Aron made me agree to post my paper before he’d let me put his up. If you haven’t listened to his yet, please do. It’s not only a great introduction to Lacan, but also an interesting theological reflection. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.. or at least, you shouldn’t be.
So, here’s my presentation from this year’s AAR MidAtlantic Regional conference. This is pretty much the same paper that Cynthia posted on Per Caritatem a couple months ago – Thanks again, Cynthia! I had a great response in the Q&A time, but failed to record it. Anyway, let us know what you think about all this podcasting stuff. I’m thinking about getting a better mic than the one that comes with the macbook, but would like to know if this stuff is relevant or even helpful to the lot of you before I invest in it.
Cheers,
Dan
David began the von Balthasar blog conference last night over at The Fire and the Rose with the following introduction:
In a world where we are bombarded by seemingly endless amounts of information, I trust this conference will offer something distinct and interesting. While blogs have been disparaged (often rightly) by academics, I hope this experiment demonstrates that theo-blogging can be a place for academically rigorous and theologically sophisticated work. More importantly, in a conference examining the interrelation between theology and exegesis, I hope most of all that these essays provoke us to return to the text anew for a fresh hearing of God’s Word. May we gain a greater appreciation for what von Balthasar accomplished, and, following his example, learn to cultivate a faith that always seeks understanding.
My contribution will be posted tomorrow. In the meantime, definitely head on over and read the inaugural posts, here and here. Lois Miles has a great piece on von Balthasar’s reliance upon the contemplative mysticism of Adrienne von Speyr. The essay gives a nice biography of their relationship, including a bit on the creation of von Speyr’s commentaries on Scripture. Cynthia Nielsen, in her usual exemplary style, helps us understand Balthasar’s insight that aesthetics and hermeneutics can not be separated without comprising the wholeness of the Scripture – “a recovery of theologico-aesthetic sensibilities that had been lost with certain modernist interpretive currents.”
By all means, please engage these authors by commenting. I think this format of blog conference is a unique opportunity for scholars around the globe to extend the theological conversations that just aren’t (unfortunately) getting air time in places like AAR and the like. Additionally, the kind of interaction that has already begun exhibits a kind of charity that is as rare in the larger, more established venues. As David mentions, the blog medium hasn’t garnered the best reputation among the academic elite. Hopefully our fellowship will help change that perception.
As many of you know, Janet has begun the discussion of S. Endo’s Silence over at deepgraceoftheory. Here at TLOU, we’d like to investigate some of the more technical aspects of the theology behind Silence. So today, through the magic of cut and paste, we’re going to direct your attention to Janet’s and my conversation that we hope to continue here.
First, Janet quotes my early comment, and then responds to it:
“Rather, I think of it like participating in the sacraments. Our relationship to God through the church is starved if we deprive ourselves of the sacraments. Likewise, if we refuse to participate in the world in a way that conforms to our end, we lose something of the sacramentality of being in the world.”
Yes, I agree with you you about this “participation.” I suppose this is why Father Rodrigues was willing to hear Kichijiro’s confession and have him live with him in his little community. Continue reading ‘The Sacraments and Silence’
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.
This morning, one of my professors related to the class that in his parish the deacon preached this last sunday. The Gospel, some of you may remember, was from Luke and was the story of the Sadducees posing to Jesus a particularly frightening situation re: Levitical law, but an even more perplexing problem to those who hold to bodily resurrection. Apparently this deacon reads in the passage, and especially in Jesus’ response to the Sadducees, an affirmation that we (Christians, I assume) are not of this world, and b/c we are bound to be like angels in heaven, this world and the corporeal matter not. I got a decidedly different message in my parish. Our sermon told us that the Sadducees were “diet evil” and a rather rambunctious crowd, merely interested in asking Jesus dumb questions like the above. Jesus in this sermon’s telling served a little more than a literary device to offset the Sadducees sophomoric logic. Continue reading ‘Sadducees and bad preaching’
Here’s one to get the thomists out there involved – you know who you are. 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…”
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,” 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.”
Continue reading ‘Rahner and de Lubac on the final knowledge of God, pt. 1′
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.’
If the Enlightenment and subsequent periods of modernity have done anything to alter what it means to be human, they have set humanity at a distance from the world, positing a radical degree of separation between the created order and Aristotle’s rational animals. Where God factors into this rift, and how one structures the dialogue between Philosophy and Theology, depends largely on how one schematizes God in relation to Being. It was Hans Urs von Balthasar who adroitly drew out the ramification of the human mind’s prodigality when he said, “[T]he human person himself would stand as the synthetic element, not only between [Church and world/Faith and Reason], but secretly above both.”
Continue reading ‘Cosmic Aesthetics: Begbie, von Balthasar, and some musings on modernity’s implications for theological aesthetics’
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′
That’s the claim made by Preaching Without Contempt: Overcoming Unintended Anti-Juadaism (2006), a short volume by Marilyn J. Salmon, NT prof at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Salmon stakes the claim, following recent Pauline scholarship, that the Gospels are inherently Jewish texts, that Jesus’ Judaism is at the core of his mission, and that a good deal of Christian hermeneutics, theologizing, and subsequent preaching has notoriously failed to recognize such.
Continue reading ‘Inadvertent Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology? A Reading Group Proposal’
August 13th is the day that Anglicans, especially Irish Anglicans, remember Jeremy Taylor (d. Aug 13, 1667) whose various clerical posts included serving as chaplain to Charles I and, later in life, as Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. I first learned of Taylor last year in an article by Edmund Newey titled “The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Wichcote, Ralph Cudworth, and Jeremy Taylor”. Newey’s central thesis relates to the concept of theosis, also called deification, in four Anglicans and the Cambridge Platonists movement in Anglican theology (Wichcote and Cudworth often being considered the first of the Cambridge Platonists). Tonight, I’ll look at Newey’s introduction and exegesis of Hooker. Continue reading ‘Theosis among some Anglicans, part 1′
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