The Golden Ass

Professor and friend David Fitch read Part 1 of 2 of my blog series here and responded as follows: “Hey bro … this is thick bro … can you do this for me? Can you give me an abstract? One paragraph summarizing the thesis of the post? And three points substantiating it??"

I responded by explaining a few things I'm doing and addressing in my short blog series without being explicit. I figured explaining them to him, in particular, would probably be helpful, as he is an academic. The reason said explanations are here collectively named a “Postscript” should become clear through the course of reading them:


1. Inside / outside. I'm attempting to climb inside the story rather than observe it from outside and above. To actually move through the story of Gen. 22 through the course of reading the blog post / series. Hence imagery in the blog post that intentionally places the reader, and the characters in the story, inside the horizon and under the domus of heaven rather than in a transcendent position above the fray.

Obvious difficulties here:

A. As moderns, we're outsiders to the ANE [Ancient Near East] world, and to the ANE practice of ritual child sacrifice. Reliance on scholarly sources comes in here. In my blog series, I generally minimized that and relegated it to the endnotes.

B. To get inside the story is to give a taste and sense of it. That was my intention in the blog post(s). I gave an intro. But I can't explain the revelation from the jump (as I would in a thesis statement), the key on which the whole story turns. Because, from inside the story, the characters in it don't know the revelation before it happens. That's part of the point of the story - that revelation is required to renounce the world of "our" Babylonian ancestors and to enter into a new world (as articulated in Part 2, here). But that much I did say in the intro.

For clarity, the original intro of Part 1 jumped straight into the news story of collaboration between Steve Bannon and Epst&!n on a film production to clear Epst&!n’s name, followed by a quick summary of three reasons for the importance of framing our public story of the Epst&!n files as one of child sacrifice, three reasons I intended to articulate further in the rest of the coming two blog posts. What the reader would go back and read now is an added and edited intro that came about as a result of being spurred on by Fitch in this conversation with him – said new intro into the difficulty in facing reality followed by its necessity and inevitability if we want to experience life’s goodness, beauty, and truth.


2. My blog post is meant to be for the church rather than for academia. But everything I just said about the inside and outside of a story and its journey had loads of meta, academic mumbo jumbo attached to it, or in the background. And I can't say everything in a blog post.

A. Example - throughout my blog post, I hinted at the modern individual as our idolatrous fantasy as a contextualized extension of the figure of the ancient hero into the modern world. Language in Part 1 of my series that pointed towards the modern individual and his or her territory as a fantasy included “our choices aren't as free as we imagine,” and “we aren't in control of the globe as we imagine.” In Part 1, I also gestured towards the modern individual itself being imaged after Baal / Marduk in the first place.

B. Another example - the figure of the Tower of Babel. Fantastical reaching to and/or descending from the heavens is key here. Again, I can't say everything in a blog post or series, but I definitely hinted at this. I did so primarily with the art and with storied references to or associations with it. The referenced art was William Christenberry’s Dream Building Ensemble and his Portrait, which, taken together, articulate the Babylonian Tower and the modern person as one image taken up into the interwoven modern practices of capitalism, individualism, and racism (the sexism of the sex cult of child sacrifice was around long before modernity). These indicative artistic references, in and of themselves, are related to the goal of "entering inside," of imaging a character inside a story set inside the horizon and under the domus of heaven. With reference to the figure of the Tower of Babel, the image of identifying with life inside the horizon and under the domus of heaven is intended to be compared to having transcended from and above, and having mastered the globe. This is to say that “entering inside” the story is, in my blog post and series, meant to be compared to having reached the top of the Tower, as though having presumed to have completed said Tower. Obviously, that’s not how the script of Gen. 11 goes.

Taking these two sets of images in these two examples together, I'm addressing the modern individual as such. And I'm tying that image of the modern individual to the ancient figure of the Babylonian Tower. To have taken up modern identity itself is to have presumed that the Tower was completed, and that it not only reached the heavens but obtained a vantage point outside them. To be modern is to be meta, to have entered the post-script, to have taken up what Arendt, in The Human Condition describes as an "Archimedean point" outside the globe, with a view of it which is that of its Maker.^[1]
3. Because it sounds like it would be helpful to academics, and because I think readers who would care about the content of this postscript already sense or know this, and so for me to say it here is not to kill or ruin it…

The point I'm driving at is that the story of Gen. 22 is told from the vantage point of the ear of Abraham rather than that of the eye of God...

And so, if the original command (in Gen. 22) was a "test" or "trail"...we have to ask whether:

A. the story is told from a transcendent vantage point, under the assumption that there is direct, unmediated relationship between the "command" that God spoke and, in turn, what Abraham heard?
Or rather -
B. the hearing of the command as we have it recorded and handed down to us was how it was heard in the ear of Abraham, who had come from a place where the Master from above is appeased with blood sacrifices of representatives of vanquished enemies in order to obtain divine blessings?
And thus -
B.b. God was bringing Abraham along on a journey from Babylon to another world, and accounting for where Abraham had been to get Abraham to somewhere closer to where God really is?
My implied answer to that question – implied by my very taking up the task of “entering inside” the story in the first place - is precisely why the revelation of the divinity Abraham had encountered as One "who sees and hears" and who also "is seen and heard" is so radical and implies an alternative creation story of a whole other world from the one created or brought into order by Ba'al / Marduk (or by “handmade” idolatry of and in attentive devotion to Ba’al / Marduk). Finnegans Wake is here simply an analogical meta example of such "entering inside," after modenrs had already “exited,” and as articulated and celebrated from inside our Western tradition.

