Liber locorum communium

Fenton on Downtown Abbey

2012-02-26T23:17:00.001-08:00

"The greatest rival to the English country house tradition is the Russian, with its rich suggestions of a feudal system in decline, and with its great questions hanging in the air: How shall I live to some purpose? How can I reform the world I know? Those who ask such questions may be querulous and ineffectual, but the questions themselves are intelligent and profound, whereas the great questions that hang over the English country house come, for the most part, from the far side of stupid: Can I score a personal triumph at the flower show while forgoing first prize for my roses? Can I secure my lord's affection by pretending to go rescue his dog?"

James Fenton, "The Abbey that jumped the shark," Times literary supplement, March 8, 2012, p. 27.

"We are not personally acquainted with the writings of John Calvin, nor are we certain how nearly we agree with his views of divine truth; neither do we care."

2012-02-26T22:47:00.000-08:00

The two early nineteenth-century Kentucky revivalists Robert Marshall and J. Thompson in response to criticism (presumably Reformed), as quoted by Mark A. Noll in The scandal of the evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Company, 1994), 63, quoting Nathan O. Hatch, The democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 174.

A potential downside of competition

2012-02-26T21:57:00.001-08:00

"The consequences for the churches were immense. They were now compelled to compete for adherents. . . ."
     "This combination of revivalism and disestablishment had effects whose importance cannot be exaggerated. Analyzed positively, the combination gave the American churches a new dynamism, a new effectiveness in fulfilling the Great Commission, and a new vitality in bringing the gospel to the people. Analyzed negatively, the combination of revivalism and disestablishment meant that pragmatic concerns would prevail over principle. What the churches required were results—new adherents—or they would simply go out of business. Thus, the production of results had to override all other considerations."

     Mark A. Noll, The scandal of the evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 66. Yet wouldn't a determinative factor be the target audience? Wouldn't it depend on who you're competing for? And haven't intellectuals been always in the minority? And if that's true, then don't you have to "become all things to all men"?
     Moreover, I find it hard to believe that schism isn't an additional factor, i.e. that a united church isn't in a better position to "become all things to all men" than an increasingly fragmented one.

Edwards on the immediacy of the "divine and supernatural light"

2012-02-25T13:16:00.001-08:00

     "II. I proceed now to the second thing proposed, viz. to show how this light is immediately given by God, and not obtained by natural means. And here,
     "First. 'Tis not intended that the natural faculties are not made use of in it. The natural faculties are the subject of this light: and they are the subject in such a manner, that they are not merely passive, but active in it; the acts and exercises of man's understanding are concerned and made use of in it. God in letting in this light into the soul, deals with man according to his nature, or as a rational creature; and makes use of his human faculties. But yet this light is not the less immediately from God for that; though the faculties are made use of, 'tis as the subject and not as the cause; and that acting of the faculties in it, is not the cause, but is either implied in the thing itself (in the light that is imparted), or is the consequence of it. As the use that we make of our eyes in beholding various objects, when the sun arises, is not the cause of the light that discovers those objects to us.
     "Second. 'Tis not intended that outward means have no concern in this affair. As I have observed already, 'tis not in this affair, as it is in inspiration, where new truths are suggested: for here is by this light only given a due apprehension of the same truths that are revealed in the Word of God; and therefore it is not given without the Word. The gospel is made use of in this affair: this light is "the light of the glorious gospel of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4). The gospel is as a glass, by which this light is conveyed to us; 1 Corinthians 13:12, "Now we see through a glass…." But,
     "Third. When it is said that this light is given immediately by God, and not obtained by natural means, hereby is intended, that 'tis given by God without making use of any means that operate by their own power, or a natural force. God makes use of means; but 'tis not as mediate causes to produce this effect. There are not truly any second causes of it; but it is produced by God immediately. The Word of God is no proper cause of this effect: it don't operate by any natural force in it. The Word of God is only made use of to convey to the mind the subject matter of this saving instruction: and this indeed it doth convey to us by natural force or influence. It conveys to our minds these and those doctrines; it is the cause of the notion of them in our heads, but not of the sense of the divine excellency of them in our hearts. Indeed a person can't have spiritual light without the Word. But that don't argue, that the Word properly causes that light. The mind can't see the excellency of any doctrine, unless that doctrine be first in the mind; but the seeing the excellency of the doctrine may be immediately from the Spirit of God; though the conveying of the doctrine or proposition itself may be by the Word. So that the notions that are the subject matter of this light, are conveyed to the mind by the Word of God; but that due sense of the heart, wherein this light formally consists, is immediately by the Spirit of God. As for instance, that notion that there is a Christ, and that Christ is holy and gracious, is conveyed to the mind by the Word of God: but the sense of the excellency of Christ by reason of that holiness and grace, is nevertheless immediately the work of the Holy Spirit."

     Jonathan Edwards, "A divine and supernatural light" (August 1733), Doctrine II. The works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Perry Miller et al., vol. 17 (Sermons and discourses, 1730-1733, ed. Mark R. Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)), p. 416-17.

"It is not rational to suppose, if there be any such excellency in divine things, that wicked men should see it."

2012-02-25T13:07:00.002-08:00

"It is not rational to suppose, if there be any such excellency in divine things, that wicked men should see it. 'Tis not rational to suppose, that those whose minds are full of spiritual pollution, and under the power of filthy lusts, should have any relish or sense of divine beauty, or excellency; or that their minds should be susceptive of that light that is in its own nature so pure and heavenly. It need not seem at all strange, that sin should so blind the mind, seeing that men's particular natural tempers and dispositions will so much blind them in secular matters; as when men's natural temper is melancholy, jealous, fearful, proud, or the like."

Jonathan Edwards, "A divine and supernatural light" (August 1733), Doctrine III Secondly 2. The works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Perry Miller et al., vol. 17 (Sermons and discourses, 1730-1733, ed. Mark R. Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)), p. 421.

Sit anima mea cum Westleio

2012-02-20T08:40:00.000-08:00

"We hope nothing then, we fear every thing, from a religious movement, which nevertheless in its rise excites our sympathy, and of which we do not deny, as of any event in the world, the incidental benefits. Yet interest, pity and admiration we do feel for many of the principal agents in it; and if the choice lay between them and the reformers of the 16th century (which we thankfully acknowledge it does not,) a serious inquirer would have greater reason for saying, 'Sit anima mea cum Westleio,' than 'cum Luthero,' or 'cum Calvino,' and 'cum multis aliis,' as the grammar has it, 'quos nunc perscribere longum est.'"

     John Henry Newman, reviewing vol. 1 of The life and times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1839), in The British critic, and quarterly theological review 28, no. 56 (October 1840): 264. All of this though Methodism was, for Newman, undoubtedly "a formal heresy" (263).
     George Whitfield in a letter from Bristol dated 24 June 1749: "Sit anima mea cum Methodistis."
     I was put onto this by Robert G. Walker, "A game of tag: a new source for Samuel Johnson?," Times literary supplement no. 5675 (January 6, 2012): 14 (14-15), where the source and subsequent career of the Averoeism "Sit anima mea cum . . ." is discussed at some length.

Iron, then blood

2012-02-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

"Nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden . . . sondern durch Eisen und Blut".

Otto von Bismark, "Shortly after being appointed premier of Prussia in [(on 30 September)] 1862," as quoted by R. J. W. Evans, in "The gambler in blood and iron," The New York review of books 59, no. 3 (February 23, 2012), 37n1, citing Die gesammelten Werke, ed. H. von Petersdorff (Berlin: Otto Stolberg, 1924-1934), vol. 10, p. 140. According to the 3rd edition of the Oxford dictionary of quotations, Bismark himself reversed the two words in his famous speech to the Prussian House of Deputies on 28 January 1886. But Prof. Evans thinks that by that point he was simply going along with the "geflugeltes Wort" that the public had been making of it since the 1860s (note to me dated 12 February 2012).

Grace

2012-02-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

G. K. Chesterton, "Grace," British Library MS Add. 73334 (c. 1894-1896), fol. 5v, as reproduced on p. 43 of vol. 10 of the Collected works (Collected poetry, Part 1), under "Juvenile and early poems," as well as elsewhere, as indicated by the British Library record. I was introduced to this by my sister, Lois Perisho Tebo.

"Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church"

2012-02-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

"We have had great disputes how the church ought to be regulated; and indeed the subject of these disputes was of great importance: but the due regulation of your families is of no less, and in some respects, of much greater importance. Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. And family education and order are some of the chief of the means of grace. If these fail, all other means are like to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be like to prosper and be successful.
"Let me now therefore, once more, before I finally cease to speak to this congregation, repeat and earnestly press the counsel, which I have often urged on heads of families here, while I was their pastor, to great painfulness, in teaching, warning and directing their children; bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; beginning early, where there is yet opportunity; and maintaining a constant diligence in labors of this kind: remembering that, as you would not have all your instructions and counsels ineffectual, there must be government as well as instructions, which must be maintained with an even hand, and steady resolution; as a guard to the religion and morals of the family, and the support of its good order. Take heed that it ben't with any of you as it was with Eli of old, who reproved his children, but restrained them not; and that by this means you do not bring the like curse on your families, as he did on his."

Jonathan Edwards, "A farewell sermon preached at the first precinct in Northampton, after the people's public rejection of their minister…on June 22, 1750," Application VI (Directions), First. The works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Perry Miller et al., vol. 25 (Sermons and discourses, 1743-1758, ed.Wilson H. Kimnach (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)), p. 484.
According to The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online as consulted on 4 February 2012, Edwards used for the family the phrase "little church" twice else: in The great awakening (WJE 4, p. 487), and in the sermon "Living to Christ" (on Phil 1:21; WJE 10, p. 577).

Wilcox on Murray on "the modern horror of being thought 'judgmental'"

2012-02-01T20:10:00.000-08:00

     "There are at least two ways to close this cultural divide and renew the cultural foundations of the American experiment. First, policy makers and business leaders need to shore up the economic foundations of working- and middle-class life. . . .
      "Second, as Mr. Murray notes, the members of the upper class must abandon the modern horror of being thought 'judgmental'; instead, he says, they should 'preach what they practice.' This does not mean turning the clock back to the 1950s or the Victorian age. It just means that the elites who control the heights of government, education, business and the popular culture could do a lot more to encourage the core American values that they themselves now live by."

     W. Bradford Wilcox, "Values inequality," The Wall Street journal, 31 January 2012.

"the Church is His Body and that Body may sin"

2012-01-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

     "Not long ago Mr Middleton Murry wrote a book in which he spoke of 'the betrayal of Christ by the Churches'. To this Father Gerald Vann wrote a reply in which he spoke of 'the betrayal of the Church by the Christians'. Both were concerned with the same facts, but Mr Murry spoke as a Protestant, Father Vann as a Catholic. It is impossible for Christ to be betrayed by the Church, because the Church is His Body and that Body may sin and so betray both Christ and the Church, and this is the situation in which we find ourselves. We are all more or less guilty. . . ."

     Bede Griffiths, The golden string, chap. 10 (Catholicism) ((New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1954), 158). I get the distinction, but isn't this poorly formulated? "It is impossible for Christ to be betrayed by the Church," which "is His Body and . . . may sin"?
     I was referred to The golden string by C. S. Lewis in Surprised by joy, but found it inferior. Absolutely everything as a major turning point. An excessively Whig memoir.

"Do you not know that we are to judge angels?"

2012-01-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

In this “historical [(as distinguished from metaphysical)] dualism” of St. Paul, “There are two successive economies. The one was established on the subordination of the physical world to the ‘powers’ created by God in the good, and more particularly to their head, ‘the prince of this world’. This first economy was wrecked by the lie of its head, who carried along with him, if not the whole hierarchy of which he was the summit, at least a considerable portion of it. Still, it survives. This survival is provisionary, but for as long as it lasts, the στοιχεία τοῦ κόσμου τούτου [(Col 2:8, 20)], the κοσμοκράτορες [(Eph 6:12)] retain in it, with their function, however they perform it, their authority, which is of divine origin. It is true, on the one hand, that they abuse it, in this sense, that they divert to themselves the worship of the creatures inferior [to them], [the] worship of which they would be only the ministers [were it directed] towards God. But it is not less true, on the other hand, that they are deluded on this point, and that, at the very height of their malice, they do but serve, without being aware of it, the divine intentions. The impossibility of their situation [(Cette situation paradoxale)] becomes [unmistakably] evident [(éclate)] in the blindness of the ‘rulers of this age’ [(1 Cor 2:6, 8)], who crucified the Lord of glory, but who would undoubtedly have carefully avoided such a mistake if they had had any insight into the significance of what they were then doing. In fact, by leading to its consummation the perversion of the economy that had been entrusted to them, they struck a fatal blow against their own authority [(ils en ont cassé le ressort)]. Henceforth, there can take the place of it another economy, in which it is the new humanity, the humanity of Christ, at once both God and man, which reigns in the name of God.

