God's face like a countenance beaming forth from the darkness: in order to see it we throw everything we possess into the fire - the world, our joys, our hopes. The flame leaps forth, consumes it all, and in its glow the beloved Face lights up. But the flame dies down, and we feed it with what little remains to us: honor, success, our will, the intellect, our temperament, finally our very self: absume et suscipe - "take and receive". This is not simple self-giving, but, increasingly, the knowledge that I am being taken, that I must surrender. Grace is everything: the moment of God's appearing; grace also the every sacrifice the fire snatches from me.
from The Grain of Wheat - Aphorisms by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Ignatius Press
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Having a Little More Hart
Indulging my current enthusiasm for the writings of David Bentley Hart, I'm beginning to read his book "The Beauty of the Infinite". In the introduction I read these following paragraphs and thought them worthy of being passed on.
"As Origen observed, the marvel of Christ is that, in a world where power, riches, and violence seduce hearts and compel assent, he persuades and prevails not as a tyrant, an armed assailant, or a man of wealth, but simply as a teacher of God and his love.... Christ is a persuasion, a form of evoking desire, and the whole force of the Gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also piece: that the desire of awakened by the shape of Christ and his Church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a greater, as an episode in the endless epic of power. Christian rhetoric, then, is already a question to itself; for if theology cannot concede the intrinsic violence of rhetoric as such, neither can it avoid the task of framing an account of how its own rhetoric may be conceived as the peaceful offer of a peaceful evangel, and not as... a practice of persuasion for persuasion's sake, violence, coercion and its most enchanting. Such an account must inevitably make an appeal to beauty.
What Christian thought offers the world is not a set of "rational" arguments that... force ascent from others by leaving them ... at a loss for words; rather, it stands before the world principally with the story it tells concerning God and creation, the form of Christ, the loveliness of the practice of Christian charity -- and the rhetorical richness of its idiom. Making its appeal first to the eye and heart, as the only way it may "command" assent, the Church cannot separate truth from rhetoric, or from beauty." (pp. 4)
Tell the story, display the form of Christ, exhibit the lovliness of Christian charity. How lofty the goal. How attainable!
"As Origen observed, the marvel of Christ is that, in a world where power, riches, and violence seduce hearts and compel assent, he persuades and prevails not as a tyrant, an armed assailant, or a man of wealth, but simply as a teacher of God and his love.... Christ is a persuasion, a form of evoking desire, and the whole force of the Gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also piece: that the desire of awakened by the shape of Christ and his Church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a greater, as an episode in the endless epic of power. Christian rhetoric, then, is already a question to itself; for if theology cannot concede the intrinsic violence of rhetoric as such, neither can it avoid the task of framing an account of how its own rhetoric may be conceived as the peaceful offer of a peaceful evangel, and not as... a practice of persuasion for persuasion's sake, violence, coercion and its most enchanting. Such an account must inevitably make an appeal to beauty.
What Christian thought offers the world is not a set of "rational" arguments that... force ascent from others by leaving them ... at a loss for words; rather, it stands before the world principally with the story it tells concerning God and creation, the form of Christ, the loveliness of the practice of Christian charity -- and the rhetorical richness of its idiom. Making its appeal first to the eye and heart, as the only way it may "command" assent, the Church cannot separate truth from rhetoric, or from beauty." (pp. 4)
Tell the story, display the form of Christ, exhibit the lovliness of Christian charity. How lofty the goal. How attainable!
A Little More Hart
This is another quote from David Bentley Hart's book, "In The Aftermath". The quote is from an artilcle (later to become a book, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?) on the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It gave me a different view of all the bad stuff that happens to the helpless.
"CHRISTIANS OFTEN find it hard to adopt the spiritual idiom of the New Testament - to think in terms, that is, of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, of Christ's triumph over the principalities of this world, of the overthrow of hell. All Christians know, of course, that it is through God's self-outpouring upon the cross that they are saved, and that they are made able by grace to participate in Christ's suffering; but this should never be allowed to obscure what is revealed at Easter: that the incarnate God enters "this cosmos" not simply to disclose its immanent rationality, but to break the boundaries of fallen nature asunder, and to refashion creation after its ancient beauty - wherein neither sin nor death had any place. Christian thought has traditionally, of necessity, defined evil as a privation of the good, possessing no essence or nature of its own, a purely parasitic corruption of reality; hence it can have no positive role to play in God's determination of himself or purpose for his creatures (even if by economy God can bring good from evil); it can in no way supply any imagined deficiency in God's or creation's goodness. Being infinitely sufficient in himself, God had no need of a passage through sin and death to manifest his glory in his creatures or to join them perfectly to himself. This is why it is misleading even to say, as did the scholar mentioned above, that the drama of fall and redemption will make the final state of things more glorious than it might otherwise have been. No less metaphysically incoherent - though immeasurably more vile - is the suggestion of that Calvinist that God requires suffering and death to reveal certain of his attributes (capricious cruelty, perhaps? injustice? a depraved sense of humor?); it is precisely sin, suffering, and death that blind us to God's true nature.
