Gordon Fitch wrote:
>
> although I guess the saved are
> allowed to enjoy the show.
>
I think you have to go back to Dante to get Christian arguments of images on these various contradictions that are wholly in good faith. God -- the Christian God -- was for Dante such a given that there was no need to wrap himself and theodical webs, and serious discomfort was such an everyday occurence that there was no pressure as it were to duck or to apologize. In general, I prefer authors in the pre-apologetic phase: ancient rather than 19th c. 'defenders' of slavery, Bards of Capitalism who wer born no later than the 1770s -- that gets you Hegel, Beethoven, Ricardo, Austen, Wordsworth, & Coleridge as the last generation who could take capitalism for granted without hiding a blush.
Carrol