speaking of Origen...

Here you go:

Father Sergius...

     Fr Sergius is indeed a kind of modern Origen - brilliant, combative, insanely erudite, visionary, occasionally daft, and intoxicated by Jesus. I don't know that either of 'em are heretics in the strict sense, though they do go rogue in the more speculative flights. Those flights, though, are offered in service to the Church of Jesus Christ, and thus motivated by love and not a desire to divide the Body. So, all in all, I'd say they're both great servants of the Church. When and if they erred, they did so for the right reasons. I wish all of us had the intellectual, moral, and spiritual courage and ardor these two Fathers manifest in even their minor works.

i can't work a cute reference to 'Hart' into the title...

     I know little enough of James K A Smith, except that he's at Calvin College and writes books on vaguely philosophical topics. To be completely open here, I've never been able to read more than a paragraph by the man without drifting into a fitful sleep punctuated by bad socialist dreams.

     I also have little concern with staying within the Reformed tradition. Of course, whether the positions taken by those at Calvinist International are fair representations of the Reformed Tradition in its fullness is debatable. In any event, they have of late gotten into what was at first an amusing tangle with one David Bentley Hart, a tangle in which they have the losing part. As a result, one Peter Escalante has doubled down repeatedly as he tries with more and more obvious vanity to win a rhetorical and philosophical battle that is beyond him. 

    I will not take up Hart's defense. Suffice it to say, I don't always agree with Hart, but in this case I think he has the better part. In fact, it's not clear to me that Hart isn't having some fun with this tempest in a thimble. He has obviously baited his opponents, offering the most exaggerated statements mixed in with his more cogent arguments, and those guys have just as obviously taken the bait. Escalante in particular seems to be witlessly and pointlessly misreading Hart.  
     Does Escalante really imagine that Hart would assert 'that apocalyptic theopanies are somehow required in order to understand that jumping off a bridge is a bad idea'? Or that jumping off a bridge is, in terms of discernment, the same as making judgments about fraught moral matters amongst communities that have received decades of false catechesis? (Make no mistake, one needn't go to any kind of church to receive catechesis in matters of morals and what we might loosely call theology, inasmuch as all people have their gods, whatever they call 'em). 

     Oh well. I offer the following rambling yet mercifully brief reflection on this now tedious affair.

     It's not so obvious that a narrowly construed Aristotelian-Thomist understanding of natural revelation, and thus natural law, is representative of the larger catholic tradition of thought in these matters. (Note well that I didn't say anything specific about Thomas or Aristotle; we're dealing with a specific school of interpretation here, one that is myopic and philosophically daft.) 

     This is relevant because the mission of Calvinist International implies that they seek to offer the broadest possible consensus in matters of doctrine and philosophy. Again, they explicitly assert that the Reformed tradition, at its best, represents this 'mere Christianity', a catholic consensus capable of uniting diverse Christians through an irenic approach to matters often made divisive. 

     Of course, it remains to be demonstrated by anything they've said or done that the Reformed tradition, and the particular construal of it they find convincing, is itself that consensus, that 'mere Christianity' all of us need. As an assumption it hardly holds water; it must be demonstrated through both historical and dogmatic argument. Without such an argument, folks like me who stand outside the Reformed tradition in general, and CI's particular place within that tradition, have no reason to listen to 'em. 

     Of course, here we get at the crux of their polemics in this running skirmish - on what ground of consensual 'reason' can we meet to hash this out? I don't agree that 'natural knowledge' and 'reason' are quite what CI makes 'em out to be. But of course, that's because I'm being unreasonable. Perhaps I'm even a Kierkegaardian who imagines that all truth is ultimately subjective (for the Dane, that was an attempt to salvage particular subjectivity from the ravages of the Hegelian system; whether he succeeded is another matter), and therefore an inward something not subject to public scrutiny and argument. Perhaps I delight in imaginary apocalypticalist phenomenologies. Maybe I believe in faeries in the forest. Certainly I deny the givenness of the transcendentals of being, Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, and their convertibility. (The fact that I, like Hart, have spent years writing about that can not be allowed to play any part in the skirmish at hand.) 

     Perhaps I'm overdoing it, but I doubt it, because it's precisely such nonsense that has dominated the essays on CI.

