Athanasius ties the Arians up in knots with an order-of-decrees argument. If the Son is created for the sake of creating us, then the Son exists for our need rather than we for His sake. That suggests a particular ordering of God’s will: “It is not that God, having the Word in himself, wills us; but it is as if, having us in himself, God wills his own word.” This almost suggests that the Son is not directly willed at... Read more
Athanasius says that “the words of human beings do not act.” Instead, “it is not by words but by hands that a human being works, for human hands have subsistence while words do not.” Hence, he is willing to adopt Irenaeus’s notion that the Son and Spirit are the two “hands” of the Father. But human words do act. Which makes one wonder: How would Christology have developed differently if John Searle or J. L. Austin rather than Athanasius had... Read more
Athanasius ( Orations Against the Arians ) writes that “God is not like us.” This is in the context of explaining how the eternal Word differs from the ephemeral words of human beings, and how the divine Word actually does what it says: “the Word of God is not, as it were, a mere enunciation.” Yet, criticizing Arians from another angle, Athanasius insists that even among corporeal creatures there are “offspring that are not parts of the essences from which... Read more
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M responds to my posts about liberalism, where I quoted a couple of passages from a recent essay by John Milbank. Rogers writes: “I do think that there is probably a liberal anthropology that can be criticized in a way similar to Milbank. But sometimes I wonder if both liberals and anti-liberals impute too much theoretical weight ‘anthropology’) to what is really just a very practical and non-controversial intellectual move. (more…) Read more
When Jesus tells Peter to forgive “seventy times seven” times, He is only alluding to the climax of God’s dealings with Israel that Daniel prophesied; he is He is also is alluding to Lamech, who threatened to avenge himself “seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:22-23). Lamech was the descendant of Cain. Cain was the first murderer, a fratricide. His brother did him no wrong, but instead of confessing his sin to his brother and seeking reconciliation, he killed his brother. He then established... Read more
In the first year of Darius, Daniel was studying the book of Jeremiah’s prophecies when he came upon the prophecy that Israel would be released from captivity after 70 years. The 70th year of exile was coming, and so Daniel began fasting in sackcloth and ashes, and be began confessing the sins of Israel and pleading with the Lord to hear and restore Israel. While he was praying, Gabriel appeared and told him that the Lord had decreed “70 weeks.”... Read more
Frederick Beiser’s ( Fate of Reason ) account of Hamann is a mess. He gets the history right (so far as I know it), but his summary of Hamann’s thought is not only mistaken; it’s incoherent. For Hamann, Beiser says, “faith is an immediate experience,” like sense experience, but on the very next page he says that Hamann “explicitly affirms that all our knowledge, whether religious or not, comes through our five senses.” What happened to immediacy? He claims that... Read more
Hamann does believe, as many postmoderns do, that we have no access to reality without language. But for Hamann this does not mean that we suffer “linguistic claustropobia,” or “outsidelessness.” Dickson again: “the fact that perceiving and understanding are inseparable from speaking is commonsensical; one no more need despair over it (nor contest that this is so) than one would trouble oneself over the fact that there is no access to sight without eyes. The fundamental differences lies in the... Read more
Hamann says that the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation does not, despite its apparent attention to the human author, really honor the author. This is because historical-critical interpretation is “castrated,” removing all passion and kerygmatic intention. Dickson writes, “The desires and kerygmatic intentions of the biblical authors are appreciated, and indeed given the courtesy of a response. To recognize an author’s or redactor’s aims but not to respond to them (even with a polite refusal) could be seen as a... Read more
Cryptic as always, Hamann writes ( Aesthetica in Nuce ): “Speak, that I might see you! — This desire was fulfilled in creation, which is an address to the creature through the creature.” Dickson notes that this suggests that creation pre-exists itself such that its desire is answered by the act of creation. She explains: “I make sense of this logical puzzle by metaschematically applying a Lacanian notion: that even before it is born the baby already is given a... Read more
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