“In this perspective, everything becomes clear. The good angels suffer the repercussions consequent upon the defection and eviction of Satan not personally, but as members of a spiritual organism fallen in its head, and therefore in the whole of its structure. They will indeed collaborate in the new economy. They will even have a place of honor. But they will no longer be its rulers. They will enter into it as auxiliaries of a new ruler, who is the last Adam, the divine man. In this sense they will find themselves subordinates in the [very] world of which they were once the rectors, because the new humanity, one with its [new] head, the Christ, [one] with a unity to which they cannot pretend, will [at that point] participate in his sovereignty. It is for this reason that St. Paul can say, “Do you not know that we will judge the angels?” (1 Cor 6:3) And this is exactly the situation that he describes in the epistle to the Galations as ours with respect to the law established by them. We have been under the law, and therefore under the angels, as an heir under his custodian. For as long as the heir remains a minor, the custodian is his master. But when the former attains to his majority, the latter becomes what he was in reality, a simple servant—let us not mince words: a slave—in the house in which the heir is lord by hereditary right [(cf. Gal 3:23-24)].

“Reciprocally, for as long as the definitive economy, that of the Christ, has not supplanted the first, it persists, [together] with the relations that constitute of it the warp and woof. Satan remains the ruler of this world, and he is, in his very malice, the agent of the holy [(justicière)] wrath by which God, through him, makes contact with all of those who have identified themselves with his revolt. [Nonetheless] it remains [the case] that this wrath will accomplish the aims of saving love. . . ."

Louis Bouyer, “Les deux économies du gouvernement divin: Satan et le Christ,” in Initiation théologiques par un groupe de théologiens, tome II: Dieu et sa creation, 2nd ed. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1953), 514-516 (504-535).

Like sheep among wolves

2012-01-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

"So seen, 'Catholic Action' is at the same time—through the strange [but] providential enchainment of an act of love to the pressure [imposed] by a world that slips again and again into the [posture of an] Anti-Church—the only form of the work of the Church in the world possible today. Thanks to the accelerating disentanglement of the interpenetration and mutually supportive reinforcement of Church and State that grew up historically, [the Church] has now only as much indirect power over the individual as he in freedom confers upon it. Despite all [of the] concordats, there remain to it almost no public legal means of holding him, with the help of the State, to even the merely external fulfillment of its requirements. [If] the Church must release the faithful, as those strengthened—confirmed!—by the Holy Spirit for their world-sanctifying office, into the world [just] as it did in its first times, [then] it can no longer, by [an] indirect influence over the shape of the public temporal order, protect [them] from the most extreme of trials in the here and now."

Ignaz Zangerle, "Zur situation der Kirche," Der Brenner 14 (1933/34): 46. Bio here and here.

"the impulse to scratch when I itch or to pull to pieces when I am inquisitive"

2012-01-18T04:30:00.000-08:00

"But what never claimed objectivity cannot be destroyed by subjectivism. The impulse to scratch when I itch or to pull to pieces when I am inquisitive is immune from the solvent which is fatal to my justice, or honour, or care for posterity. When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains. It cannot be exploded or 'seen through' because it never had any pretensions. The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. . . . those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any other ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse. . . . our hope even of a 'conditioned' happiness rests on what is ordinarily called 'chance'—the chance that benevolent impulses may on the whole predominate in our Conditioners. For without the judgement 'Benevolence is good'—that is, without re-entering the Tao—they can have no ground for promoting or stabilizing their benevolent impulses rather than any others. By the logic of their position they must just take their impulses as they come, from chance. And Chance here means Nature. It is from heredity, digestion, the weather, and the association of ideas, that the motives of the Conditioners will spring. Their extreme rationalism, by 'seeing through' all 'rational' motives, leaves them creatures of wholly irrational behaviour. If you will not obey the Tao, or else commit suicide, obedience to impulse (and therefore, in the long run, to mere 'nature') is the only course left open.
"At the moment, then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subject to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely 'natural'—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man. . . . If the fully planned and conditioned world (with its Tao a mere product of the planning) comes into existence, Nature will be troubled no more by the restive species that rose in revolt against her so many millions of years ago, will be vexed no longer by its chatter of truth and mercy and beauty and happiness. Ferum victorem cepit: and if the eugenics are efficient enough there will be no second revolt, but all snug beneath the Conditioners, and the Conditioners beneath her, till the moon falls or the sun grows cold."

C. S. Lewis, The abolition of man, or reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools, University of Durham Riddell memorial lectures 15, chap. 3 ((New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947), 41-43).

The hermeneutics of suspicion as fundamentally mechanistic, and in that sense illiberal

2012-01-16T16:41:00.000-08:00

The "reductive program [of the Laplacean fallacy], applied to politics, entails the idea that political action is necessarily shaped by force, motivated by greed and fear, with morality used as a screen to delude the victims."

Michael Polanyi, Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy, pt. 2, chap. 6, sec. 2 ((London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962 [1958]), 141).

A scientific method that has a disintegrating effect on the person or thing it was introduced to understand is of no "scientific value" at all

2012-01-16T16:08:00.000-08:00

"the pursuits of biology, medicine, psychology and the social sciences, may [1-2] rectify our everyday conceptions of plants and animals, and even of man and society; but we must set against any such modification its effect on [3] the interest by which the study of the original subject matter had been prompted and justified. If the scientific virtues of [1] exact observation and [2] strict correlation of data are given absolute preference for the treatment of a subject matter which disintegrates when represented in such terms, the result will be irrelevant to the subject matter and probably of no [3] interest at all."

Michael Polanyi, Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy, pt. 2, chap. 6, sec. 2 ((London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962 [1958]), 137). Polanyi is here weighing the first two of the three factors constitutive of "scientific value" against the third (pp. 135-136), and grounding the third, or "intrinsic interest," in "ordinary" or "everyday" or "pre-scientific interest".

"a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal transaction"

2012-01-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

"[Mr Bulstrode] had long poured out utterances of repentance. But to-day a repentance had come which was of a bitterer flavour, and a threatening Providence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal transaction. The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for him; self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring restitution in his hand."

George Eliot, Middlemarch, Bk. 6, chap. 61 (ed. W. J. Harvey (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), 668).

"general doctrine . . . unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling"

2012-01-16T13:02:00.000-08:00

"There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong. . . .
"to Mr Bulstrode God's cause was something different from his own rectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would be well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence. Also, profitable investments in trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits in the hands of God's servant.
"This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men."

George Eliot, Middlemarch, Bk. 6, chap. 61 (ed. W. J. Harvey (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), 667-668).

"we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures."

2012-01-16T12:54:00.000-08:00

George Eliot, Middlemarch, Bk. 6, chap. 57 (ed. W. J. Harvey (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), 625).

"But what, in conclusion, of Joy?"

2012-01-14T23:44:00.000-08:00

"But what, in conclusion, of Joy? for that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about. To tell you the truth, the subject has nearly lost all interest for me since I became a Christian. I cannot, indeed, complain, like Wordsworth, that the visionary gleam has passed away. I believe (if the thing were at all worth recording) that the old stab, the old bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life whatever. But I now know that the experience, considered as a state of mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, 'Look!' The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. 'We would be at Jerusalem.'"

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by joy: the shape of my early life (Orlando, FL: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc., 1955), 238 (chap. 15, The beginning).

Different religions

2012-01-08T21:49:00.000-08:00

"Differences of practice are of two kinds: those that (after the initial surprise) we can accommodate as mere divergences of custom or of culture, and those that strike us as reflecting differences of principle. The distinction is prior to the formulation of the underlying principle. We apprehend a divergence of practice from our own either as merely a different way of practising the same religion, even if not to our own taste, or else as signalling that the religion of those who observe the divergent practice is not quite the same as our own: and, in the latter case, we ordinarily recognize the divergence as being of the second kind before we can put into words the difference of principle that we feel to exist. If you do this, or if you do not do that, we want to say, you must understand what you are doing in an essentially different way from that in which we understand it; recognizing this to be so does not require that we have any means at hand to formulate that difference of understanding. It is in this that we see most clearly reflected the priority of practice over doctrine that usually prevails: the doctrine attempts to give verbal expression to a significance that is apprehended in advance of that expression. That is why differences of practice, when they are of the second kind, are of greater importance than differences of formulated doctrine."

Michael Dummett, "The intelligibility of eucharistic doctrine," in The rationality of religious belief: essays in honour of Basil Mitchell, ed. William J. Abraham and Steven W. Holtzer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 236-237.

Making a virtue of necessity?

2012-01-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

"The Church falls back today out of love for the world and [as] at the same time forced by it—two aspects of a single event!—deeper and deeper [(immer stärker) in]to the position of defenseless independence."

Ignaz Zangerle, "Zur situation der Kirche," Der Brenner 14 (1933/34): 45.

Zangerle on the freedom of the Church with respect to the forms that it has itself assumed

2012-01-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

"Despite the wealth of cultural forms it has itself given rise to about itself [(eben trotz des Reichtums mitgeweihter Kulturformen)], the Church is bound to none of the ways in which it has appeared to this point in history."

Ignaz Zangerle, "Zur situation der Kirche," Der Brenner 14 (1933/34): 44. Yes, but none of them? Context is a discussion of the "Enteuropäisierung der Kirche" inaugurated by Maximum illud (30 November 1919), Quo efficacius (6 January 1920), Rerum ecclesiae (28 February 1926), and so forth.

Without ANY distinction?

2011-12-21T14:24:00.000-08:00

"men have begun to collect many books and great libraries outside and alongside of the Holy Scriptures, and especially have begun to scramble together without any distinction, all sorts of 'fathers,' 'councils,' and doctors.' Not only has good time been wasted and the study of the Scriptures neglected, but the pure understanding of God's Word is lost. . . ."

Martin Luther, Preface in vol. 1 of the Wittenberg edition of his German works (1539), as reproduced in Philip Jacob Spener, Pia desideria (1675) III.1, trans. and ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 91. =WA 50, 657, ll. 5-10. =Works 34, 283.

There are some diseases that we've never seen God heal

2011-12-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

"As Emile Zola once noted: The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, but not one wooden leg."

Mary Karr, Lit: a memoir (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 255. Shouldn't that be the road from Lourdes? Someday I'll get round to tracking this to source, as it has been attributed also to others. But it reminds me of a comment I once read in Books and culture to the effect that there are some diseases that we have never seen God heal. I'll have to track that one down as well.

"Fulfill the contract you entered into at the box factory, amen."

2011-12-21T10:28:00.004-08:00

     "In[to the car] climbs big-footed David [Foster Wallace], red bandana around his head, along with a[nother] guy from our [AA] group named Jack.
     "Jack of the red curly hair, skittery-eyed Jack, who—on being introduced to me first—explained that he had a little touch of the schizophrenia, as he held his index finger one inch from thumb. Mostly he stays medicated enough to hold down a job at the box factory. But he once showed up to arrange chairs with a tinfoil over his head molded into a knight's helmet with a kind of swan shape on top, convinced that his girlfriend was beaming messages to him through the radio. It's a tribute to the radical equality of the room that I never heard anybody ever challenge the reasoning. . . .
     "Riding back to Lexington in the backseat, I sit between passed-out, openmouthed James—his breath on the side window spreading and receding like a tide—and curly-headed Jack. I think with rue of Joan the Bone's injunction to ask the first person I saw about my marriage. I'm still angling to prove what crazy bullshit her much vaunted surrender-to-the-group concept is. Whatever Jack's brief spells of clarity, he rarely goes to a meeting without jabbering out something nutty.
     "So I start whispering my tale of marital woe to Jack, who sits in the hunched posture of somebody tensing against a blow. Occasionally, he'll tug a red curl over the crease in his forehead.
     "Eventually, I wind down and ask, what should I do? And I wait for the word salad of his scrambled cortex to spew forth. Instead, his eyes meet mine evenly, and he says—as it seems everybody says—You should pray about it.
     "But what if I don't believe in God? It's like they've sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can't will feeling.
     "What Jack says issues from some still, true place that could not be extinguished by all the schizophrenia his genetic code could muster. It sounds something like this:
     "Get on your knees and find some quiet place inside yourself, a little sunshine right about here. Jack holds his hands in a ball shape about midchest, saying, Let go. Surrender, Dorothy, the witch wrote in the sky. Surrender, Mary.
     "I want to surrender but have no idea what that means.
     "He goes on with a level gaze and a steady tone: Yield up what scares you. Yield up what makes you want to scream and cry. Enter into that quiet. It's a cathedral. It's an empty football stadium with all the lights on. And pray to be an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is conflict, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope . . .
     "What if I get no answer there?
     "If God hasn't spoken, do nothing. Fulfill the contract you entered into at the box factory, amen. Make the containers you promised to tape and staple. Go quietly and shine. Wait. Those not impelled to act must remain in the cathedral. Don't be lonely. I get so lonely sometimes, I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger. But I have to go to a[n AA] meeting and make the chairs circle perfect.
     "He kisses his index finger and plants it in the middle of my forehead, and I swear it burns like it had eucalyptus on it. Like a coal from the archangel onto the mouth of Moses."

