August 14, 2017

"Speaking of Trump, I notice he has been channeling Tom Waits."

Writes Amadeus 48 (in the comments, here). He quotes this Tom Waits song:
He's got the fire and the fury at his command
But you don't have to worry, just hold onto Jesus' hand.
We'll all be safe from Satan when the thunder rolls.
We just gotta help me keep the devil way down in the hole.


I think both men were channeling the Old Testament:
Isaiah 42:25 So he poured upon him the heat of his anger and the fury of war; it set him on fire all around, but he did not understand; it burned him, but he did not take it to heart.

Isaiah 66:15 For the Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to pay back his anger in fury, and his rebuke in flames of fire.

Lamentations 2:4 He has bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe; he has killed all in whom we took pride in the tent of daughter Zion; he has poured out his fury like fire.

Ezekiel 19:12 But it was plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground; the east wind dried it up; its fruit was stripped off, its strong stem was withered; the fire consumed it.

Ezekiel 23:25 I will direct my indignation against you, in order that they may deal with you in fury. They shall cut off your nose and your ears, and your survivors shall fall by the sword. They shall seize your sons and your daughters, and your survivors shall be devoured by fire.
And the New Testament:
Hebrews 10:26-37 For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.... For we know the one who said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”
ADDED: Possibly related: An op-ed in today's NYT titled "Christianity Does Not Justify Trump’s ‘Fire and Fury.'" I didn't realize anyone had been arguing that, and I'd just noticed that "fury of fire" in the New Testament. The author, Steven Paulikas, is an Episcopal priest in Park Slope (Brooklyn, NY).

Apparently, a Baptist minister (Robert Jeffress) had asserted that God gave Trump the power to "take out" Kim Jong-Un. Paulikas finds that "shockingly uninformed and dangerous." Jeffress stressed Paul's statement (in Romans 13) that existing governmental authorities are instituted by God. Paulikas stresses the next thing Paul says: "love one another" and "the one who loves another has fulfilled the law."
There has been discussion about whether the president’s bold words on Kim were improvised or part of a strategy to push China into cracking down on North Korea. Jeffress’s comments reveal a third dimension: a corrupted theology that could supply a misguided moral thrust to the president’s potential course of action. Seen in this light, the vision of “fire and fury” should be taken very seriously and at face value, an apocalyptic statement resulting from a highly unorthodox theology with no basis in the Bible.

31 comments:

rhhardin said...

It's hendiadys in either case. Fire of fury or fury of fire.

Conjunction for subordination.

Unknown said...

“Being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.”

Trumpers = the Venn diagram of Neo-Nazi's + White Nationalists

Kevin said...

Not to mention the movie Balls of Fury:

Karl Wolfschtagg: You are so close to defeat that it already reeks of your cheap cologne.

Master Wong: [smirks] The joke's on you, pretty boy. It's not cologne, it's lady speed stick.

Molly said...

Fire in the hole was the theme song for the tv series "The Wire" with a number of different people/groups performing it under the opening credits.

Ralph L said...

To be more accurate, they're channeling the English Bible.

I've only seen tiny bits, but the KJV is very close to Tyndale's Bible from a century earlier.

Unknown said...

Anonymous the activist hacking group has taken over the Alt-Right Daily Stormer news site and will shut it down within 24-hours. See full story on your favorite non-right wing news site.

Now, that is some pretty cool shit by Anonymous.

Oops, shouldn't say things like that on a pro-Trump site. Ah, well ...

Kevin said...

Anonymous the activist hacking group has taken over the Alt-Right Daily Stormer news site and will shut it down within 24-hours. See full story on your favorite non-right wing news site.

Now, that is some pretty cool shit by Anonymous.


Free speech is really a problem for some people. They are more fascist than the fascists they seek to suppress.

Fernandinande said...

You missed the funniest one:

Jeremiah 4:4
"Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings."

"The foreskins of your heart" - Country song.

Bob_R said...

"I didn't realize anyone had been arguing that" Rule 43. Someone is always arguing everything.

Is the "straw man" fallacy obsolete? Maybe we should call it the "internet man" fallacy. The dumbest guy on the internet is the new straw man.

Amadeus 48 said...

The history of Protestantism is theologians slanging each other over interpretations of the scriptures. What would Calvin do? I am glad the the NYT is provoding a forum for such theological debates--at least one side. Will they offer Rev. Jefress room to respond?

Ralph L said...

Althouse is sublimininably telling us to F Off.

Wince said...

To be really pop culture, maybe Trump should say "Dracarys"?