     The fact is that Hart's position grows out of a larger construal of the truly catholic than the folks at Calvinist International seem able to grasp. This does not make Hart always and ever right in all his particulars; again, I would never say that. It does mean, however, that the assumptions and inferences and arguments he offers have sailed right past Escalante in particular. For example, at the end of Hart's latest piece, one can discern a deeply contested sort of Eastern Orthodox understanding of the relation between the creature and its Creator. 

     You see, there is more to the catholic tradition than is dreamt of by the editors of Calvinist International. Were they as truly interested in forging a consensus, a kind of mere Christianity that could unite more than it divides, they would have to reckon with this, however uncomfortable it made 'em. Instead, they attack it from a position poised on the most narrow kind of Reformed theology and philosophy. Again, that is their prerogative, but to build on that foundation is not to return to classical sources of Christian wisdom; it is to burnish a particular tradition that reads selected classical sources such as the Summa and the like in a particular, not to mention peculiar, manner. 

the progressive left...

     Has there ever been a more detailed, more rigid, more insidious code of behavior and speech than that used by the Progressive Left to manipulate others into submission? They're the most moralistic band of killjoys.
     I've also had occasion to note the Progressive Left's murderous embrace of eugenics and general Malthusian principles. Now it seems they are growing more militarist even as they embrace the nihilism of the agenda behind the movement for so-called 'marriage equality'. 
     This bothers me, as I have friends on that side of the divide. Those connections are difficult, because silence in the face of these horrors demonstrates tacit complicity.

     More and more it's my experience that those who say they want 'peace', 'concord', 'open conversation', 'reason', and the like are poseurs who only want to beat others into submission.

the communion of the saints...

     I just like this:

May Brigid bless the house wherein you dwell
Bless every fireside, every wall and floor;
Bless every heart that beats beneath its roof;
And every tongue and mind for evermore;
Bless every hand that toils to bring joy
And every foot that walks its portals through.
This is my wish today, my constant prayer
May Brigid bless the house that shelters you.

     Don't worry. It's not like I believe the saints are, you know, alive in Christ. Rank heresy that is! No, they're dead and gone, and it's best we don't try and talk with 'em or otherwise disturb their deadness.

nothing new under the sun...

Lamarck:Darwin::Pelagius:Augustine. QED.

a revision...

Wherein We Prepare for Another Apocalypse



I fear those who hope, on bended knee,
to reap an Eden sopped with morning dew.
Call it, year zero for the happy few:
against this dream how can we hold a plea –
the merely human’s worth less than a flea
when Utopia calls, so let’s come clean, we knew
all along that there could be no place
in that nice world for such a fragile race.

working, working...

     So, I just sent off a submission of poems to Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry via their website. Now the waiting begins. Over the next week, I have seven more submissions to variously send through the web or regular mail. For now, having written several lines of poetry, and done this one submission, I think a break is in order. Time for a walk.
     Peace out.

a poem...

Fortunate Fall



A faulty memory’s not fit to amuse
us, when we need a means to slip away
into a dream of all the good we may
or may not dare. For we yet hate to lose,
shambling and resentful of the news
that loss is woven into every play
we make. The sun yet burns us, as we weigh
the odds that love’s an everlasting ruse.
It's like a dream, this memory undone.
The hour's not as early as I thought,
yet I bear the remnant of our love
for a garden City lost, then won -
a fugitive law presses from above
that we might be more dearly bought.

a poem...

A Cordial Reply to Thomas Hardy

And it’s strange to say, my friend,
     that all that is is forged through chance
accretions, changes lacking all
     completion, formal happenstance - 

more likely, is it not, that chance,
     in all it’s variations, forms
return upon return, until
     each thing to its end conforms.

an untitled poem...

For now I haven't got a thing to say
with all this blank verse stretched before me,
so how about we set aside today
at least our passion for the kill, and flee
that coming wrath we all sense at our heels
while claiming that's just how oblivion feels.

working at poetry...

     Just spent a few happy hours revising poems, some of them quite old. One of 'em goes back to the Spring of 1998. 
     There is a simple satisfaction in knowing one has done the job at hand.

a ramble with no purpose...

