quote:

---

The world’s story of seeking God through its own wisdom is a story of failure. God may be revealed in creation, but human wisdom habitually misconstrues the knowledge of God to be found there. In the words of Romans 1:19–25, the world inevitably fails to honor or give thanks to God, but exchanges the truth of God for a lie.…Not even a wholesale reevaluation of wisdom by providing new norms and categories will suffice, since what the preaching of the crucified Christ does is to reveal the radical discontinuity between God and the world.…The gap between the free, transcendent God and a not-knowing humanity is bridged by a message that does not make sense by human standards, but a message that saves. Correspondingly, responders are not described as those who understand, but as those who believe. (Cousar 29–31)

---

quote:

---

A. Schmemann, "For the Life of the World" - from pages 128-130

The uniqueness of secularism, its difference from the great heresies of the patristic age, is that the latter were provoked by the encounter of Christianity with Hellenism, whereas the former is the result of a "breakdown" within Christianity itself, of its own deep metamorphosis. The lack of time prevents me from dealing with this point in detail. I shall limit myself therefore to one "symbolic" example directly related to our theme. At the end of the second century a Latin theologian, Berengarius of Tours, was condemned for his teaching on the Eucharist. He maintained that because the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements is "mystical" or "symbolic," it is not real. The Lateran Council which condemned him--and there is for me the crux of the matter-simply reversed the formula. It proclaimed that since Christ's presence in the Eucharist is real, it is not "mystical." What is truly decisive her is precisely the disconnection and the opposition of the two terms verum and mystice, the acceptance, on both sides that they are mutually exclusive. Western theology this declared that that which is "real" is not symbolic. This was, in fact, the collapse of the fundamental Christian understanding of creation in terms of its ontological sacramentality. And since then, Christian thought, in Scholasticism and beyond it, never ceased to oppose these terms, to reject, implicitly or explicitly, the "symbolic realism" and the "realistic symbolism" and the symbolism of reality. It was the collapse of the fundamental Christian mysterion, the antinomincal "holding together" of the reality of the symbol, and of the symbolism of reality. It was a collaps3e of the fundamental Christian understanding of creation in terms of its ontological sacramentality. And since then, Christian thought, in Scholosticism and beyond it, never ceased to oppose these terms, to reject, implicitly or explicitly, the symbolic realism and the "realistic symbolism" of the Christian world view. "As if God did not exist"-this formula originated not with Bonhoeffer or any modern apostle of "religionless Christianity." It is indeed implied already in Thomism, with its basic epistemological distinction between causa prima and cause secundae. Here is the real cause of secularism, which is ultimately nothing else but the affirmation of the world's autonomy, of its self-sufficiency in terms of reason, knowledge, and action. The downfall of Christian thought and experience. And whether the "natural" and the "supernatural" are somehow related to one another by analogia entis, in the Latin theology, or whether this analogy is totally rejected, as in Barthianism, ultimately makes not difference. In both views the world ceases to be the "natural" sacrament of God, and the supernatural sacrament to have any continuity with the world.

Let us not be mistaken, however,. This Western theological framework was in fact accepted by the Orthodox East also, and since the end of the patristic age our theology ad been indeed much more "Western" than "Eastern." If secularism can be properly termed a Western heresy, the very fruit of the basic Western "deviation," our own scholastic theology has also been permeated with it for centuries, and this in spite of the violent denunciations of Rome and papism. And it is indeed ironic, by not at all accidental, that psychologically the most "Western" among the Orthodox today are precisely the ultra-conservative "Super Orthodox," whose whole frame of mind is legalistic and syllogistic on the one had, and is made up, on the other hand, of those there "dichotomies' whose introduction into Christian thought is the "original sin" of the West. Once these dichotomies are accepted, it does not matter, theologically speaking, whether one "accepts" the world, as in the case of the Western enthusiasts of "secular Christianity," or "rejects" it, as in the case of the "Super-Orthodox" prophet of apocalyptic doom. The optimistic positivism of the one, and the pessimistic negativism of the other are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. Both, by denying the world its natural "sacramentality" and radically opposing the "natural" to the "supernatural," make the world grace proof, and ultimately lead to secularism. And it is here, within this spiritual and psychological context, that the problem of worship in relation to modern secularism acquires its real significance.

