THE THIRD POSITION: A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

President Trump's recent epic speech in Poland has received a mixed reception from the alt-right at large. In his address to the Poles, Trump praised the still-monocultural, mass immigration-resistant nation for taking a stalwart stand for the values of Western civilization. So far, so great! However, Trump went on to throw down a rhetorical gauntlet against Russia for its recent incursions in Syria and Ukraine, causing some to think he was just using the occasion to regurgitate CIA-friendly Putin-phobic neocon talking points, quite at odds with Candidate Trump's more pro-Russia rhetoric. But can one be pro-traditional West and still Russia-skeptical? Andy Nowicki explores the question in this article, originally published in 2014.

         

by Andy Nowicki  

Jesus famously declared that “No man can serve two masters,” by which he meant that devotion to truth can never signify a middle-of-the-road, safe, or moderate stance; instead, it binds one to a radical trajectory of belief and behavior which cannot be compromised.

Christ, however, was referring to a choice between an unworthy master and a worthy one, the former being “mammon” (that is, worldliness); the latter, God. What about when the choice is between two would-be masters, each of whom is plainly unworthy, even if the one might be—relatively speaking—slightly less unsavory than the other?       

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SUFFERING GOD

An excerpt from the essay "The Suffering God and the Culture of Death," published in volume 2, issue 2 of The Christendom Review in 2010, an essay now included in Andy Nowicki's  2015 book Notes Before Death: Three Essays.

What are the full ramifications of the notion of God suffering as a man?

by Andy Nowicki

How to begin to describe the ramifications of this strange and moving idea (the Incarnation), which is the essence of the Christian faith? One is at a loss, because the profundity of the concept is beyond all words, and this is ironic, since it is all about a “Word” (in Greek, “Logos”) allegedly “made flesh.”

What does it say about the human race that God would consent to take human form? What does it say about human suffering that God became man in order to suffer the humiliation and grief, the mental and physical pain, the ignoble punishment of a common criminal, being flogged, stripped, and nailed to a cross to die?

Let us consider the full implications of the Incarnation in Christian theology.

THE LOST SOUL AND THE CROWNED CHRIST

by Andy Nowicki

The alienated soul, of whom I have felt compelled to write of much lately, is one who recognizes the contemporary modern liberal Zeitgeist for the trussed-up sham that it is, yet at the same time can’t seem to will himself to believe in anything beyond this monstrous Moloch which looms so ubiquitously in his midst and bestrides him like a Colossus everywhere he goes.

That he despises this dreadful buggering beast is a given; he’ll be God-damned if he’ll ever be bullied into “loving Big Brother,” like that pussy Winston Smith in 1984 (or so he thinks to himself, bucking his spirit up temporarily with sheer self-generated buoyant bravado).