There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that everything that occurs at the level of what Aquinas calls secondary causality - in nature or history - is governed not only by a transcendent providence, but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. But consider the price at which that comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of - but entirely by way of - every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines (and so on). It seems a strange thing to find peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome. Better, it seems to me, the view of the ancient Gnostics: however ludicrous their beliefs, they at least, when they concluded that suffering and death were essential aspects of the creator's design, had the good sense to yearn to know a higher God.
As for comfort, when we seek it, l can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes - and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, "Behold, I make all things new.” (In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments, Erdmans, 2009, pp. 115-117)
The author makes a statement (somewhere in thiis book) that he is not pastoral. I think that last line contradicts that notion.
"CHRISTIANS OFTEN find it hard to adopt the spiritual idiom of the New Testament - to think in terms, that is, of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, of Christ's triumph over the principalities of this world, of the overthrow of hell. All Christians know, of course, that it is through God's self-outpouring upon the cross that they are saved, and that they are made able by grace to participate in Christ's suffering; but this should never be allowed to obscure what is revealed at Easter: that the incarnate God enters "this cosmos" not simply to disclose its immanent rationality, but to break the boundaries of fallen nature asunder, and to refashion creation after its ancient beauty - wherein neither sin nor death had any place. Christian thought has traditionally, of necessity, defined evil as a privation of the good, possessing no essence or nature of its own, a purely parasitic corruption of reality; hence it can have no positive role to play in God's determination of himself or purpose for his creatures (even if by economy God can bring good from evil); it can in no way supply any imagined deficiency in God's or creation's goodness. Being infinitely sufficient in himself, God had no need of a passage through sin and death to manifest his glory in his creatures or to join them perfectly to himself. This is why it is misleading even to say, as did the scholar mentioned above, that the drama of fall and redemption will make the final state of things more glorious than it might otherwise have been. No less metaphysically incoherent - though immeasurably more vile - is the suggestion of that Calvinist that God requires suffering and death to reveal certain of his attributes (capricious cruelty, perhaps? injustice? a depraved sense of humor?); it is precisely sin, suffering, and death that blind us to God's true nature.
There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that everything that occurs at the level of what Aquinas calls secondary causality - in nature or history - is governed not only by a transcendent providence, but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. But consider the price at which that comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of - but entirely by way of - every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines (and so on). It seems a strange thing to find peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome. Better, it seems to me, the view of the ancient Gnostics: however ludicrous their beliefs, they at least, when they concluded that suffering and death were essential aspects of the creator's design, had the good sense to yearn to know a higher God.
As for comfort, when we seek it, l can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes - and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, "Behold, I make all things new.” (In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments, Erdmans, 2009, pp. 115-117)
The author makes a statement (somewhere in thiis book) that he is not pastoral. I think that last line contradicts that notion.
Friday, January 8, 2010
The reference to the Carthaginians in the previous post, caused me to find in Wikipedia on Carthage, the following:
"Modern archeological excavations have been interpreted as confirming Plutarch's reports of Carthaginian child sacrifice.[24] In a single child cemetery called the Tophet by archaeologists, an estimated 20,000 urns were deposited between 400 BC and 200 BC, with the practice continuing until the early years of the Christian period. The urns contained the charred bones of newborns and in some cases the bones of fetuses and 2-year-olds. These remains have been interpreted to mean that in the cases of stillborn babies, the parents would sacrifice their youngest child. There is a clear correlation between the frequency of cremation and the well-being of the city. In bad times (war, poor harvests) cremations became more frequent, but it is not possible to know why. The correlation could be because bad times inspired the Carthaginians to pray for divine intervention (via child sacrifice), or because bad times increased child mortality, leading to more child burials (via cremation)."
Our aborted children are treated as detritus for the garbage dump. Why? Since Christianity has "deconstructed" religious justifications for the sacrifice of innocents, such killing can only be continued when Christian interdicts are extirpated from conscience. Thus does hostility to Christianity grow.
"Modern archeological excavations have been interpreted as confirming Plutarch's reports of Carthaginian child sacrifice.[24] In a single child cemetery called the Tophet by archaeologists, an estimated 20,000 urns were deposited between 400 BC and 200 BC, with the practice continuing until the early years of the Christian period. The urns contained the charred bones of newborns and in some cases the bones of fetuses and 2-year-olds. These remains have been interpreted to mean that in the cases of stillborn babies, the parents would sacrifice their youngest child. There is a clear correlation between the frequency of cremation and the well-being of the city. In bad times (war, poor harvests) cremations became more frequent, but it is not possible to know why. The correlation could be because bad times inspired the Carthaginians to pray for divine intervention (via child sacrifice), or because bad times increased child mortality, leading to more child burials (via cremation)."
Our aborted children are treated as detritus for the garbage dump. Why? Since Christianity has "deconstructed" religious justifications for the sacrifice of innocents, such killing can only be continued when Christian interdicts are extirpated from conscience. Thus does hostility to Christianity grow.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Enjoying My Christmas Presents
In the past several days I have begun to use my Christmas presents. The first I used was my new cordless drill. I used it to put together a new magazine rack, also a Christmas present, for my office. The next of my presents to be used was one of the books given to me, a book by David Bentley Hart. The book is entitled "In The Aftermath" and consists of a series of essays previously written by the author in various magazines.
