This is meant as a response to the discussion to the previous post on Dumbledore. It is directed towards this sense in Christianity in which all believers are feminized as the “bride of Christ.” To say we are feminized is simplistic because we are feminine in that particular formulation, but at the same time that we are the “body of Christ,” which is. . . . . male, I guess. But I’d like to preface this by saying that I do believe in heaven, and I do believe in talking about what it will be like when we get there, but I don’t believe we’ll be discussing who is gay or straight. There are many reasons for that by the first that springs to mind is that heaven ought not to be shoot-myself-in-the-head-boring. Continue reading ‘Why didn’t the Jews circumcise their women?’
Archive for October, 2007
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Recently J.K. Rowling revealed that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay, and that he had fallen in love with the (eventually) evil wizard Grindelwald as a youth, which partly explains his ideological mistakes made with that wizard. The revelation came when a student asked her if the headmaster who always spoke so highly of the power of love had ever fallen in love himself. I think that this is an opportunity for a wise person to say something about the current debate on homosexuality in culture and church, esp. in the Anglican communion. Unfortunately, I will speaking on the matter instead.
In the 1940s, Henri de Lubac was unusual, at least as far as Roman Catholic theologians go. He was a Thomist, but not by the criteria that the majority of Thomists would have judged other Thomists: he wasn’t educated in Rome under Reginald Garigou-Lagrange, the leading Thomas scholar of the first half of that century; like M.-D. Chenu and Yves Congar, he wrote a lot about the church before Thomas, which led Garigou-Lagrange to write an article called “The New Theology: Where Is It Headed”; he disagreed with the primary commentators on Thomas, such as Cajetan and Suarez; he accused the Thomists of adhering to a Wolffian rationalism and a model of pure nature (thanks to Cajetan and Suarez) that rather than preserving the integrity of human nature and the gratuity of grace resulted in an incoherent idea of human nature which either demanded grace from God out of a plea for justice, or made the natural and supernatural merely two species of the same genus – the supernatural and natural are different, but only on account of the supernatural being a “super” natural. Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac and the origins of The Mystery of the Supernatural’
Oh, and by the way, October 15th appears to be an important day:
F. Nietzsche:
born Oct. 15, 1844, Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
M. Foucault:
born October 15, 1926 , Poitiers, France
Here are a couple stanzas from a recently posted poem by Brendan Sammon at The Well at the World’s End. He wrote another poem in August called “Right and Left Leave No Right Left” that is equally worth a complete read. A nice balance to all the foment from certain once enjoyable periodicals.
Between the Realist and the Idealist
The Idealist says
“The truth is not here!
It waits for us somewhere out there!”
The Realist says,
“There is only the here,
And the truth is we only know where.”
….
Whose ideas are real?
Whose reality ideal?
The answer is never inerrant;
But between all ideals
And everything real
Where the real ideals
Make ideas grow real,
Beauty is always inherent.
Here’s one to get the thomists out there involved – you know who you are.1 This week, I’ve had the fun task of analyzing Rahner’s and de Lubac’s positions on the beatific vision and Gaudium et Spes, 22. It’s been interesting to gain a deeper understanding the interpretations of how Christ “fully reveals man to man himself…”2
The whole thing goes back further than Aquinas, even to Augustine in passages like his Letters XCII and CXLVII (De Videndo Deo). The following is from Letter XCII.
And we shall become the more like unto Him, the more we advance in knowledge of Him and in love; because “though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day,”3 yet so as that, however far one may have become advanced in this life, he is far short of that perfection of likeness which is fitted for seeing God, as the apostle says, “face to face.”4
Continue reading ‘Rahner and de Lubac on the final knowledge of God, pt. 1′
- no, not you scott. You’re “scotian” or “scotusian”↩
- Gaudium et Spes 22↩
- II Cor. 4:6↩
- I Cor. 8:12↩
Janet has invited us to read Shusaku Endo’s Silence with her in this advent season, partly as an opportunity for Episcopalians to reflect on the situation within the Anglican Communion. This from her site:
Right now, we Episcopalians find ourselves in a place where the same diametrically opposed interpretations of our actions are being offered us. How can we know for sure? We have to trust in the God we know. I have never thought that the real question is, does God exist? No, the real question is, who and what is God?
