"Some men's Wit is like a dark lanthorn, which serves their own turn and guides their own way: but is never known (according to the Scripture Phrase) either to shine forth before Men, or to glorify their Father in heaven."
Alexander Pope, "Thoughts on various subjects," LXXXI (Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in prose (1741), II: 337), as quoted by Melvyn New, Richard Davies, and W. G. Day, in their Notes to The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, vol. 3 of the edition of Tristram Shandy in the Florida edition of the works of Laurence Sterne (Gainsville, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1984), 233. Still, I would settle for the company of Tristram's uncle Toby: "—What a conjucture was here lost!—My father in one of his best explanatory moods—in eager pursuit of a metaphysical point into the very regions, where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encompassed it about;—my uncle Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world; his head like a smoke-jack;—the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter!" (Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., III.18-19 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 293)).
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Getting right to the point
"Lord God, maker of heaven and earth and of all created things, you make your just ones holy and you justify sinners who confess your name. Hear us as we humbly pray to you: give us eternal joy with your saints."
Prayer after (the third) Psalm 150, Morning prayer, Sunday, Week II (Christian prayer, p. 783). I love the audacity here.
Prayer after (the third) Psalm 150, Morning prayer, Sunday, Week II (Christian prayer, p. 783). I love the audacity here.
The CCC on the Opus Dei
"Creation was fashioned with a view to the sabbath and therefore for the worship and adoration of God. Worship is inscribed in the order of creation. As the rule of St. Benedict says, nothing should take precedence over 'the work of God,' that is, solemn worship. This indicates the right order of human concerns."
Catechism of the Catholic Church #347. "Creatio intuitu sabbati effecta est et propterea intuitu cultus et adorationis Dei. Cultus est in creationis ordine inscriptus. «Nihil operi Dei praeponatur», dicit sancti Benedicti Regula, ita rectum sollicitudinum humanarum denotans ordinem."
Catechism of the Catholic Church #347. "Creatio intuitu sabbati effecta est et propterea intuitu cultus et adorationis Dei. Cultus est in creationis ordine inscriptus. «Nihil operi Dei praeponatur», dicit sancti Benedicti Regula, ita rectum sollicitudinum humanarum denotans ordinem."
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Sterne on the clergy
"like French politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field."
Walter Sterne on pulpit delivery in the Church of England, in Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266). "I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that my heart was so full.—That was the very reason, Trim, replied my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop [(a Catholic)], would take their part in what they deliver a deeply as this poor fellow has done,—as their compositions are fine;—[I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop]—I maintain it,—that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole world:—But alas! continued my father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, like French politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field."
Walter Sterne on pulpit delivery in the Church of England, in Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266). "I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that my heart was so full.—That was the very reason, Trim, replied my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop [(a Catholic)], would take their part in what they deliver a deeply as this poor fellow has done,—as their compositions are fine;—[I deny it, quoth Dr. Slop]—I maintain it,—that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole world:—But alas! continued my father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, like French politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field."
Sterne on the subordination of conscience
"'your conscience is not a law:—No, God and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;—not, like an Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his own passions,—but like a British judge in this land of liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he knows already written.'"
Yorick's Sermon on conscience; Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266).
Yorick's Sermon on conscience; Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266).
Sterne on the New atheists?
"'Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other cause but quietness' sake.'"
Yorick's Sermon on conscience; Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266).
Yorick's Sermon on conscience; Laurence Sterne, The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., II.17 (GBWW, 1st ed., 1952, vol. 36, p. 266).
Friday, January 16, 2009
Levy on a crucial principle of complementarity
"the West and the East. . . . manifestly designate the same state-of-thing under wordings that merely sound mutually exclusive. 'The vision of God according to essence,' as Augustine conceives it, does not designate a vision of God that would comprehend uno intuitu the wholeness of the divine Being. Yet this type of vision is precisely what the Eastern Fathers reject when they say that no created mind will ever be able to contemplate the essence of God. Correlatively, the 'vision of God according to the energeiai,' as conceived by the Greek Fathers, does not designate the vision of an entity numerically different from the divine essence (God is uncomposed). Yet this type of vision is precisely what Augustine rejects when he states that operations and essence are one in God. Once again, it is worthwhile emphasizing, in opposition to Bradshaw, that this difference in the wordings is not due to Augustine's ignorance of the philosophical patterns that inspired the Greek Fathers, but to his original way of reassuming these patterns. The fact that the interpretations of Augustine and of the Eastern Fathers, despite their difference of approach, coincide from a doctrinal point of view, is probably the best tribute possible to the idea that dogmatic unity within Christianity does not imply theoretical uniformity."
Antoine Levy, O.P., "An introduction to divine relativity: beyond David Bradshaw's Aristotle east and west," Thomist 72, no. 2 (April 2008): 219-220. The Orthodox distinction between the ousia and the energeiai is what one must stress when one theologizes from that (or God's) side of "the divine relativity". But their unity (and therefore the visio Dei, i.e. essentiae) is what one must stress when one theologizes from this (or man's) side. "there is no third point of view" from which these two complementary, yet "mutually exclusive" perspectives can both be embraced simultaneously: "one must choose [either] one system of reference or the other", either the East or the West. Yet doctrinally, they are identical (229). Constitutive of this complementarity is what Levy calls "the Porphryian Principle" (196 ff.): the asymetricality of the cosmological relation grounded in the utter (but therefore immanence-enabling) transcendence of God ("a relationship from B to A, but no relationship from A to B" (200); "created beings are in-a-state-of-relationship, en skehesei, whereas God is foreign-to-any-relationship, askhetos" (209); etc.). And an insistence upon this asymetricality is as fundamental to the East as it is to the West. Or so Levy.
Antoine Levy, O.P., "An introduction to divine relativity: beyond David Bradshaw's Aristotle east and west," Thomist 72, no. 2 (April 2008): 219-220. The Orthodox distinction between the ousia and the energeiai is what one must stress when one theologizes from that (or God's) side of "the divine relativity". But their unity (and therefore the visio Dei, i.e. essentiae) is what one must stress when one theologizes from this (or man's) side. "there is no third point of view" from which these two complementary, yet "mutually exclusive" perspectives can both be embraced simultaneously: "one must choose [either] one system of reference or the other", either the East or the West. Yet doctrinally, they are identical (229). Constitutive of this complementarity is what Levy calls "the Porphryian Principle" (196 ff.): the asymetricality of the cosmological relation grounded in the utter (but therefore immanence-enabling) transcendence of God ("a relationship from B to A, but no relationship from A to B" (200); "created beings are in-a-state-of-relationship, en skehesei, whereas God is foreign-to-any-relationship, askhetos" (209); etc.). And an insistence upon this asymetricality is as fundamental to the East as it is to the West. Or so Levy.
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