Everything mysterious and marvellous is proscribed
The Reformation is the first great expression of the search for certainty in modern times. As Schleiermacher put it, the Reformation and the Enlightenment have this in common, that ‘everything mysterious and marvellous is proscribed. Imagination is not to be filled with [what are now thought of as] airy images.’ In their search for the one truth, both movements attempted to do away with the visual image, the vehicle par excellence of the right hemisphere, particularly in its mythical and metaphoric function, in favour of the word, the stronghold of the left hemisphere, in pursuit of unambiguous certainty. … What is so compelling here is that the motive force behind the Reformation was the urge to regain authenticity, with which one can only be profoundly sympathetic. The path it soon took was that of the destruction of all means whereby the authentic could have been recaptured.
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary. (For related thoughts, though I didn’t plan a sequence on this general topic.)
Conscientious objector to arbitrary binaries
An Irish teacher at my grammar school used to tell this joke: A rabbi was wandering the streets of Belfast late one night and was confronted by an armed member of one of the local paramilitary organizations. “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” the armed man demanded. “I’m a Jew,” the rabbi replied. “Well, are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?” came the response. Now, this may not be that amusing as a joke, but it makes an important point: societies have categories for thinking about people and identity, and a real problem occurs when those categories are simply not adequate or appropriate.
Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
Only one sacrament?
How many sacraments does the Orthodox Church have? This is a question that an inquiring 16th century European might have posed. The Catholics had seven, while the Lutherans (and some other Protestants) said there were only two. “Of course,” thought the Orthodox in struggling to answer a question that had never been spoken in the Orthodox world, “We surely can’t have fewer than the Catholics.” So, “Seven.” Someone else in the Orthodox world thought, “But we’re more excellent.” So, the answer came back, “Nine.” Then, in the modern world of flourishing Orthodox thought a patriarch said, “The whole world’s a sacrament.” The counting of sacraments risks reducing them to moments of ritual, the concern of priests and churchly events: “We need to get the baby done…” I once heard as an Anglican. However, to say that “the whole world is a sacrament” runs the risk of saying nothing at all.
At its core, all of these statements beg the question: what is a sacrament? In the Orthodox world of the past, the term “sacrament” is missing from its vocabulary. Instead, Orthodoxy speaks of a “mystery.” It is well spoken, in that what is described is something hidden that is being made manifest. What we find, I think, is the very life of Christ being given to us. That is the mystery hidden from before the ages.
…
[R]ather than saying that the “whole world is a sacrament,” it is more accurate to say that there is only one sacrament – that of union with the death and resurrection of Christ.
Theodicy in a nutshell?
At this point, it might be objected that the problem of evil casts doubt on this claim; for if God is good, why hasn’t he eliminated the evil that obviously exists in the world? But there are several problems with this objection. First of all, it could only undermine Aquinas’s argument for God’s goodness if we assumed that a good being could not possibly have a reason to allow evil. But it is notoriously difficult to show that such a being could not possibly have such a reason, and even most contemporary atheist philosophers would not make such a strong claim.
Edward Feser, Aquinas
Cheap evangelical dates
From the outset of his brief political career, Trump has viewed right-wing evangelical leaders as a kind of special-interest group to be schmoozed, conned, or bought off, former aides told me. Though he faced Republican primary opponents in 2016 with deeper religious roots—Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee—Trump was confident that his wealth and celebrity would attract high-profile Christian surrogates to vouch for him.
Mackay Coppins. The photo illustration to the article vindicates Trump’s cynicism about “high-profile Christian surrogates.”
The Beatitudes, tell us the way blessedness works. I’ll take that over political “strength,” “force,” or “power” any day of the week, not just Sundays.
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 