The Whirlpool's Rim

Great comment, David. I am surprised at myself for...

2012-05-29T09:49:32.437-07:00

Great comment, David. I am surprised at myself for finding time to praise the writing of Draper's character for including his yearning for American repossession without noticing that the actual effect of George's "repeated sacrifices" were the sharing of that sacrifice by the citizens of Bedford Falls.

Bacevich thinks Wonderful Life is sentimental, and...

2012-05-24T13:15:42.742-07:00

Bacevich thinks Wonderful Life is sentimental, and it is in some ways, but not in the ways he indicates. The Bailey Building and Loan isn't saved through wishful thinking, but through the repeated sacrifices of George Bailey over many years. In the climax of the story, the BBL is in turn saved through the personal donations of the citizens of Bedford Falls in light of all George has done for them. Clarence the angel doesn't save the BBL, he saves George, and even if Clarence is eliminated from the story, the BBL is still saved... only George would never know it.

Perhaps Bacevich thinks it wishful thinking that the citizens of Bedford Falls would do such a thing. This is the view expressed by Henry Potter, who says the people will run George out of town on a rail when they discover the shortfall. But this isn't "realism", it's just a world-weary cynicism masquerading as wisdom.

John Behr, writing in Communio (Fall 2011...

2012-05-01T14:22:52.617-07:00

John Behr, writing in Communio (Fall 2011):

We need to acknowledge our part in his death, just as Peter must when he encounters the risen Christ in the gospel of John. Here, after the Passion, the disciples are back at the lake fishing as if nothing had happened. Jesus appears at the break of day, but is only recognized when he directs them to the place that they can find sustenance and find it in abundance. Only then does the beloved disciple say to Peter: "It is the Lord." But before Peter can again address Jesus as "Lord," he is confronted by Christ asking him three times, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter has to acknowledge his past, in which he denied Christ three times, as part of who he is; he cannot simply return to the more comfortable period before his time as a disciple, and a failed disciple at that. Only in this way can he once again be "Peter," the "rock"; only in this way can his past failure be brought to a good conclusion in his work as an apostle.

First, a clarification on my most recent comment: ...

2012-04-24T13:58:28.685-07:00

First, a clarification on my most recent comment: I was referring to the exclamation "no more circle" as an example of "registering the reception of a leap in being" from a consciousness of destiny wholly determined by Moira to a consciousness of destiny that is ultimately transcendent (or, at least, belonging to the gift of faith). I was asking whether the act of registering such a historical reception as an historian (or as a theologian reflecting on history) is akin to developing or endorsing a linearity of history that "has abandoned its true concrete condition." Similarly, what is the value of viewing the historical destiny of Rome through the lens of the Church's universal mission? Is it acceptable to praise Rome (and the Latin language) for the survival of the Catholic Church while also recognizing that it, like every epoch, could not respond to the fullness of being?

Second, the above questions are trivial in light of the rest of your comments, so I am glad that the precise causal linearity of our back-and-forth has not been clear from the outset. They (your comments) correspond with the Communio view of the extension, throughout history, via the sacraments and the liturgy, of the "eschatological consciousness of the early Church." In the most recent issue the Orthodox theological John Behr writes:

For Paul our entry into the mystery of Christ, as members of his body, is very clearly through Baptism, which is in the image of Christ's own death and resurrection. Through baptism we die to sin and this world once and for all. But as we still have sin working within us, and will certainly still die, our life in Christ still lies in the future: to the extent that we die to ourselves now, we begin to live the life of Christ . . . Having died in baptism, our true life lies hidden in Christ: it is not yet clear that we have been recreated and conformed to the image of God after the stature of Christ. We are a work in progress; our blueprint, the statue lying in the block of marble waiting to be sculpted, is already the image of Christ, though for now hidden with him. We are being worked on, so that when he appears, we will appear with him.

He goes on to show that the post-resurrection appearances of Christ reveal the eschatological dimensions of the liturgy. Those who saw him and believed in him abandoned him at the Crucifixion. Even Peter. When some of them met him after the Resurrection on the road to Emmaus they still did not recognize him or his purpose. And once they did recognize him (through what Adam elsewhere described as a "communal work [breaking of the bread, interpretation of scripture] of remembering") "he disappears from their sight."

