After being jumped on for my apparently less-than-exact political groussing, I will stay closer to my own expertise for this entry. In fact, it will be so much so that I don't know if hardly anyone will get the proper smile from this, except for Seraphim, of course.... :-)
While at the library tonight, I got some good emails, including a gracious one from my Doktorvater who is settling into his retirement in the Jesuit community at Boston College, next to the fellow on whom I'm writing the dissertation he's directing, and one from Tom Near, who was once long ago with me one of the bad boys of the Department of History at Northern. After discovering me online after not hearing from one another for a decade, he sent me one of those cool "catch up" letters that are so much fun. His current location leaves me more than impressed: he's a new professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale.
Lastly, I received from my advisor this little gem. Hysterical. Really. It is. You have to believe me! :
Subject: My Favorite Zizioulas Joke
Last weekend at a conference in Cambridge (UK) Zizioulas was forced to admit that a theologumenon he said was Gregory of Nyssa's was in fact not something Gregory ever said: quote,"Well, yes, Gregory did not say this, but it is what he would say if he were alive today." He then proceeded to say that according to GregNys and Maximus it is the case that through the Incarnation we become part of the Trinity (which set Kallistos Ware off like a bomb.)
isnt it? of course in the whole area of
'theosis' there is no precision ,and
no doubt none possible, as to what is
meant etc.
anyway if Gregory of Nyssa were alive today
I am sure he would be pleased that Notre
Dame whomped Penn State on Saturday, I will
go that far with confidence.
+Seraphim
Another student on the mailing responded with the following, which you might find interesting:
not decide it. for me an interesting
approach is that of the expression
'necessity of being' in charles williams
poem about galahad 'necessity of being
was communicated to the son of lancelot'...
I believe this gets to the point where the
rubber hits the road and in other words
is the universe 'necessary' ...I will wish
to say, understanding it is only words etc
and images are better but still not the
thing itself, yes.
the fourth side of rublevs table of the
Trinity...the fourth sought by Jung etc...
regarding of the cosmos and
individuals as grounded in
the Divine is what is known
as panentheism isn't it? I
have never gotten much of a handle
on any of this, well and of course
in one sense who has? part of the
problem with theological discussion
of the nature of Reality is that
X can assert A and Y can assert
B but Reality will remain somehow
beyond all of that won't it? rather
as in supposed remark of galileo
that it still goes around the sun
etc after his prudent retractions.
But clearly I think the negative way is strong in its security, that we can with much greater certainty say what God is not: logic serves us very well there. And obviously with revelation in particular, there's a lot that can be said in the positive mode, too. It's the clash of ideas that whittles away at revealing the Truth of these things over time. So, for example, whether or not it seems random to people who've never studied the long history of the inquiry into the matter, I feel very secure in describing God as Triune. That sort of thing....
of this discussion of theosis, it
is not really for us to decide is it?
was my little thought...but yes of
course.
Calistos going "off like a bomb"
but I am sure it was a fairly
courteous explosion, the dear fellow.
else looked at your political post
and see that the danger seems limited
to that "twenty years" from now
you might be a registered
Democrat. concluding that this is a
condition contrary to present fact, it
seems not alarming. None of us can be
sure that we will not fall into this
or that vice in the future, let us just
hope all your future vices are pleasant
and not worse than(as nabokov said 5
of the 7 deadly sins were) peccadillos...
as it would seem to me being a
democrat is not.
Nabokov said that without the other two
(lust and pride) the human race could
not survive.
well thinking theologically now before
Bp C goes off at a distance I would say
accepting that in its terms, of course
considerably as bon mot, the virtues
including humilty and chastity are also
necessary to the race.