I address all this much more explicitly in my (yet unpublished) book than in my blog post(s), but my book isn't about contextualizing the story of the Epst&!n files in particular. In the blog series, I'm more trying to open closed doors of those trained inside fundamentalism to greater curiosity and wonder. I’m interested in invitation towards asking questions fundamentalists might otherwise not, in movement towards seeing things they might otherwise not - sans too much explicitly academic language. But, from the vantage point of an academic, I'm also interested in doing work to contextualize the ancient story into a contemporary one with which we're all quite familiar.

Of course, all of this is partly to say that “entering inside” is, for us now, itself a difficulty into which we must entrust ourselves if we are to embrace what it means to be human. It not only can be but is likely inevitably a form of suffering endurance for us moderns. To begin to move in this direction is inevitably to make a holy sacrifice of our fantastical idols of transcendence to the one true God of Israel. In both the story of the Epst&!n files and of the sacrifice of Isaac, entrusting ourselves to movement way from fantasies and towards reality appears to us in all of its necessity, however, because the reality of being human is not having transcended but is living inside the horizon and under the domus of heaven. This is also to say, then, that Gen. 22’s story of what happens on Mt. Moriah is a guide whose climactic revelation that - not with any sense of frustrated incompletion but, instead, with wondrous awe - necessarily invites or “commands” us in this inevitable direction. And, in this movement to “inside,” revelation on Mt. Moriah points towards the Incarnation.

Endnotes

1. Arendt, Hannah, 1998 (2nd Ed.), The Human Condition, pp. 11, 294-296.↩

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you…You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. – James 5: 1, 5-6 (NRSV)

In Part 1, I introduced this blog series as a difficult journey into reality with which all of us, if we want not only to embrace our humanity but to encounter beauty, goodness, and truth, are tasked. In keeping with the story at hand, I took this difficulty to be so pervasive and acute that it inevitably requires revelation. Of course, part of what makes reality difficult is that it so readily feels overwhelming. To wit, in Part 1, I presented the Epst&!n files as a presumed story of the creation of the world by a cabal of rich, free men who represent the true Master and control everything. And, I submitted that, as Christians tasked with immersion in and living out of the script for the world we call the scriptures, the properly ordered way to name and frame the story of the Epst&!n files is as one of child sacrifice. I argued that such a framing was important for three reasons:

First – the larger picture by which we understand who we are, and how we know our knowing in the first place. We are not the ground of our own being, and we are not left to figure out what’s going on by ourselves. To recognize the image of a cabal of free men who control everything as a shared fantasy is to properly order the relationships between mortality and divinity, and it is thus also to properly order our attention. This, in and of itself, is difficult.

Second - Theology offers explanations of things we’re otherwise left either curiously wondering or interminably and reactively furious about. “Why is nothing happening? What the h&ll is going on!?” “Why are they speaking as though this doesn’t matter?” “Why is no one hearing the voices of the women?” The very need for such questions is because of the story in which we’re all immersed together. Thousands were raped. We’re all immersed. We all live in a world governed by ritual sacrifice of the chaos-enemy by the victorious hero who is himself fashioned in the image of fantastical idols that depict an unknown, powerfully terrifying, and functionally divine Master from above. Not only that, but the body, blood, guts, and soul of the silenced and vanquished enemy is the constitution of this world created by human hands, in which we’re all immersed together. This is also obviously extremely difficult to face and bear.

Third – how do we respond? Is there a world made not by human hands? If so, what is it like? If the story of the Epst&!n files is one of child sacrifice that creates and orders our world, what do we do? Ironically, it is the sacrifice of Isaac that teaches us how to respond in this moment. We need guidance, and it actually requires revelation. And, the revelation itself invites us into our response. That response is movement from terrifyingly shamed silence to the hearing of the Silence of wondrous awe that responds to the Word spoken. Of course, this means we will then, in the end, find ourselves living in a new world, hearing voices we otherwise could not, speaking a new language, and walking a radically different path.

3.1. HOW DO WE RESPOND?

We have seen that the answer to the question, “What the h&ll is going on?” is ritual child sacrifice, and in the specific context of a sex cult. We have also seen that naming it this way orients us inside the ancient script we call the scriptures that name and characterize the world we inhabit and that script the action that happens in it. When faced with the horrifically terrifying reality to which the Epst&!n files point, many of us want not only a language that gives account but also actual accountability. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that’s what we want when and if we actually do take up the difficult task of facing reality rather than deflecting from, covering over, or ignoring it. And, we want the abuse to stop. We want sanity and liberation from the false Master. We all want accountability, but the story itself is a linguistic account. The question is, what story? To name it child sacrifice rather than simply or only “abuse,” or perhaps even r@pe, is to answer this question. It is to place and thus find ourselves inside the tradition with which, if we are Christian, we identify.

And, because we are not the authors of the script, because humans are not and do not occupy the central position of and in the cosmos – because we neither make choices as freely as we imagine nor control outcomes as our vain fantasies would have it - to name the story in which we find ourselves, to orient ourselves in it itself constitutes a response. To name our position as that of the responsive rather than presuming to take up or grasp for positions of either the generative mover or final authority is itself a response to what we see happening. We are thus left with the question of what happens inside that story we inhabit when the Master’s desire for victorious ascent comes to the moment and place of fulfillment.

