Saturday, April 29, 2017

"freed from the hypocrisies of the family and the school"

     "A plague upon (all) of the (verbal) decencies of an emasculated time [in] which, under their hypocritical mantle, there blossomed too often only neurosis and poison!  And a plague also upon the chaste Latins:  I am a Celt."

     "Foin des pudeurs (toutes verbales) d’un temps châtré qui, sous leur hypocrite manteaux, ne fleurent trop souvent que la névrose et le poison!  Et foin aussi des purs latins:  je suis un Celte."

     Louis Pergaud, Préface to La guerre des boutons (1912), my translation.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

A fearful unicity

     "'What would happen if we took everything that exists in the universe, and divided it by one?  I'll tell you.  It would remain the same.  So, therefore, how do we know that someone isn't doing that right now, at this very instant?  It makes me shudder to think of it.  We might be constantly divided by one, or multiplied by one for that matter, and we wouldn't even know it!'"

     Craig Binkey, in Mark Helprin, Winter's tale (San Diego:  Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1983), 396.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

The Book of Common Prayer: "a means to worship A creator"

     Dust jacket, The Book of common prayer:  the texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, ed. Brian Cummings (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2011):


All of the prayers in the 1662 BCP invoking "a creator" are at the very least binitarian.  And the Thirty-Nine Articles as published in that same edition are pretty specific.  Take just Article 1, for example:
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things both visible and invisible.  And in unity of this Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

"do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting"

"No, is the correct and orthodox answer of the one addressed [by the serpent].  God has not said that. . . . [But] It would have been better not to give the serpent an orthodox answer.  For in conversation with the serpent no orthodox answer is so sure that it cannot be demolished by the serpent.  Was not this beast of chaos not only more subtle than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made (v. 1), but far cleverer than the man created by God—dangerously so from the moment that man allowed himself to converse with and answer it?  There are some men that we ought not even to greet (2 Jn 10 f.), for 'he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.'  The serpent in paradise is the essence of all those that we ought not to greet.  But the greeting took place, and it was followed at once by the demolition of man's orthodox answer."

"Nein, antwortet die so Angeredete ganz korrekt, ganz orthodox: Das hat Gott nicht gesagt. . . .  Der Schlange wäre sicher besser auch keine orthodoxe Antwort gegeben worden! Denn so sicher konnte diese Antwort, im Gespräch mit der Schlange gegeben, nicht sein, daß sie nicht eben von der Schlange auch destruiert werden konnte. War diese doch – sie das Chaostier! – nicht nur nach v 1 listiger als alle von Gott dem Herrn geschaffenen Tiere des Feldes, sondern auch klüger als der von Gott geschaffene Mensch: von dem Augenblick an gefährlich klüger, da dieser sich überhaupt darauf einließ, ihr Rede und Antwort zu stehen. Es gibt Partner, die man nach 2. Joh. 10 f. nicht einmal begrüßen soll: «Denn wer ihn begrüßt, nimmt teil an seinen bösen Werken.» Die Schlange im Paradies ist der Inbegriff aller solcher schon gar nicht erst zu begrüßenden Partner! Aber das Begrüßen war nun schon geschehen und die Destruktion der orthodoxen Antwort des Menschen mußte ihr auf dem Fuße folgen."

     Karl Barth, CD IV/1, 434-435, underscoring mine =KD IV/1, 481-482.

"I fell in love just once, and then it had to be with you."

     Tom Adair, "Everything happens to me" (1940).