Saturday, July 14, 2018

"an information that goes beyond the [entropic] disinformation from which death results"

La Croix
"The world's oldest sepulchres, a hundred thousand years from us [in time], already give voice to th[is hope] in a symbolic language of flowers, provisions, and jewels.  By honoring its dead, by closing their tombs, humanity keeps its eyes open for [(garde les yeux ouverts sur)] an information that goes beyond the [entropic] disinformation from which death results."

     Gustave Martelet, S.J., "Information du monde et résurrection du Christ," in Penser la foi:  recherches en théologie aujourd'hui:  mélanges offerts à Joseph Moingt, ed. Joseph Doré and Christoph Theobald (Paris:  Éditions du Cerf/Assas Éditions, 1993), 1055-1056 (1053-1061).

Honor

Source

PROSPERO
Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition
Worthily purchased, take my daughter.  But
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be ministered,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both.  Therefore take heed,
As Hymen's lamps shall light you.

FERDINAND
As I hope
For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,
With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den,
The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion
Our worser genius can, shall never melt
Mine honour into lust, to take away
The edge of that day's celebration,
When I shall think or Phoebus' steeds are foundered,
Or night kept chained below.

     William Shakespeare, The tempest 4.1.13-31.

Prospero on Caliban

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
Nuture can never stick; on whom my pains
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost; . . .

     Shakespeare, The tempest 4.1.188-190.  Cf., however, Prospero's "pardon" and Caliban's "trim", at 5.1.288-294.

Friday, July 13, 2018

The divine wisdom is "the art . . . of bringing the divine love to its complete realization."

". . . so nennen wir mit Recht neben der göttlichen Liebe die Weisheit als die Kunst gleichsam die göttliche Liebe vollkommen zu realisiren."

     F. D. E. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube () par. 165.1.  I was put onto this by Janet Martin Soskice, "Being and love:  Schleiermacher, Aquinas and Augustine," Modern theology 34, no. 3 (July 2018):  490 (480-491).

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Saturday, June 30, 2018

"If favor is shown to the wicked. . . ."

"when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.  If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals perversely and does not see the majesty of the Lord."


כַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר מִשְׁפָּטֶ֨יךָ֙ לָאָ֔רֶץ צֶ֥דֶק לָמְד֖וּיֹשְׁבֵ֥י תֵבֵֽל׃
יֻחַ֤ן רָשָׁע֙ בַּל־לָמַ֣ד צֶ֔דֶק בְּאֶ֥רֶץ נְכֹחֹ֖ות יְעַוֵּ֑ל וּבַל־יִרְאֶ֖ה גֵּא֥וּת יְהוָֽה׃


     Is 26:9b-10 RSV.  However this is to be fit into its context, and into biblical teaching as a whole, it makes a point not widely aired today.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

A thoroughly admirable confession: Ian Bradley on some of the ways in which he misappropriated "Celtic Christianity"

". . . research by myself and others has made me realise that the original book was coloured too much by the naive zeal of the new convert and was overly romantic and simplistic in some of what it said both about particular themes and also about the uniqueness and particularity of Celtic Christianity.  I have also become more cautious about the use of this phrase and the concept that it denotes. . . .
". . . I am, for example, no longer inclined to view Celtic Christianity as either feminine—or eco-friendly, light on sin and judgement or particularly affirmative of the natural world and the intrinsic goodness of humanity.  I am much more conscious of the orthodoxy of the faith of the early Irish monks, their sense of human sinfulness and the importance of penitence and their belief in the awesome power as well as the presence of God.  I realize that, like others who wrote in those early heady days of the modern Celtic Christian revival, I was somewhat careless in conflating ancient and relatively modern sources and seeing them all as representing a single continuing entity.  I was also too ready to project my own dreams and prejudices into the mists of the far-distant past. . . .
". . . I have found my own very liberal Christian faith seriously challenged rather than reinforced and I have been made much more conscious of my own sin and frailty and of the themes of judgement and accountability.  This has been a much harder and more disturbing journey than the one which originally took me on to the Celtic way.  Maybe that is because I am older than when I first embarked on it but I think it is also because I have let the voices of the Celtic saints, their followers and chroniclers, speak to me more clearly and listened to them with less of a preconceived agenda about what I was hoping to hear from them.  If they have not quite turned this unrepentant old liberal into a conservative evangelical, they have certainly forced me [to] think much more seriously about subjects which are not naturally congenial to me. . . .
     "25 years on from The Celtic Way, this new book offers a more sober and measured appreciation of a significant tradition, perhaps one less exceptional and unique than I once thought, but nonetheless distinctive and important."

     Ian Bradley, Following the Celtic way:  a new assessment of Celtic Christianity (London:  Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2018), vii, ix-x, xi.  Cf. this.  Of the books he has published since The Celtic way first came out in 1993, Bradley cites especially Celtic Christianity:  making myths and dreaming dreams (1999) ("my most academic and deconstructionist work in this area") and Colonies of heaven =Celtic Christian communities:  live the tradition (2000).