Collage: Top two photos of artist Nick Cave’s “Soundsuit” (photos by author). Bottom Left Window of Michelangelo’s Campidoglio, in Rome, Italy (credit mblage on IG). Bottom Right: Detail of Filippo Brunelleschi’s Cupola atop his infamous “Duomo” of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence, Italy (credit gogenevieve on IG).
When I visited Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art in Chicago in June of 2022 and saw Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, the curator directed my attention to Cave’s own story and response. It turns out to itself sound out to us as an echo and extension of the story we are here inhabiting and narrating. Cave’s Soundsuit is a kind of icon that helps us enter his story, to see the world he sees, put ourselves in the position of the character he plays, and to begin to learn the language he speaks. The museum curator teaches us that Cave’s Soundsuit came about as a response to the 1991 beating of Rodney King. As Cave was sitting in a Los Angeles park, doing the hard work of contemplating what happened, he started gathering sticks. As the curator tells Cave's story:

“He later sewed the twigs into a garment envisioned as a suit of armor: a means of obscuring his identity as a queer Black man for protection while paradoxically amplifying his radical otherness. The origin of the name 'Soundsuit' came from the experience of wearing the garment. According to Cave, 'Once I put it on and moved in it, I realized that was the protest - the sound it made. In order to be heard, you gotta’ make sound.'”

First, notice that the mirroring double images of protecting and making sound depicted by the “garment” are those of a person taking up a character in the action of a story set in a world characterized by sacrificial violence by presumed heroes with fantasies of ultimate victory. As Pete Hegseth said it: "The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.” Of course a warrior who twists the image of Christ into its opposite is also tasked with the sacrificial slaughter of shamed enemies.

By contrast, the sound of the twigs rustling with Cave’s movement is the sound of his existing. And, in the context of his story, of our story, this sound appears on the horizon as not that of his slaughter, his silencing, or his shaming. It is not the immobilized silent scream of the shamed child locked in the dungeon of a Tower and penetrated by a sequence of banal men who, by and in the very act of penetrative violence, presume to render themselves representatives of the heroically victorious Master from above. The sound of Cave’s existing is the mirrored double to the tearing apart of his flesh with the butcher knife Abraham raised to heaven before the angel spoke. Cave’s Soundsuit is not the sound of burning flesh bound to an altar constructed in devotion to a falsely honored divinity Abrham didn’t know was false until the moment he heard the sound of all existing speaking.

In the same way that one can “hear” Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, these Italian architectural details, when they appear before you “here,” “in person,” very clearly and viscerally register (also) to the ear. That is partly because of a vicarious, formal association with the ear of the hearer. The form of these seashells is analogically similar to that of the human ear. In each of these instances in which we are invited to receive the sound of the Word of what appears before us, our hearing draws us upward. It edifies us. Edifying speech starts with hearing. Here, to hear and respond is the opposite of reaching and grasping for ascent. Architectural wonders from the contingencies of our Christian history and tradition thus themselves also appear as edifying guides. When we hear the sound of the angel’s speech, mirror images of penetrating death and unbinding liberation meet in their true center together with the image of Isaac resurrected, with the sound of rustling twigs, with the seeing and hearing of a vanquished teenage girl decades later vindicated into a life of dignified speech that edifies.

Such miraculously wondrous turns towards life require revealed guides. Because we are not transcendent individuals whose choices are not as free as we imagine and whose desired outcomes cannot ultimately or finally be controlled, because the elite cabal who controls everything really is taken up in and by vain fantasies, we all need such guides. Though this is a difficult confession for moderns to make, Cave’s story appears here for us as a guide that directs us towards the story we need to guide us. Abraham’s “Here I am” is also Cave’s existing. Abraham’s naming of his presence in response to the angel’s speaking his name aloud is Cave’s hearing the edifying truth of God rather than the lie of shamefully dark fantasies who make empty promises. And, as Abraham’s “Here I am” refrain makes space for the angel to respond to Abraham’s response by inviting him to hear and see the truth in the silent cessation of a particularly terrifying form of sacrificial violence that is taken up in devotion to a heroic Master, so also has Cave heard the full sound of the Word of Life. To hear the truth that this place and moment when and where “the Lord sees” is at once also the place and moment when and where the child victim of ritual sacrifice is seen and heard rather than defeated and slaughtered is to turn from the shamed silence of her blood’s cries heard from the ground to the wondrous awe of silent adoration rising to the heavens.^[1]

3.2. IT IS REVELATION TO WHICH WE RESPOND WITH SEEING AND HEARING IN AND OF A NEW WORLD

To have made this turn is to have taken up the difficult task of facing and bearing the terror of a false creation made by human hands. To have responded to the speech of the revealed angel who reveals reality, then, is for the site and moment of sacrificial slaughter to appear instead as the site of new creation.^[2] This is to say that, for Abraham to go from having imagined the divinity who appeared to him as a terrifying Master from above who demands child sacrifice to obtain blessings of life and provision to, instead, seeing and hearing the true God of Israel who sees and hears, who is present with us in the appearing, is for Abrham to have been created anew. It is for Abraham to not make himself into a new person but to be created again. Because creation is the domain of divinity rather than of the mortally human, Abraham’s turn that is also his creation is for us the disclosure that we are not the creators but are vulnerably in need of a guide. “His creation” here, of course, has a double meaning. His own creation is not his own but is his having been created. As we share his story with him, it also becomes our own creation. It tuns out that the man who crafts girls into the image of a chaos-serpent vanquished by a heroically victorious Master was telling the wrong creation story.

