If from unseasonable levity or wantonness, or rashness, you do any thing out of order or not in its own place, by which the weak or unskillful are offended, it may be said that offence has been given by you, since the ground of offence is owing to your fault. And in general, offence is said to be given in any matter where the person from whom it has proceeded is in fault.Offence is said to be taken when a thing otherwise done, not wickedly or unseasonably, is made an occasion of offence from malevolence or some sinister feeling. For here offence was not given, but sinister interpreters ceaselessly take offence.By the former kind, the weak only, by the latter, the ill-tempered and Pharisaical are offended. Wherefore, we shall call the one the offence of the weak, the other the offence of Pharisees. (Inst. III.19.xi)The question, I suppose, is whether offence was given or only taken? Put it another way: do those who are making the running out of being offended here sound more like the weak, or more like the Pharisees?
Saturday, December 03, 2011
JC on JC
Jeremy Clarkson this week attempted a joke about balance on the BBC. In order to make it, he necessarily embodied two opposed views on the strikes, with a segue between the two about there needing to be balance on the BBC. Apparently, it is offensive to trade unionists to satirise the BBC's apparent addiction to getting two people with opposed view to shout each other down and calling the result 'balance'. Who knew?Yes, I heard Mary Bousted point out that in some parts of the world trade unionists are shot even nowadays; obviously that is a great wickedness to be deplored. And I know Jeremy Clarkson tries to get attention with idiotic and sometimes over-the-top insults. But equally, we all know what 'taking someone outside and shooting them' means and it's hardly 'Come the Revolution, comrades', and the people who were offended at this particular comment were mostly the people for whom Jeremy Clarkson is a bit of a hate figure anyway.So to help us think through this one, here's someone else who is probably a hate figure for that sort of person. I've been reading through John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion on my commute, and read the following passage in only the last week or so. It seems topical.
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2 comments:
Sounds like you are using Beveridge rather than Battles. (On a Kindle, by any chance?) However, to be honest, I'm not sure that Battles is much better on this occasion. Perhaps one day the New Living Institutes will hit the shops.
As regards the substantive issue, no doubt some of Clarkson's critics were in the Pharasaical school - but some of them seemed determined to give the impression that they were among the weak - indeed, the very weak.
And as for Calvin's conclusion - which you did not quote ("I'm prepared to limit the exercise of my freedom in order not to upset the weak, but I am certainly not prepared to do so just to keep the Pharisees happy"*) - the implication is that Clarkson should just keep on being Clarkson.
By the way, always good to see Calvin quoted on current affairs.
(*No - not Battles. It's the YMB version.)
No, I take all four volumes with me on the train. ;-)
Yes, it's on an e-reader. Not a Kindle. (Haven't I fulminated against Amazon here yet? I had a good old rant over at Pileus recently. Someone should take Jeff Bezos outside and... introduce him to Jeremy Clarkson.)
Beveridge is the older translation, I think. I'm not very up on translation issues in Calvin, and my French, more than passable though I say it who shouldn't, would probably suffer a nervous breakdown.
Pharisees claiming to be weak has to be about the oldest trick in the book. Teetotallers are forever trying it on, but they're easily smoked out: you just ask whether my drinking is likely to incite them to drink, and they have to say it won't. Likewise, I don't predict a spate of murders of prominent trades unionists. Not even Bob Crow.
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