     Mary Karr, Lit: a memoir (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 230-231, 233-234. (She means Isaiah, I think.)

"What fun-house land have I crossed into, where the rich seek the counsel of the poor?"

2011-12-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

Mary Karr, Lit: a memoir (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 191.

"We're asleep most of the time, I once heard the writer George Saunders say, but we can wake up."

2011-12-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

Mary Karr, Lit: a memoir (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 190.

How can I keep from singing?

2011-12-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

"Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we're formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential. Usually, the closest we get is when we love, or when some beloved beams back, which can galvanize you like steel and make resilient what had heretofore only been soft flesh. (Dev, you gave me that.) It can start you singing as the lion pads over to you, its jaws hinging open, its hot breath on you. Even unto death.

Mary Karr 2009 Pax Christi"

Mary Karr, Lit: a memoir (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 385-386. The allusion is to p. 350: "Early Christians, [Tobias Wolff] tells me, partly won converts by going to death singing. I mean, a lion is eating your face and you're singing. Or you're crucified upside down and you're singing. It's undeniable that some experience changed them from the normal consciousness. Maybe they were hypnotized, brainwashed. Aren't suicide bombers gleeful?"

"only an editorial Casaubon would wish to pursue the matter further."

2011-12-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

"There are three possible candidates — William Lowth (1660-1732), Simon Lowth (1630-1720), and Robert Lowth (1710-87); all prolific writers on theological subjects. The reader has a free choice; Professor Haight favours the first while I incline to the last, since he engaged in controversy with Bishop Warburton, mentioned elsewhere in connection with Casaubon. But only an editorial Casaubon would wish to pursue the matter further."

W. J. Harvey, on the Lowth alluded to in chap. 37 of Middlemarch, by George Eliot. George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. W. J. Harvey (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), 905 (chap. 37, note 4, from p. 409).

Famous last words

2011-12-13T16:51:00.000-08:00

"After Custer gave the battalion orders, Half Yellow Face spoke through Boyer. 'Do not divide your men,' he said. 'There are too many of the enemy for us, even if we stay together. If you must fight, keep us all together.'

"Custer was in no mood to hear dire predictions. 'You do the scouting, and I will attend to the fighting,' he said.

"The Crow began to strip off his clothes and paint his face. Custer asked what he was doing.

"'Because you and I are going home today, and by a trail that is strange to us both,' said Half Yellow Face."

James Donovan, A terrible glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn—the last great battle of the American West (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 212. Half Yellow Face was among the very few who came to grips with the sheer size of the Indian encampment in time.

"he had to wince under a promise of success given by that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality."

2011-12-10T19:00:00.000-08:00

George Eliot, Middlemarch, book 5, chap. 45 (Penguin edition ed. W. J. Harvey (1965), p. 490).

"If any assert that he has now put off his holy flesh, and that his Godhead is stripped of the body, and deny that he is now with his body and will come again with it, let him not see the glory of his coming."

2011-12-10T18:57:00.000-08:00

Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep. 101 to Celdonius against Apollinaris, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow (Christology of the later fathers, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy in collaboration with Cyril C. Richardson, Library of Christian classics 3 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954), 218 (215-224)).

"the more simple a thing, the more relations attend it"

2011-12-10T18:51:00.000-08:00

"it is not against the notion of anything's simplicity that there be many relations between it and others; indeed the more simple a thing, the more relations attend it. For the more simple a thing is the less limited is its power and thus its causality can extend to more. That it why it is said in the Book of Causes that the more a power is unifed, the more infinite it is than any multiplied power. . . .
"Therefore, it follows on the supreme simplicity of God that infinite relations exist between creatures and him, insofar as he produces creatures different from himself, but in some way like unto him."

St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia 7.8.Resp., trans. Ralph McInerny (Thomas Aquinas: selected writings, ed. & trans. Ralph McInerny (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998), 328).

St. Spyridon (or Spiridon), the pagan philosopher, and the brick or tile or potsherd

2011-12-05T17:48:00.000-08:00

I am interested in tracking this to source. Unfortunately, it remains very much a work in progress, a work I am likely to get to only in spurts, as time permits:

In what follows, I reproduce Paul van den Ven, La légende de S. Spyridon, évêque de Trimithonte, Bibliothèque du Muséon 33 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires and the Institut Orientaliste, 1953). I have skimmed clear through the Greek of chap. 6 of the Life by Theodore twice, as reproduced on pp. 27-34 of the critical edition by Ven (above), looking for a reference to the use of the brick/tile/potsherd, but without any success so far (though my Greek is admittedly primitive). Can someone help? The first reference to Spyridon in chap. 6 occurs at p. 28 l. 15, though Spyridon does not begin addressing the philosopher until p. 30 l. 7. The line, "In this wise became the philosopher a Christian and, having been overcome by the old man, rejoiced," occurs at p. 31 l. 16-p. 32 l. 2, after which point the scene seems to shift, sidelining (?) Spyridon until p. 34 l. 8., i.e. the penultimate sentence of the chapter.

Life in iambic verse upon which Theodore of Paphos relied (Ven, Lives III-IV = Part III, pp. 115* ff.; Textes, pp. 129 ff.): does not cover events at the Council of Nicaea.
Hist. eccl. of Rufinus, as translated back into Greek by Gelasius of Cesarea (= Hist. eccl. X.3-5, as ed. Mommsen (pp. 961-965), but Glas, below, offers this as well): conversion of the pagan philosopher effected by an unnamed rough and illiterate bishop-shepherd, not Spyridon (though Spyridon plays a role in this account of the Council of Nicaea). [I've skimmed the Latin without seeing a reference to the brick/tile/potsherd. But I could well have missed that.]
Life of Theodore of Paphos (Ven, Life I = Part II, pp. 55* ff.; Textes, pp. 1 ff.): attributes the conversion of the pagan philosopher to Spyridon. Yet Theodore was so scrupulous with his sources, that this is probably a later interpolation (Ven, pp. 76*-78*). (Earlier Ven had argued that it was the work of Theodore himself, free-wheeling a bit on the basis of Rufinus-Gelasius, but he came to think this highly unlikely (pp. 75-76*).)
Chronicle of George the Monk (Chronique de Georges le Moine, ed. de Boor, p. 505, 17-508; and A. Glas, Die Kirchengeschichte des Gelasios von Kaisareia (1914), pp. 36-44): "one of these passages contains precisely the piece about which we speak, translated from Rufinus in terms very similar to those of the work of Theodore, [but] with attribution to Spyridon of the conversion of the philosopher," so the question is whence this identification with Spyridon derives. Heseler derives it from Theodore, but "It is easier to say this than to prove it" (indeed, "That George the Monk knew [that it was] Spyridon thanks to a source other than the work of Theodore is indubitable"). [So does the identification antedate Theodore?] Does it derive somehow from Rufinus-Gelasius? No, not from any reconstruction of the latter known to us. Apprarently the Hist. eccl. by Theodore the Lector is one potential intermediary, but this whole section (Ven, pp. 79*-80*) ends unsatisfactorily.

Additional titles of some relevance:

Saint Spyridon of Tremithus: Life; Miracles after his repose; Liturgical service and Akathist hymn in his honor. Liberty, TN: St. John of Kronstadt Press, 1997. Life from pp. 330-350 of vol. 4 of [The lives of the saints in the Russian language, as set forth in the Menology of St. Dimitri of Rostov] (Moscow: Synodal Press, 1903), by Isaac E. Lambertsen in 1981; Miracles from pp. 338-369 of vol. 12 and pp. 205-207 of vol. 8 of the 5th edition of [The great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church] (Athens: Archimandrite Matthew Lagges, Pub., 1974), by Leonides J. Papadopoulos and Georgia Lizardos in 1984; Liturgical service by Isaac E. Lambertsen in 1983 "and subsequently incorporated into vol. 4 of The Menaion of the Orthodox Church (Liberty, TN: St. John of Kronstadt Press, 1996); and Akathist hymn by Isaac E. Lambertsen in 1988. For references to the brick/tile/potsherd (tile here), see pp. 34 (a note of some kind positioned not in the Life (!), but in the Miracles after his repose), 53 (Kontakion III of the Akathist hymn), 54 (Ikos III of the Akathist hymn), 62 (Prayer I to the Holy Hierarch Spyridon, Wonderworker of Tremithus, in the Akathist hymn), and maybe elsewhere (though I didn't see any elsewhere, just skimming). Note though that this title refers to no sources behind the Russian Life (from the Menology of St. Dimitri of Rostov) and the (contemporary) liturgy.
Novum Auctarium Bibliothecae Hagiographicae Graecae. Ed. François Halkin, S.J. Subsidia Hagiographica 65. Brussels, Société des Bollandistes, 1984. See pp. 192 ff.
Bibliotheca hagiographica Graeca. 3rd ed. Ed. François Halkin, S.J. Subsidia hagiographica 8a. 3 vols. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1957. See nos. 1647 ff. (pp. 246 ff.).
Garitte, Gérard. "L'édition des Vies de saint Spyridon par M. van den Ven." Revue d'histoire écclesiastique 50 (1955): 125-140.
Bibliotheca hagiographica Graeca. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1909. Additional titles in modern Greek listed here.
Usener, H. "Beiträge zur Geschichte der Legendliteratur." Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie 13 (1887): 219-232 (219-259).

Seripando on the theory of the duplex iustitia

2011-12-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

"'Has the justified, who has performed good works in a state of grace and with the help of actual grace—both of which stem from the merits of Christ—and who has thus preserved both inherent justice, so completely met the claims of divine justice that when he appears before the judgment-seat of Christ he obtains eternal life on account of his own merits? Or is he in need, in addition to his own inherent justice, of the mercy and justice of Christ, that is, of the merits of His Passion, in order to supplement what is wanting to his own personal justice? and this in such wise that this justice is imparted to him in the measure of his faith and charity?'"

     One of the two questions submitted to the theologians by the Council of Trent on 15 October 1546 in response to the "vote" cast by the Augustinian Girolomo Seripando on 8 October (Hubert Jedin, A history of the Council of Trent, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1961), vol. 2 (The first sessions at Trent, 1545-47), p. 249). This vote "raised a problem the discussion of which was destined to delay the conclusion of the debate for many weeks" (247): "a question had cropped up which would have to be thoroughly examined once more. It was not the case that any serious doubts about the fundamental principles of the Catholic doctrine of justification had arisen in the minds of its members. They all conceived it as an entitative, supernatural elevation, through sanctifying grace and the meritoriousness of good works performed in a state of grace. Ultimately the only question was the formulation of an acknowledged element of Christian piety, namely the relation of the justified to Jesus Christ, his Saviour" (248-249; cf. Seripando's stress on the significance of union with Christ on 26-27 November (286-287)). This distinction between "the fundamental principles of . . . doctrine" and "an acknowledged element of Christian piety" was an important one to some: "For Stephen [of Sestino] this imputation [of 'the perfect justice of Christ'] is a postulate of practical piety: 'Do not let us talk of transcendental matters, let us not attempt to square the circle, but let us speak in the light of our own experience.' Personal experience and the experience of the Saints . . . teach us that when the Christian reflects on the dreadful judgment to come, he has recourse to God's mercy and the merits of Jesus Christ. Another Augustinian Hermit, Gregory of Padua, similarly appealed to the personal experience of Christians. In theory he rejected the doctrine of the insufficiency of inherent justice but in practice he advocated the imputation of the justice of Christ for, he asks, which of us, when he considers his own life, will presume to assert that he has adequately satisfied every one of God's demands?" (254-255, emphasis mine) The Servite Mazochi, for his part, distinguished between speaking "'to scholastics as a scholastic'" and speaking as an "ordinary Christian" (255). Etc.
     Ultimately, though, Seripando's "question of a twofold justice" (248), though never formally condemned (Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 14, col. 1934), was answered by the Council in the negative.
     Thus, I have yet to put my finger on anything like the "Silentio" I remember David Willis once speaking of. According to Willis if memory serves, Seripando posed a question similar to the one posed by Gregory of Padua above ("Which of us, when he appears before the judgment-seat of Christ, will presume, etc."), and got from the Council Fathers only a stunned (because dumbfounded) "Silentio" in reply. Rather, opposition to "la théorie de la double justice" (Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 14, col. 1933-1934; cf. vol. 8, cols. 2182-2185) seems to have been pretty vigorous from the moment Seripando invoked it.
     But: I have read only very superficially in this area, and would be more than happy to stand corrected. (I am particularly interested in confirmation of the tale as I remember Dr. Willis telling it.)

