I just bought a myself a MacBook and am back online. It’s been about half a year since my last computer went missing, and now I get to see what I’ve missed in the Wide World of Webs. After a quick perusal I conclude this consists of:
About 25 pages of prozac and viagra spam on Coal, and several million homemade videos on Youtube.
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Summer impairs my reading faculty. The heat accumulates like vegetable matter in my brain, but I’ve snuck a couple of good reads in through the undergrowth anyway.
Mere Christianity is one of the heavily referenced ‘must-reads’ of thinking and unthinking Christianity alike. Most of my friends are surprised when I admit my ignorance of its contents. I was never in any hurry to read it, partly because it’s so popular, partly because of false impressions I’ve accumulated over the years – these may have been my fault, may have been the fault of it’s advocates, I’m not sure.
I’m finally reading it, and of course, enjoying it thoroughly. There are the obvious reasons for this: Lewis’ great respect for institutional religion, his insistence that talking about what is common to Christianity in no way pre-empts the need to go further along a particular path in searching for the truth (to choose a denomination, as it were, rather than limit Christianity to it’s Lowest Common Denominator, as if that were all that mattered), his 3 part discussion of the structure and functioning or morality, and return to the 7 virtues as a format for breaking down the demands of personal morality.
But the bubbles in the beer, for me, is Lewis as linguist’s adept use of language underlying every argument, and in the direct linguistic points he scores on appropriate occasions through the book.
Apologetics are often highly readable but linguistically coy, ignorant (in keeping with our culture), or lacking in precision. Lewis is readable, and terribly precise. One might contrast him with his literary and apologetic predecessor, G.K. Chesteron, who was precise, and readable, but not always clear (for the average reader, at any rate), partly because although he was linguistically precise, he was always shifting gears without warning: changing his apologetic audience or target from chapter to chapter, indulging his opponent’s philosophical views and their merits on one page before making an about face to show how deficient they are once you step outside of their fabricated borders, and so on. Unlike Chesterton, Lewis is the penultimate guide. Chesterton dares his reader to keep up with him. Lewis takes him by the hand and guides him along, step by step. Both have their place, but I now understand why Lewis is often recommended to young or new Christians, while Chesterton usually gets the more obscure, literary types.
I think a small study group that looked at books like Mere Christianity would be a riot. We could start with that, then move on to things like Chesterton’s Heretics/Orthodoxy, Bonhoeffor’s Cost of Discipleship, perhaps with a more advanced read, like Alistair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, thrown into the mix from time to time. If anyone’s interested, let me know. I might just get something started.
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It’s been a long, dry spell, but the big story of early 2008 is not apocalyptic climate change or third world political meltdown, as perhaps you thought. No, it’s the return of Coal and it’s skittish author.
I’m going to ease into things today by posting, not my words, but as in many previous posts, the words of Vatican media correspondent John Allen. He offers some badly needed observations in a speech delivered on “Cathedrals and the Media”.
More
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I need your questions on religion and the arts, religion and culture, religion and politics, comparative religion, theology and ethics, Biblical studies, philology, history, and so on. Absolutely anything you can think of; anything that has popped into your head and floated around unanswered, for any amount of time, in recent memory. The questions can be as speculative and apparently, to you, insipid, as you like. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what your own thoughts are related to those questions – though if you do have thoughts you believe could be interesting, and at least lead in potentially interesting directions, that too would be welcome. It also doesn’t matter if you think concrete answers are even possible. Just write them to me. I would greatly appreciate it.
As for Coal, I realize this has been one of my dryest months ever. Sadly I’ve been either preoccupied or had very little to talk about (publically) lately. I fully expect that to change in coming months, though I can’t positively map out a timeframe for you. My apologies to anyone who has been repeatedly confronted by a page identical to the time previous. I hope you will continue to check, at least occasionally, until things get back underway – which, eventually, they will.
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Greatest Christmas carol ever: O Come O Come Emmanuel.
Second greatest: Carol of the Bells. It’s too bad this song is irrevocably associated with Home Alone.
Greatest non-traditional Christmas song: It’s a toss up between Sister Winter and Did I make you cry on Christmas (Well, you deserved it!), both by Sufjan Stevens.
Greatest Christmas movie ever (and one of the greatest movies of all time): It’s a Wonderful Life.
Second greatest: Scrooge (or A Christmas Carol), starring Alistair Sims.
Worst popular movie: Miracle on 34th Street, any version.
Greatest Christmas novel: I have to go with A Christmas Carol, though that is doubtless partly due to the fact that I’ve never read many of the classic Christmas stories. Maybe I’ll get to The Gift of the Magi later this week.
Best present I received this year: Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth, by Richard John Neuhaus, from my parents.
Something more people ought to know about Christmas: “Xmas” is not, as some people think, the de-’Christ’-ianized version of “Christmas”. It is in fact leftover from early Church tradition, and the Greek spelling of Christ, “Xristos” (textpattern doesn’t support the greek font, but you can find it elsewhere online).
And you?
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John Allen interviews Cardinal Avery Dulles.
What does the blind man now see?
Kierkegaard knew that faith is absurd. A man is blind because he does not open his eyes. His eyes have never been opened, though they could be. Another man comes to him, a man whose eyes have been opened, and says, “Open your eyes.” But the blind man is skeptical and afraid. Life has treated him well thus far. Why risk ruining everything by opening his eyes? What can there possibly be to see? The seeing man explains the visible beauty of the world, but the blind man has never seen and cannot understand him. He sounds like a madman. Who listens to a madman?
