature into personal union with himself. … No human is excluded from this almighty act of God the Son; everyone is implicated. …
Maybe the weary world has some distant, befuddled sense that their very humanity gives them all a stake in this annual feast, this least demanding but most inviting public rehearsal of the love of God.
As a young convert to the Christian faith, I would often get grumpy (I felt it was righteous jealousy) about the way shallow, secular, seasonal merriment tended to bury the truth under tinsel and jingle bells. But now I think I am beginning to get it. Even beyond the circle of faith, Christmas spreads the rumor that God is not done with humanity.
Read Why Christmas is Bigger Than Easter over at Christianity Today. For another shot in the arm about the Incarnation, read Glen Scrivener belting Glory to God in the Lowest.
AI Will Never Be as Human as You
Ian Leslie on ChatGPT and the struggle to be human.
While AI never truly vanishes from the news cycle, the release of ChatGPT at the end of November bumped it back to the top. Ask ChatGPT anything and you’ll get a clearly stated and plausible answer. It’s a remarkable advance.
But don’t believe all the hype, says journalist Ian Leslie. Most of ChatGPT’s answers read like a college student winging it on an essay. “The bot’s articles are fluent but tend towards the generic, bland and superficial,” he writes. Perhaps this is because we are becoming bland, generic and superficial?
Leslie cites examples from our pop music, movies, and politics to display his overarching point: “As the machines learn how to emulate us, we are making it easier for them, by becoming more like the machines.” We are becoming more like algorithmic models— “abstract entities with all the messiness of humanity scooped out.” How do we avoid this fate?
By taking seriously that which we cannot measure, and that which piques our interest but does not fit our models; by not being too confident in the models we have; by learning to appreciate ambiguity, intuition and mystery; by making room, now and again, for superstition and mad ideas. Above all, by refusing, in whatever game we’re playing, to make thoughtless and predictable moves just because they’re the moves we’ve been taught or conditioned to believe are the correct ones. We should strive to be difficult to model.
Read The Struggle to Be Human at Ian Leslie’s Substack. Over at Mere Orthodoxy, you can also read two pastors reflecting on what ChatGPT and AI more generally might mean for spiritual formation.
Harry and Meghan’s Moral Exile
Giles Fraser with a tale of two palaces.
With a book, a podcast, a tell-all Netflix series, and their faces on most tabloid covers, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to develop their brand. They’re likely to come up at the Christmas lunch table on both sides of the Atlantic. If this happens, Giles Fraser suggests that the ensuing discussion will eventually focus on “whether one believes we have obligations beyond our control” or not.
Harry and his brother William, Fraser writes,
…are archetypes of two fundamental and bitter political adversaries: very roughly, tradition and the ethics of the market, old world power and new world power, England and America. People will keep on making programmes about Harry and Meghan not because they are intrinsically worth watching, nor because they provide us with any new information about their perfectly ordinary romance, but rather because they reference a very primitive kind of disagreement about the nature of moral reality. Harry and Meghan are compelling in their own way because they are absolute true believers in the kind of moral vision they propound. In direct contrast, many believe that what they think of as being good is the very thing we now need saving from: an ethics indistinguishable from narcissism. The crack between us reaches down to the very bottom.
Read Harry and Meghan’s moral exile over at UnHerd. For a deeper explanation of the ethics they represent and a beautiful sketch of an alternative, check out Carter Snead’s article The Anthropology of Expressive Individualism.
Just when Phillip thought he knew all the carols, out came a total surprise at last week’s Feuerzangenbowle party: “See Him Lying on a Bed of Straw”, aka the Calypso Carol. Realising that every English person knew it made him feel like he’d entered an alternate Christmas universe. It was like the first mince pie all over again.
Reading: Philip is reading Wendell Berry’s The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice, a “pondering and ponderous” tome penned because Berry couldn’t write a blurb for a popular book on race. In a time of atomised thinking, Berry sees wholes where the rest of us see parts. His treatment of racial matters has something to offend everyone, and Phillip is finding it both challenging and refreshing.
Listening: The Advent playlist is still going strong, but Christmastide is queued up for when the time is right. Since he’s been preaching on the Magnificat this Advent, Phillip has enjoyed renditions that range from quiet and reflective, to boisterous and triumphant, as well as places in between? He likes them all, but no one tops Bach. He also recently discovered this rendition of Silent Night, which competes with Rutter as his favorite (despite weird lyrical changes).
A parent of older children once told Andy that “No one with young children really flourishes for those first few years” and he has held that bar-lowering advice to his heart. Despite the limitations of the early years of parenthood, Andy has been catching a few minutes of Bible reading most days in the wee hours of the morning, scratching down bleary notes in this journaling Bible.
Listening: Andy has compiled all his Spotify playlists from the past several years into one mega-playlist to rule them all, in case you’re into that sort of thing. (Sorry, Phillip, there is no Bach.)
Reading: Andy received Malcolm Guite’s David’s Crown, 150 poems for the Psalms. It has been wonderful to read a creative project that makes me keep saying, “Wow! How did he accomplish this?”
New from The Darkling Psalter (Andy’s poetry and Psalm translation project): Psalm 131 and poems and psalms for the beauty of creation.