"intellectual historians must use [period] dictionaries"

2011-12-04T15:45:00.000-08:00

"After praising Skinner, I must confess here my own early naïveté—it took me a good decade to recognize that, in my own field, many practitioners of intellectual history are just dogmaticians in disguise; perhaps half a decade more to realize that the phrase 'Barthian historiography' is an oxymoron; and several more years beyond that to come to grips with the datum that systematic theologians, taken as a group, do not read historical documents and, when they go so far as to cite historical documents, often evidence a deep aversion to the meaning intended by the original authors."

Richard A. Muller, "Reflections on persistent Whiggism and its antidotes in the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century intellectual history," in Seeing things their way: intellectual history and the return of religion, ed. Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 137 (134-153). "the writings of a Luther, Calvin, Montaigne, or Descartes do not provide the context for the interpretation of the writings of Luther, Calvin, Montaigne, or Descartes" (140). "intellectual historians must use sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dictionaries" (138). One of the things Whiggism does is ignore "the 'minor' or 'lesser' thinkers of an era" and examine "only the thought of a major writer to the exclusion of the persons and events that surrounded him" (140). To stop doing this would be to come to grips with "the lack of originality of sixteenth-century writers [on grace] like Calvin" (142-143). This Muller calls "the 'great thinker' problem" (139).

Doctrinal fidelity with development: just possible

2011-12-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

"Doctrinal fidelity in the [Zoroastrian] cult of Mithra can thus be demonstrated over a period of at least 2,500 years.
     "Close doctrinal fidelity by the Zoroastrian church can be established in other respects also; and the veneration in which it holds its prophet is shown in many ways. Yet by the syncretic theory one is asked to believe that profound respect for Zoroaster, and a proven tradition of immense conservatism and loyalty, can both be reconciled with an early, radical betrayal of Zoroaster's own teachings; and that in the case of Mithra, the prophet's disciples, although scrupulously preserving his own words and his moral teachings, so far rejected his doctrines that they put their worship of the god whom he preached, Ahura Mazda, under the protection of a god whom he denied, or even abhorred[, namely, Mithra]. To establish the syncretic theory against such opposing considerations would require very strong evidence indeed; and in fact, as we have seen, there is no real evidence for it at all. It is reasonable, therefore, to reject it, and to accept instead the testimony of the Zoroastrian church, unchanged and harmonious at all known periods of its history. From it one can deduce that Zoroaster held to the basic theology of the old Iranian religion, with all its yazatas[, including Mithra], and that his reform consisted largely in reinterpreting its beliefs at a nobler and subtler spiritual level, in the light of an intensely personal apprehension of the supreme God, and of the struggle to be waged between good and evil.
     "The immense help given over the last century and more by comparative philology for the better understanding of the Avesta, and the great advances made, have led perhaps to a touch of hubris in the West, to an assumption that on all points juddīns can interpret the Good Religion better than its own adherents; but this is a sweeping assumption, and the study of other religions suggests that it is unlikely to be true. Plainly there have been considerable theological developments in the course of the long history of Zoroastrianism; but there is little sign of those radical breaks and changes in doctrine which have been so widely postulated by Western scholars."

     Mary Boyce, "On Mithra's part in Zoroastrianism," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 32, no. 1 (1969): 34 (10-34). Background: The "particular Iranian doctrine which is generally held in the West to have been rejected by Zoroaster" is "the doctrine that Mithra existed, that he was a great and good god, and that he was to be worshipped. Most Western scholars have held that Zoroaster denied the existence of Mithra, or was vehemently opposed to his cult, or tacitly ignored it" (14). But this was due to the above-mentioned "touch of [Western] hubris". Moreover, "the present Zoroastrian veneration of Mihr, as protector under the Creator Ōhrmazd, is wholly consonant with what is regarded as the oldest allusion to Mithra in the Avesta" (33).
     If Boyce is right, and Zoroaster did not break with "the old Iranian religion" over Mithra (nor has Zoroastrianism ever done), that is nevertheless not the same thing as (for example) the apparently highly dubious claim that the Mithraism of the 1st through 4th/5th-century Greco-Roman West was a form of Zoroastrianism plain and simple!

     Something else worth excerpting: "The Zoroastrian tradition is firm that the Zoroastrian church is one, and that it was founded by Zoroaster, who was a great prophet but a mortal man, living at a particular time in history. All the marvellous legends of his birth and life have not obscured this basic tenet. The day of Zoroaster's death is remembered each year in Iran and India, on Rūz Khoršēd, Māh Dai, and a bāj (i.e. the drōn ceremony) is then solemnized in his honour. This service is celebrated for him as for a righteous man who has died, an ašo ravān; and since no Zoroastrian act of worship may be offered to a human being, however holy, the service is celebrated with the xšnūman of Ardā Fravaš, but with a special intention (nāmčišti) for the soul of Zoroaster. . . . This liturgical fact is of primary importance as evidence for Zoroaster’s human existence. If his own followers have resisted the pious temptation to make their prophet divine, there seems little justification for juddīns to do so” (12).

Doctor Subtilis

2011-11-26T21:50:00.000-08:00

"It was all very well to look pale, sitting for the portrait of Aquinas, you know. . . . But Aquinas, now - he was a little too subtle, wasn't he? Does anybody read Aquinas?"

Mr. Brooke of Edward Casaubon, in George Eliot's Middlemarch, chap. 28. The "subtle doctor" was, of course, Duns Scotus.

"Young Mr Ladislaw was not at all deep himself in German writers; but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings."

2011-11-26T21:24:00.000-08:00

George Eliot, Middlemarch, chap. 21.

"in a media-addled age, mere scrupulous scholarship is rarely a match for shameless intellectual dishonesty or emotional derangement."

2011-11-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

David Bentley Hart, "Mediocrity's tribute," in On the square: daily columns from First things' top writers, 25 November 2011.

"the 'no God's land' of a human liberty improperly raised to the rank of a secondary divinity"

2011-11-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

"The human being and God are not in competition, simply because the first and the second cause are not on the same plane. Furthermore, it is God himself who gives the free choice of the creature all of its (determined) reality. Confronted with the immense mystery of predestination and the unequal distribution of grace, one ought not to propose a 'solution,' but to situate the mystery in its proper place: in the fathomless liberty, goodness, and wisdom of God, and not in the 'no God's land' of a human liberty improperly raised to the rank of a secondary divinity. Henceforth, Bañezianism—and the thesis of physical premotion—became the official doctrine of the Dominican Order."

Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., "The Thomist tradition" (2003), trans. Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., Nova et vetera: the English edition of the international theological journal 8, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 881 (869-881).

Kennan on the importance of "a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions"

2011-11-21T22:20:00.000-08:00

"There is more resepect to be won . . . by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives."

George Kennan, as quoted by Frank Costigliola, in his "Is this George Kennan?," The New York review of books 58, no. 19 (December 8, 2011), 6 (4-8).

The happiness of me

2011-11-21T22:11:00.000-08:00

"at the age of twenty, [Mill] suffered one of the most famous nervous breakdowns in history; having embraced utilitarianism with a religious passion, he asked himself a fatal question: If all his plans for the happiness of others were realized, would he himself be happy? 'An irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!"' Only after eighteen months of depression did he regain his poise."

Alan Ryan on John Stuart Mill, in "The passionate hero, then and now," The New York review of books 58, no. 19 (December 8, 2011), 60 (59-63). The quotation is from chap. 5 of the Autobiography.

"in the thick of foes"

2011-11-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

     "It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes [(mitten under die Feinde)]. There is his commission, his work. 'The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he also who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared?' (Luther).
     "'I will sow them among the people: and they shall remember me in far countries' (Zech. 10:9). According to God's will Christendom [(Christenheit)] is a scattered people, scattered like seed 'into all the kingdoms of the earth' (Deut. 28:25). That is its curse and its promise. God's people must dwell in far countries among the unbelievers, but it will be the seed of the Kingdom of God in all the world.'"

     Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper One, HarperCollins Publishers, [1954]), 17-18.

Bonhoeffer on the unavoidability of reproof

2011-11-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

     "Reproof is unavoidable. God's Word demands it when a brother falls into open sin. The practice of discipline in the congregation begins in the smallest circles. Where defection from God's Word in doctrine or life imperils the family fellowship and with it the whole congregation, the word of admonition and rebuke must be ventured. Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin. It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship, when we allow nothing but God's Word to stand between us, judging and succoring. Then it is not we who are judging; God alone judges, and God's judgment is helpful and healing. Ultimately, we have no charge but to serve our brother, never to set ourselves above him, and we serve him even when we must speak the judging and dividing Word of God to him, even when, in obedience to God, we must break off fellowship with him."

     Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: HarperOne, HarperCollins Publishers, [1954]), 107, a passage that should be read within the whole of chap. 4 (on Ministry), but goes nonetheless firmly against the present grain. From pp. 105-106:

"And yet this correct judgment lies perilously near to the deadly dictum of Cain: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' A seemingly sacred respect for another's freedom can be subject to the curse of God: 'His blood will I require at thine hand' (Ezek. 3:18).
     "Where Christian live together the time must inevitably come when in some crisis one person will have to declare God's Word and will to another. It is inconceivable that the things that are of utmost importance to each individual should not be spoken by one to another. It is unchristian consciously to deprive another of the one decisive service we can render to him. . . ."
     "The basis on which Christians can speak to one another is that each knows the other as a sinner, who, with all his human dignity, is lonely and lost if he is not given help. This is not to make him contemptible nor to disparage him in any way. On the contrary, it is to accord him the one real dignity that man has, namely, that, though he is a sinner, he can share in God's grace and glory and be God's child. This recognition gives to our brotherly speech the freedom and candor that it needs. We speak to one another on the basis of the help with both need. We admonish one another to go the way that Christ bids us to go. We warn one another against the disobedience that is our common destruction. We are gentle and we are severe with one another, for we know both God's kindness and God's severity."

"a certain beatitude of our body"

2011-11-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

"Thus, although sensible perception, apparently disparaged at the beginning [of the 'Adore te deuote'] (v. 5), is revealed [to be] necessary in order to understand the message and to contemplate the sacramental Christ, one notes that it persists even once glorified. In eternity, the humanity of Christ will be also the object of our contemplation: 'There will be a certain beatitude of our body, in that it will [continue to] see God in sensible creatures, and in the body of Christ above all' (Sentences IV, d.49 q.2 a.2 [ad 6]), and Thomas specifies elsewhere: 'The blessed contemplate in the first place [(prioritairement)] the divinity of Christ and not his humanity. But they find their joy in the contemplation of the one and of the other' (Quodlibet VIII, q. 9 a.2 [Resp.]). This will be an integral and inalienable component of their beatitude. Thomas, 'in his entirety' glorified, will contemplate [the] glorified Jesus 'in his entirety' [(Thomas, «tout entier» glorifié, contemplera Jésus glorifié «tout entier»)]."

Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., "«Adore Te»: La plus belle prière de saint Thomas," La vie spirituelle no. 726 (mars 1998): 35 (28-36). The Sed contra of Quodlibet VIII q. 9 a.2 is more explicit than the Respondeo: "On the contrary, one does not attain to the end [(extremum)] except through the middle [(medium)]; but the middle between God and men is the humanity of Christ: 1 Tim. 2:5: ‘the mediator [between] God and men is the man Christ Jesus.’ Therefore the blessed do not attain to the contemplation of the divinity of Christ except by first contemplating his humanity [(Ergo sancti non perveniunt ad contemplationem divinitatis Christi, nisi prius contemplando eius humanitatem)]." But there is also an "ad Sed contra," something I have yet to see in the Summa. And it is from this that Torrell gets his "Thomas specifies elsewhere": "To that which [the Sed] contra throws up as an obstacle, [it is] to be said that this argument procedes with respect to the state of [life on] the way, in which, since [(sed (but), next clause)] we are not yet perfectly conjoined with God, . . . [(sed)] it behooves us to accede to God through Christ; but since in beatitude we will already be conjoined with God, we [will] intend the divinity of Christ before [(per prius . . . quam)] his humanity."

"although we can in a way understand God without understanding his goodness, we cannot understand God by understanding that he is not good".

2011-11-06T13:18:00.000-08:00

"licet nos intelligamus aliqualiter Deum, non intelligendo eius bonitatem, non tamen possumus intelligere Deum intelligendo eum non esse bonum".

St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia 7.4.ad 8, trans. Ralph McInerny (Thomas Aquinas: selected writings, ed. & trans. Ralph McInerny (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998), 309).