And your comment on the Ascension also reminds me of Jose Granados' Communio article on that mystery (which I quoted here).

Anyway, I'll probably have more to say later, but right now I need to go have a drink to calm down after watching Fernando Torres score against Barcelona.

The last line should read:insofar as He has been S...

2012-04-24T06:50:53.382-07:00

The last line should read:insofar as He has been SENT in consequence of the Ascension.
...I Did not want to give the impression that I Think the Spirit's identity is a consequence of history but rather that the Church's hidden union with God in history is accomplished by the sending of an Advocate, namely the Holy Spirit --Who is of course eternal.

The question then becomes something like the follo...

2012-04-24T06:31:36.828-07:00

The question then becomes something like the following: What about the history that IS the end times --namely that deceptive perpetuation preceding its own apcalypse? This is the time of the Church Militant, and this Church bears within it the secret of how the world has ended --but it bears it AS a secret too- - namely veiled as the Eucharistic sacrifice and revealed only through the mediation of the Gift of Faith. THE linearity, then, of the Church as it approaches its destiny is a consequence of its having the fruits of the abolition of history --i.e. union with God, and yet having them only in secrecy --i.e. the secrecy of the Concealing withdrawal of God that is history. This secret possession of Union with God seems to be the Holy Spirit insofar as He has been only in consequence of the Ascension.

I suppose an odd conclusion may be drawn from appr...

2012-04-24T06:09:43.741-07:00

I suppose an odd conclusion may be drawn from approaching history in the way I am suggesting. That conclusion is that history itself becomes something deceptive,, after Christ since it appears to go on unfulfilled even though the fullness of time has been accomplished. The end times last over two millenia. This deception of the perpetuation of history after its end is annhilated by the eschaton, where what had alreaddy happened in secret is revealed: history has ended. For me this sounds about right because history is itself the history of the withdrawal of God, and the arrival of God -- that is His union with man is the tearing aside of history. Likewise, to speak of God entering time through the condescension of the Incarnation is to speak of God suffering the humilation of enduring the withdrawal of God ("Why hast Thou forsaken me") in order reverse that withdrawal for man.

Having tried to roughly situate the problem in thi...

2012-04-24T00:55:32.092-07:00

Having tried to roughly situate the problem in this way, it is important for to emphasize that I do not mean to suggest two exclusive histories simply coinciding. Salvation history thoroughly transforms and reinterprets and --indeed definitively unconceals-- history itself. Thus, since the crucifixion we have been living in the end times.

If by "registering a reception of a leap in b...

2012-04-24T00:36:22.076-07:00

If by "registering a reception of a leap in being" you are referring to Heideggerian epochality --and I am sorry to impose this if that is not what you mean (I am confused by your remark "Moira to transcendent destiny"), then I respond emphatically that there is an abyss of difference between this and a "linearity of history"; the epochs of seynsgeschichte quite precisely avoid linearity because their seeming succession is really the withdrawal of a missed beginning. In such a context Moira, as schicksal, is a consequence of the schicken --the sending or destining whereby what is sent is the Same as what is withheld. But that just sounds contradictory and oracular (if not inchoate) unless we concretely understand what is meant: namely that every age is an age at all because of the particular manner in which being exceeds an historical people's understanding of being. The age is constituted by what is misses. Therefore it is at once sent forth and held back. This understanding of history does not admit of any linearity or even succession, since since an epoch which follows a previous epoch not only comes but goes after it. In pursuing what withdraws from and as the previous age a supposedly succeeding age actually allows the Same to arise again --i.e.to be once again concealed in an age. What we are really talking about is how something 'eternal' not only appears in history but constitutes history.

Salvation history consists of a wholly different destiny since it does not move toward a withdrawal of the beginning and thus toward a primal concealment (calypsis), but rather toward an apo-calypsis. For it, in a way history has already ended, and the fullness of time has arrived.

Is there a difference between registering the rece...

2012-04-22T08:22:51.549-07:00

Is there a difference between registering the reception of a "leap in being" (Moira to transcendent destiny) and developing a linearity of history? Isn't there, with Augustine, the constant presence throughout history of the two cities, according to which we would still be able to think from out of Moira while celebrating a transcendental destiny (and maybe even a historical progress toward the latter)?

