An Email

Sent to several friends regarding this column:

http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html

This was an interesting read. I'm writing straight from my notes here instead of organizing a true written response, so please be patient if it comes a little scattered.

First, I'd like some more clarity on what Green means by "not a place" but still "real experienced conditions." Does he mean, then, that heaven and hell are states of mind detached without any physical conditions? (i.e. in eternity we are disembodied, and our minds/consciousnesses are the only conduits of perception) This will lead quickly back to talk of the resurrection of the dead, which I didn't find much developed in this article, but in the way I understand heaven and hell, is the central fact. I can entertain the notion that hell is more a state of mind than a plotted place on a map, but whether its experienced with or without the body (i.e. whole person) is very important to distinguish.

Second, I think that Green overplays his hand very badly on two points. First, that the Western Christian imagery of hell-as-a-place was nowhere to be found before the Great Schism, and second, that the biblical language supports his pet theory that hell is within the presence of God. More on these later as well.

He's probably right that Sheol ought to be transliterated. That's about as much as I'm able to say, with my very little Hebrew, about translations in the O.T. He's certainly right about the Greek view of Hades paralleling that of the old Jews; Hades/Sheol is the abode of the ghosts of both the righteous and the wicked, but these ghosts are not whole people. They are echoes of the men, while (as it says in the Iliad) the men themselves lie in their graves. This is all quite different than the Platonic notion that the body is merely a temporary home of the real person, the leaving of which will provide a higher, more spiritual existence. To nearly all ancient people there wasn't really a life-after-death to speak of. With time, the Greek view became more nuanced. The particularly wicked had punishments imagined for them in Hades, and something like Elysium (still in the same "locality") was imagined for the blessed. The Platonic philosophers talked about the soul as the seat of existence, and believed it to be immortal, while other schools dabbled in something like re-incarnation. (You see this in Virgil, which I blogged about here.) And of course, as was often the case in Greco-Roman religion, none of these contradictions really bothered anyone. There was a comfortable jumble of possibilities in Hades, and no one really had anything staked on it. Life (except for a very few, like Socrates) was only really had in the body, and what came afterwards was a number of varied, but ultimately inconsequential possibilities.

In Jewish thought, hints of resurrection creep in by the late psalms and minor prophets, and there is a full blown expectation of it (though it wasn't the center of their religious hopes) by the time of the Maccabean uprising. Indeed, it was the subject of their dying words as they were executed in the temple. It's fairly well established that by N.T. times, the Pharisees and Essenes represented religious interests whose defining dogmas concerned the resurrection. For the Jews of Jesus' time, Hades was still the abode of the righteous and the wicked after death, but it was a stopping-house before a bodily resurrection. (And when I say Jews, I should note that there was pluriformity in Israel as well, although not to the extent of the rest of the Hellenistic world)

So, then for the Old Testament. Again, I can't speak for his specific accusations about bad translation and word study, but I think he's generally on the right track in his representation of the Jewish/Hellenistic interplay. I would make, in transitioning to the New Testament, one observation about Gehenna: no one seems to be able to mention the word (which appears in Hebrew and transliterated Greek) without the obligatory explanation about how it was Jerusalem's burning garbage heap, therefore the association with fire, therefore hellfire, etc. I can't find any evidence of this "fact" before the 19th century. It isn't present in the scriptures, the early church fathers, or any of the rabbinical literature I've read. I wonder if, like the bell attached to the high priest's ankles when he entered the Holy of Holies, or the low gate in Jerusalem that was called the Eye of the Needle, it's actually a Christian urban legend, something that might've come from the 19th century version of Wikipedia. All three of these "facts" would make sense given their context and clarify a confusion, but without seeing any real historical evidence for them, I think we have to leave them as theories. (If anyone has any solid historical evidence, please let me know, and I'll be happy to be corrected)

What then, do we know about fiery Gehenna? It might have actually been a burning rubbish-heap, or perhaps "going to Gehenna," like "going to Timbuktu" might have meant exactly what one would think it means from it's N.T. context. (Not going to the place per se, but to a separate, excluded place of eternal torment.)

I don't know how much we can take from the Lazarus parable. I strongly suspect that it tells us only that a locative heaven and hell were used as a story-telling device (like we use St. Peter at the pearly gates as a joke-telling device) and is not Jesus' systematic exposition of his views on the subject. Also, I'd like to know which passage in the Retractions of Augustine he's talking about. I don't remember anything about this, and don't have a copy at hand.