In the wondrous awe of this place and moment, we are given the gift of seeing that the guide we so vulnerably need is actually the Lord who sees and is seen. Our given guides are thus extensions into and through the course of historical time of the first guide. If we might be swept up into the contingencies of history by an elite cabal who controls everything, the Lord appears before us at history’s climax as also said history’s beginning and telos. Inside this beginning and telos, all such contingencies appear and find their place. This is to say that even those of the elite cabal who practices child sacrifices finds their proper place in the world atop Mt. Moriah. We are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts.

Christ’s history climaxed on the same Mt. as Abraham’s. In our sharing in the stories of history’s vulnerable contingencies, that place and moment becomes the crux of our story, too. In Nick Cave’s Soundings, and in edifying architectural echoes of hearing and being heard, we hear echoes of the angel speaking. The guide of guides gathers our other guides up into himself for the pleasure of helping us to see, for the delight of revelatory gift. We are given to see that the gift is pleased to reveal himself at the very site and moment of slaughter.

By “pleased,” of course, I do not mean to say that he is pleased with the slaughter. Quite the opposite. He is the reason for Isaac’s resurrection from death’s binding. I mean to say, then, that His love is revealed to be such that he desires presence with us even in and at the site and moment his own slaughter. The site of Isaac’s resurrection is, after all, also the site of the slaughter of God in the flesh. When he appears again, we thus already know how to recognize him. We know we hear his voice again as the Epst&!n files appear before all to see. We know this, because he himself has been pleased to have revealed it to us. “Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’” – Gen. 22: 7 (NRSV)

3.3. SACRIFICIAL CRIES OF THE VANGUISHED AS ECHOES OF THE VOICE OF GOD

As the logic and flow of Jesus’ brother James’ words implies, it is Isaac, yes, but also Christ himself who is seen and heard in “the cries of the harvesters [that] have reached the ears of the Lord” (James 5:4). The presumed Master is being tested in a trial (Psalm 82). The revelation is his trial itself. The girls victimized by penetrating shame are being vindicated by the true Master whose penetrated suffering is itself their endured purification. It is at this place and moment when and where we are given to see that he makes our sacrificial lifeblood his own. That it is He himself who is revealed here in the hearing of a sacrificed girl’s cries is why James’ very next words in chapter 5 of his letter – these particular words directed to the rich cabal of elites who fancy themselves the masters who presume to control everything - are: “You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you” (James 5: 5-6). Of course, this framing of girl sacrifice implies that it was not the Father who slaughtered the child on Golgotha. Instead, it was the fantastical idol of heroic victory by way of sacrificial blood.

If we are asking who plays which parts in the story, we do not see God’s solidarity with the oppressed. We instead are gifted with disclosure of God as the sacrificed child itself. In this version of the story, however, the central actor of the story does not slaughter another but submits to it. As Abraham and Nick Cave have responded to this image that appears as radically other in a world that seems to be constituted by the shameful silence of vanquished enemies sacrificially slaughtered by a heroic victor, so we, too, are invited. The invitation is life into a new world, one radically other from the world created by fantastical idols. For us to accept the invitation of life in a new world born of Revealed disclosure is to itself, like Abaham, respond as one created anew. And, to respond as one created anew in a new world is to have heard the voice of a God revealed to be radically other than the Master towards whom fantastical dreams reach and grasp.^[3]

3.4. IN A NEW WORLD, WHAT PATH FORWARD DO WE TAKE?

To know what this response is, we need only to read and hear the language of the story. And, in the story, we find the prophetic forbidding of child sacrifice. God’s act of gifted disclosure constitutes revelation of a divinity whose act of creation in the moment and place of his own sacrifice constitutes the end towards which all child sacrifice moves and in accordance with which all child sacrifice ceases. The divine language that speaks the creation of a new Abraham is also the creation of a new world. Abraham’s birth is not only of himself but into a different world. It is a different cosmos with a different cosmology. As Isaac was resurrected into the new world that had come into order by the voice of a newly-revealed divinity, so is the sacrificial girl who was bound up to horse stalls in the dungeon of the banal’s Tower, the child who had previously only heard shaming insults. As Abraham is born into a new world, so is she if she shares in his story with him. To wit -

In the story, we also find the creator’s divine command to live along a trajectory that makes appear the revealed Lord who sees and is seen rather than demands sacrificial slaughter in order to obtain blessings of life and provision. Accountability at a systematic, institutional level is not the answer but is itself a response. This is to say that, if we manage to find ourselves in a world and a moment when and where true accountability happens, then we can know it to be a revealed response rather than a free choice whose outcome any of us accomplished or made happen. We know this, because we’ve already been given the Revelation. Said Revelation constitutes the beginning of an account of a different cosmos, with a turn to a new cosmology. Epst&!n and Trump’s idolatrous fantasies that demand sacrificial blood not only give shape to but constitute a Mt. Moriah moment we are all now inhabiting. Many will of course blindly continue the slaughter. These devoted ones will continue to speak in confused languages as though they live in another world of their own making. As Abraham heard and responded in sacred awe that gives sight of a new world, we are also so invited. Who else will accept the invitation of and to wondrous awe? How about the vindicated girl?