Lieux d'oubli

2011-11-06T08:41:00.000-08:00

"What is new, at least in the modern era, is the neglect of history. Every memorial, every museum, every shorthand commemorative allusion to something from the past that should arouse in us the appropriate sentiments of respect, or regret, or sadness, or pride, is parasitic upon the presumption of historical knowledge: not shared memory, but a shared memory of history as we learned it. France, like other modern nations, is living off the pedagogical capital invested in its citizens in earlier decades. As Jacques and Mona Ozouf gloomily conclude in their essay on Augustine Fouillé's educational classic Le Tour de la France par deux enfants [(1877)]: 'Le Tour de la France stands as witness to that moment in French history when everything was invested in the schools....
"...to judge from the virtual disappearance of narrative history from the curriculum in school systems, including the American, the time may soon come when, for many citizens, large parts of their common past will constitute something more akin to lieux d'oubli, realms of forgetting—or, rather, realms of ignorance, since there will have been little to forget. Teaching children, as we now do, to be critical of received versions of the past serves little purpose once there no longer is a received version."

Tony Judt, "À la recherche du temps perdu: France and its pasts" (1998), in Reappraisals: reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), 215-216 (196-218).

"no myths, no glory, no peasants", or "'Will French cuisine be all that remains when everything else is forgotten?'"

2011-11-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

"Lieux de mémoire, as Nora puts it in his introductory essay, 'exist because there are no longer any milieux de mémoire, settings in which memory is a real part of everyday experience.' And what are lieux de mémoire? '[They] are fundamentally vestiges . . . the rituals of a ritual-less society; fleeting incursions of the sacred into a disenchanted world: vestiges of parochial loyalties in a society that is busily effacing all parochialisms.'"

Tony Judt, quoting Pierre Nora's "Between memory and history," Realms of memory: rethinking the French past 3 (Symbols), ed. Lawrence D.Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 (1996-1998)), pp. 6-7, in his (i.e. Judt's) "À la recherche du temps perdu: France and its pasts" (1998), Reappraisals: reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), 204 (196-218). Cf. Judt himself: "In erecting formal reminders or replicas of something we ought to remember, we risk further forgetfulness: By making symbols or remnants stand for the whole, we ease ourselves into an illusion" (197-198). I would supplement that last sentence as follows: "By making symbols or remnants stand for the whole" we have ourselves abandoned or been passively complicit in the demolition of (à la Wendell Berry?), whether that be the reality itself or at least the full-orbed history of it,...

"Moreover, these ['information'] panels ['set off to the right at frequent intervals' along 'the magnificently engineered, impeccably landscaped autoroutes of France'] are intentionally and unapologetically didactic: They tell you about the French past—or about present-day activities (wine-making, for example) that provide continuity with the past—in ways that reinforce a certain understanding of the country. Ah, we say, yes: The battlefield of Verdun; the amphitheater at Nîmes; the cornfields of the Beauce. And as we reflect upon the variety and the wealth of the country, the ancient roots and modern traumas of the nation, we share with others a certain memory of France. We are being led at seventy miles an hour through the Museum of France that is France itself" (197).

"the LORD is God; there is no other".

2011-10-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

“The Christian-Jewish God is the incomparable Wholly Other and One [(der unvergleichbare völlig Andere und Eine)]; but a god in Greco-Roman antiquity is only one among innumerable others, the number of which is constantly on the make [(sich ständig vermehrt)]. The men of Greco-Roman antiquity for whom Josephus writes see themselves at one end of a continuum at the other end of which are to be found the gods. The way from one end to the other is [both] traversable and [in fact] traversed. Differences between [the] gods and men are sometimes so slight that one does not in a [given] encounter know whether it is with a god or a man that one has to do.”

Ulrich Victor, "Das Testimonium Flavianum: ein authentischer Text des Josephus," Novum testamentum 52 (2010): 73 (72-82).

"Very ignorant, very innocent and very civilized."

2011-10-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

Primo Levi, "Of 'Cesare' (Lello Perugia, his Italian companion on the journey home [from Auschwitz])," as quoted by Tony Judt, in his "The elementary truths of Primo Levi," Reappraisals: reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), 51 (citing The reawakening, p. 204) (44-62).

"The burning bush is the Cross. The highest claim of revelation, the 'I am he,' and the Cross of Jesus are inseparably one."

2011-10-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

"'When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am [(τότε γνώσεσθε ὅτι ἐγω εἰμι)]. . . .'"

Jn 8:28, RSV, but with the concluding pronoun, i.e. "he" ("then you will know that I am he"), removed. Cf. the LXX of Is 43:10: "I too am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe and understand that I am [(ἵνα γνῶτε...ὅτι ἐγώ εἱμι)]" (NETS). The pronoun is there in the Hebrew of v. 10 ("that I [am] He [(כִּֽי־אֲנִי הוּא)]"), but that is followed by v. 11: "I, I am the Lord [(אָנֹכִי אָנֹכִי יְהוָה, ἐγὼ ὁ Θεός)]". All of this is brought out on pp. 347-349 (pp. 345 ff.) of Joseph Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth: from the baptism in the Jordan to the transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2007), whence the heading, which occurs on p. 349.

David Lyle Jeffrey on the superiority of Christian formation in China

2011-10-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

"what many foreign visitors have observed, namely that the quality of biblical preaching and teaching in the patriotic (registered) churches and in the study groups and house churches typically seems much higher than in evangelical churches here in America, is confirmable by anyone from the West who spends time with Chinese students and younger faculty converts; one may expect to find much higher levels of biblical literacy and theological clarity by three to five years post-conversion than amongst American counterparts after two or three decades in the church. In urban house churches, the teaching is often led by young women, professional university teachers (laoshe) with doctoral degrees in literature and philosophy. This teaching is learned, yet marked by an evangelical urgency and commitment to obedient practice rather than simply intellectual assent."

David Lyle Jeffrey, "A critique of all religions: Chinese intellectuals and the church," Books and culture 17, no. 4 (July/August 2011): 19 (18-21).

Tabaraud on "the reunion that we must desire"

2011-10-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

"'the reunion that we must desire is not at all that of a general indifference, but precisely that which is founded on the unity of belief [(croyance)]. Politics can be satisfied when it has succeeded in facilitating the adoption of the same words; but religion requires that all those who employ them give them the same sense, without which those [supposedly] agreeing [manage only] to collude in deceiving one another by an hypocritical language destined to betray the thought of each.'"

     Mathieu Tabaraud, Histoire critique des projets formés depuis trois cents ans pour la réunion des communions chrétiennes (Paris: 1824), 412-413, as quoted in Bernard Plongeron, "Les projets de réunion des communions chrétiennes du Directoire à l'Empire," Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France 66, no. 176 (1980), 28-29 (17-49).

Tabaraud, though, remains unsatisfied with this (ultimately Louis de Bonald's) distinction between the the politics of indifférence and the unity of croyance, and goes on to distinguish the latter from the even more crucial unity of foi:

     "If all of the attempts . . . to reunite the Christian communions have failed, this is because they have all been inhabited by the same confusion: all take for basic the unity of belief [(croyance)], whereas all sincere, honest, and abiding reunion necessitates the unity of faith [(foi)]. The difference is not slight. [Argument over t]he unity of confession is a political argument that brings only the cult into play [(n'est qu'un argument politique qui met en œuvre le culte)]. The uniformity of worship or the celebration of the cult-in-common requires only exterior practices and pretends to ignore the interior dispositions of the believer. Now, only the interior dispositions, into which it would not be fitting 'to initiate a dangerous inquisition', guarantee religion, that is to say unity of faith, and faith is a gift of God. But too often the attempts at reunion have been only human enterprises. . . .
     "It is necessary to insist on this radical distinction that Tabaraud makes between cult and religion because it is sometimes thought that it is an invention of the theologians of the twentieth century.... Tabaraud takes finds fault with

'that predilection, become so common, for substituting for the word religion, which supposes the interior belief of dogmas divine and invariable, that of cult, which expresses only the material and exterior part of [religion] subject to so many variations all dependent on contingent circumstances'.

     "It could well be that, at the [very] moment that the concordatory system founded on the cultic [(le cultuel)] is put in place, these authors, more numerous than one might think, by drawing attention to this reductive confusion, put a finger on an essential aspect of the anticlericalism of the nineteenth century, what contemporary historians have called the 'roots of unbelief'.
     "For the expert on the free thought of the eighteenth century, it is already a conviction: not only does this obsession with the cult-in-common distort [(dénature)] the true reunion of Christians; it promotes 'indifference to all beliefs, [an indifference] that supposes that everything is arbitrary in religion, everything perfectly equal in the eyes of God [(la Divinité)], no matter what idea one forms of his attributes. This system, the worst of all, which has passed from religion into morals [(les mœurs)], Bacon regarded as one of the doorways to atheism'. . . . Hence the alternative that dominates the work of Tabaraud.
     "Either one remains lucid on the distinction between cult and religion and the narrow but firm way of the conditions of a reunion thus emerges:

'The reunion of the Christian communions, the object of so many desires, must therefore be founded on that tolerance so dear to gentle and upright souls, [that tolerance] committed to [(qui présente des idées d')] indulgence for the erring while simultaneously proscribing rigorously all errors; [an] evangelical virtue that establishes the progress of truth on the means of persuasion while eschewing every way of constraint, above all when it is a question of reclaiming brethren who, although separated from us by their particular belief, are not less our brothren...' (p. 6).

     "Or one persists in reducing religion to the cult and falls [(c'est tomber)] into the trap of political religion. It is here that Tabaraud accuse the Protestants of understanding 'religion' as the interaction of the temporal power and the spiritual power, the external tribunal and the interior tribunal. In the 16th century, the Reform owed its success to the influence of the temporal power. [And] it is from it that even today the Protestants expect it to realize the reunion. . . .
     ". . . In distinction from the Protestants [by contrast], the Catholics reunit the two powers without confounding them" (30-32).

     That last judgment strikes me as counterintuitive.

The missing link

2011-10-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

"Although they used the term in early writings, ID proponents today regularly deny that they are creationists. . . .
"[Yet] Among the revelations of the Kitzmiller trial were details of the [calculated] switch from the language of creation science to that of ID. . . .
"What happened in 1987 that occasioned this linguistic fig leaf? That is when the Edwards case was decided, finding it unconstitutional to teach creation science in the public schools. In subsequent drafts leading up to the published text, 'creation science' became 'design theory', and 'creationists' became 'design proponents'. The new terms were substituted in an almost search-and-replace manner.
"Barbara Forrest, an expert witness for the plaintiffs who examined the manuscripts, even turned up what is now humorously referred to as the 'Missing Link' between creationism and intelligent design—a sentence in the second 1987 draft [of Of pandas and people] that includes an accidental transitional form 'cdesign proponentsists'".

Robert T. Pennock, "The pre-modern sins of intelligent design," The Oxford handbook of religion and science, ed. Philip Clayton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 734-735 (732-748). William A. Dembski in this same Companion: "Despite its constant repetition, the charge that intelligent design is a form of creationism is false" ("In defense of intelligent design," 719). For Demski here, what this means is only that it doesn't necessarily entail creationism. What he does not address is the historical question of provenance. I find the article by Pennock damning.

And speech about God above all

2011-10-15T16:22:00.000-07:00

The "early guesswork [of the child learning to speak] may appear floundering and foolish to adults, but the conjectural character of linguistic usage which it reveals is necessarily inherent in all speech and remains inherent in ours to the end."

Michael Polanyi, Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973 (1962, 1958)), 106. Yet just as what the child gropes towards is a mastery of the rules of adult discourse (rules developed in personal contact with reality), so what the Christian gropes towards is something objective: an ability to speak with facility the language of God and the saints. That Polanyi is a realist is made abundantly clear from p. 110 ("If we can say of an unprecedented owl, belonging perhaps to a new species: 'This is an owl', using this designation in an appropriately modified sense, why should we not equally well say of an owl: 'This is a sparrow', meaning a new kind of sparrow, not known so far by that name? Indeed, why should we ever say one thing rather than another, and not pick our descriptive terms at random?").

We say more than we can know, whether for good or for ill

2011-10-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

"just as, owing to the ultimately tacit character of all our knowledge, we remain ever unable to say all that we know, so also, in view of the tacit character of meaning, we can never quite know what is implied in what we say."

Michael Polanyi, Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973 (1962, 1958)), 95.

"Alexander’s winged boots are harder to believe when recounted in Xenophontian prose."