"No more circle! No more blind destiny! No mo...

2012-04-20T02:20:18.693-07:00

"No more circle! No more blind destiny! No more Moira! No more Fate!"

Because of this quote --which was alone what I was responding to --I do not see the campatibility or even concurrence that you are talking about in De Lubac when you say " Faith in Providence (which, for de Lubac, is a faith in our origin as imago die), and the creation of a conceptual system based on that faith, happens along with (within) "blind destiny."

I was only writing to support precisely this concurrence that you seem to be insisting on. But I have mush more to say about your second paragraph when I get a spare minute after today's teaching.

"imago die." Really, Tony?

2012-04-18T09:46:03.594-07:00

"imago die." Really, Tony?

Nice to see you back online, Pseudonoma. I hope yo...

2012-04-18T09:21:05.133-07:00

Nice to see you back online, Pseudonoma. I hope you are well.

I don't know that de Lubac is thinking the Christian concept of time as explicitly or finally linear. His purpose in Catholicism is to rehabilitate the Christian concept of a common transcendent destiny for mankind for which the "whole history of the world is a preparation." Such a destiny would not mean that the "darkness of God" in the present age is phenomenologically (wc?) lifted by the light of salvation history or that we somehow no longer require the gift of the capacity to be contemporaneous with Christ. Faith in Providence (which, for de Lubac, is a faith in our origin as imago die), and the creation of a conceptual system based on that faith, happens along with (within) "blind destiny." However, I don't know whether that is in accord with your "from out of Moira."

Is Augustine's joy at the explosion of circles the beginning of a strictly linear concept? It may announce the beginning of a possible "linearity of history that has abandoned its true condition" -- a concept that may begin to hold sway historically -- but it seems to me that it is more a joy at "something else" within Moira, some circular return that would be more worthy of Archimedes' mortal focus, some unintended gift given by the disruptive sandal of the Roman empire. The disturbance of the circle reveals the restlessness of the heart.

"But should one follow them further- and ever...

2012-04-11T23:49:56.661-07:00

"But should one follow them further- and ever further and further on,
thinkest thou, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally
antithetical?"-
"Everything straight lieth," murmured the dwarf, contemptuously.
"All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle."

Thus spake the gravity dwarf against Zarathustra. I mention it because Zarathustra, in a parody of Christ, is to defeat the weight of gravity, the crookedness of truth, and the circularity of time. But he is not the only one that parodies --I would submit that every time we try to think the Christian concept of time as linear in opposition to the circularity of the ancients, we are entangled in errors. The replacement of the chiaroscura of Moira is with the Light of the Incarnation must nevertheless still be *thought* from out of Moira. Otherwise we think from out of this blindly, and so develop a linearity of history that has abandoned its true concrete condition. namely the presence of Christ. This happens in most philosophies of history.

Here is a description of the memorization technique from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (ignore the evolutionary psychology stuff):

Both men use a technique they say is popular with memory fanatics, a method known as loci, which means places, thought to be used by the ancient Romans and Greeks. The theory is that the brain is best equipped to remember images and locations, because this information is evolutionarily useful, say, in helping humans remember which trails through the woods lead back home.

By turning names, facts and figures into pictures and then anchoring these images in the mind using familiar locations, such as one's house, one needs only to "walk" through his house mentally to remember where the image was placed.

From JPII's Theology of the Body, Aud...

2012-03-24T16:53:46.490-07:00

From JPII's Theology of the Body, Audience 11/7/79:

Considering the specificity of the language, one must first recognize that this Genesis torpor, in which, by the work of Yahweh-God, the man is immersed in preparation for the new creative act, stimulates much thought. Against the background of contemporary mentality, which is accustomed--by analysis of the subconscious--to link sexual contents with the world of dreams, that torpor may evoke a particular association. The biblical account, however, seems to go beyond the dimension of the human subconscious. If one then supposes that a certain diversity of vocabulary is significant, one can conclude that man (adam) falls into that "torpor" in order to wake up as male (is) and female (issa). In fact, it is here in Genesis 2:23 that we come across the distinction between is and issah for the first time. Perhaps, therefore, the analogy of sleep indicates here not so much a passage from consciousness to the subconscious, but a specific return to non-being (sleep has within itself a component of the annihilation of man's conscious existence), or to the moment before creation, in order that the solitary "man" may by God's creative initiative reemerge from that moment in his double unity as male and female.