Onto some Greek...I make no claims to be anything other than barely competent, but I can spot a quack when I see one. Mr. Green is either overreaching his capabilities, or was taught very poorly. The preposition apo, in all dialects of Greek, means "from"/"away from," or "by means of." (It matches the Latin preposition ab/a almost exactly) Just this morning in reading Luke I translated verses saying "full of many people from (apo) all Judea and Jerusalem and the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, they came to hear him and to be healed from (apo) their sicknesses. The passage from II Thess. could be read with a sense of apo instrumentally (the word from, with it's locative/instrumental vagueness would be the closest match) but to change it to the meaning of kata or dia (because of, on account of ) is to take a very bold liberty with the text. It's an interesting theory, but it's far from the closed case he makes it out to be. Calvin might be able to clarify this further if he has his Wallace Grammar nearby, which I do not.

Similarly, all of his talk about Tartarus is misrepresenting. Tartarus, in Homer, is just lower hell. Yes, it is the home of the banished Titans, but it is also the abode of Sisyphus and Tantalus. It's the seat of Tisiphone...it is Hell, if ever there was a Hell with a capital H. (I wrote about it in the Aeneid here).

In addition to his interesting but hardly conclusive theories about God as fire, Green does his worst work talking about energeia. Yes, energeia sounds like energy, and the two words do have common relatives. But translators are absolutely right to translate the word the way they do; it is most often the verb ergo (work, accomplish) with the preposition en tacked on. The Holy Spirit energei is the Holy Spirit working in us, and that, not some kind of electrical force, would have been the most accurate connotation. All of his talk about the energies of God is a retrojection of 20th/21st century language on texts that had no clue about them.

All of these language discussions don't really come together into anything more profound than "there appears to be variegated language in the New and Old Testaments about hell." This is not new information. The leap from all which is discussed before to Green's own theory rests entirely on the syllogism: God loves all unconditionally; Unconditional love couldn't possibly lead to separated eternal torment; Therefore God would not torment anyone eternally. Now, I probably wouldn't choose the word unconditionally here. God's love is unconditional, but in the same sense that his justice and his holiness are unconditional. If God is the great First Mover, he doesn't require "conditions" to fully be any of the essential qualities of his person. So in that sense, yes, God loves unconditionally. But does it mean that God will disregard all acts of choice, righteousness, wickedness, virtue, vice, and circumstance in his dealings with mankind, both corporately and person to person? I don't think there's any evidence that's true.

Here are the two things we know for sure from the New Testament: 1) There will be a resurrection of the dead. (1 Cor. 15 for an explicit account of this) and 2) Everyone will appear before the bema seat of Jesus. (A judge's bench) (Rom 14:10, 2 Cor. 5:10). We don't know what the judgement of Jesus will be, and we don't know who will get what. We should, if we have any decency, pray regularly for universal mercy. Wouldn't it seem wonderful to us if all was forgiven everyone? It may even be hard for us to imagine how a God whose essence is love could do anything otherwise, but consider our circumstances: We live in an age in which the principal measure of a person's life-story is success or failure in romantic love. (Try to imagine any novel without this as the driving theme if you don't believe me; now try to imagine inserting that theme into any ancient text.) Couple that with our profound ignorance of fear and evil. When was the last time any of us were truly afraid? We do, I believe, all remember some moment of real fear, perhaps being alone outside in the dark, or hearing footsteps downstairs that shouldn't have been there. Yet most of the time we eat safe, sanitized food, and we can drive out darkness with electric lights, stave off the cold with gas heating, and lock our sturdy doors to the conditions of most of historical humanity. And despite our wish to ignore it, there is evil. Indeed, if we let down our puffery and pride for half a moment and look honestly at how we've cheated and deceived, we can acknowledge how each of us really are split ourselves, not to mention the corporate (oppression by a group of people) or natural (tsunamis, hurricanes) evils. And thus we stand, an age living in denial of danger or evil, and overly enamored with shallow meanings of "love." Is it any surprise that we should be discomfited by the idea of real danger in the beyond, or of a containment of evil?

Again, let us pray for universal mercy. But let's not think that just because we don't like the idea of hell that we can erase it from our theology, just as we've done to the angels. (Another topic that was vague in the scriptures, over-played in the Middle Ages, and now written of as superstition today.) It's in thinking about the angels that I almost would subscribe to Green's theory, that the presence of God (see, by the way, Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, on the terror of the numinous is a searing pain to the mortal eye and mind. Anytime an angel enters the pages of scripture, his first words must be Fear Not...they certainly inspire fear! Yet does this mean that hell is the experience of our own poor choices? It is just as likely it means that the Holy, even when it comes in peace, is a terror...so what about when it comes in judgement?