Ralph L said...

slanging each other over interpretations of the scriptures
And the liturgy, and Host raising, and Does this surplice make me look fat?

Rae said...

Christians are The Worst unless they agree with me.

Phil 314 said...

Texas vs. Park Slope.

richlb said...

This is the honest to God's truth - yesterday was the first time I realized that "Antifa" stood for "Anti-fascists". I swear on all that is holy up until this point I had just assumed it stood for "Anti-FA" - meaning "Anti-first amendment". It seemed to fit the situation each time. I was always sort of shocked how blatant they were about this in their name.

MadisonMan said...

Father Paulikas, what does Christianity say about the ineffectiveness of Obama's actions for 8 years with regard to North Korea?

traditionalguy said...

Control over the element of fire has long been used as a terror weapon to scare peasants. War ship's used Greek Fire. The British used Congreve Rockets' red glare. The Chinese used gunpowder in fireworks that lead directly to canon fire. And finally Curtis LeMay discovered how to make high altitude daylight precision B-29 bombers into low level Fire Bombers that disappeared 100,000 Japs in a night.

Ann Althouse said...

"Texas vs. Park Slope."

I used to live 4 blocks from that church. And back when I lived there — 1981-1984 — we thought that area was outside of Park Slope. We were pretty snobby about thinking that each block you walked in that direction (from 3rd Street to 7th Street) was considered a step down, socio-economically. I wanted to go to Episcopal Church at the time but considered that building too scary! I never set foot inside. I would take the subway into the Village to go to Grace Church at 802 Broadway (near where we'd lived before exiling ourselves to Brooklyn).

Ann Althouse said...

In case that makes me look too Episcopalian, I should say that I was taken to Presbyterian Church when I was a child (Westminster Church in Wilmington, Delaware), but we started going to Episcopal Church when we moved to a neighborhood where a new Episcopal Church was going up a few blocks from our house and the vicar befriended my father. They enjoyed drinking together. It was convivial in a way my father liked, and he cared about the development of the new neighborhood, which included that church.

Paddy O said...

The sacrament of Cointreau, if I'm not mistaken.

And an example by the vicar that exemplifies what a pastor should be about. Christianity transforms from below, as it's never been quite as good about imposing from above.

Ralph L said...

The Episcopal Church is dying in Wilmington (elsewhere, too). They're combining congregations, and IIRC, had to move the bishop out of a bad neighborhood.

My uncle was a vestryman at St Paul's in Shipley Heights. It's now a community center.

Unknown said...

I think that Robert Jeffress is literally correct that God gave Trump the power to "take out" Kim Jong-Un. Trump is the Commander in Chief and certainly has the power to do exactly that. Of course, that might not be a wise course, but he absolutely has the power.

Earnest Prole said...

If there's any language the Norks will understand, it's the language of Christ's Good Book, translated into English and then into Korean of course. Trump is quite simply a genius.

mockturtle said...

Paulikas quotes Barth whose acolyte Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined the plot to assassinate Hitler.

tim in vermont said...

So the Norks are ready to negotiate. Wow. Go The Donald!

tim in vermont said...

Since I am willing to bet that about the only way 99% of the non liberal commenters on this site even know of the "Daily Stormer" is from reports by lefty trolls, I am thinking they won't be missed.

tim in vermont said...

Where were they when a Maddow fan-boi was gunning down Republicans? I see MSNBC is still up.

Not that hassling Nazis is a bad thing, it's just that it would seem less hypocritical to go after all fascists.

Howard said...

richlb : same here, but I thought antifa was an arab muzzie word.

Jael (Gone Windwalking) said...

~
Apocryphal maybe, or maybe not, either way, it wasn’t Fire that burned-bright the burned out madness of Pope Henry VIII, but rather, the blood-licking dogs that cleaned the floor of his putrid carcass, though his Anglo Church remains, and of that Church, not all is wrong, so with love to Father-Physicist, John Polkinghorne’s proposal that his Church’s scripture be taken as field lab notebook, a starter for further testing (methinks he’s a bit of an open-process theologian, maybe a closet lover of Whitehead), though Good Father John too liberally may not sufficiently see Fire as a form of Love, though I'd rather have Father John's advice on nuclear Fire than the advice of a pluri-promising-clown.

BJM said...

Maybe he's a WoW player. In the Warlords of Draenor expansion pack, fire and fury is a required level item.

What? That's no less likely than a Biblical attribution, Trump has never struck me as being especially interested or learned in scripture or theology.

I tend to think it's a snappy phrase he liked and used off-the-cuff in the "good cop, bad cop" strategy he and Tillerson are running. Austin Bay has a good Nork piece today.