Newbigin on the data

"How far, for instance, can the principle of democracy be carried in the sphere of religion?  A friend of mine was a member of a Sarvodaya community of the kind which I have described, in which, as elsewhere, the Lord's prayer was used for common worship.  One member of the group expressed his difficulties with the phrase 'forgive us our trespasses' which did not, he felt, correspond with any reality in his own experience.  The problem was brought up for discussion in the whole group, as the result of which my friend as the only Christian was very courteously requested to bring back a revised draft of the prayer.  He had difficulty in explaining his inability to do so.  The idea of something absolutely given, a datum in religion, threatened to disrupt a fellowship based on the principle of agreement by discussion and sharing."

J. E. Lesslie Newbigin, A faith for this one world? (New York:  Harper & Brothers, 1961), 33-34.  I've read only this one lecture ("Where shall we look for a world faith?").

Tushnet and Zaleski on the institutional church

"All institutions are 'structures of sin'; but without [them] there is no virtue."

Eve Tushnet, http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#779962140238887582.


"One still hears complaints about the 'institutional church'--the very expression betrays a parti pris.  But how would we know Christ without the institutional church?  Who else would preserve the great secret of the gospel for us through the centuries, keeping it safe in the wilderness of opinions?  We live in a world of institutions or in no world at all, and the institutional church is surely the greatest institution the world has ever known. . . .
"Do we have more reason to trust experimental, free-floating forms of religious life?  Give me an institution any day, a big sprawling, international one, where authority resides in structures and traditions and is not invested in particular personalities; where my own personality is of little account, and yet I get to keep it.  The ship of faith has its anchorage in the world, and I thank Constantine for it."

Carol Zaleski, "How my mind has changed:  Slow-motion conversion," Christian century 127, no. 1 (January 12, 2010): 30-31 (26-31).

Zaleski on the beauty of dogma

"The dogmatism I now wish to recant is the dogmatism that blinds us to the beauty of dogma."

Carol Zaleski, "How my mind has changed:  Slow-motion conversion," Christian century 127, no. 1 (January 12, 2010):  28 (26-31).

Gibbon on toleration

"The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful."

Edward Gibbon, The decline and fall of the Roman empire (1776-88), chap. 2, as reproduced in the 5th edition of the Oxford dictionary of quotations (1999).

Don't beat the Picards

"'Jehan, Jehan, cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum disciplina.  Jehan be good, Jehan be studious, Jehan don't stay out of college all night without legitimate excuse and your master's permission.  Don't beat the Picards, noli, Joannes, verberare Picardos.  Don't rot on the straw of the classroom like an illiterate donkey, quasi asinus illiteratus.  Jehan, let yourself be punished at your master's discretion.  Jehan, go to chapel every evening and sing an anthem with a verse and a prayer to Our Glorious Lady the Virgin Mary.'"

Jehan du Moulin, mocking his brother Dom Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Josas, in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris x.2, trans. John Sturrock ((New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1978), 394).  cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum disciplina:  "The doctrine of the doctors, the discipline of the disciples have grown slack" (Sturrock again).