Here's an interesting idea of what Hell might actually look like from N.T. Wright: Our distinguishing characteristic as living organisms is our partly divine heritage. We are animals, like mammals in most outward respects, but partly descended from the gods. We are, being made, in imago Dei, bearers of a divine likeness. The principal effect of sin (original and otherwise) is a defacing of that image. In fact, the further one is given into sin, the less Divine and more animal he becomes; the more he begins to bear the image of the idol he worships, be that lust, greed, or sloth. Wright suggests that Hell might be the final removal of the divine image...a giving over unto animal nature, to be tormented forever by being subjected to their own idolatry. (Like in Narnia, when the beasts that are given speech revert back to being just dumb beasts.) I like the reasoning behind this idea, though of course it's just a theory and no more absolutely proven than Green's...but isn't it curious that they move in such opposite directions? That one is the removal of the divine and the other is it's nearer presence?

The curious thing about this whole recent muddle over hell (and I still haven't read Rob Bell's book...is there anyone who has a copy?) is that it isn't nearly as controversial or interesting as the muddle we should be having over heaven. There may or may not be human souls in hell following the end of all things, but there certainly won't be human souls in heaven...the astounding truth of the resurrection of the dead is that heaven is coming here.

Ken Robinson on Education

I'm terribly concerned that I might be interested in education after all. This is disturbing for me, an avowed professional musician who teaches grade school "just to pay the bills." I'm afraid that if I start participating in the conversation, I'll have compromised my position aloof. If I'm particularly careless I might accidentally stay late or start having conversations with the other faculty members. This has all been prompted by watching this video, a presentation by Sir Ken Robinson on education at a TED conference several years ago. I appreciate Mr. Robinson on several levels. Trivially, he has a charming accent. He speaks with a cadence at the end of his statements that you never hear in American English; it's very engaging. He is also to be highly commended for his use of language, especially on his chosen topic. When was the last time you heard or read someone on the subject of education and you didn't start counting cliches? Contrast Mr. Robinson's thoughts with this recent address by President Obama. The White House address is full of meaningless teacher-babble like "modernizing our schools," "teaching to the test," "out-educate us today, out-compete us tomorrow." Mr. Robinson, on the other hand, doesn't employ a single word without an evocative meaning and value.

Enough, however, about style; the substance of what he says is the really critical part, and here we find ourselves in agreement on several points. First, the world is changing around us, and the instrument of education is our only real hope to keep that change somewhat under control. The technical advances of the past 150 years (I begin with the telegraph) have radically changed the way in which people live in the world. We are presently hurling headlong toward whatever changes the next year of technical advances may bring, without any notion of what those changes will be, and without any realistic opportunity, should we desire it, of putting brakes on the progress. In fact, the world seems only to be changing faster. These changes do not only touch our use of machines. Our political and religious discourse have been funneled through new media, and accordingly reshaped. Sex, after birth control, is changed. Our ideas of privacy and identity are being reshaped. We are deluged with information, images, and ideas. How will anyone learn to make sense of it unless through education? Mr. Robinson argues that education only adds to these problems by "educating children out of their creative capacity."

Mr. Robinson urges us to leave off the practice of stigmatizing "wrong" responses. It is in every child's willingness to be wrong, he says, wherein lies their capacity to be creative; a capacity that we cure them of. He says this comes from an obsession with only one organ of the child's body, and one side of it; a particular set of correct answers to be known and stored in the brain.

Here I would make my contribution to the great conversation Mr. Robinson has started: There is little chance for art if we aren't willing to set boundaries, and little chance for preserving our Western history if we aren't willing to observe what CSL calls the Tao. As regards creativity, it must be observed that most of the great triumphs of the arts have come from strict requirements about form. There are, of course, in most great works (and artists) alterations or progressions of form, but still a fundamental mastery of loyalty to a pre-determined pattern. Mozart was brilliantly creative, but Leopold corrected his mistakes. When Mozart learned composition, he wasn't given a blank sheet of manuscript paper and told to be original; he was given a cantus firmus and told to harmonize it without writing parallel 5ths or crossing voices. John Cage has thrown away the cantus firmus and the rules of counterpoint to liberate his "creativity" and is left still only with the blank paper. The same is true of dance and the visual arts. A child's creative capacity in dance may be a splendid thing, but at some point she must learn the difference between a foxtrot and a gavotte if she wishes to create anything really original; and that means that she can't do the gavotte steps during the foxtrot, or vice-versa.