---

• Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanism of neural binding. In summary, reason is not, in any way, a transcendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.
  
• Reason is evolutionary, in that abstract reason builds on and makes use of forms of perceptual and motor inference present in “lower” animals. The result is a Darwinism [Semeia’s note: probably a dirty word here, but read on] of reason, a rational Darwinism: Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature. The discovery that reason is evolutionary utterly changes our relation to other animals and changes our conception of human beings as uniquely rational. Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.
  
• Reason is not “universal” in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way that our minds are embodied.
  
• Reason is not completely conscious, but mostly unconscious.
  
• Reason is not purely literal, but largely metaphorical and imaginative.
  
• Reason is not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged.

quote:

---

Given the radical discontinuity between God and us evidenced in the cross (as argued by the folks you quoted), how can a theology of the cross “come naturally” to anyone? Ha ha! Just being difficult.

---

The answer I believe is anticipated in the question. Natural theology is out for many theologians of the cross. Revelation is necessary for us to have reconciliation with God. I see that the question was somewhat light-hearted in tone, but it is an important point of distinciton nonetheless.

quote:

---

On the real, I liked it. I don’t poo-poo everything about reasoning out some things from the created order, but I agree that the cross surpasses it all, dropping from the sky like a bomb. We would never have guessed God would do THIS. Is this basically what you’re saying? Question: How would somebody heavy into this end up defining humankind as the “image of God.”

---

Yes, that is basically what is being said, and humankind is to be understood as in God's image principly by comparison to Jesus Christ. The clearest revelation we have on the topic.

quote:

---

I’m still fuzzy on the nominalist-realist distinctions too. I think I tend toward the realist end of the things. Is anyone surprised?

Tom

---

Not really, but I trust that time will show you the way.




"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK

quote:

---

Modes, George Lakoff has an earlier book from 1987 called "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things" that covers some of the same material as Philosophy and the Flesh. He also wrote "Metaphors We Live By" in 1979, on conceptual metaphor. But he takes the information from the earlier books and goes a lot further with it in Philosophy in the Flesh. You do not need to read the earlier books first, because much of the material is gone over again. But it is interesting stuff.

Thanks,
Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

---

quote:

---

by Nicholas Cabasilas (later 1300s AD), in "The Life in Christ" -- p.94-95)


The Second Book [557-560] § 18. Baptism as a personal experience of God

Many are the remedies which down through the ages have been devised for this sick race; it was Christ's death alone which was able to bring true life and health. For this reason, to be born by this new birth and live the blessed life and be disposed to health and, as far as lies in man, to confess the faith and take on oneself the passion and die the death of Christ is nothing less than to drink of this medicine. This is the poser of the new law, thus it is that a Christian is born. In this way he arrives at admirable wisdom and undertakes the noblest deeds. His faith is unmovable, since he believes without compulsion and governs his conduct by the power of God, and not be laws. Holding fast both faith and virtue he is formed by both into the blessed likeness of Christ. "The kingdom of God," it is said, "does not consist in words but in power" (1 Cor. 4:20), and "the word of the cross is to us who are being saved the power of God" (1 Cor 1:18).

The new law, then, is spiritual because the Spirit works everything. The former law is written because it goes no further than letters and sounds. Therefore the law is "as shadow" (Heb. 10:1) and an image, the present one is reality and truth. The words and letters are like an image in relation to reality. Before they were realized God foreshadowed them on many occasions by the covenant, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers" (Jer. 31:31-32) What does this mean? "This," He says, "is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah: I will put my laws within their mind and in their hearts I will write them" (Jer 31:33) -- that is, not composing them by mere sound of words, but by the Lawgiver's presence, without intermediary. For he says, "no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest" (Jer. 31:34). Because he had obtained this law David also uttered this blessed saying, "I know that the Lord is great" (Ps. 135:5). He says, "I know," having experienced it himself, not by having heard it taught by others. Wherefore he leads others too to the same experience, saying, "O taste and see that the Lord is gracious" (Ps. 34:9). Even though the blessed man had praised God's graciousness in many and varied words, yet, since the words were not capable of showing the reality, he himself summons his listeners to the experience of the things which he praises.

---

quote:

---

Faithful, my friend, I have no idea what that purple face means but I just about fell over laughing when her jaw dropped to the bottom of the screen.

---