The Raiders Of The Lost Ark Thought Experiment

Spielberg's 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark poses what amounts to a thought experiment that's at its basis not too much different from the one Rabbi Pesach Wolicki poses in the YouTube presentation I've discusssed over the past two days: it boils down to the question of what we would do if the Old Testament history and prophecies turned out to be more than just a collection of comfortable fairy tales; instead, they have some bearing on current events.

Wolicki argues that the Old Testament contains numerous prophecies that the nation of Israel will be restored. Chrome AI Mode gives this summnary: Deuteronomy 30:3–5 Return from scattering to the ancestral land; Isaiah 11:11–12 Global regathering from the four corners of the earth; Jeremiah 31:31–34 Establishment of a New Covenant and spiritual renewal; Ezekiel 37:1–14 National resurrection (Valley of Dry Bones); and Amos 9:14–15 Permanent restoration and rebuilding of ruined cities.

The issue Wolicki raises is simple: it's hard to avoid thinking that the modern Israeli nation-state is shaping up to be some sort of fulfillment of these prophecies. It's certainly possible to argue that the Biblical prophecies aren't meant to be literal, they are some sort of poetic or sublime expression of the end times leading to the final judgment, a time which is still yet to come, and which no man can predict. Nevertheless, the mere existence of modern Israel as a prosperous, sovereign territory is a problem for the ancient and medieval notion that the Jews are cursed to perpetual exile.

Wolicki says there are two ways to deny this problem: first, to claim modern Jews aren't the Jews of the Old Testament, and second, that the modern Israeli nation-state is just a secular entity that happens to exist in a troubled part of the world, and we owe it no more favored treatment than any other nation-state that it may or may not be in our interest to support. In other words, modern Israel simply is not the Israel portrayed in the Old Testament.

I said yesterday that one minor imperfection in Wolicki's argument is that he directs it primarily at people like Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson, whom President Trump rightly (to my mind) characterizes as "low IQ". Can we find higher-IQ figures who see things the same way? I think the neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser is one candidate. He's become a highly vocal opponent of the Iran war, for instance, here. His objections are based primarily on "just war docrine", which I've criticized elsewhere, but I think other objections are closer to the problem raised by Wolicki's modern Israel conundrum. For instance, he criticizes Trump for going back on his view that the US has no business in the Middle East:

It also should not be forgotten that for Trump to bring the U.S. into a major new war in the Middle East would be contrary to his own longstanding rhetoric. For example, in 2019, he said:

The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE…..

But then, contradictory and reckless statements are par for the course with Trump. . . . His record is one that can be characterized as unstable and unprincipled at best and shamelessly dishonest at worst. This reinforces the conclusion that his judgment on grave matters such as war cannot be trusted.

Feser's view of Biblical Israel is pretty dark, as in this X post reproduced on his blog:

These idiotic Elmer Gantrys should re-read their Bibles, where they'll find that the history of the people of God is portrayed not as one of virtue rewarded with endless military victories and material blessings, but rather one of continual moral corruption and apostasy on which divine punishment is repeatedly visited.

It seems to me that this is a serious misreading of the Old Testament history books -- yes, Israel stumbles, procrastinates, and resists God's call in Exodus and Numbers, but it does establish a state in the Promised Land, often via battles in which God actively blesses the effort. There are both bad kings and good ones, after all, and the ultimate king will be from David's line. It seems to me that Feser here is following Augustine's view, which is echoed by Aquinas, that the Jews are fated to eternal exile, which is not in fact the Biblical prophecy.

Next, Feser pretty clearly sees Israel as a modern nation-state entirely separate from Old Testament Israel, and the US has no business getting involved with Israel's wars:

I think that Israel can indeed make the case that it has a just cause, at least insofar as its aim is simply to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. (A more ambitious goal of regime change would be much harder to justify, for the same reason that, as I said in my earlier article, it would not be justifiable for the U.S. to attempt regime change. But here I am just addressing the more limited aim of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability.)

However, this does not entail that the U.S. is justified in attacking Iran. Note first that the recent U.S. bombing was not carried out in response to any act of war on Iran’s part against the United States.

The problem is that the US has been acting generally consistent with a national policy established in 1948 by President Truman:

Harry Truman understood what the land of Israel meant to the Jewish people and recognized their history in the region. From the time of Abraham, and with expulsion by the Romans, a time spanning almost 4000 years, the Jewish people had desired to occupy the land. He recognized their history was more than 4,000 years, Harry Truman recognized this and made a moral choice in affirming the Jewish state.

So the US has generally supported Israel as both a moral objective and a matter of national policy, whether Feser agrees with this or not. It's his right to argue against this, but the policy is the policy. Second, the official Catholic policy on Israel is at best ambiguous:

After clearly stating that the Catholic view does not understand the current nation of Israel as a theological entity, Benedict adds, “At the same time, however, it was made clear that the Jewish people, like every people, had a natural right to their own land. . . . In this sense, the Vatican has recognized the State of Israel as a modern constitutional state, and sees it as a legitimate home of the Jewish people, [even though] the rationale for which cannot be derived directly from Holy Scripture” (178). The modern nation-state of Israel is not what the Bible is referring to when it speaks of Israel, but the nation of Israel can be supported for other reasons.

Thus, when one speaks of “the right of Israel to exist,” one ought to differentiate the reasons one asserts this right. Claiming that the nation-state of Israel has a right to exist because the Bible says so is something entirely different than claiming that the Jewish people have a right to their own nation according to natural law. The fact that Zionism can be used to describe either position only exacerbates the confusion.

Wolicki suggests that the precise meaning of the modern state of Israel vis-a-vis Catholic teaching is still in development, but it currently says that independent of the Old Testament, the Jews have a right to be in Israel, and the Vatican recognizes this as a practical matter. Feser insists that as a secular nation-state, Israel has a right to pursue its national interests according to natural law, but US policy violates natural law insofar as it supports Israel militarily.

On this, he disagrees with 78 years of US policy, which he's entitled to do, but this does tend to push him to the fringe, and it doesn't automatically refute Truman's position that this is a moral decision just because, say, Truman was a Baptist, not a Catholic. The Catholic Kennedy supported Israel as well.

The problem is that the official Catholic position on Israel supports its existence only because of the situation on the ground -- it sets aside the question of scripture. Wolicki speifically addresses the situation on the ground as making the Church's ancient and medieval positions on the Jews and perpetual exile absurd, but he adds the pesky problem of scripture -- yes, scripture says the Jews brought their trials on themselves, but it also says this won't be permanent, and right now, the situation appears to be changing in significant ways.

This is the basic metaphor that accompanies the scene where the Ark of the Covenant is opened in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- what if the Old Testament isn't just comfortable fairy tales? In that case, you'd better not mess with Israel, huh? Natural law doesn't necessarily govern everything in that case. I keep getting the impression that Feser keeps refusing to take that into consideration -- if natural law is all that matters, we don't need the Old Testament at all, nor indeed the New one. This is at the root of Feser's problem.