We are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts. Of course, then, the ceasing of slaughter on Mt. Moriah has profound implications for how we all relate to one another in everyday life. Adoration that rises to the heavens also takes up the form of devotion along a path. To inhabit a world created by the language of a divinity whose speech reveals his own caring presence of seeing and hearing is to relate to one another with the caring presence of seeing and hearing. And, if we ask about the ceasing of the ritual of child sacrifice in the specific context of an elite sex cult, then profound implications again arise, this time in everyday relations between men and women, or between men and girls. To inhabit a world created by the language of a divinity whose speech reveals his own caring presence of seeing and hearing among men and women, men and girls, means not only the cessation of ritual humiliation of the chaos-enemy but, instead, mutual relating in enactment of edifying care in response to the hearing and seeing of the One whose seeing and hearing creates a world made of faithful Love Incarnate. This is to inhabit the wondrous awe of Mt. Moriah. To simply love and dignify appropriately according to the decreed reign of properly ordered relating in mutual hearing and seeing in a given circumstance is not the final account. But it is itself to give an account of the story of the Epst&!n files. Who can give the final account? We expectantly await the Word again.

Endnotes

1. Robert Alter translates Gen. 22: 14 as: “And Abraham called the name of that place YHWH-Yireh, as is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord there is sight.’” Alter comments further: “The place-name means ‘the LORD sees.’ The phrase at the end means literally either ‘he sees’ or ‘he will be seen,’ depending on how the verb is vocalized, and this translation uses a noun instead to preserve the ambiguity. It is also not clear whether it is God or the person who comes to the Mount who sees/is seen.” (Alter, Robert, The Hebrew Bible: Volume 1, The Five Books of Moses, 2019, p. 74.) ↑
2. It may by now be obvious to my reader that I am not using the term “creation” in the way many of my readers likely take for granted as its meaning. I am not referring to creatio ex nihilo, to making material reality appear out of nothing. Rather, drawing from the work of John Walton, primarily in The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate and in The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate, when I say “creation,” I am referring to some storied version of the divine act of brining the world into order. ↑
3. To associate Nick Cave’s response to the beating of Rodney King with Abraham’s response to Revelation is not necessarily to bind what is articulated here as God’s “radical otherness” to Cave’s identity as a queer Black man. If I intend to “affirm” anything here, it is simply Cave’s dignity. If I intend to associate God with Cave somehow, it is by way of creation as an extension of and dependent on existing itself in and by the Word. To say more is to go beyond the purview of this blog post and to give answers I do not necessarily have. ↑

 

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. 2 Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure during the last days. 4 Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. 7 Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. – James 5: 1-8 (NRSV)

Facing reality is a difficult thing to do. If any of us are honest, we can attest to that fact without hesitation. On the other side of it, though, is beauty, goodness, and truth. This is the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac on Mt. Moriah. I would like to suggest, whether we realize it or not, that it is also the story of the Epst&!n files. This blog series is to be my articulation of what I mean by that.

As Rainer Maria Rilke said in Letters to a Young Poet: “it is clear that we must trust what is difficult…that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.” If any of us desire anything good, or simply to be human, facing reality is not only required but inevitable. In his encouragement towards this, Rilke does not name our Judeo-Christian tradition. Rilke’s message, however, is the eventuality of a beautiful fruit whose seed has been buried deep in the tradition in question. By “buried deep,” I mean to indicate that it’s been hidden. Living the Christian life is not possible without facing difficult things. In fact, facing difficult things is inevitable and required as one crosses the threshold into discipleship. That discipleship has been turned into something easy and cheap is what I mean when I say a seed has been hidden.

James’ words in the opening verses of chapter 5 are obviously difficult, and partly because they can sound harsh. But they are tied to a seed of gentleness and care without which they could never be uttered. And, not only that, our human journey towards that gentleness and care is precisely what renders James difficult. That seed was first planted on Mt. Moriah. The reality of the story of Mt. Moriah, however, is so difficult that the place where the story happened could not have possibly had its name until after said story’s climax. This is because the human characters in the story were utterly incapable of knowing where the story was heading from its outset. And that is part of the difficulty. Of course, that is the case in any story. But, it is not the case in every story that this is because what the characters are to come to face through the course of the story is too difficult for them.

I mean to say that Abraham had no idea what was going on when he started his journey towards and up Mt. Moriah in Gen. 22. Not only that, but he was so clueless that he thought he knew exactly what was going on, but reality turned out to be precisely the opposite of what he not only imagined but actually was capable of hearing. I also mean to say that the story, as we have it handed down to us, is told not from the eye of God but from the ear of Abraham. In this sense, it is a human rather than a divine story. In this sense, too, it is a story in which we all participate. And, as we all inevitably must face difficulty if we want goodness and truth, so also are we all, like Abraham, relatively clueless as we are in the midst of the actuality of our own story. As Abraham took for granted the land from where he had come, from the Land of Towers (Gen. 11), so do we.

Dream Building Ensemble, by William Christenberry, 2001.

