Neil Gaiman’s Stardust is due out any day now, and is already getting great feedback. I read the book recently, and even passed it on to a friend as he headed off to Italy for a month. He read it quickly. I’m hoping – hint, hint – that he’ll acquiese and review it for us here before we’re all spoiled on the film.
Anyway, it’s so short, and really good, so all of you, put down the theology, and the social constructivism, and the Duns Scotus – I won’t even say Harry Potter, since those of you that are still reading or haven’t finished, as Aron says, have bigger problems – go get Stardust from your local library or independent bookstore, and get cracking. You have about 13 hours from now… 16 if you’re Pacific.
From Salon.com: This is a picture that looks to have been made with pleasure, for our pleasure, as opposed to something we’re supposed to be impressed by.
Scott over at Medius Temporis, and currently in deep dialogue with Janet and I in the Balthasar Podcast below, has invited us to a discussion on the Beatific Vision. Please do check it out.
Incidentally, Audacious Deviant has posted a lovely meditative series of Transfiguration icons – The Feast of the Transfiguration was on Monday – that I think goes quite nicely with discussion on Beatific vision.
It seems that according to a strict definition of “immediate presence of the Trinity to the human intellect”, then the event of the Transfiguration couldn’t be Beatific for the apostles present – after all it was still a vision of Christ in human form. But, then that raises the question of whether one would even be able to perceive Christ in an unmediated way, regardless of this or that side of heaven.
In honor of the passing of Ingmar Bergman, the Chicago Cinema forum has announced a weekend-long “crash course in Bergman”. You can read about it at the Chicago Cinema forum website or at the Chicago Reader, a fine print establishment. I still remember the first time I saw the Seventh Seal and both marvelled at it and winced in confusion at the same time. It was the beginning of a painful but necessary break from the american pop film aesthetic. Later, I would see his Magic Flute and, despite my terse relationship with opera, quite enjoy it. (The close-ups of people in the audience, especially a particular child, make it a really charming film)
So, in the spirit of remembering Bergman, I thought we might have a little interactivity here.
I was only allowed the space for 7 choices, and most likely missed the film many of you would have chosen. But, that’s what comments are for, right?
Introducing our very first podcast. <hold the fanfare, please>
We’re trying something new today. Some of you asked me to post the introduction to Balthasar I did earlier this year at St. Marks. So, here it is, although I must first make the following disclaimer: the file is rather large (32.4mb), the sound quality is poor, and I say “um” a lot… really, I can’t believe that I talk like that. The sound quality we can address in the future, but I think I may be doomed as a public speaker. I can only hope that my secondary students have been so enrapt by the content of my lesson plans that they haven’t noticed me stumbling over my ums.
An audio introduction to von Balthasar. Right click to download
For future podcasts and our regular feed please subscribe in your reader and/or iTunes here.
In his 1936 article “Sur la philosophie chrétienne,” Henri de Lubac claims that the question of the viability of “Christian philosophy” is not a question so much of Christian thought, or theology, adapting its own concepts to the “external” language of philosophy (e.g. Anglo-analytic religious epistemology and Classical Theism). Nor is it the converse, a philosophy that has “received a Christian contribution”, a kind-of Christian stamp of approval. Rather, Christian philosophy is that philosophy which recognizes its finitude (“its radical insufficiency”), admits to its short-comings (that is its inability to on-its-own be Christian), and give up any notion of rationalizing Revelation. Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac “On Christian Philosophy”, part 1′
If anyone is in or taking a trip to New York soon, consider visiting St. John the Divine Cathedral on Amsterdam at 112th Street. It’s huge. It’s gothic. It’s gorgeous. And of course, it’s under renovation, so if you’ve never seen the place, it might be worth waiting to appreciate its grandeur at a time when wooden barriers no longer block access to the nave. Seeing all 601 feet of it stretch out before you as you enter the church is a dazzling experience that visitors should be able to enjoy again by Easter 2008, according to one of the staff members whom I asked recently. But the temporarily curtailed space still gives you something of a feeling for this amazing cathedral. Continue reading ‘St. John the Divine Cathedral’
Is Harry Potter a Christian? Well, lets start this conversation off with the basics, and I should note that my jumping off point is the two Bible quotations which appear on two noteworthy tombs in book 7 of J.K. Rowlings masterful series (By the way, this post has spoilers galore, but if you haven’t read book 7 by now you’ve got bigger problems anyway, and I would suggest professional help) So, to the quotations. Where your Treasure is, there will your Heart be also, and, The Last Enemy that shall be Destroyed is Death. Love and Death, then, are the themes which dominate these books, but as I always tell my students when we’re examining the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is Jesus’ most extended answer to the question of what Christian love is, Jesus gives a brand new look at love, going beyond even what the prophets had envisaged, present in his teachings, the full glory of which is seen in his death and resurrection. The message of HP is this: Love, fearing not the specter of the power of death, works a greater magic in this world than any deeds of muggles or wizards. Harry is clearly not as powerful as Voldemort, or even, as the latest movie makes splendidly clear, his legions of death-eaters (Helena!), but as Dumbledore unceasingly drones, Harry has a power of which the glorious V-cake knows not. Clearly, the entrance into victory over this serpentine monster is Harry’s baptism courtesy of his mother, that is, his love of love over any of the fruits of this world (Faux psychoanalysts take note—he loves love more than he loves his mother). His life is forfeit in the way that St. Paul’s was, not a stoical suicide his, but rather the uncontainable energy released by the breaking of these rusted bonds. What effect? He gives up his life for his friends, and he does die. And his soul goes to the place where souls go (Lord forgive Joanna for saying that “it’s all in our heads”), and then he simply returns, as simply as Christ rising from the tomb with a sternly confused look on his face as in Piero della Francesca’s rendering of it, Roman soldiers slumping in earthly defeat.
Next up: We’re hoping for a masterful post by Dr. Ramey of Rowan Univ. fame on John Milbank and the surnaturel, and I’m already asking myself how one can live in a world created by and for love, in which love is stronger than death, though no stranger to it, without the storyteller himself. Even if to simply put the idea “all in our heads”. . . . .
The following is a response by Jefe G, a fellow resident of the DC area, to the series of posts on Balthasar’s Love Alone and Fathers Day. Jefferson agreed to let us share it here as a guest post – hopefully not his last! Thanks, Jefe. – DWM
I didn’t have the best experience with the first Balthasar book I read, so [the recent series of posts on The Land of Unlikeness] convinced me to give him another chance.
I was surprised that when I was about half halfway through Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible, I started to feel something like a heaviness of suffering in the text. I was flipping to the title page to see the publication date for its proximity to WWII, when I noticed the description of the 
cover photograph. The cover of my edition has a picture of an etching from a wall at a cell in Auschwitz of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I was almost relieved that I wasn’t the only one who saw in Balthasar’s slim book something absolutely ludicrous. Because just as scratching Jesus into a Nazi death camp cell wall is ludicrous, so is maintaining a belief that we remain ordered toward love, and that we are welcomed into that love, despite being absolutely aware of the enormity of human suffering today. Continue reading ‘Response to Love Alone’
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