2011-10-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

"The [450 aa (after the death of Alexander)] source who provides modern historians with most of their facts, therefore, was himself dependent on one [contemporary] source which ancient writers thought Alexander would have thrown away in disgust [(Aristobulus)] and on another which is attached to an official programme of exaltation [(Ptolemy I)]. It’s not simply that modern historians have been taken in by Arrian’s plain-talking rhetorical strategy. . . . Nor is it simply a question of prejudice about the greater reliability of histories written by manly men-of-action. More than any other ancient author Arrian seems to approach his subject in a modern way. He says what texts he is using, why he chose them and how they will be used. Every now and again he compares them with each other and with what he has found elsewhere.
"This modernity is an illusion. It is not hard to see that Arrian’s unusual carefulness derives from unusual anxiety about the charge of extreme bias which might be laid against his chosen authorities. His methodological transparency is the mark of a partisan defensive about the charge of partisanship, not a precocious scientific historian, working with meticulous care. Arrian’s high reputation was earned by omitting the most egregious examples of fawning he found in his sources, supplementing from other sources their most egregious omissions, and being noisily defensive about the charge of bias. For students of Quellenforschung, who learned their trade trying to see behind the more opaque texts of Homer and the Bible, he was a gift from heaven. He seemed to have done all the work for them and even at times to have indulged in a little Quellenkritik. It seems inevitable in retrospect that this most nervous of historians would find highest honour in the age of source analysis.
"Unfortunately, it is an age which hasn’t yet passed. Alexander scholarship still consists, for the most part, in arguments over which bit of which surviving text derives from which earlier lost source, whether it is a solid piece of information and how, in that case, it can be squared with something someone else says elsewhere. . . .
"To be sure, since knowledge of Alexander is derived overwhelmingly from derivative texts, we need to know everything we can about them and their sources. Moreover, there is an old-fashioned charm to this kind of fact-oriented text-combing: phenomenal erudition, lack of circumspection, proper engagement with the work of older scholars, clarity of exposition, and a satisfying bluntness in critical asides. . . And one wouldn’t wish on any subject the type of Lacanian analysis, rhetorics of gender and queer theory, which afflict other areas of ancient history. But there are surely more useful things to do with Alexander in the 21st century than Quellenforschung.
"Most of the secure facts about which author used what when were pinned down years ago, and although possible new connections have proliferated, cogency is rare – everything anyone needs to know can be found conveniently in P.A. Brunt’s notes and appendices to the Loeb edition of Arrian. Moreover, for most of the derivative authors, the whole idea of neat genealogies is more convenient than plausible. No historian of Alexander came to the subject a virgin. Not only was he the most important figure from the Greek past but it is unlikely that any writer of the Roman period managed to get through his education without a knowledge of some of the more notorious passages of Hegesias, Callisthenes and Clitarchus; as prime examples of how not to write history, or simply how not to write, they were too useful to be ignored. There must have been promiscuous cross-fertilisation of sources over a long period, making a Gordian knot of the lines of transmission. . . .
"The one author who does show his methods, on the other hand, Arrian, seems deliberately to have selected the most hagiographical version and then disguised its excesses. But Arrian’s bad choices cannot now be corrected. No amount of source criticism can make him more objective. . . .
". . . when the Metz Epitome, a late, partially preserved manuscript in the novelistic tradition, written c.1300 years aa, is hailed as ‘perhaps the single most important contribution to the source criticism of Alexander’s reign’ and Polybius is enthusiastically elevated into the canon of derivative authors on whom source criticism can be performed (‘amazingly for the first time’), one cannot help seeing signs of desperation. The texts are finally running out and Alexander historians are finally running out of excuses for not doing something more interesting with their subject."

James Davidson, "Bonkers about boys," London review of books 23, no. 21 (1 November 2001), (7-10).

"if they did not come we should have to look for them".

2011-10-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

"How happy we are . . . that the poor should thus come to us; if they did not come we should have to look for them; and for that there is not always time."

St. John Vianney, the Curé d'Ars, as quoted by Abbé Francis Trochu (quoting Catherine Lassagne from the Procès de l'Ordinaire, p. 495) in his The Curé d'Ars: St Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1859) according to the Acts of the process of canonization and numerous hitherto unpublished documents, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1951 [1927]), 462.

"riveted to that rude seat, a prisoner of sinners."

2011-10-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

"the confessional was the instrument of his crucifixion. He was 'a martyr of the confessional,' says the Abbé Monnin. He might have fled from sinners and have hidden himself in a cloister or in a desert; the love of souls made him stay at Ars. He who had spent his youth in the fields, in the pure atmosphere of his native hills, remained, on days when a serene sky calls men into the open country, riveted to that rude seat, a prisoner of sinners. His was a refined and sensitive heart, and he loved the beauty of Nature. Once upon a time he, too, walked in the smiling vale of the Fontblin where the aspens rustle; even now he was only divided from it by a few houses and the walls of his church. However, of his own will, he deprived himself, for a space of thirty years, of the pleasure of tasting its charm, its pastures, its restful shade!"

Abbé Francis Trochu, The Curé d'Ars: St Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1859) according to the Acts of the process of canonization and numerous hitherto unpublished documents, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1951 [1927]), 475.

St. Athanasius on the redirection of the senses

2011-10-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

"men's mind having finally fallen to things of sense, the Word disguised himself by appearing in a body, that he might, as man, transfer men to himself, and center their senses on himself [(ἵνα . . . τὰς αἰσθήσεις αὐτῶν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀποκλὶνῃ)]. . . ."

St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 16 (PG 25, col. 124), trans. Archibald Robertson; Christology of the later Fathers, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy and Cyril C. Richardson, Library of Christian classics 3 (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1954), 70.

Salva nos Domine vigilantes

2011-10-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Salva nos Domine vigilantes: custodi nos dormientes: ut vigilemus cum Christo et requiescamus in pace.

Common prayer (2000): Save us, O Lord, while waking, and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep may rest in peace.

Book of common worship (PCUSA and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1993): Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep rest in his peace.

United Methodist book of worship (1992): Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

Book of common prayer (1979): Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

Liturgy of the hours (1975): Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.

Great Sarum Breviary of 1531 (Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum (1879-1886), fasc. 2, col. 228).

12th-century manuscripts listed by CANTUS

"May the worship of each one here bring salvation to all."

2011-10-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

Missale Romanum: Propitiáre, Dómine, supplicatiónibus nostris, et has oblatiónes famulórum tuórum benígnus assúme, ut, quod sínguli ad honórem tui nóminis obtulérunt, cunctis profíciat ad salútem. Per Christum.

3rd English edition:

2nd English edition: Lord, hear the prayers of your people and receive our gifts. May the worship of each one here bring salvation to all. Grant this...

Prayer over the gifts (super oblata), Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Latin from here: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/ex3.htm#b3e.

St. Bernard on the divine compassibility

2011-09-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

"God is impassible, but not incompassible [(impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis)]. . . ."

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 26.5 (S[ancti] Bernardi opera 1, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 1-35 (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957), 173, ll. 16-17; PL 183, col. 906). My source, Pope Bendict XVI, in his Jesus of Nazareth: from the baptism in the Jordan to the transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2007), renders this as follows: "God cannot suffer, but he can 'suffer with'" (87).

"a contest in generosity"

2011-09-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

"As he left the chapel that morning the saint could not restrain his gladness. 'Oh! how beautiful is religion!' he exclaimed. 'I was thinking a little while ago that between our Lord and these good religious, his mystic brides, there took place a contest in generosity. But, do what they may, our Lord invariably proves the winner. The Sisters said: 'I renew my vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.' Yet it was they who received most, for I, in my turn, said: 'May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep thy soul unto life everlasting.'"

The Curé d'Ars, as quoted by Abbé Francis Trochu, in his The Curé d'Ars: St Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1859) according to the Acts of the process of canonization and numerous hitherto unpublished documents, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1951 [1927]), 370-371.

"in such a way that each one of the faithful can be certain"

2011-09-22T22:22:00.000-07:00

"the Deputation de fide is not of the mind that this word should be understood in a juridical sense (Lat. in sensu forensi) so that it only signifies putting an end to controversy which has arisen in respect to heresy and doctrine which is properly speaking de fide. Rather, the word 'defines' signifies that the Pope directly and conclusively pronounces his sentence about a doctrine which concerns matters of faith or morals and does so in a way that each one of the faithful can be certain of the mind of the Apostolic See, of the mind of the Roman Pontiff; in such a way, indeed, that he or she knows for certain that such and such a doctrine is held to be heretical, proximate to heresy, certain or erroneous, etc., by the Roman Pontiff. Such, therefore, is the meaning of the word 'defines.'"

Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser, relatio of 16 July 1870; The gift of infallibility: the official relatio on infallibility of Bishop Vincent Gasser at Vatican Council I (11 July 1870), trans. Rev. James T. O'Connor (Boston, MA: St. Paul Editions, 1986), 74.

Wolfson on Albinus and Plotinus on the via negativa

2011-09-22T01:05:00.000-07:00

"the negation of any predicate of God does not mean that its opposite can be predicated of Him; rather it means the exclusion of God from the universe of the discourse of the predicate in question."

Harry A. Wolfson, "Negative attributes in the Church Fathers and the gnostic Basilides," Harvard theological review 50, no. 2 (1957): 146 (145-156), as quoted by Harm J. M. J. Goris, in his Free creatures of an eternal God: Thomas Aquinas on God's infallible foreknowledge and irresistible will, Publications of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, new series, 4 (Nijmegen: Stichting Thomasfonds; Leuven: Peeters, [1996]), 12-13n13.

The man behind the Curé d'Ars

2011-09-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

"Once again the indefatigable Balley went to work. It was one of the advantages of having had no grand achievements in life; he had not grown bored with doing things that count."

George William Rutler, Saint John Vianney: the Curé d'Ars today (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988), 88.

"keep [y]our nerve, pray for divine assistance, and launch forth boldly in the teeth of opposition and ridicule"

2011-09-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

"In these circumstances the strategy of translating the language of the faith into the jargon of the streets is superficial. The intention is good, and there is even a grain of truth on offer. It is wise to develop contemporary analogies that will capture in a vivid way the great truths of the gospel. . . . However, the mistake is to think that folk are ready to roll over and accept the Christian faith if only we could find a way to make it intelligible to them. This ignores the offense of the faith. To see what is at stake in salvation requires an intellectual revolution that shakes the foundations of one's standard conception of oneself. The darkness and cognitive malfunction are so great that the active grace of God is required to wake us from our dogmatic slumbers. We should permit the claims of the faith to call into question the common intellectual assumptions of our day rather than capitulating at the first sign of opposition. Moreover, it is not always easy to explain the deep things of God even to veteran believers. Thus, to rely on strategies of translation, or on cute analogies, or on church growth techniques, in order to relieve our anxieties is disastrous for the church in the long run. We need to keep our nerve, pray for divine assistance, and launch forth boldly in the teeth of opposition and ridicule. Cutting a deal with the world at this point and reworking the faith to accommodate its wishes is simply wrongheaded and ineffective."

William J. Abraham, Wesley for armchair theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 106.

Turning the evangelical movement around

2011-09-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

"The Holy Spirit does indeed work incessantly to bring folk to faith in Christ and connect them to each other in the body of Christ. However, does not the Holy Spirit also work to create the church as an institution that exists through space and time? So in following up on the comprehensive work of the Holy Spirit, we are drawn deeper into the life and work of the church as an institution. In practice Wesley was headed away from the institutional church. If we follow his best instincts we will do a U-turn and head in the opposite direction."

William J. Abraham, Wesley for armchair theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 121. Cf. "It was this world of faith that Wesley inhabited. He was supported at every level in his work. The state, the church, the universities, and the intellectual giants of his day supplied him with a network of ideas and practices without which he would have been hopelessly handicapped. Wesley himself rarely saw this; like most reformers and renewalists he had a keener eye for what was wrong than for what was right. He was so preoccupied with the problems of dry rot in the pulpit that he forgot how good the foundations were. He was so worried about the broken arms of his patients that he ignored how well they had already learned to walk. He was so busy adding new trains to the railway company and getting them to run on time that he overlooked his deep dependence on the network of track and railway stations that dotted the countryside. He was so taken with his piccolo trumpet and the tune he was playing that he disregarded the steady beat of the big drum at the back of the orchestra. Wesley's life and thought depended critically on the commitments of the state, the requirements of the Church of England, the theological presuppositions of university life, and the effectiveness of the intellectual work done by a host of scholars and writers. His genius was to note that these in themselves were not enough to secure the spiritual welfare of people. The church also needed to be an effective tutor in the spiritual life" (32-33).

"the Holy Spirit is not a labor-saving device."

2011-09-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

William J. Abraham, Wesley for armchair theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 108.

Might as well have opposed it

2011-09-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

"it is not enough merely to be enlightened and in tune with history. During the Reign of Terror, after having given good service to the Revolution, eight 'constitutional bishops' perished on the guillotine."

James Hitchcock, "The French connection: the many parallels between France's Revolution and today's anti-Christian secularism," Touchstone 24, no 5 (September/October 2011), 35.