And the question, who is God, what is God, is also the question: what have I found in my journey that compels my allegiance and is worthy of my deepest devotion?
Continue reading ‘Invitation to Read Shusako Endo’s Silence’
It seems important to me to note that this interview from October 5th has received relatively little notice by either the Anglican Community or the greater Christian community, whereas the fact that he apparently said little, he mostly listened, at the House of Bishops in New Orleans, has been a great source of consternation for many: “why didn’t he chasten the Episcopals?” on one side; “Why didn’t he affirm [you fill in the blanks]?” on the other.
Anyway, with that comment made, here’s portions of a transcript from an Oct. 5th interveiw with Rowan Williams on BBC radio.
Q: Help me understand Archbishop, why these Christians, these exiles from Iraq have been targeted?
A: Since the Iraq war, Christian communities in Iraq which have lived there for literally thousands of years have been seen as, in some sense, agents of the West. People described how the sort of notes that were pushed under their door, the messages and threats they received said ‘you are American agents’ or ‘you are Zionist agents and we’re going to have to get rid of you.’ So there’s a very clear link in people’s minds with the conflict.
…[W]hatever one says now about that, it’s quite clear that our governments have a very heavy responsibility to see what can be done for these people. To secure the status and the welfare of refugees and to work on what seems the almost impossible task of making a society that they can return to in Iraq. And of course when some people talk – as some do – about the possibility of a partition solution in Iraq, very often the Christians are left out of account in this.
I don’t say this out of a kind of Christian chauvinism – wanting to defend my corner, The presence of Christians in communities like Iraq and Syria is actually part of what you might call a pluralist, tolerant, co-existent tradition in Middle-Eastern Arab society which is itself under threat.
So it’s not just about Christians, what’s at stake is much more than just the future of just the Christian community. But everywhere you go in the Middle-East, Christian people will say ‘the main problem we face is the catastrophic drainage of Christians from this region’. So that what were once plural societies not exclusively or narrowly Muslim, are becoming more and more closed.
…
I don’t know what sort of calculations were made. I do think that two things are clear: that the effect on Christian communities in the region was gravely under estimated, and that the scale of the refugee problem was gravely underestimated. Now what we have at the moment is a refugee problem in the Middle East of almost unprecedented scale. We’ve already got the Palestinian refugee problem and I also visited some Palestinian refugees on the outskirts of Beirut; we now have on top of that another million and a half – and growing – number of Iraqi refugees and this is where, when people talk about further destablilising the region, when you read about some American political advisers speaking about action against Syria and Iran, I can only say that I regard that as criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly.
…
Q: Do you think there will ever be a time in the future when we look back at the invasion of Iraq and say yes actually that was for the best?
A: No.
Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe is an explosion of cultural throwbacks and cinematic contortions, not to mention Beatle’s hit after hit, “like endless rain into a paper cup”. But it’s not simply vintage nostalgia. Buried in the plot is a power struggle between two deep human urges that bears theological fruit in its reflection of Love as a pole averring, mediating factor that ultimately funds the best of human efforts.
Early in the film, Taymor appears to squarely pit social and militant activism and artistic creation against each other, and gives the impression that the infamous Love will side with the latter. It’s only an impression, and one that many on both sides mistakenly take to as the final word for better or ill. On one side, there’s the declaration of fealty to an ambiguous and numinous Love, the great fictional panacea. On the other, there’s the concession that Love is indeed ambiguous, impotent to effect change; the there’s an argument for the need for something else, something more jarring, even violent. And thus we have the polarization of the 60s set before us: the peaceful, inward, even insular arts culture on one side (Woodstock par excellance); and the boisterous and often violent activist movement concomitant and strangely akin to the oft harsh and violent government (Kent State/Vietnam). And then, in wake of this “revolution” there’s the late 70s and 80s, perceived by many, and certainly portrayed in the film, as the waning of Love and meaning – “You know, it’s gonna be alright, yeah”. Continue reading ‘Is All We Need LOVE? A prolegomena to future discussions on Love and Being.’
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