Bardy on Tertullian on the argument from prescription

"One is naturally tempted to compare Tertullian with Saint Irenaeus. . . .  The bishop of Lyon and the priest of Carthage study often the same problems; combat the same heretics; utilize, order to refute error, the same argument from the apostolic origin of doctrines.  But an abyss separates the two men.  Saint Irenaeus is, above all, in everything he writes, the disciple of tradition.  He takes care not to innovate in any way.  He repeats--in an original manner, of course [(d'ailleurs)], and by placing on it the mark of his own mind--whatever he has learned from his masters; and, when he wishes to show where the truth is found, he is content to refer to the churches that preserve the apostolic teaching, [and] to the church of Rome above all.  Tertullian gives a new form to the argument from Saint Irenaeus; he imprints upon it the mark of his juridical mind and proposes a whole theory of prescription.  [The argument from] prescription is a good one [(valable)] to be sure, but the apostolic authority that founds it has, of necessity, faded into the background.  What catches one's eye is the new form that the reasoning and the juridicism that inspires [this argument] has imposed [(prise, taken)].  Is it any surprise, then, if, having become a Montanist, Tertullian abandons the argument from prescription?  It is not he who penned the formula Non est de præscriptione arguendum sed de ratione vincendum.  But this formula of Cyprian does give expression to the thought of Tertullian as it appears in his later writings, [and] in De pudicitia above all.  Of what value is prescription, if reason calls it into question [(lui donne tort)]?  Or, again, if the Holy Spirit adds new teachings to those of the apostles?  Such is in fact the final step in an evolution that one might wish [had been] less rigid.  Carried away by the exaggeration of a merciless logic, Tertullian becomes the doctor of private inspiration after having been that of fidelity to the traditional teachings."

G. Bardy, "Tertullien," Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 15.1 (1946), col. 167.  The argument from prescription is the argument from "Uninterrupted use or possession from time immemorial" (Oxford English dictionary), and Bardy elaborates on this, following Tertullian, in col. 146, pars. 2-3:  "in the matter of dogma, possession is equivalent to title."  And "The agreement of [widely scattered] communities among themselves confirms the proof", such that "the argument is solid.  The merit of Tertullian is to have found the definitive formulation of [it]:  Quod apud multos unum invenitur, non est erratum, sed traditum" (De præscr. 27; Bardy cites also 37).  I haven't read the whole article, but went looking for it in response to J. Bellamy, "Assomption de la Sainte Vierge," Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 1 (1903), col. 2135:  "In the matter of tradition and of beliefs, it is in the Church above all that prescription is equivalent to title. . . ."

Durand on the yield of the prioritization of relation over procession in St. Thomas

"The yield of a nuanced analysis of the different facets of the Trinitarian relation allows Thomas to honor a properly relational conception of the person of the Father. In this he distinguishes himself from Bonaventure, and leads to term the first sketch of [the] solution supplied by Albert the Great.
"The connection between procession [(read also emanation, origin)] and relation is more subtle in Thomas than in Bonaventure because Aquinas manages to avoid a univocal solution. At the point at which the Franciscan master opted for a subordination of relation with respect to emanation, the Dominican gives priority to the relation insofar as it subsists [(en tant que'elle subsiste)], while underscoring that relation qua relation [(en tant que rapport)] is indeed founded on procession.
"This speculative tour de force leads to a theology of the Father originale, and heads off an excessive reliance on the model of emanation [(soustraite au seul modèle de l'émanation)]. The Father is no longer characterized so much as first hypostasis and fontal plenitude as Father of the Son."

Fr. Emmanuel Durand, O.P., “Le Père en sa relation constitutive au Fils selon saint Thomas d’Aquin.” Revue thomiste 107, no. 1 (2007): 60 (47-72). "The complex resolution of the relation between origin and relation finds itself thus aligned with an advanced understanding of the hypostasis of the Father. The relation of paternity is not a simple consequence of the act of generation; it is the first element of analysis appropriate to the signification of the perfection of the Father. Thus Thomas recalls in Summa theologiae [I.33.2.ad 2] that "generation is signified as in progress [(en devenir)], but paternity signifies the achievement of generation [(Generatio . . . significatur ut in fieri: sed paternitas significat complementum generationis, generation signifies something in process of being made, while paternity signifies the complement of [(i.e. that which completes)] generation (FEDP))]. Our way of knowing is tied naturally to becoming, but we have at our disposal . . . resources for, on the one hand, purifying the concepts of movement and change that we employ and, on the other hand, completing these concepts in other registers. This is precisely the function of relation in regard to procession in the theology of St. Thomas" (61). Cf. http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2009/12/durand-on-aquinas-on-divine-paternity.html and http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2009/11/calling-fathers-father.html.