From sacrament to Sacrament, forever

2011-08-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

"it is true that the invisible grace that these structures communicate to us, or for which they are the occasion of our reception, will perdure even after they cease. However, in a sense, just the inverse is true as well: invisible grace moves us toward the sacraments not as mere historically contingent means, but also as precursors to a more profound eschatological form of dependence upon mediation: the mediation of the sacred humanity of Christ, which will perdure eternally. The sacraments are imperfect instrumental applications 'already' of what we will experience more perfectly for eternity: dependence upon the mediating grace of Jesus Christ as man. . . .
"in contrast to Rahner's view, sacramental grace for Aquinas is not simply the visible manifestation of what is always, already happening invisibly outside the Church. Nor does extra-sacramental grace drive us towards the sacraments simply because of a general human need for categorical mediation. Rather, such grace 'outside the Church' is only a diminished form and anticipation of what comes to full reality uniquely in the sacraments of the Church. Quite in opposition, then, to Rahner's view, sacraments cannot appear as visual aids to what we already possess, but they are instruments that incorporate us into a higher form of life with God than that which we previously possessed when we were not yet incorporated into the fullness of sacramental life.
". . . Like Congar, St. Thomas certainly holds that the sacraments are the means of grace that produce an inward spiritual communion and that they give way eventually to the eschatological life of the kingdom of God. He also makes it clear, however, that these same sacraments are part of the inherent common good of social communion into which the invisible workings of grace invite us, and by which those same workings are inwardly maintained. Nor does this corporate body cease to be eschatologically. When these sacramental means cease to exist, they do so in order to give way not to a non-sacramental, invisible reality, but to a superior communal life that is itself also visible and invisible. This is the life of the Resurrection, in which we will live in everlasting dependency upon the 'sacramental' mediation of Christ himself: the human mediation of the Savior as High Priest. His humanity will remain the everlasting instrument and sign of the communication of divine life, such that we will be dependent upon Jesus as both God and human for eternity. Already in the life of the Church in this world, then, sacramental communion is part of the very form of the saving life of grace, since we are saved in an ecclesial body that is inseparably visible and invisible."

Thomas Joseph White, O.P., "The priesthood makes the Church: ecclesial communion and the power of the keys," Nova et vetera: the English edition of the international theological journal 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 221, 227-228 (209-236).

Steck on the existence of man after Auschwitz

2011-08-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

"There are those who say, After Auschwitz one can no longer speak of God. [Yet] Israel did so [after another such event] in the Old Testament long ago. I [by contrast] find [that] after Auschwitz one can no longer speak in such a ridiculously 'Enlightened' fashion and with such unspeakable naïveté [(so lächerlich aufgeklärt und so unsäglich naiv)] of the self-realized and superior man [(dem selbstverwirklichten und besseren Menschen)], as so commonly today."

Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 92 (75-95). Others have said this, too, of course.

"The existence of these specific men is the existence of Jesus Christ for us and for all men."

2011-08-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

Karl Barth, CD I/2, 486 =KD I/2, 539 (§19.2.3), as quoted by Bruce L. McCormack in his "The being of Holy Scripture is in becoming: Karl Barth in conversation with American evangelical criticism," Evangelicals and Scripture: tradition, authority and hermeneutics, ed. Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguéz, and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 68 (55-75). "these specific men" are the "first witnesses": "His disciples, His followers, His apostles, those who are called by Him, the witnesses of his resurrection, those to whom He Himself has directly promised and given His Holy Spirit". So they are unique: "It is in this function that they are distinguished from us and from all other men, whom they resemble in everything else." Yet there is something about this that rings true for the saints as well.

For better

2011-08-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

"Your first wife married you for better or for worse. Your second wife, particularly if you were sixty and she was a twenty-eight-year-old number like Serena—why kid yourself?—she married you for better."

Tom Wolfe, A man in full (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 135.

Morning prayer the morning after seeing Werner Herzog's "Cave of forgotten dreams"

2011-08-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, End chamber, West wall, c. 30,000 BCE.

When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers,

the moon and the stars which thou has established;

what is man that thou art mindful of him,

and the son of man that thou dost care for him?

Yet thou hast made him little less than God,

and dost crown him with glory and honor.

Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, Hillaire

chamber, North wall, c. 30,000 BCE.

Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;

thou hast put all things under his feet,

all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

Ps 8:3-9, RSV.

(Actually, I slipped up and read the wrong office, but how providential!)

"although he takes back his word, although he breaks his promise, although he takes back what he gave, although he envelops his goodness in the hidden, in contradiction"

2011-08-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

"Abraham is not [just] anyone who must give [up] his child; [it is] not something, albeit the most beloved [of things], [that] Abraham must give [up], no, [it is] God—[it is] God [that] he must give back to God, the trusted, gracious, tried-and-true God [who] discloses everything to him, [it is] th[is God that] he must give back to God! This is the whole harshness of the story, as Israel perceived it: God against God; God himself here takes his promise back, himself slams shut everything that he had once opened, places in question with all sharpness the hope and expectation that he himself had aroused in Abraham. [It is n]ot the loss of an only child [that] stands here in play, no, of Abraham is here expected the renunciation of the graciously-inclined God, the salvation-creating God of Israel. Of Abraham is expected—and indeed by God himself!—the renunciation of the God on whose word Abraham had staked his life. This is the depth and the unfathomability of this story, that God contradicts himself on the field of the experience of Israel! That he takes back [the already] given, [fully] realized nearness of meaning and salvation, that he takes from Israel everything, that he takes from th[is] man everything that he had given him, and no one is able to prevent this—and yet in this, too, remains his God!—[this is an] awareness of God in a depth of experience to which we moderns in blasphemous over-self-valuation do not again, not even from afar, attain. 'Sadistic,' 'cruel,' 'hostile to life,' 'one who strikes out at the defenseless'—these, I believe, are all, however, completely inappropriate, completely anthropomorphic, reductionistic, completely inapplicable concepts for what happens in Genesis 22: the mysterious, dark, night-saturated unreasonable demand of God that [Abraham] remain with him, go on [hand] in his hand, although he takes back his word, although he breaks his promise, although he takes [back] what he gave, although he envelops his goodness in the hidden, in contradiction."

Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 87 (75-95).

Cur Deus homo

2011-08-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

"This is the sort of teaching we derive from the mighty revelation of God's becoming man. By his intimate union with humanity, . . . He freed man from evil, and healed the very author of evil himself."

Gregory of Nyssa, Address on religious instruction 26, ed. and trans. Cyril C. Richardson. Christology of the later fathers, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy in collaboration with Cyril C. Richardson, Library of Christian classics 3 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954), 304. Cf. "And by so doing he benefited, not only the one who had perished, but also the very one who had brought us to ruin" (303), and "In the same way, when death, corruption, darkness, and the other offshoots of vice have attached themselves to the author of evil, contact with the divine power acts like fire and effects the disappearance of what is contrary to nature. In this way the nature is purified and benefited, even though the process of separation is a painful one. Hence not even the adversary himself can question that what occurred was just and salutary—if, that is, he comes to recognize its benefit" (303-304). Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco "recommend[s] prudence while reading this text . . . , seeing in this affirmation more of a hypothesis than a firm conviction", and says that Gregory "returned to this notion in An et res (PG 46, 104) and Tunc et ipse (GNO III/2, 15)" ("Devil," The Brill dictionary of Greogry of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco & Giulio Maspero, and trans. Seth Cherney, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 225-226).

The Confession of St. Martha

2011-07-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Martha:
Jn 11:27: ἐγὼ πεπίστευκα ὅτι σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἐρχόμενος.

Peter:
Mk 8:29: σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστός.
Mt 16:16: σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος.

The antiphon to the Benedictus for the Feast of St. Martha in the Liturgia horarum conflates the two confessions: Tu es Christus, Fílius Dei vivi, qui in hunc mundum venísti.

The rising generation can get it wrong

2011-07-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

"By rights it is you, who are in the prime of all your inner powers, who ought to continue the war against the enemies of truth and not to shrink from the task. Thus we fathers may be gladdened by the noble efforts of our children. For this is what the law of nature presupposes. But since you have turned your ranks and direct toward us the assaults of those darts which are hurled by the opponents of truth, and bid us old men to quench with the shield of faith their 'hot, burning coals' and their missiles sharpened by knowledge (as they falsely call it), we accept the challenge."

Gregory of Nyssa, "An answer to Ablabius: that we should not think of saying there are three gods," ed. and trans. Cyril C. Richardson. Christology of the later Fathers, Library of Christian classics 3, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy in collaboration with Cyril C. Richardson (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1954), 256.

Stoom/Blephen, Stephen

2011-07-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

"Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?

"Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary."

James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 17 (Ithaca). Ulysses: the corrected text, ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (New York, NY: Random House, 1986), 564, ll. 741-744.

"if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable"

2011-07-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

"What relation existed between their ages?

"16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C."

James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 17 (Ithaca). Ulysses: the corrected text, ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (New York, NY: Random House, 1986), 555-556, ll. 446-461.

Abba Sisoes on "whether there is a punishment for men"

2011-07-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

"Three old men came to see Abba Sisoes, having heard about him. The first said to him, 'Father, how shall I save myself from the river of fire [(τοῦ πυρίνου ποταμοῦ; cf. Dn 7:10 on the ποταμὸς πυρός)]?' He did not answer him. The second said to him, 'Father, how can I be saved from the gnashing of teeth [(Mt 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Lk 13:28)] and the worm which dieth not [(Mk 9:48)]?' The third said, 'Father, what shall I do, for the remembrance of the outer darkness [(Mt 8:12; 22:13; 25:30)] is killing me?' By way of reply the old man said to them, 'For my part, I do not keep in mind the remembrance of any of these things, for God is compassionate and I hope [(ἐλπίζω)] that he will show me his mercy.' Hearing this, the old men went back offended. But the old man, not wishing to let them go away hurt, said to them, 'Blessed are you, my brothers; truly I envy you. The first speaks of the river of fire, the second of hell [(τοῦ Ταρτάρου; cf. Jb 40:20, 41:24, and Pr 30:16 LXX; 2 Pt 3:4)] and the third of darkness. Now if your spirit is filled with such remembrances, it is impossible for you to sin. What shall I do, then? I who am hard of heart and to whom it has not been granted so much as to know whether there is a punishment for men [(ὅτι κἀν ἐστι κόλασις τοῖς ἁνθρώποις; cf. Mt 25:46 on κόλασιν αἰώνιον)]; no doubt it is because of this that I am sinning all the time.' They prostrated themselves before him and said, 'Now we have seen exactly that of which we have heard tell.'"

Abba Sisoes 19 (PG 65, col. 397). This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Sisoès. The desert Christian: sayings of the Desert Fathers: the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 216-217. Given the clear quotations of and allusions to Scripture, Sisoes' two responses can't represent as straightforward an agnosticism as they seem to at first glance. Note that in Daniel the context is a sitting of the divine court in judgment and an opening of the books. I have not looked beyond Daniel for this "river of fire" imagery, though the references to a "lake of fire" in the Apocalypse (among the uses of fire for judgment generally) cannot be irrelevant.

For searchability:

"Three old men came to see Abba Sisoes, having heard about him. The first said to him, 'Father, how shall I save myself from the river of fire?' He did not answer him. The second said to him, 'Father, how can I be saved from the gnashing of teeth and the worm which dieth not?' The third said, 'Father, what shall I do, for the remembrance of the outer darkness is killing me?' By way of reply the old man said to them, 'For my part, I do not keep in mind the remembrance of any of these things, for God is compassionate and I hope that he will show me his mercy.' Hearing this, the old men went back offended. But the old man, not wishing to let them go away hurt, said to them, 'Blessed are you, my brothers; truly I envy you. The first speaks of the river of fire, the second of hell and the third of darkness. Now if your spirit is filled with such remembrances, it is impossible for you to sin. What shall I do, then? I who am hard of heart and to whom it has not been granted so much as to know whether there is a punishment for men; no doubt it is because of this that I am sinning all the time.' They prostrated themselves before him and said, 'Now we have seen exactly that of which we have heard tell.'"

It's the office, stupid

2011-07-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

"in Lumen gentium, the church’s self-definition in the Second Vatican Council, introduced in a council document the charismatic church along with the church of office, saying that charisms are carried by religious orders, by charismatic figures like St. Francis of Assisi, prophetic figures. They’re given a moment when they’re necessary for the reform of the church and for the renewal of the mission, but they’re not permanent.

"What’s permanent is the office, but it doesn’t lend itself very easily to charismatic figures. A bishop, a priest, isn’t a guru. He should disappear behind the office because he comes and goes, and someone else comes and goes. The office is what counts. And so from that perspective I am less concerned about personal memoirs than I am about the preservation of the office, as given to us from the Apostles…the faith and the office, because the office is part of the faith. This is a so called institutional church that somehow rides apart from the church as the body of the faithful. So, from that perspective, what I personally may have experienced in the midst of trying to fulfill the office is not all that important.

"John Paul II was very conscious of the office, but he fulfilled it in a very personal way that didn’t detract from the office. The danger is that if you become a guru, you’ll fulfill it in a way that does detract from the office, in which case you’ve failed."

Francis Cardinal George, OMI, in part two of David Gibson's "Setting boundaries: a conversation with Cardinal George," a Commonweal web exclusive dated 22 July 2011.

"no more than a very good Deist"

2011-07-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

"[William Wake's] last French interlocutor, the génovéfain P.-F. Le Courayer, distraut, preferred to rally to a reductive Anglicanism that could serve [as a] compromise in [the] guise of [a] project of reunion. This fooled no one and above all not the Queen of England, who wrote of Le Courayer: 'I fear he is no more than a very good Deist, as most the learned men when they cease being Papists prove.''"