In any case, in the light of the context of Genesis 2:18-20, there is no doubt that man falls into this "torpor" with the desire of finding a being similar to himself. If by analogy with sleep we can speak here also of dream, we must say that this biblical archetype allows us to suppose as the content of this dream a "second I," which is also personal and equally related to the situation of original solitude, that is, to that whole process of establishing human identity in relation to all living beings (animalia), inasmuch as it is a process of man's "differentiation" from such surroundings. In this way, the circle of the human person's solitude is broken, because the first "man" reawakens from his sleep as "male and female."

de Lubac, writing in The Drama of Atheist Huma...

2012-03-19T12:06:57.979-07:00
de Lubac, writing in The Drama of Atheist Humanism:

Some argue that [Dostoevsky's] bad characters, the deniers, stand out admirably in these books, whereas the good, the virtuous, the believers are commonplace figures . . . But, as we noted in the case of Myshkin, the characters of the second type are not always so insignificant! If their coloring is rather pale and their gestures sometimes clumsy, is there not a simple reason for that? Heaven has always been less easy to paint than hell; but that does not mean the painter has a greater belief in hell than in heaven . . . (368)

Nietzsche, writing in The Gay Science, Se...

2012-03-16T13:14:11.263-07:00
Nietzsche, writing in The Gay Science, Section 108: "God is dead; but men are such that there will still be caves perhaps for millenia in which his shadow will be shown . . ."

de Lubac quotes Augustine in Catholicism ...

2012-03-16T12:19:12.279-07:00
de Lubac quotes Augustine in Catholicism (142) and in The Drama of Atheist Humanism he also writes, "No more circle! No more blind destiny! No more Moira! No more Fate!" (23)

From an article by Joseph P. Fell in Research ...

2012-03-16T10:26:47.633-07:00
From an article by Joseph P. Fell in Research in Phenomenology:

What is this "home," this "destiny"? [Heidegger's interpretation of Zarathustra's "convalescence"] It is reached via an overcoming of "revenge . . . the will's aversion to time and its 'It was'." . . .

What, then, is the time of this destiny and of this home? . . . One’s destined time, as a mortal dwelling on the earth, is the coming on of what has been out of the future. The overman must pass the test of being able to affirm a time in which there will be nothing essentially new or novel; his time is a time of finite possibilities. Research in Phenomenology 15 (1):29-41, 37

Jack Burden's marriage to Anne Stanton is like an American dramatization of this return home. As I said in the post on '90s Country, it is like the revelation of the "how [via love] that time remains in this time!" in the midst of the anguished "how did that time become this time?"

Daniel McCarthy, writing at @TAC:

There’s an all too easy answer to the question of why bad things happen to innocent people — the evils of his world, great as they seem in the light of our mortal lives, are nothing compared to whatever reward (or punishment) awaits in the next. The immortality of the soul and the scale of eternity can erase any transient suffering in this life, or so the logic goes. But this is cold comfort, and the reason it’s cold comfort raises a more difficult question. The things that matter to us are all limited and mortal; our knowledge and experience of them occurs only within the parameters of mortal, earthly existence. An immortal, unearthly existence, whatever else can be said for it, is not one that much resembles the world or people we love in our fragile, time-bound lives. The joys of reunion with lost loved ones in the afterlife are some solace to grieving families in the here and now, but the more the mind considers a different plane of existence in an entirely different context from the one we know, where even the self has lost the horizon of experience, the less appealing it becomes.

Mattie's final words as True Grit end...

2012-02-29T14:45:40.163-07:00
Mattie's final words as True Grit ends: "Time just gets away from us."

For Ricoeur, resignation is the first step -- in the aftermath of nihilism -- beyond the desire for consolation via theodicy and toward a repetition of faith.