Perhaps he wants to believe because he loves the fantasy. The visible world sounds enchanting, and the blind man revels without end in his imagination of it. He imagines himself opening his eyes and walking awestruck through the world for the first time. But he is afraid to destroy this fantasy. He knows that reality never matches ones expectations.
Or perhaps he does believe, and wants to open his eyes more than anything. What if he opens his eyes and still sees nothing? What if he tries to open his eyes, and finds that he cannot. He is the only one who cannot, while all his friends and family open their eyes and speak to him about the glorious world they have found. He sits alone in the dark, wishing he could open his eyes. They tell him he can, just do it. But he can’t. Perhaps he has never really tried. He doesn’t know anymore.
Worst of all, the blind man does not know he is blind. He can see clearly, and has seen clearly all his life. A man comes to him and says, “close your eyes, and I will teach you to see clearly”. This sounds absurd, but perhaps there is something about the man that leads the wide-eyed blind man to believe him – or want to believe him. There is the promise of something beyond that which he has seen and knows and fails to satisfy. Still, all the fear and doubt remain, and the whole thing seems absurd in moments of clarity. The wide-eyed blind man notices that the people who close their eyes do so only when their sight has already become clouded and they have difficulty seeing. He sees well, so why should he close his eyes?
How can you tell me what the blind man now sees?
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Original entries coming soon. Seriously this time. Soon.
In the meantime, this is old, but I thought it was worth repeating. It’s from Father Dowd.
Beyond this, though, I see a sad trend among some Catholics whose love and defense of Faith seems to make them myopic when it comes to Hope. The result is that they try harder and harder to defend the faith to the point of getting frustrated and wondering if it’s all worth it, wondering where it’s all going — in other words, losing hope. And when Hope is lost, Charity is not far behind. It is possible to have faith and still be on the road to perdition.
Think about that. Think about that very hard. Especially if you’re one of those damned unchurched, dechurched, new-churched, post-churched, pre-churched, or re-re-churched, whatever the hell all that means. Sorry. Caveat.
And who am I to talk? Well, it’s not me talking. I’m thinking about it with you. It was Father Dowd talking.
Don’t let my unfortunate tone blur your response to his fine lines. I’m upset and foolish at the moment. I’m avoiding talking about what I want to talk about it. We’ll talk about it later. Unless you’re not someone I talk to. Then we won’t.
Berate me if you must.
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Esoteric Christianity consists of the substance of the religion (of which faith is an integral part, but by no means the only part – it is worth noting here that faith without religion can consist of nothing but a solipsistic emotivism), accessible only through language, comprehensible only in the language developed within the Church community, of which there are many, many dialects, yet a grounding commonality due to a joint subscription to a single root text (this is why non-scriptural Christianity very quickly stops being Christianity). It might be assumed that the word ‘esoteric’ could imply some kind of hermetic self-sufficiency or gnostic revelation to the elect, but that is not how it is being used here.
Exoteric Christianity consists of the symbols and language, accessible to all, apparent in public representation, easily misused, abused, and impossible to understand properly (yet alluring) outside of the contexts and contents of esoteric Christianity.
In actuality, there is no clear distinction between the two.
The Protestant Church tends to destroy the exoteric aspects of the faith. This is based on the realization that without the substance behind the symbols, the symbols are pagan and misleading. This attempt is futile, and dangerous, because the elimination is believed to be necessary (symbols are deemed idolatrous), but its impossibility leads adherents to ignore the exoteric aspects of their religion (sometimes even denying religion itself, and substituting it with mere faith or spirituality), which ironically prevents them from delving behind the images into the substance.
It is worth noting that the many of Protestant orthodoxy’s greatest representatives, most notably John Calvin, did not make this mistake. But the reader who does is likely to miss the tensions existing in Calvin’s text.
The Catholic Church recognizes both aspects of Christianity, yet at times extends the distinction empirically to its adherents (such that the clergy are initiated into esoteric Christianity, while the laity are left with pagan symbolism).
I have no desire to comment at this time regarding the relationships between theology and practice and the errors involved in relating esoteric and exoteric Christianity. But I thought these observations were worthwhile (if not completely developed) in and of themselves.
As my academic catechesis moves forward, the language of religion becomes increasingly meaningless to me. I can dissect a given theological statement, find incoherencies in a group of statements or system, make inferences on the basis of beliefs A, B, and C, and delineate between the realms of philosophic speculation and doctrinal necessity. But I no longer have any idea what any of it has to do with anything. I know that it does mean something, but I’ve lost my grip on what that is. It’s a very strange phenomenon. In my first two years of school, studies and life were knotted too tightly, and the strain was, to be dramatic about it, unbearable. Now I’ve somehow managed to tear the two apart, and the lack of strain is equally unbearable. I guess I just need to find the necessary tension.
But first, I need to finish my meaningless thesis. Yes, I’m still going on about that. Now there’s an unbearable strain of a very different kind. Just one more week…
Now this is interesting. While I still haven’t read any of his books, Peter Leithart is a sort of hero of mine. This is due to what I see as his intuitive, yet surprisingly rare, approach to integrating theology and the arts (he is professor of Theology and Literature at New Saint Andrew’s College). I’ve only recently discovered his website, and was looking through the archives when I came across an entry about the movie Constantine. Check it out.
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