     I'm over, inter alia, Mad Men; Game of Thrones; Iron Chef America, Top Chef, and any of their ilk; movies based on comic books; zombies; vampires (sorry Joss, but you're partly to blame); the new, super-popular Rush; the LCMS, PCA, OPC, ELCA, PC(USA), UCC, ACNA, LCNA, UMC, LCWS, ECUSA, REC, AAC, and I'm eyeing the OCA; Rand Paul (should have stayed On Message there big guy); Libertarians in general; Democrats, Republicans, and other Stupid Liberals; Peter Jackson; Wendell Berry.
     I still love Firefly, but wish the fans would get over it. And no, we're not Browncoats. 
     Justified is currently about the best thing on television. 
     Well, there's Top Gear, but that's a different kettle of widgets. 
     Yes, I still love television. There are more television shows in my iTunes rack than movies. I would love to write for television. Perhaps there's an opening for a slightly more Rightish Aaron Sorkin. 
     No, I didn't really think so.
     I would like to write a book on Hell entitled Love Wins. That would also be a fine title for a book about Augustine's fine-spun theology of predestination. Put a contract in front of me and I might just sign the thing.
     Rob Bell is an excellent writer of ad copy. I was going to say that he should be in marketing, but thought better of it for some reason.
     I'm both an Old Earth and a Young Earth Creationist. Sue me. 
     I've long had my doubts that there was ever anything like Feudalism. If we made up Feudalism out of our own pure brains, then I do much wonder why. Riddle me why we invented Feudalism, and you'll untangle the skein tightly wound in the last two and a half centuries or more. You might also win a grant.
     I'm tired, yet all I want to do is watch television and eat ice cream. 
     That would be stupid, so of course I would never do it. 
     Peace out.
     
     

psa...

     You know, 'Moon Mist' is as lovely as anything by, say, Stravinsky or Debussy. 

psa...

     Our music this evening is 'Mood Indigo' by one Duke Ellington.

so that happened...

Woke up with an overwhelming sense of mortality. Yes, dear reader, time was spinning faster and faster, and my own personal eschaton bore down impendent.

Well, I guess I'm awake now.

a poem, revised...

Time’s Arrow Yet Again

We beg the moon for alms in early Spring
as snow falls silent, deep, and slow throughout
the night, and not a person doesn’t fling
his imprecations at the sky in doubt -
for they might never hear a robin call
outside an open window, or feel air
warm and moist as flowers dying fall,
young mayflies rise, irresistible fate to dare.

This ancient earth seems like a silent rock
upon its pinions, fast held to depend,
and our impatient fiddling with its lock
distracts from all careening to the end.
Even now we find it helpful to distrust
time’s power to work all living things to dust.

a poem...

Time’s Arrow Yet Again

We beg the sun for alms in early Spring
as snow falls silent, deep, and slow throughout
this day, and not a person doesn’t fling
his imprecations at the sky in doubt
that they will ever hear a robin call
outside an open window, or breathe deep air
so warm and moist as flowers dying fall,
young mayflies rise their pendent time to dare.
Even now we find it helpful to distrust
time’s power to work all living things to dust.

the Shroud of Turin out and about...

     The Shroud of Turin, which usually lives in seclusion on the Isle of Man, over the weekend made a rare public appearance, apparently at the request of the Roman Catholic Church. Said a spokesperson for the Shroud, 'The Shroud, as you know, is a private relic, but this cause is so important, so pressing, that the Shroud made an exception at the request of the Pope himself.'
     This most famous of relics rarely ventures into the spotlight, eschewing fame for the simpler pleasures of family and friends, so crowds of fans responded with surprise and delight as they caught a glimpse of their beloved icon. No word yet on whether the Shroud will tour Europe, or perhaps even North America. 

'allow me to retort'...

     Love wins, therefore Hell exists. QED.

habemus papam?

     The whole world groans to find itself crypto-Papist. 
     Seems all are enthralled by Pope Francis. I'm not. He seems nothing more or less than a perfectly serviceable Pope. 
     I'm not holding my breath over indulgences.

a poser...

     I read that there 'is a purely natural happiness proportionate to human nature', but riddle me this, in what does human nature consist? Just what would a purely natural happiness sound like?

Geoffrey Hill, briefly considered...

