2016-05-16T18:15:13-07:00

Last updated on: May 16, 2016 at 6:15 pm   By

Nietzsche would’ve seen Karl Barth as his match. The German philosopher is a usefully confusing atheist thinker. He said some very unexpected things about Christianity that actually get at the core of Christianity. After all, his father was a well-loved Lutheran minister, so Nietzsche understood Christianity from the inside. I wonder whether it has been explored how much Lutheranism seeped into his own frequently bleak, yet uplifting philosophy of decline. He liked to think things through to the end. One of his most valuable insights... Read more

2016-05-15T22:02:29-07:00

Last updated on: May 15, 2016 at 10:02 pm   By

The Holy Spirit made unexpected feminine appearances in ancient Hebrew traditions. “I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” –John 14:26 ========= “My mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of my hairs and carried me to Mount Tabor.” –Origen, quoting an agrapha in his Commentary on the Gospel of John... Read more

2016-05-11T09:52:49-07:00

Last updated on: May 11, 2016 at 9:52 am   By

The philosopher Martin Heidegger is arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th century. He almost singlehandedly (Scheler did too) turned Husserl’s phenomenology into the heart of human being-there, what the old tradition used to call philosophy as a way of life. This was his major contribution to modern philosophy, even though I’ve never seen it put this way, that is, by giving is a highly personalist twist. Although Heidegger might also have the claim as one of the first... Read more

2016-05-08T19:53:14-07:00

Last updated on: May 8, 2016 at 7:53 pm   By

. . . A pure thing, against the sad affairs of earth. Pure, forbidden the use of certain words: Toilet, telephone, ticket, ass, money . . . ~ Czesław Miłosz, A Treatise on Poetry The Catholic Imagination is a strange and wonderful thing. My fascination with it goes all the way back when I first came to the States to stay in 1986. Before that I might’ve seen a Lutheran church or two, but never participated in a Protestant service. Even at... Read more

2019-01-03T13:07:27-07:00

Last updated on: January 3, 2019 at 1:07 pm   By

Those outside of religious traditions sometimes articulate the belief that believers adhere to belief as a magical talisman for all of life’s problems. Alas, that Freudian wish remains unfulfilled for the vast majority of believers. Belief, much like marriage, is not a magical solution to all of life’s problems, but the inauguration into a whole new set of problems and obstacles. This at least makes sense for Christianity, the paradoxical religion of a Divine Physician who dies in the prime... Read more

2016-05-07T12:44:08-07:00

Last updated on: May 7, 2016 at 12:44 pm   By

That philosophy died yesterday, since Hegel or Marx, Nietzsche, or Heidegger, and that philosophy should still wander toward the meaning of its death, or that it has always lived knowing itself to be dying; that philosophy died one day, within history, or that it has always fed on its own agony, on the violent way it opens history by opposing itself to nonphilosophy, which is its past and its concern, its death and wellspring; that beyond the death, or dying... Read more

2016-05-06T20:03:31-07:00

Last updated on: May 6, 2016 at 8:03 pm   By

In our case, it is surely obvious that the sudden intensification of our capacity to pick up the eschatological undertones and overtones of the New Testamnt must have something to do with the emerging crisis of European civilization. Since the turn of the [20th] century human minds have been increasingly aware of a decline and fall, like the premonition of some imminent earthquake in world history. The First World War gave this sense its earliest tragic confirmation, undermining as it... Read more

2016-05-05T18:02:55-07:00

Last updated on: May 5, 2016 at 6:02 pm   By

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican Army’s surprising defeat of French troops at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza. Little known fact: the holiday is more widely celebrated in the United States than it is in Mexico. In my wildly surreal mind this seems like an appropriate time to remind you of the legacy of the French thinker Rene Girard. I make this connection because most of his later work concentrated upon the utter pointlessness of modern warfare, especially... Read more

2016-05-05T00:10:23-07:00

Last updated on: May 5, 2016 at 12:10 am   By

The electorate these days is thinking apocalyptically. This presidential election cycle is too much even for the strongest stomachs. Donald Trump destroyed Ted Cruz in Indiana yesterday. Today, the man who would’ve finished fourth in a two man race, John Kasich, is apparently dropping out. The two least popular candidates in living memory are the presumptive nominees for the Democrats and the Republicans. You might ask yourself: How can Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton be the two best candidates in any world other than... Read more

2016-05-02T17:29:39-07:00

Last updated on: May 2, 2016 at 5:29 pm   By

No, it’s not nudity, as you can still tell from the cover photo even if I did a bangup job of cropping out some serious naughty bits from that fresco. The Roman Catholic Church in its long history has seen it all: saints, sinners, suckers–a veritable historical alphabet soup. There’s nothing new under the sun for us Catholics. This is one reason why people freaking out about Pope Francis is so un-Catholic. However, once in a while, something truly new,... Read more

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