Bernard Plongeron, "Les projets de réunion des communions chrétiennes du Directoire à l'Empire," Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France 66, no. 176 (1980), 17 (17-49), citing E. Préclin, L'union des églises gallicane et anglicane: une tentative au temps de Louis XIV: P.-F. Le Courayer (de 1681 à 1732) et Guillaume Wake (Paris, 1928), 160-162. The words of the Queen are taken directly from the Diary of Viscount Percival, afterwards first Earl of Egmont, rather than the French of this article: "Pray has Dr. Couraye a correspondence in France now? I answered, I did not know, for Mr. Duncombe had stolen him from me, not only for the winter, but now for the summer, which was a loss to me, because of his cheerful temper and learned conversation. I added that he understood a thing the clearest, and replied to it the quickest of any man I know. I wish, said she, I could prevail with him to do more than he does. You mean, Madam, said I, to declare himself a Protestant; but I think it very extraordinary to see a monk go so far as he has done in approaching us. And yet, said she, I fear he is gone too far; how so, replied I? Why I fear he is no more than a very good Deist, as most the learned men when they cease being Papists prove. Madam, said I, he is certainly a true and sincere Christian; for so I find him in all conversations I ever had with him. Then, said she, he is possibly of Erasmus's opinion, for whom I have a great esteem. I believe, replied I, that he is of his opinion, for he highly esteems him, and thinks him the greatest man the Church of Rome produced. I shall, said she, be desirous to see Dr. Couraye when he returns to London" (Diary of Viscount Percival, afterwards first Early of Egmont, vol. 1, 1730-1733, Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1920), 396).

"a teacher who does not transmit the two Testaments in their unity is a murderer of souls."

2011-07-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

"Duo uero ubera propterea dixit quoniam hic qui se doctorem profitetur, et animarum nutritorem, nisi de utroque testamento docuerit auditores, id est uetus et nouum ab uno omnipotenti Deo processisse, homicida effictur animarum."

"Indeed, the two breasts were referred to because he who considers himself a doctor and nurturer of souls, unless he has taught [his] hearers about each Testament, i.e. that the Old and the New have come from the one omnipotent God, [he] is made a murderer of souls."

Aponius, In canticvm canticorvm expositionem VI.27 (ll. 302-306) (CCSL 19, p. 149, and SC 421, p. 156; cf. PLS 1, col. 901), on Song of Songs 4:5, as quoted in Paolo Prosperi, “Novum in vetere latet. Vetus in novo patet: toward a renewal of typological exegesis,” Communio: international Catholic review 37, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 393 (389-424). PLS 1 has "hic [qui se] doctorem profitetur, et animarum nutritorem, nisi de utroque testamento docuerit auditores, id est, vetus et novum ab uno omnipotenti Deo processisse, homicida animarum est." Other variants in CCSL 19. There is much more of value here in context.

"'If you will, you can become all flame.'"

2011-07-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame [(γεγόνασιν οἱ δάκτυλοι αὐτοῦ, ὡς δέκα λαμπάδες πυρός· και λέγει αὐτῷ· Εἰ θέλεις, γενοῦ ὅλος ὡς πῦρ)].'"

Abba Joseph of Panephysis 7 (PG 65, col. 229). This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Joseph de Panépho. The desert Christian: sayings of the Desert Fathers: the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 103.

"'We have put the light burden on one side, that is to say, self-accusation, and we have loaded ourselves with a heavy one, that is to say, self-justification.'"

2011-07-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

Abba John the Dwarf 21 (PG 65, col. 212). This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Jean Colobos. The desert Christian: sayings of the Desert Fathers: the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 90.

"'God sells righteousness at a very low price to those who wish to buy it: a little piece of bread, a cloak of no value, a cup of cold water, a mite.'"

2011-07-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

Abba Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus 16 (PG 65, col. 168). This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Épiphane. The desert Christian: sayings of the Desert Fathers: the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 59.

General confession not necessarily a kind of poor-man's private confession

2011-07-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

"There are two consciences to be purged, the particular conscience that is purged in each in the secrecy of confession, and the public conscience that Saint Hilary calls [the] conscientiam publicam, the confession of which must be public. . . . Sometimes it is even the custom to confess in that action very publicly all of the kinds of sin capable of being committed by those most wicked and lost; and this is very well done, [which is] to say [(et cela estoit tres bien fait, pour dire)] that absolutely anyone [(qui que ce soit)] had been capable of committing them and must [therefore] hold himself responsible for them, [he] for whom it is here a question of making a full apology [(reparation d'honneur)] for all public sins, contagious and scandalous."

Jean Morin or François II de Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Rouen (it isn't clear to me which), as quoted in Nichole Lemaitre, "Confession privée et confession publique dans les paroisses du XVIe siècle," Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France 69, no. 183 (1983): 199n23 (189-208). I can't tell for sure which of the two cited here is the one from which these words are taken, but Lemaitre makes it clear that it was Francis I de Harlay who, in 1641, was the first to articulate this position. There is more on this (and its patristic roots) in context.

A word to the wise

2011-07-12T19:48:00.000-07:00

Notice pasted inside the front cover of a copy of the 23rd (i.e. 1957) edition of Novum Testamentum Graece, ed. Erwin Nestle and Kurt Aland (NA²³), and picked up second-hand at the Goodwill in Ballard, WA, in the year 2007 or thereabouts. This could have been a joke perpetrated by some student worker in the University Bookstore, or it could have been directed quite deliberately at the threat posed by a critical edition of the New Testament in principle (Rob Wall). But it could also have been inadvertent, an unforeseen (and therefore humorous) consequence of the mindless application of standard policy.

Keyed in so as to render this searchable:

TO THE STUDENTS:

The fact that this volume is being used as a textbook in your class does not mean that the University necessarily endorses its contents from the standpoint of morals, philosophy, theology, or scientific hypotheses. The position of Bob Jones University on these subjects is well known.

In order to standardize the work and validate the credits of the University, it is sometimes necessary to use textbooks whose contents the University cannot wholly endorse. You understand, of course, that acceptable textbooks in certain academic fields are very difficult to secure.

BOB JONES UNIVERSITY

Greenville, South Carolina

"in a manner that follows upon the Incarnation"

2011-07-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

"The Eucharist continues the Incarnation, but there are important differences between the two mysteries. In the Incarnation, when the Word became flesh, the divine nature did not transubstantiate the human nature. It did not take the place of the human being. To say that it did would fall into a monophysite interpretation of the mystery. To understand the Incarnation as a transubstantiation would imply that the human nature ceased to be but only appeared to be when united with the divine. Instead, the human substance, soul and body, is integrally present in the Incarnation. In this respect, the human substance in the Incarnation is different from the substance of bread in the Eucharist. The human substance, soul and body, remains intact, but the substance of the bread does not.

"Indeed, it is the very material and bodily quality of the Incarnation that calls for Transubstantiation in the Eucharist. If Christ is to be present in the sacrament, he must be present in his divine and human natures; if his human nature is to be present, it must be present in both soul and body. And if his body is to be present, the bread cannot be. The one thing cannot be two material substances, both bread and a human body, not even the glorified human body of Christ. If it is the one it cannot be the other. The two bodily natures exclude one another, and it is the bodily presence of Christ that is specifically emphasized in the words of consecration. The body of Christ is not with the bread but takes the place of the bread in the change we call Transubstantiation. If we deny this change, we deny the bodily presence of the glorified Christ, and hence we deny the presence of Christ. Without Transubstantiation the sacramental presence of Christ would not occur.

"In the Eucharist, therefore, it is the radical worldliness of the Incarnation, its materiality, that calls for Transubstantiation in the Eucharist. It is the incarnate divinity, the Word made flesh and not simply the divine nature, that is present in the Eucharist. If I may use the terms, the body of Christ, because it is material, 'displaces' or 'dislodges' the bread. Whatever matter may be, it takes place, it is located. Through Transubstantiation, the bodily presence of the transcendent divinity, in the person of the Son, takes its place among us in a manner that follows upon the Incarnation, and it does so by replacing the substance of bread and wine."

Robert Sokolowski, "The Eucharist and transubstantiation" (1997), in Christian faith and human understanding: studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the human person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 106-107 (95-112). I first encountered this in Communio: the international Catholic review 24, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 867-880. On pp. 100-101 Sokolowski names a few of the "other presences of Christ".

Chesterton on the recurrent necessity of a repromulgation of the natural law, or We shall fight for the obvious as if it were risible, even contemptible

2011-07-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

"Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed."

Gilbert K. Chesterton, Heretics (London and New York: John Lane: The Bodley Head, 1905), 304-305 (XX. Concluding remarks on the importance of orthodoxy). Here it is in the reprint of 1909.

"This," not "This bread"

2011-07-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

"St. Thomas. . . . observes that in the Eucharistic Prayer Christ is quoted not as saying, 'This bread is my body,' but 'This is my body.' If Christ had said 'this bread' was his body, then the thing referred to would still be bread, but the simple demonstrative pronoun 'this' without a noun implies that it is not bread any longer."

Robert Sokolowski, "The Eucharist and Transubstantiation" (1997), in Christian faith and human understanding: studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the human person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of American Press, 2006), 105-106 (95-112), citing Summa theologiae III.78.5.Resp. (Latin here), as well as 75.3 and 75.8.

Steck on "the nearness of the God who puts us . . . to the test"

2011-07-10T21:17:00.000-07:00

"Suffering as withdrawl of the blessing, as [a] taking back of what was [once graciously] given, is seen [by Israel] as the nearness of the God who puts [us]—[we] unwittingly—to the test [(des unwissentlich prüfenden Gottes)]. Suffering is seen—as here in our story [of the sacrifice of Isaac]—as the question whether God the Giver lives only in the gift, whether he is God only so long as the gift is there; or whether he is truly [the] God with no other gods besides him, the transcendent, binding, [and] unique One-who-stands-over-and-against of Israel [(Gegenüber Israels)], the [One] who permits no escape into an evil, into a fatum, besides the [command] simply 'to love God' [(das keine Ausflucht in ein Böses, in ein Fatum neben dem bloß 'lieben Gott' zuläßt)]. God puts Abraham to the test. In this event is all suffering, all withdrawl, all leave-taking, all the oppressive experience that man attempts to solve as [though it were] a riddle comprehended. . . . [And] now the contour of the First Commandment makes an impression via an event, the question to Abraham whether God is for him really God, or only the sweet, the extrapolated God, the power projected outwardly [in an attempt to ensure the] happiness he [so desperately] desires, the anthropomorphized God responsible for all inhumanity, . . . the made-up monster."

Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 85-86 (75-95).

Barney the Friendly (or Purple) Dinosaur as French Revolutionary

2011-07-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

"Anyone today who would worship with mimes and balloons, with instant folk music composed by commercial interests, is capable of singing the 'Ronde de la Décade' about the elimination of the sabbatarian calendar:

Oublions saint Roche et son chien
Saint Crépin et saint Crépinien
Et Monsieur le Cochon
Du saint en capuchon
Celébrons la Décade."

George William Rutler, "Church and state in Vianney's youth," Appendix I to Saint John Vianney: the Curé d'Ars today (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988), 228, citing Albert Mathiez, La théophilanthropie et le culte décadaire, 1796-1801 (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1904), 64, which punctuates and formats it differently, as in this lame attempt at a translation:

Let's forget St. Roch and his dog,
St. Crispin and St. Crispinian
     And Monsieur the Pig
     Of the saint in cowl.
     Let's celebrate the Décade, . . . etc. [(Refrain)]

I know absolutely nothing about the Republican calendar, or any of the word play here, but 5 Frimaire (formerly 25 November) was apparently the day of the pig. None of the Catholic saints mentioned in this stanza were associated with 25 November. "Du saint en capuchon" is obscure to me, but the pig was an attribute of St. Anthony of Egypt, so could he be the "saint en capuchon"? His feast day was 17 January.

Probably I've got this all wrong. Nonetheless, what Rutler makes of it stands alone.

"J'avise le bon Dieu et le bon Dieu m'avise."

2011-07-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

The farmer Louis Chaffangeon, as quoted by the Curé d'Ars, as quoted by Abbé Francis Trochu, in his The Curé d'Ars: St Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1859) according to the Acts of the process of canonization and numerous hitherto unpublished documents, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1951 [1927]), 184; and George William Rutler, in his Saint John Vianney: the Curé d'Ars today (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988), 151.

"When fashion inclines to silk underwear and denim outerwear, it is well to remember a man who had it the other way, his salute to an all-seeing God."

2011-07-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

George William Rutler, Saint John Vianney: the Curé d'Ars today (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988), 99. Yeah, but this is now a bit dated. Now fashion inclines to silk underwear as outerwear period. So is that a tribute, too?