And, as Abraham didn’t know where he was heading at the outset of Gen. 22, neither do we. As Abraham didn’t know where he was, neither do we. Mt. Moriah didn’t receive its name until after the divine revelation that was given in that moment and in that place. As Abraham didn’t know where he was going, we, in reality, also don’t. And, as Abraham didn’t know where he was, neither do we. We can all recognize Gen. 22 as a story of child sacrifice. We do not, however, all readily recognize our contemporary story of the Epst&!n files as such. I submit that our contemporary story of the Epst&!n files is a contextualized re-living of Abraham’s moment of child sacrifice on Mt. Moriah. And, as the ritual sacrifice of Isaac was Abraham’s participation in a creation story, so, too, is the sacrifice of girls in the story of the Epst&!n files. Trigger warning: to say what I mean by all of this will obviously require a telling of the story of the Epst&!n files. To begin, then -

One person who appears repeatedly in the Epst&!n files is Steve Bannon. One of the revelations there is their mutually bound relationship to shared goals. While Epst&!n helped Bannon shape our larger shared environment in the image of his far-right populist project, Bannon worked to rehab Epst&!n’s public image by means of a film production (ref. here). Do note the mirror images presented to us by, on the one hand, Bannon’s description of the media’s exposure of the truth about Epst&!n to public view as a “sophisticated op” and, on the other, the film projector extending Epst&!n and Bannon’s shared image for the world out into it.

What the doubling in that mirror presents to us is that, while thousands have been r*ped by Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epst&!n's sex cult of sacrificially ritual shaming, all of us are immersed in their environment of abuse and lies. Each of us is left to respond or react in some way, whether towards healing and presence in grace and truth or towards dissociation that mirrors the abusive violence. We are not all only witnesses to Epst&!n’s child abuse. We are immersed in a cosmos made by attentive devotion to sacrificially violent idols made by human hands.

I want to clarify and specify, however, that abuse is only one term for what's happening right now. Abuse is a psychological or neurobiological term, as well as a sociological one. In theological terms, however, the reason I referred to it as a sex cult of sacrificially ritual shaming is because what we're all witnessing by giving attention to the very public news of the Epst&!n files is child sacrifice. I take framing it in such terms to be important for a number of reasons:

First – the larger picture by which we understand who we are, and how we know our knowing in the first place. We are not the ground of our own being, and we are not left to figure out what’s going on by ourselves. Second – story and framing. Theology offers explanations of things we’re otherwise left either curiously wondering or interminably and reactively furious about. It helps us interpret what’s happening. Third – response. What to do? The sacrifice of Isaac teaches us how to respond in this moment. We need guidance, and it actually requires revelation. The revelation is of the previously referenced seed of gentleness and care. And, the revelation itself is an alternative act of creation that invites us into a response.

1.1. WHO ARE WE?

Metaphysics and epistemology. It is true that we're immersed in a patriarchal environment of male violence. But these men are not the evil. They are men, and they are utterly banal. Trump is literally sh!ttin in diapers in the White House on national television. The evil is not flesh and blood. The masks and gowns they wear carry a terrifying brightness, but the eye holes have always struck me as strangely disjunctive for a reason. It is merely a mortal man under the hood. The wrestling with which are tasked, however, is against principalities and powers. Yes, it turns out there really is an elite cabal pulling strings. But the cabal itself is governed and engulfed by vain fantasies whose promises only make for destruction. The scriptural name given to these fantasies is idolatry.

Portrait, by William Christenberry, 1983.

This is not to decleave the evil from the world we inhabit. It is not to separate soul and body, world and spirit. It is to properly order the things and categories to which we give our attention. It is thus to properly direct our attention. To wit -

2.1. WHERE ARE WE?

Why is our response to public disclosure of the Epst&!n files is so woefully insufficient? Why is nothing happening? What the h@ll is going on? How is this being swept under the rug!? Why does it seem like authorities are speaking as though they live in another world? Why are the regime’s supporters imitating their same language? Where are the voices of the victims? If it is true that we are immersed in an environment of male violence, it is also true that the truth is being actively covered up. If it is true that these men are utterly banal, they are also actively working to envelop their deeds in darkness. They have agency, and they are using it. Predominant secular categories offer pathologized explanations as to why, but I take these to be too neat and tidy, and with answers and solutions that are too easily and freely chosen. Secular political explanations of partisanship or ideology follow a similar pattern that churns out simplicity, ease, and free choices. These men have agency, but their choices are not the whole story. And, their actions are hardly "free." All who sin are bound to sin.

Abraham ascended Mt. Moriah to offer his only child to what he had understood since he was himself a child to be a powerful Master from above whose full truth was terrifyingly cloaked in darkness on the other side of the horizon of what can be sensed by humans. Abraham's offering was bound to the altar in order to obtain blessings of fruitfulness and life from this terrifyingly powerful Master. And, it was said by all that this Master brought the world into order by way of sacrificial slaughter of its enemy and rival, who was depicted as a chaos-serpent.^[1] This was the language of Abraham’s ascent up Mt. Moriah. The Master's Law was violent victory over chaos, and the means of victory was blood sacrifice. Not only that, but the language of the land from which Abraham sojourned decreed that the shamed and vanquished enemy-chaos was what the Master then used to make the ordered world Abraham inhabited. This is to say that the slaughter of blood sacrifice constituted the creation of the world, and to practice the child's immolation was not only appeasement of the Master but participation in said Master's original and ongoing act of creatively bringing order out of chaos in the world. This is obviously a difficult thing to bear but also, if you represent the heroic victor, a matter of reverent devotion and celebration.