     The early poetry of Geoffrey Hill finds its telos in the later. It's inexorable, and makes perfect sense. Whether the later poetry is any good or not, well, that's a whole other wicket. There's so little of the former, and so much of the later - perhaps that's a parallax of a sort. 

zero-sum...

     I see an essay in the latest Nova et Vetera entitled 'Lectio Divina in a Secular Age.' Seems secular and lay attitudes have 'invaded the cloister'. This is true. It is also hilarious. Lest we forget, during the Reformation, the attitudes and practices of the cloister invaded the secular and lay world all around. My how times have changed.

how long before the ecusa takes up the cause?

     Seems there are some Unitarians who want to give the holy handed blessing to my favorite dorm fantasy: 

'But within the ranks of the UUA over the past few years, there has been some quiet unrest concerning a small but activist group that vociferously supports polyamory. That is to say “the practice of loving and relating intimately to more than one other person at a time,” according to a mission statement by Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA). The UUPA “encourages spiritual wholeness regarding polyamory,” including the right of polyamorous people to have their unions blessed by a minister.'

Others in the ranks want 'em to stifle on tactical grounds - this does, after all, hurt the push toward so-called 'marriage equality'. 
     Am I the only one who finds this hilarious?

from a couple of days ago...

I love Columbus in the Springtime
I love Columbus in the Fall
I love Columbus in the Winter when it's Springtime
I love Columbus in the Summer when it's all
the seasons rolled together til the Fall...

'a fascination of what's difficult'...

     It's time I reckoned with the work of one Geoffrey Hill. I have avoided his later poetry in particular, and remain skeptical about it. We'll see how it goes. After all, I love Paul Celan, Rene Char, and Emily Dickinson, so my guess is there is something I have missed in Hill's bitter and rough poems. 

tv! tv!

     For some reason, I allowed myself to be sucked into the void that is The West Wing. Over the past three days, I have, among other things, watched all of the first two seasons. There is some witty writing, yes, and it can be funny as hell from time to time. It is, however, so heavy-handed, so sentimental, that it is in the end pernicious. It could be one of the most depraved and dangerous series I’ve ever seen. 

     Allow me to focus on only one arc within the two seasons I have witnessed. Turns out that the President has a certain type of MS. He was diagnosed seven years before we catch up with him at the start of the series. Only a handful of people know about his condition, which is slowly revealed over several episodes in these two seasons. When it is disclosed that he lied about it for several years, especially while on the campaign for the presidency, his entire administration, and legacy, is threatened with shipwreck. 