An excerpt from Religion, Atheism, Faith:

Nietzsche also gave the name "consolation" to the great desire, "the greatest hope": that man might overcome himself. Why did he refer to this hope as consolation? Perhaps because consolation bears in itself the notion of deliverance from feelings of revenge. "For that man be delivered from revenge is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms." Deliverance from vengeance is at the heart of our meditation on consolation, for vengeance means: "Where once was suffering, punishment must appear." Heidegger comments in the following manner: vengeance is an activity which opposes itself and is degrading--though not primarily and fundamentally in a moral sense. The critique of vengeance is not itself a moral critique. The spirit of vengeance is directed against time, against that which passes. Zarathustra says: "This, yes, this alone is vengeance itself, resentment of the will against time and its this was." Vengeance is the will in self-opposition, and hence, resentment against time. The fact that time passes is the catastrophe which causes the will to suffer and on which the will takes revenge by denouncing that which passes because it passes. To overcome vengeance is to overcome the negation within the affirmation.

Fr. Dylan Schrader on the ignorance of Christ:

"[The Church teaches] that our Lord had the Beatific Vision in his life on earth and was, therefore, conscious of his divine identity from the first moment of his conception in the womb of Mary . . .

Only the Beatific Vision made it possible for his human intellect to know each member of humanity, intimately and individually, for in that Vision, our Lord saw each of us in the divine Essence, the very source of all reality . . .

If we denied that Christ had the Beatific Vision while on earth, we would have to conclude that whatever knowledge he did eventually gain of his identity and mission was a result of God’s revelation. Thus, Christ would have had the virtue of faith. This would mean, in turn, that the faith of the Church would be based on Christ’s own faith, and his unique role as the 'perfecter of our faith' (Heb 12:2) would be undermined.

It is unclear to me whether having the Beatific Vision and a certain knowledge of his identity and mission means that Christ could not have been "ignorant" in any way. Fr. Schrader also writes:

"Sometimes, people are confused by the claim that Christ had the Beatific Vision while on earth. After all, doesn’t the Bible say that Christ 'grew in wisdom' (Lk 2:52)? Assuredly, the Church teaches that Jesus learned things. Our Lord assumed a full human nature, and it is proper to man to acquire knowledge through experience. We should note at the outset that there is no difficulty in saying that Christ learned, through experience, things that he already knew through his beatific and infused knowledge. It is a matter of coming to know in fundamentally different ways. For example, already knowing the geographical layout of Palestine, Jesus actually walked the streets of Palestine. Already knowing the precise day and hour of his death on the cross, our Lord arrived at that hour, and gave himself over to the fearful experience of crucifixion."

And in the comments he distinguishes between two doctrines:

"I should say that there are really two different doctrines being discussed in this section of my article. The first is the doctrine that Christ, as man, was always conscious of his divine identity. The second is that he possessed the Beatific Vision on earth. The first doctrine is taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (at least a doctrine de fide tenenda). The second doctrine is taught by the Magisterium (e.g., very clearly in the letter of Pius XII I quoted), though possibly not definitively; it is at least a doctrine to which religious submission of intellect and will is owed, and it would be theologically unsafe to deny it."

Michael Hannon, writing at First Things: ...

2012-01-09T21:10:55.323-07:00
Michael Hannon, writing at First Things:

In a recent documentary on Eastern Christian monasticism, NYU’s Norris Chumley asked a monk in the Ukraine if God speaks to him in prayer. “He does not speak to me,” the monk answered, “because he has already said everything, through the Gospel and through the works of the Holy Fathers, of the saints.” Such a response might sound borderline blasphemous to contemporary Christians. And yet, this answer reflects perfectly the consensus of the Church over the past 2,000 years. In general, it seems that God provides the graces people need to serve him in whatever station of life they occupy. (Via Siris)

From Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death...

2012-01-07T22:10:30.538-07:00
From Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death:

The God-relationship is an infinitizing, but in fantasy this infinitizing can so sweep a man off his feet that his state is simply an intoxication. To exist before God may seem unendurable to a man because he cannot come back to himself, become himself. Such a fantasized religious person would say (to characterize him by means of some lines): "That a sparrow can live is comprehensible; it does not know that it exists before God. But to know that one exists before God, and then not instantly to go mad or sink into nothingness!"

But to become fantastic in this way, and thus to be in despair, does not mean, although it usually becomes apparent, that a person cannot go on living fairly well, seem to be a man, be occupied with temporal matters, marry, have children, he honored and esteemed--and it may not be detected that in a deeper sense he lacks a self. (32)