Christianity: the Great Assimilator
Published on July 8th, 2010.
“The phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this:—That great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is, in its rudiments or in its separate parts, to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it,—’These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:’ we, on the contrary, prefer to say, ‘these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.’ That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canannites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; ’sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;’ claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to ’suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings.’
“How far in fact this process has gone, is a question of history; and we believe it has before now been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. Milman, have thought that its existence told against Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a Sibyl was inspired, or Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing at the Nativity; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in very deed He died for us on Calvary. Nor are we afraid to allow, that, even after His coming, the Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner’s fire, or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her Master’s image.
“The distinction between these two theories is broad and obvious. The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to expect, ‘at sundry times and in divers manners,’ various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of itself. We consider the Christian doctrine, when analyzed, to appear, like the human frame, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made;’ but they think it some one tenet or certain principles given out at one time in their fulness, without gradual enlargement before Christ’s coming or elucidation afterwards. They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen; we conceive that the Church, like Aaron’s rod, devours the serpent of the magicians. They are ever hunting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fulness. They seek what never has been found; we accept and use what even they acknowledge to be a substance. They are driven to maintain, on their part, that the Church’s doctrine was never pure; we say that it can never be corrupt. We consider that a divine promise keeps the Church Catholic from doctrinal corruption; but on what promise, or on what encouragement, they are seeking for their visionary purity does not appear.”
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John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 380-2.
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Love they Neighbor
Published on June 28th, 2010.
If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my “religious duties”, then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only my readiness too encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well.
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Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter DEUS CARITAS EST, Part I, Par. 18.
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The Necessity of Friendship
Published on June 28th, 2010.
For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends? Or how can prosperity be guarded and preserved without friends? The greater it is, the more exposed is it to risk. And in poverty and in other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge. . . . Friendship seems too to hold states together, and lawgivers to care more for it than for justice; for unanimity seems to be something like friendship, and this they aim at most of all, and expel faction as their worst enemy; and when men are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality.
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Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Bk VIII, 1155a5-28.
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God the Father
Published on June 2nd, 2010.
Faced with having to select between ‘Mother’ or ‘Father’ as the proper name of God–as one must, since ‘parent’ by itself does not individuate–the criterion should be which name is the more easily separated from its function as the name of a role in our bisexual reproduction. Once this criterion is adopted, it becomes clear that only ‘Father’ will do, since ‘Mother’ is too intimately involved with the process of reproduction. In other words, a mother goddess is too continuous with the world, too much like the womb from which we came, to stand for the divine reality revealed in the Old Testament, a reality that is decisively other than the world, different from the world, discontinuous with the world, and with a plan, indeed, for the world’s remaking.
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Aidan Nichols, Holy Order: Apostolic Priesthood from the New Testament to the Second Vatican Council (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1990), 149-50.
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Loving thy neighbor…
Published on May 31st, 2010.
I do not believe it possible for a man to be saved who has done nothing to advance the salvation of his neighbour.
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St. John Chrysostom, On The Priesthood (388 AD). Quoted in Aidan Nichols, Holy Order: Apostolic Priesthood from the New Testament to the Second Vatican Council (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1990), 64.
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Ministry One Person at a Time
Published on April 16th, 2010.
Jesus’ ministry was not orderly, but we would hardly suggest that it had no focus. He was frequently overextended in ministering to those in need, but he never lost his way. His work, at times, interfered with his sleep, but not with his prayer. For years I wondered how he kept his ministry so clearly on track through all the interruptions and obstacles–all the “mess” of the world that intruded into his life and ministry.
Then one day it struck me that, when Jesus opened his arms to embrace a little child and when he opened his arms wide on the cross to embrace the whole world, it was one and the same. He came to bring the Father’s healing, saving love to the human family–one person at a time. He came among us filled with enduring love. So, the people he encountered on his journeys were never interruptions, distractions, or obstacles. For him, they were opportunities to carry out his mission; this is why the Father had sent him into the world! Serving others was at the very core of the meaning of his life and ministry.
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Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, The Gift of Peace: Personal Reflections by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1997), 78-9.
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On being Right
Published on February 10th, 2010.
It is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
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Martha C. Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism,” Political Theory, Vol. 20, No. 2, (May, 1992), pp. 215.
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Myth and Nature
Published on February 10th, 2010.
“Just as our feelings about humanity veer between pride and shame, our conceptions of nature involve both fear and idealization.
The concept of nature presupposes some sort of prior unity, before man was separated from his environment. As Baring and Cashford put it:
Humanity’s act of becoming aware that it is a creature distinct from animal and plant ruptures the wholeness of the divine order by splitting consciousness into a duality….(p. 163).
Myth emerged in a response to a sense of terror and disorientation created by this rupture. Lacking the security of a clear biological niche and overwhelmed by an exceptionally powerful imagination, man used myth as a means to order the chaos of experience (Blumenberg, pp. 3-7). Myth divided the natural wold into various realms and powers, which might be more easily placated or controlled. This rupture is commemorated in several tales, such as the origin of the divinities and the universe from the breaking of a primordial egg (Gimbutas, pp. 101-111; Detienne, p. 71). The process of division left experience fragmented and incomplete. It generated the elusive feelings of anxiety and discontent which pervade our entire civilization but are so difficult to articulate or explain.”
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Boria Sax, The Serpent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and Literature (Blacksburg, VA: McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, 1998), 19-20.
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Nature and Culture
Published on February 10th, 2010.
“All culture is pervaded by a nostalgia for a lost intimacy with nature, a condition variously identified with childhood, so-called “primitive” cultures or some period of the past….”
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Boria Sax, The Serpent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and Literature (Blacksburg, VA: McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, 1998), 20.
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Death is not the greatest evil
Published on January 20th, 2010.
Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in war, contrive to avoid death at any cost. Indeed it is often obvious in battle that one could escape death by throwing away one’s weapons and by turning to supplicate one’s pursuers, and there are many ways to avoid death in every kind of danger if one will venture to do or say anything to avoid it. It is not difficult to avoid death, gentleman; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.
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Plato, Apology, 39.
Published in: John Cooper, ed. Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 34.
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