     Here’s where we have a problem. Before I get to that, let’s look at what’s good about this. First, it is a plausible story. Second, it is pretty well written, and the acting is good. The problem, dear reader, is this. At no point are we, the viewers, ever encouraged to consider that this paragon of Presidents, this PhD in economics with a Nobel Prize, should resign and accept the disgrace due his actions. He has, for several years, perpetrated a conspiracy, all so he can attain and hold the office of the President. He, and his people, are convinced that they are somehow different, and while we see a few of these staffers react with shock and anger upon hearing the news, they fall in line and help save this man they have pledged to serve.
     This is all given to us in the most cloying way. We are meant to identify with this President, feel the emotional trauma he and his must endure as they finally reveal it to the public. Reveal it they do, in a carefully staged manner, after taking a poll to gauge how the public might react to such news. While all this is happening, the reality of their deception is made clearer by scenes with the White House Counsel, who insists that both the President and the First Lady grapple with at least the deep and broad legal morass they have created for themselves. Such realism as this one character offers, however, is undercut by the viewer's carefully cultivated loyalty to the central characters, a loyalty that is driven by ideological as well as emotional investments. So, again, as the seriousness of the crisis becomes more and more apparent; as the senior staff takes to meeting in the basement to plot strategy; as the press is manipulated; we never hear that most basic question: should not the President resign?
     Consider - in the story they’ve written, this man has committed fraud on a massive scale. His wife, a distinguished physician and now also the First Lady, has colluded with him in this fraud, and in the doing has violated several provisions in the code of ethics that orders her profession to the common good. They have taken care with the secret, restricting knowledge of the man’s condition to a small circle of people necessary to care for him and advance his interests. We are shown that they have never coerced anyone or asked them to lie, but it is also understood that this man commands such personal loyalty that there is almost no chance that anyone ever would reveal his secret. So, he and his wife have cast a veil of secrecy over the existence of a disease so grave that it could, though it need not, threaten the very sanity of the man who would be President. He is special, you see; the country needs him. Were he to reveal his condition, it’s likely that, fair or unfair, he would lose. He wants to be President, he needs to be President, and all those around him believe in him. This carries into the point in the story where the secret is revealed to all, and the Administration closes ranks to protect Their Man (and themselves).
     That this would all be grounds for impeachment and then an indictment is mentioned from time to time, but, at least in what I’ve seen so far, it is never fully explored. Instead, we have the emotional and ideological identification with this Powerful Man, who is at the center of a constellation of truly interesting characters we come to care for, and in that fog of sentiment and pandering we are subtly and not so subtly by turns moved to hope that the President not only survives this crisis but thrives in office. Once I left the glow of my computer screen and looked out the window onto the still turning world, I shook off this fog and started to think once again. A President that lied so egregiously, all so he could attain that office, would offend me morally, for such a President would ill-deserve the office. The fraud itself would render all his moral and political power moot. I would hope to see him speedily impeached and convicted and thus removed from office. I’m also certain that we could find him a minimum security prison somewhere with excellent medical facilities.
      So, the series seems to my ear to be a propaganda piece for the Magic Presidency. In it, the President is all powerful, except when stymied by idiot congressmen who refuse to bend to his will, or those legal and moral niceties that might impede his path to glory. Sure he lied, committed several felonies and colluded in fraud in fact, but we can forgive him because he is a brilliant reformer, a compassionate man of principle, and a lover of all things Constitutional. The West Wing is dangerous and depraved, it seems to me, because it is really a story about the Cult of the President, wrapped in a soap opera about a group of quirky eternal university students.  

fun with words...

     When used to describe a work of theology, or pretty much anything, the following words are without any significance beyond branding: provocative, controversial, radical, inclusive, equality...feel free to add your own.

a weather report...

     Outside it snows and snows.
     It's so still, and the snow is heavy and wet, and it's bright the way it always is at night while it snows and snows.

     More transient beauty. God is very good.

they are always with us...

     From I Am Amazed (Against the Origenists), by one Shenoute of Atripe, the section entitled, 'On the Incarnation and the Eucharist':

     'But now some say that the bread and cup are not the body and blood of Christ, but are merely a type. I have grown weary of saying this. Woe is me! I have become disturbed on account of this ungodliness!'

     Quite so. 'I have grown weary of saying this,' how I understand.
     
     'If the Lord himself says, "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will live forever," and moreover, "This is my body and this is my blood," how great will be the woe to these people when they say that is is not his body and his blood, and how great will be the woe to those who accept their words!'

     No matter. People have their opinions. They feel somehow entitled to those opinions, and love to share them. They will make no assertions as to truth, mind you, but how they love their opinions.

     The word of the day is isomorphic.
   

Rob Bell is here to help God...

     Rob Bell speaks of 'giving back to the make the world the kind of place God always dreamed it could be.' Poor God, dreaming a wonderful dream, only to watch it become a Dream Deferred because some of us are so mean. God is like a kid with cancer who wants more than anything to meet his favorite baseball player, only to be told no over and over again. Poor poor God. Let's all pitch in to make God's wonderful dream come true. The first thing you can do, of course, is buy Rob Bell's book. 

how about some Luther?

     In lieu of anything of my own, I give you something from Luther's sermons on John 6:

     'He speaks openly, clearly, and plainly of this, so that no one may think that he says it in a dark or hidden way or is using a figure of speech: "I am the bread," a food which has come from heaven. "Whoever eats of me, shall live." Here no one can deny that he is talking about himself, since he says this about himself, that is, about his person. Therefore one is to grasp and take hold of the person of Christ with certainty, and not go wandering on other paths. But people are most offended by this, that he says "I". Whoever overcomes this offense, has triumphed, for this is the real art and the highest wisdom of faith, if one can only consider and regard this person Christ as God, as his food and bread of eternal life, yes, as his comfort, redeemer, and savior, for whatever he is, that you obtain with him. This article makes you a Christian, so that you are called "Christian" from Christ, and you receive your Christian title from him.'