“Recounting a Spanish proverb that God always forgives, man sometimes forgives, but nature never forgives, [Pope] Francis said: ‘If we have deteriorated the Earth, the response will be very ugly’.”
April 22 (Earth Day), 2020
“Proverbial wisdom, it must be born in mind, deals sometimes with only one aspect of a truth.”
F. Edward Hulme, Proverbial Lore (1906)
Brevity is of the essence in a proverb, and proverbial wisdom must therefore be taken with a lively awareness of holophrasis. The notion that “God always forgives” is, for instance, holophrasic because the conditions of forgiveness are left unsaid. So long as everyone tacitly understands that “God always forgives” is the holophrastic form of “God always forgives those who repent and ask forgiveness,” the conditions of forgiveness are “needless to say.” There is no danger in dealing with one aspect of a truth when you are talking to people who share the tacit knowledge that there are other aspects of that truth.
But the holophrasis of proverbial wisdom gives rise to mischief when that which is “needless to say” really needs to be said. When Spaniards were properly catechized Catholics, the abridgement of the proverb did Spaniards no harm. But since Pope Francis was not addressing properly catechized Catholics (assuming such exist), abridgement does harm by suggesting that the proverb is the whole truth.
If Pope Francis truly believes that we have an ironclad and unconditional guarantee of forgiveness, no matter what we do or fail to do, I think he should fold up the Church and get a real job. But if his belief is correct, and God is indifferent to our actions, I suppose that even this makes no difference. As the young folk say nowadays, “it’s all good!”
* * * * *
There is at least as much dangerous holophrasis in the proverb “nature never forgives.” Does this mean that nature cannot forgive or that it will not forgive? Does nature lack the freedom to kindly suspend its laws of operation? Or does nature hold a grudge?
I suspect that the Spaniard who first framed the saw took the former view, and risked holophrasis because he knew it was “needless to say” that nature never forgives because to do so would violate the laws of nature. For instance, if I carelessly douse my shirt and pants with gasoline, and then carelessly strike a match to light a soothing cigarette, nature cannot forgive my carelessness in the way my mother can forgive my equally careless failure to send her a birthday card.
And it should be added that there would not be an ounce of anger, vengeance, or malice in the flames that would swiftly engulf me.
On the second view, the phrase “nature never forgives” implies that Mother Nature is angry and bent on taking revenge. When I read that Pope Francis said, ‘if we have deteriorated the Earth, the response will be very ugly,’ I am reminded of the words of Jehovah, as delivered by the prophetess Huldah to Hilkiah, in the reign of King Josiah. With the substitution of only one word, these might be the words of an angry Mother Nature, as delivered by some later day prophet to the trembling eco-sinners of this world.
“Because they have deteriorated me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath shall be poured out upon this place, and shall not be quenched.”
I can see no material difference between a wrath that shall not be quenched and a response that will be very ugly, apart from deterioration in quality of the language.
* * * * *
I am myself a devotee of Nature, and, making due allowance for holophrasis, agree with Wordsworth when he writes:
“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.”
Or with this sentiment of Thoreau:
“Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called . . . simply deform the landscape.”
But a Green Pope fills me with a nameless dread. A moment ago, I mentioned the prophesy of Huldah in the reign of King Josiah. As you may recall, King Josiah was troubled by the perennial problem of recrudescent Nature Worship in his kingdom, and at the time of Huldah’s prophesy had just finished purging Judah and Jerusalem of “high places, Asherah poles and idols.” Along with the “altars of the Baals,” King Josiah had torn these things down, broken them to pieces, and scattered the fragments “over the graves who had sacrificed to them.”
Now that was an “ugly” response!
Asherah is the goddess also known as Ashtoreth, Ishtar or Astarte. She is often represented as the consort of Baal, an ancient god better know to Christians as Beelzebub, the “Lord of the Flies.” And as readers of William Golding novel of that name know, the “Lord of the Flies” is the beastly law that rules all nature, not excluding the beastly nature of man.
And the Lord of the Flies does not forgive. His response is always ugly.
“Simon’s head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.
‘What are you doing out here all alone? Aren’t you afraid of me?’
Simon shook.
‘There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast.’
Simon’s mouth labored, brought forth audible words.
‘Pig’s head on a stick.’
‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?’”
The Orthosphere 
Calvinism teaches . . .
I have edited your comment down to a teaser, so that interested readers will go directly to your blog. Look for an uptick in traffic.
“To deteriorate” is not usually a transitive verb, in which mode Francis uses it, at least in English. I doubt that it is used transitively in Spanish or Italian. The Pope’s utterance partakes in the deformation that modernity inflicts on language — the banishment of argumentative rigor, proper diction, and subordination. If nature were a homeostatic unity, moreover, it could not, in fact, deteriorate, but only readjust.
Modern people do not speak well, and this inarticulacy runs through all ranks of society. The Pope’s infelicitous utterance may be the fault of a inept translator, but I thought “degraded” was pretty well established as the conventional way to describe an environment damaged by human action. I’ve just looked into it, and it appears that the word deteriorate was a transitive verb when it first made the leap from Latin in the seventeenth century, but the usage certainly jars in a modern ear. But I suppose language cannot deteriorate if deteriorating deteriorators don’t deteriorate it.
Pingback: Bow Down to the Lord of the Flies | Reaction Times
Intriguing!As a Hindu myself who is sympathetic to your cause,I’ve always been interested in the metaphysics of pantheism/omnitheism,and how this in turn in reflected in the 21st century’s esoteric revelations.
I cannot see how pantheism explains evil. In fact, it would seem to imply that all evil only appears to be evil because our minds are finite.
Golding’s book is rife with commentary on humans’ detrimental effect on nature, starting at the very beginning with the plane creating a “scar” down the side of the mountain. And then, of course, the boys burn down half the island. Oh, and poop all over the place, too. Sigh.
That may be, but Golding is also rejecting the notion that that humans will be redeemed if they will only “get back to nature.” I take it that nature is “the Lord of the Flies,” and that this is indicated by the line where the pig’s head tells Simon, “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast.” As I said in the post, I love unspoiled natural landscapes, but this does not mean that I think nature is my friend. Nature is, in a sense, lord of the forests and flowers, but it is also Lord of the Flies.
Agreed. I don’t think there’s any chance at redemption for humans according to Golding. And there’s plenty in the book when it seems that nature is unfriendly: creepers tangling the boys up, the boulder that is Piggy’s demise, and Castle Rock that contains no fresh water and a clutch of rotten eggs.