Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 3/29/2006 3:19:26 PM (GMT-6)

Here's a paragraph from pp.62-63

Nevertheless, and disturbing as it may be, it is clearly the case that there is a kind of "provisional" cosmic dual­ism within the New Testament: not an ultimate dualism, of course, between two equal principles: but certainlv a conflict between a sphere of created autonomy that strives against God on the one hand and the saving love of God in time on the other. It is a patristic notion (devel­oped with extraordinary profundity by Maximus the Con­fessor) that humanity was created as the methorios (the boundary or frontier) between the physical and the spiri­tual realms, or as the priesthood of creation that unites earth to heaven, and that thus, in the fall of man, all of material existence was made subject to the dominion of death. To say that God elects to fashion rational creatures in his image, and so grants them the freedom to bind themselves and the greater physical order to another master — to say that he who sealed up the doors of the sea might permit them to be opened again by another, more reckless hand — is not to say that God's ultimate design for his creatures can be thwarted. It is to acknowl­edge, however, that his will can be resisted by a real and (by his grace) autonomous force of defiance, or can be hidden from us by the history of cosmic corruption, and that the final realization of the good he intends in all tilings has the form (not simply as a dramatic fiction, for our edification or his glory, nor simply as a paedagogical device on his part, but in truth) of a divine victory.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 3/29/2006 3:49:34 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 3/31/2006 9:36:47 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (TGB) : 3/30/2006 11:56:01 PM (GMT-6)

.

But I do think that there is a CONNECTION between the vigor of parcing between one work or another and the vigor of making keen distinctions between ideas.  Like where he lays out the observation regarding the incarnation that it is "not natures" that suffer, but persons; therefore it is not necessary to claim that Christ's divinity suffered, for he suffered "in his flesh."

A appreciate a sharp mind, who can craft words to preserve distinctions. (Two things I'm not always able to do.   )

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 3/31/2006 9:35:10 AM (GMT-6)

Now for a funny response...

http://www.animal.ufl.edu/sharp/documents/Teaching/The%20fog%20Index.htm

SAMPLE ESSAY 

In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity.  Let  your conversational communications demonstrate a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, no coalescent conglomerations of precious garrulity, jejune bafflement and asinine affectations.  Let your extemporaneous verbal evaporations and expatriations have lucidity, intelligibility and veracious vivacity without radomontade or Thespian bombast.  Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous propensity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity.  Shun double-entendres, obnoxious jocosity and pestiferous profanity, observable or apparent.

In other words, say what you mean and DON'T USE BIG WORDS!

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Though here's a recent treatment of is -- bought but not read yet...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1888212721/qid=1135741585/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/102-4505123-4434519?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Review:

This book is best specifically because it is NOT a scholarly work. It is a good book for people who care about the salvation of their souls.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 3/31/2006 2:50:38 PM (GMT-6)

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Where's D?

TdA back stateside yet?