I would like to preface the following quotes from the first two or three essays in this book with the reasons why I find these particular quotations meaningful. One of my projects during the past several years has been a systematic reading of Balthasar's "Glory of the Lord", the first part of a trilogy in which he undertakes an attempt to restore beauty and the transcendent to its rightful place alongside the good and the true. Given our amorous relationship with reason and science, we have lost our awe of the transcendent.
The first two of the quotes below, I think, speak to this issue. I know that many religious writers have expressed their thoughts about these issues and it's been my experience that people are unwilling to rehash issues such as homosexuality and abortion. We Christians find ourselves less strident in promulgating our ideas regarding these issues because we find ourselves in the midst of those who scream intolerance when they are raised. I'm offering these quotes not to incite anyone to action or to incite those in disagreement to a greater fury, but rather because I find these ideas especially well expressed by this author. The third quote is taken from the writings of a little-known historian, Maurice Cowling (at least he is little known by me). Hart reviewed one of Cowling’s works and I thought it was a rather interesting, if cold and impersonal, definition of Christianity and so I'm sharing it with you.
Quote 1
“And everyone with some consciousness of cultural history should certainly dread whatever rough beast it is that is being bred in our ever coarser, crueler, more inarticulate, more vacuous popular culture; because, cloaked in its anodyne insipience, lies a world increasingly devoid of merit, wit, kindness, imagination, or charity.”
Quote 2
“How, after all, should Christians regard the present age when, in America alone, more than 40 million babies have been killed in the womb since the Supreme Court invented the right to abortion, and when there are many who see these deaths not just as tragic necessities, but as blameless consequences of a moral social triumph? When the Carthaginians were prevailed upon to cease sacrificing their babies, at least the place vacated by Baal reminded them that they should seek the divine above themselves; but our culture offers up its babies to “my” freedom of choice, to “me.” Surely a Christian must doubt that any other society’s moral vision has ever shown itself to be more degenerate.”
Quote 3
"Christianity is a cultural and spiritual ecology, an impulse towards the ideal or ultimate that takes form in the bones and sinews (the cultural grammar) of a civilization, as well as a corporate and private habit of orientations, limits, practices, and possibilities -- all of which allow for various social philosophies to arise and flourish, but which cannot be reduced to any of them."
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Happy New Year!
The first decade of the new millenium is over. What have I accomplished? Can I say I am closer to God? Have I helped my fellow man? How do I stand with my family and friends? What amends should I be making? Do I have hope in the future? Love in my heart? At a minimum I must ask for mercy and aim to do better. Let us begin each day anew, each decade anew, each moment anew!
Friday, December 18, 2009
What Makes Us Real
Meghan Daum in today's Tribune commented on the demise of Kirkus Review, noting that Kirkus paid for its reviews but that nowadays all one sees is free "customer" reviews on the web, from Amazon to Yelp. She thinks "the entire idea of what constitutes value -- has been turned on its ear. . . ." "No longer an intellectual or aesthetic or logical exercise drawing from objective facts (e.g., what's in the book), careful observations and real expertise (sometimes called connoisseurship), reviewing is more and more simply a vehicle for personal narrative." "Too often, the pretense of sharing advice devolves into oversharing the contours of one's navel."
The "democratization of value" means that anything goes and everyone is on display. I turned the radio to a pop station this morning on my way to work, and heard the radio "personalities" taking calls from and about "men who have lost the desire for sex, and why." A female caller talked about her own experience of getting engaged to one man, then finding herself "falling in love with another" and accepting an engagement ring from him too. "And just last night I started a bit of a fling" with another man. At least the radio hosts advised her to give both rings back. No comment on her lifestyle. But it's pretty clear she's lost the ability to "evaluate" value.
Who is the reviewer, the chronicler of our lives? Is it the person(s) we hope will see us on facebook or twitter etc.? The man we expect to entice, whose interest we want to spark? For if we live in the interest of another, aren't we really living?
To the contrary, if we live with "faces unveiled" to our God, we live in His loving, life-giving gaze. Then we don't have to preen and prance about, hoping for that other's notice. We dwell secure in in His gaze.
The "democratization of value" means that anything goes and everyone is on display. I turned the radio to a pop station this morning on my way to work, and heard the radio "personalities" taking calls from and about "men who have lost the desire for sex, and why." A female caller talked about her own experience of getting engaged to one man, then finding herself "falling in love with another" and accepting an engagement ring from him too. "And just last night I started a bit of a fling" with another man. At least the radio hosts advised her to give both rings back. No comment on her lifestyle. But it's pretty clear she's lost the ability to "evaluate" value.
Who is the reviewer, the chronicler of our lives? Is it the person(s) we hope will see us on facebook or twitter etc.? The man we expect to entice, whose interest we want to spark? For if we live in the interest of another, aren't we really living?
To the contrary, if we live with "faces unveiled" to our God, we live in His loving, life-giving gaze. Then we don't have to preen and prance about, hoping for that other's notice. We dwell secure in in His gaze.
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