2.2. WHERE ARE WE NOW?

If we frame Epst&!n’s, Bannon’s, and Trump’s banality inside Abraham’s ascent up Mt. Moriah, then, some key things come to light that are otherwise hidden. These men don’t know what they are doing. They have been on a trajectory towards appeasing an unknown and terrifyingly powerful Master since they were themselves children. As Abraham was born into, formed inside, and came from a land of figures towering towards the heavens, so, too, did Epst&!n and his cabal. That is why William Christenberry’s “Portrait” makes clear that the fantasies of bright light in which these idols clothe themselves take a similar form to that of the Babylonian Towers that dominate the horizon of the world we all inhabit together. Our character takes form in relation to the forms of our environment.

As Abraham was bound to terror of darkness from the other side of the horizon, so is the cabal of banality. Abraham was once a child in a similar position to Isaac’s. So were they. As Abraham sought blessings of fruitfulness and life – sought “the precious crop from the earth” (James 5: 7) - so do these banal men grasp for it in the only way they know. “The only way they know” is why the term “bound” is key here. They are bound to the only confused language they’ve ever known. They are thus also bound to the world that language decrees and references. As I said, their choices are not as free as we tend to imagine.

Why we imagine it that way is itself a difficult matter of our own binding, a matter of the language we speak in the world we inhabit. Many point to downstream effects of the US’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as key triggers to our current populist moment that’s characterized by fears of cultural loss attributed to mass immigration. Those wars being retributive responses to 9/11, it makes sense that our fears of loss are not at all exclusively but definitively from and of Muslim “sand n!**ers.” The story of the current moment, then, cannot be told without accounting for the fact that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, too, were religious acts of child sacrifice enacted at systematic scale. Thus, that we imagine our choices to be less free than they really are is a matter of our own binding to a world and its storied language is precisely part of why this theologically storied framing of creation and cosmology is important. Brian Tyler Cohen posted: "BREAKING: Ghislaine Maxwell PLEADS THE FIFTH when asked about Donald Trump." To be clear, the specific question was whether Trump ever engaged in sexual activity with anyone introduced to him by Maxwell or Epstein. The presumably divine story by which St. Paul refers to our shared environment as “the world” was created and brought into order should not be a breaking surprise. The reason it is “breaking” is because the reality of it is difficult to face and bear. It can break us.

Besides the obvious need for accountability, part of why we are frustrated in this Epst&!n (and Trump) moment that “nothing is happening” is because we imagine that we freely choose everything that’s happening. If we are confused by the regime’s language, it is because the languages of this place in which we are all immersed together are themselves confused. I do not say this to downplay the need for accountability but to explain why it appears toweringly impossible. The language of Abraham’s ascent up Mt. Moriah is a confused language of the Land of Towers from which he is sojourning. Because the languages of this place are confused, the place’s purposed end can never see its completion. That’s why the handing over of Iraq to their own governing structures was not only so awkward but violent. It’s also why the story of withdrawal from Afghanistan was not only so confused but also characterized by contested stories told by warring parties who speak different languages. The current “sophisticated op” of the populist far right will likely see a similar end.

The terrifying Master from above, after all, resides at the unreachable head of the Tower. And, this divine, all-powerful Master is the first hero. His violence establishes the difficult way the world works. His is not the rule of law but Law and Order. The reason why 70% of those rounded up by ICE having no significant criminal background is irrelevant here in this environment is because of the story being told in the first place by that language of Abraham’s ascent up the mountain of the world. In their banality, Bannon, Epst&!n, and Trump are all seeking to ascend towards an ensemble of dreams closer to the Master. Like the rest of us, Epst&!n and friends want to know what is, if not for their cultic rituals, otherwise cloaked in the tempting brightness of terrifying darkness.

It is no wonder, then, that their deeds are mirrors to and extensions of their divinity’s sacrificial violence that brings order out of chaos in the world. It is no wonder that their wonder is consumed by images of enemy bloodshed, of sacrificial violence. As Tawny Dragon said it on Threads: “It's f*cking wild we need a dead man's emails to believe the testimonies of 1000 women.” The women and the dead man are not even speaking the same language. Interestingly, Ms. Dragon also posted this: "They don't care about child sacrifice because the god that they worship killed his own son and called it love." I, of course, don’t take that to be what happened at Golgotha. Ms. Dragon does, however, seem to know her role in the (creation) story the dead man tells about himself, about the world, and about her. I am confident she knows the dead idol’s story far better than I, in fact. To the point of her knowing, the chaos-serpent is often depicted as a Dragon. The story of St. George slaying the fire-breathing dragon to return the village to proper order didn’t appear out of thin air.

2.3. WHERE ARE WE? COMINNG AROUND TO SOME ANSWERS

The reason it seems “nothing is happening,” then, is because something is happening. There may very well be an “Epst&!n class,” but it was the children of the lower classes who were sacrificed among ancient Israel’s neighbors, too.^[2] To call it a class war is to place ourselves in a different story and to thus invite a different response. The story on which Gen. 11 and 22 constitute a commentary is that the shamed and vanquished enemy-chaos that the Master used to make the ordered world Abraham inhabited appear before all of us is being made to appear before all of us by those who are bound in devotion to the One who invites shaming humiliation of enemies. This invitation is commanded by the Master by not only doing it first but by creating the world with it. We seem to be enveloped in darkness, because the “sophisticated op” of a projected world we inhabit is constituted by the darkness of a sacrificially vanquished enemy’s shame.

