Last night I went back and checked the Notre Dame Press overstock site on a hunch. I wanted to check whether they publish one of the few books I know of in English about the legacy of Solidarity from a theological viewpoint. Indeed, they do. Beyer’s Recovering Solidarity describes its task as follows: “Using Poland as a case study, Beyer explores the obstacles to promoting an ethic of solidarity in contemporary capitalist societies and attempts to demonstrate how the moral... Read more
Alan Jacobs on Lost in the Cosmos–the book, not this blog: “Lost in the Cosmos is the most peculiar book of Percy’s career, and in my judgment his finest achievement. I read it when it first appeared, and if you had asked me at the time whether I expected the book to be relevant in 30 years, I probably would have said no.” He tells you why he was happily wrong here. While we’re at it, feel free to drop by... Read more
I made some promises here yesterday that I have to break today (Rabelais would approve) because of last ditch paper grading. However, the following passage is a prelude to our discussion of Jenkins, Pickstock, and paganism. It also confirms our suspicions about the separation of the sacred from the profane here. Denis Feeney is a Classics scholar, so it warms my cockles to be vindicated by someone who does not ostensibly have a pony in the present debates about secularism,... Read more
Yesterday’s post discussed (here) how early Christian theology was fundamentally “polluted” by the Greek tradition of philosophy as a way of life. But historian Jaroslav Pelikan suggest the contagion goes down even further, right down into the marrow, into the very language used to compose the New Testament: “It remains one of the most momentous linguistic convergences in the entire history of the human mind and spirit that the New Testament happens to have been written in Greek–not in... Read more
Early in the morning I’m grading papers at the Crossroads mall in Bellevue. It’s delightful to watch the light filter in and settle upon the heads of people standing in line at the food court. It reminds me of the lines, The others are not hell, / if you see them early, with their / foreheads pure, cleansed by dreams.” The brackets below are all mine and suggest possible influences and/or interesting connections to Zagajewski’s poem. “In the Beauty Created By Others” from Without... Read more
I don’t want to belabor the obvious when it comes to Perry’s right-ness. What I want to concentrate upon is why he’s right about how freedom of religion has played itself out in the American public square. Stephen L. Carter has written extensively about this issue, specifically how the metaphor of the wall of separation originated with Roger Williams (not Jefferson) and was always intended to protect religion from the interference of politics, not the other way around. Some go as far... Read more
In De praescriptione, vii Tertullian asks, What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? As it turns out, quite a lot. Michael J. Buckley in his must-read Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism lays out how a too close association between religion and early modern science eventually led to the propagation of atheism. Yes, you read that right, the relationship was not not marked by antagonism (yet another Enlightenment myth exposed).... Read more
Debates about supersessionism frequently flare up in America between evangelicals (generally pro) and mainliners (generally contra). They look and sound like an outgrowth of the early modern law and grace controversies. I would like to argue the real debate is elsewhere. The following etymology is a helpful frame for what we want to talk about: “The word supersessionism comes from the English verb to supersede, from the Latin verb sedeo, sedere, sedi, sessum, ‘to sit,’ plus super, ‘upon.’ It thus... Read more
TO RAJA RAO Czesław Miłosz Raja, I wish I knew the cause of that malady. For years I could not accept the place I was in. I felt I should be somewhere else. A city, trees, human voices lacked the quality of presence. I would live by the hope of moving on. Somewhere else there was a city of real presence, of real trees and voices and friendship and love. Link, if you wish, my peculiar case (on the border... Read more
Sonnet [read at 3AM] My being turns to smoke in the mad strife Of passions which have whirled me in their wake. How miserably blind was I to take This human span for almost-endless life. What countless suns the boastful fancy forges To gild this false existence as it flows, But now my slave-like nature undergoes The blasting havoc of a life of orgies. Pleasures, my tyrant cronies, in confusion, Hurling you to the gulf of disillusion, My thirsty soul... Read more
Cosmos The In Lost
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In