Archive for the 'Incarnation' Category

lent: on death and dominion

Published by
DWM
at 02/17/2010 0 Comments

two things after a long hiatus.

1. While preparing for a class on Christology, specifically Athanasius’ on the Incarnation, I re-discovered these beautiful passages.

Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, adn the work of God was being undone. The law of death… prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape…. Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning?

…..

…the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for o part of created had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entere the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw the corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. he saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing…. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should erish the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own… He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men.

++++++++++

2. Aron doesn’t talk about his music much at all, not nearly as often as he ought to.

Good Dust – and death shall have no dominion

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On Nothing: Denys the Aeropagite names the nothing

Published by
DWM
at 10/26/2009 8 Comments

Aron recently wrote a great post looking at some features of nothingness in the Zen and Christian traditions. People clearly got a little riled up, so I thought I’d stoke the flame a little by throwing Pseudo-Dionysius into the mix.

As far as “nothingness” goes, most would probably expect a chunk from the Mystical Theology, but I prefer to pull from The Divine Names for the more systematic questions. In ch 1, Denys lays out the theurgical nature of his project: all of this, he says, ultimately comes down to the incarnational call of the Trinity to us, that we “rise up to it.” So, all the ontology, the hermeneutics, the trinitarian theory, etc… is for the greater end of theosis. Sometimes I wonder if Denys thinks that the best thing to do is become a monk. Anyway, the theurgic end of all theology is important to keep in mind when trying to understand what Denys does next with the Trinity.

The short term goal of the Divine Names is to lay out the way in which our names for God actually do or do not refer (or cohere – whichever anachronistic hermeneutic you want to sock him with) to God. The problem is, we’re not actually referring to “some-thing”. There is no X that marks God’s spot, at least, not in any way that could be grasped by finite beings. And here is the great similarity to the discussion about Aron’s post. I’ll end with these quotes.

We leave behind us all notions of the divine. We call a halt to the activities of our minds and, to the extent that is proper, we approach the ray which transcends being. Here, in a manner no words can describe, preexisted all the goals of all knowledge and it is of a kind that neither intelligence nor speech can lay hold of it nor can it at all be contemplated since it surpasses everything and is wholly beyond our capacity to know it… And if all knowledge is of that which is and is limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcendsbeing must also transcend knowledge.

How then can we speak of the divine names? How can we do this is the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge, if it abides beyond the read of mind and of being…? How can we enter upon this undertaking if the Godhead is superior to being and is unspeakable and unnameable?….

…Since the union of divinized minds with the Light beyond all deity occurs in the cessation of all intelligent activity, [then] the godlike unified minds who imitate these angels as far as possible praise it most appropriately through the denial of all beings.1

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  1. from The Divine Names, Ch 1, PG 592D-593C, trans. Colm Luibheid (Paulist Press, 1987) ↩
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St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality

Published by
Darkness Whistler
at 01/31/2009 5 Comments

These posts are portions of an, as yet, unpublished paper I did recently for a doctoral class on “spiritual practices.” This will the first of a multi-post installment. The project ventures drawing from the well of the cosmic theological vision of St. Maximus the Confessor as a vital resource for the articulation of a theological rationale undergirding the practice of Christian hospitality. I hope that it may also be a fruitful addition for the recent “retrieval” theme on TLOU in which figures like Bulgakov and Chesterton have been explored…

 St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality

Introduction

St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662 A.D.) understands the cosmos through a theological ontology of Love. All creatures in creation are unified through participation in the ecstatic Love that is the life of the Trinity. Participation in this Love unifies the difference of creatures into a harmony. As such this love is the “reason” or “logos” of creatures. With the fall of humanity this love is disrupted cosmically. The fall of humanity is key in this “cosmic tragedy” for humanity is the microcosm (micros-kosmos or “little cosmos”), which participates in the sensuous, creaturely dimension of being and the rational-spiritual dimension of the hierarchy of being. Humanity, the microcosm, is the center or crux of the hierarchy of being as it co-inheres in the second person of the Trinity, the Logos. It is the crossing of the divine and the sensuous dimensions of the hierarchy of being. Consequently, when humanity falls the harmony of creation is disrupted. This disruption or discord is healed or re-harmonized in the Incarnation of the Second person of the Trinity. In the Incarnation of the Logos in Christ the Love which orders the cosmos is shown or made concrete and the healing of humanity, the ‘microcosmic mediator,’ is accomplished; thus the goal (telos) of Creation, which the Triune God has desired from the beginning, is realized and made possible. Continue reading ‘St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality’

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Henri de Lubac “On Christian Philosophy”, part 3

Published by
DWM
at 09/03/2007 6 Comments

In this last post on Henri de Lubac’s article “On Christian Philosophy,” we will examine Lubac’s conclusion that for such a thing as Christian philosophy to exist, it must necessarily renounce its hitherto held dogma of closed rationalism, broaden the scope of reason by accepting desire, and open itself finally to the mystery of the incarnation as its ontological impetus and telos. First, let’s recap the argument thus far explored in the previous two posts (which can be found here and here).

The problem is how to conceive of the relationship between the Christian faith and philosophy. Lubac early on dismissed grounding the language of faith in Philosophy. He was also uncomfortable with the idea that philosophy can retain autonomy, yet all the while receiving contributions from the Faith. Rather, it is in the very essence of thought and reason to be open, not closed, constantly drawn forward and refreshed by faith. Philosophy can not help but be indelibly altered by its interaction with faith. Indeed, as Lubac affirms at the end of the article, within the deep structure of reason is the tectonic movement of the supernatural. But, Christian philosophy as it was then conceived was so constituted by an image of a reason hermetically sealed that there was no place for the mystery of the supernatural. The mystery could not be allowed to “fertilize” the soil of reason. Philosophers maintained the sphere of pure nature as the ground of philosophy.

Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac “On Christian Philosophy”, part 3′

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Response to Love Alone

Published by
Jefe
at 08/02/2007 7 Comments

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 Auschwitz Sacred Heartcover 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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