Contemplating Death
From “Charles Spurgeon’s” twitter today: A quote from Charles Spurgeon: The Christian who contemplates death with joy is a living sermon.
Who’s Charles Spurgeon?
Mary Daly dead at 81
I’ll blame it on grading papers for days as this is not breaking news. Daly was a force to be reckoned with.
I did hear her speak once. When I was at the Claremont Graduate School she gave a lecture. I have to admit that I didn’t understand what she was railing about. I remember that she just seemed “angry”. She used lots of post-modern-y words that were well beyond my Thomistic-Aristotelian mindset and vocabulary. Read more
Edward Schillebeeckx dead at 95
Renowned theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, died on the 23rd. Although I never finished one of his books, I was always impressed by their “freshness” and vitality. I remember reading bits of Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God
Welcoming Nazis and saving Jews
This is a story I’d never heard before. I’m also reading a wonderful bio of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Andrei Sheptyts’kyi (1865–1944) the Ukrainian metropolitan of the Greek Catholic Church, did all of these things. (Greek Catholics accept the authority of the pope, but practice a liturgy much like that of the Orthodox.) He wrote a letter to Himmler asking him to stop using Ukrainian policemen to murder Jews. He issued pastoral letters urging his people, the Greek Catholics of western Ukraine, to love their Jewish neighbors rather than serve in the police formations that were killing them.
Yet he also “welcomed the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1943, he sent Greek Catholic chaplains to accompany the Ukrainian soldiers of the Waffen-SS Division Galizien.” The blog article goes on to make clear that these decisions aren’t so difficult to explain given the historical context before WWII. Still, reading this entry alongside a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is eye opening. There are reasons behind our choices (not all the time, but a lot of the time). How do we weigh the options we have? What if those “options” are barely options at all?
New natural law and Robert George
I’ve just finished reading David Kirkpatrick’s profile of Robert George in the NY Times Sunday. It’s probably no shock that I’m not screeching, screaming conservative. But neither am I a liberal frothing at the mouth. This goes back to my describing myself as a “thinking theist”. I want to avoid getting political here. Rather, I’m just going to share some views about the intersection of religion and philosophy.
What caught my eye, of course, was the reference to Aristotle and Thomistic thought. (Disclaimer: When I first studied Aristotle it was in conjunction with Thomistic thought. I’m in no way an enemy of Thomist thought, per se.) But as I continued to read, I saw the challenge emerge: do we rest on reason and our intellect? Or do we depend on our moral inclinations? It’s my old “faith versus reason” thing. Read more
Why church isn’t the same as faith
This isn’t a news flash, but I enjoy seeing issues we discuss in class echoed in the media. Andrew Sullivan posts this quote from Paul Zahl who’s discussing the work of Emil Brunner (d. 1966). A reflection by Brunner’s former student bring this distinguished scholar to life. Here’s a little bit of the quote:
There is a collective dimension to this: all the early Christians experienced the same thing. Like alien abductees, the first Christians had a shattering experience in common. This brought them together. But this experience was not an institution.” – Paul Zahl,
Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life.
Watch Zahl speak about this book:
Neibuhr – Obama’s theologian
Haven’t viewed this yet, but it certainly looks good. David Brooks and E. J. Dionne discuss the theologian Richard Neibuhr. (Another Speaking of Faith episode)