Yes, this is to say that 14 year-old girls tied up and blindfolded, shamed and insulted in horse stalls in underground dungeons, bound ones who are expected to “perform” well enough to obtain the blessed privilege of instead being r*ped upstairs in a higher level of the Tower (ref. here) represent the shamed and humiliated chaos-enemy who the Master not only sacrificially vanquished but who constitutes the very world we inhabit. “Why is nothing happening? What the h&ll is going on?” “Why does the language spoken by authorities not seem to give a proper account of this?” “Why are women’s voices being unheard and distrusted?”

Here, we also have to remember that greed is idolatry. And, the victim is not the greedy one but their resource. To quote Alasdair MacIntyre, however, “Pleonexia, a vice in the Aristotelian scheme, is now the driving force of modern productive work.”^[3] The Greek term pleonexia, as it is used here, refers to the insatiable desire to not only acquire but accrue what is rightfully due to another. We are all tempted to such idolatrous blessings whose bestowal requires sacrificial violence. Abraham wasn’t the only one who desired ascent. We all inhabit and participate in the same world. We have from the beginning. This is a difficult confesion. The elites might be pulling the strings, but they are no more in control than you or I. Thousands have been r*ped. All of us are immersed. We are immersed in a world and the language spoken in it.

That’s why Bannon wants to envelop voting polls with ICE agents in November’s mid-term elections. As he said it: “You’re damn right. We’re gonna’ have ICE surround the polls come November. And, you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want. But we will never again allow an election to be stolen.” The Big Lie is not just a lie. It is participation in our collected testing by a fantastical idol that demands blood sacrifice. The lie is more than a lie. It is a whole script they tell, inhabit, and live. Their Master is Ba’al. Or, perhaps we can call him Molech. Bannon is his servant and prophet. Epst&!n was his priest. Trump is his kingly representative. These idolatrously deceitful fantasies cover over their banality. Their Master continues working. Bannon, Trump, and Epst&!n are not the only ones who theology frames as violently heroic victors and rule of law names criminals. But we are all immersed in the same world. It belongs to a cosmology. We are all intimately familiar with the language. It may very well be a system, but first it’s a story. Many refer to it as the scriptures.

The Epst&!n files suggest that a newborn baby was perhaps thrown off Trump’s yacht into Lake Michigan, and that a limousine driver was about to pull over, end the trip, and give Trump the beating the driver felt he deserved because he was so disgusted by hearing Trump, while talking to a “Jeffrey,” threaten to murder a girl he had r*ped. We’ve all seen potential evidence that Virginia Giuffre was threatened with binding not only herself but her family to the terror of death’s darkness *** like another girl who had been disappeared off the edge of the horizon beyond which humans cannot sense or know. These are not just the worst of what we know. They are not aberrations. Nor are they only data points that demand further investigation rather than cover in shame of darkness. They appear as graven images of the logical terminus of a linguistic script that shapes a world inside of which we’re all immersed.

"Quiet piggy" "You are the worst reporter. CNN has no ratings because of people like you. *turns away from the woman* You know, she’s a young woman. *turns back to the woman* I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. But I’ve known you for ten years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face…” Both were Trump’s responses to questions from female reporters about Epst&!n survivors. These can be said to be words of verbal abuse. But they are at least also the telling of a story of heroic victor’s shaming of the vanquished chaos-enemy. This is how we know that such acts of verbal shaming are not separate from the sacrificial slaughters of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The shared world we inhabit together is constituted by the darkness of a sacrificially vanquished enemy’s shame.

Being “graven” images, they of course make a strong impression upon us. It may be a system, or “a sophisticated op,” but first it’s a story. Whether the story is true or not, how would the image of a girl whose head had been blown off not make such a lasting impression? The reason it makes an impression is because we are all impressed with a sense of the story that governs and orders our mutually shared environment. Hence the difficulty of bearing and facing it. If the terror did or may happen in a whole separate world, to which we have no connection or in which we have no part, or if this were merely an academic exercise of objective observation, then we would be left unaffected. But we are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts. The question, then, is of our response, to which we will turn in Part 2 (of 2) of this blog series.

Endnotes

1. Eliade, Mircea, 1981, A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1, pp. 70-72. Here, Eliade is simply summarizing the Babylonian creation myth / story. I am drawing from this story in much of what follows in this blog post. For a relatively short and concise essay on the Babylonian creation story’s cultural influence today, see Wink, Walter, 1999, The Myth of Redemptive Violence. The Bible in Transmission, Spring, 1999 issue. For a helpfully generalized and short summary of the differences and similarities of the Jewish and Babylonian creation stories, as well as the scholarly fallout in the wake of the discovery of the Babylonian one, see the May 18, 2010 blog post from Pete Enns from the BioLogos website, “Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story: Found among the ruins was a Babylonian creation story referred to today as Enuma Elish. How people viewed Genesis would never be the same again” (Enns, 2010). For a concise outline of the Enuma Elish, see Webster, Michael. (Unknown date). The Babylonian Creation Story (Enuma elish). [Class handout]. For a helpful summary of the Babylonian creation story, see Wink, Walter, 1992, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, pp. 13-17. ↑
2. Herr, Larry G., 1976, “Child Sacrifice in The Ancient Near East,” Ministry: International Journal for Pastors. https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1976/03/child-sacrifice-in-the-ancient-near-east ↑
3. MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1984, After Virtue, p. 227. ↑