The parallel truth to the importance of forms in the arts is the truth of form in education. Mr. Robinson advocates that the arts be given equal status with literacy and math. (On an aside, it grieves me to think that "literacy" has somehow become something other than one of the arts...shouldn't it be called the art of letters?) This is a very democratic idea, but I don't think it's quite right, and Mr. Robinson's own example illustrates my point. He has a laugh at college professors for living only in their heads, and leaving their bodies off as some sort of necessary casement for their brain. This is, of course, both humorous and true. But it is also true that the head is the head. If there must be a head (in the authoritative sense), the head ought to be the head of the body. This doesn't mean that there's only a head, or that all the other parts must be headlike, but a head is important in a pre-eminent way, and in a way that fingers or belly buttons are not. Now, what are the things that a child ought to learn in school in order to be a healthy human being in the Western world? If the question were being asked of a child in some African tribe, where there were no radios or books, but a complex system of drumming that was used to communicate, entertain, organize, and inspire, we would say that the child must learn drumming. Even if he wouldn't be a great drummer himself, it would be absolutely vital that he understood what the drums meant; otherwise, how could he participate in his own society? The great storehouses of Western society is our literature. (Using the term in the broadest sense...one might almost say, our literacy). We have other repositories as well; we have classical music, the visual artistic tradition, the ability for rational thinking, and any number of contributing cultural traditions, but it is in light of this fact that the literary arts really do merit their primacy in our education. Our use of mathematics is closely tied to our value for rational thinking (what some call "abstracting") but mathematics has, in my opinion, overstepped its bounds in importance.

My words are not intended to be final words, especially in my own thinking. This talk is a continuing talk, and one that may not have fixed answers at the end. Perhaps in five years we shall have to scrap all the conclusions anyway. But in this grand talk, let's hope for more people who talk like Ken Robinson.

The Business of Soaking

Musicians don't really get days off. They work, by default, during the evenings and weekends. This means that when you attempt to work during the day and be a musician, you don't really ever have "time off." You work during the morning and afternoon, then you teach and perform in the evening. On weekends, you perform some more. On Sundays, you perform in church. And then it's Monday again! Fortunately, this Monday is a holiday, and I don't ever recall being so happy for one. Though I do still have to teach some lessons tonight--and thereby miss Canadian Thanksgiving at home--I've had a perfect day off.

The sad business about working so much is that it really leaves you very little time to get any work done. I've wanted to clean our nursery for some time now, and finally started the project today. I practiced for an upcoming audition, and caught up with some clerical household business. But fear not--I did "relax" as well. I spent a good hour sitting under the tree in our yard reading Cymbeline, as well as reading the Aeneid aloud. There's even a bottle of wine waiting for the end of lessons tonight.

Highlights from the weekend include moving Calvus and Beka into another apartment (to their mild frustration) and chatting with S about college plans. The lowlight was the first marching band parade of the year, which was a disaster. Our marching band

Didn't quite measure up to the others

Not to mention how much I loathe marching band music/culture in general...

Calvus and I read Merchant of Venice recently, and I've also been reading a Lewis Mumford book, a biography of Lorenzo di Medici, Faerie Queene, and Luke, Virgil, Homer, Aquinas, Bede, and Euripides.

Average Joe by Troy Meeder

Troy Meeder's book Average Joe is an unwelcome review. I do not delight in criticizing his work, and in many ways, I think it harmless. As an autobiography, or even as an apologia for his life, it does no ill. As a Christian document, it is dreadful. Average Joe is intended as a defense of the working-class man, a man who may not have received what he expected from career or fortune, but who remains faithful to his God and family nonetheless. Mr. Meeder recounts his own experiences of failure and wisened hindsight to affirm such men. He mistakenly counts the biblical heroes among them. Whoever King David was, he was by no means an "average Joe." Nor was Paul, nor Jesus. This would be near to suggesting that Mozart was an "average composer" who, by his sheer grit and American spirit, wrote some darned-good symphonies. It is either a gross historical error or a complete redefinition of the word "average."

I wondered, as I began to read this book, whether I might find anything approaching Horace's exhortation to the Golden Mean; satisfaction by balance. Mr. Meeder is, regrettably, uninterested in balance. (He denounces compromise) In fact, I don't believe Mr. Meeder writes with any intention other than defending himself. He may not be wrong to do so--he seems, from his own portrait, at least, an honest and sincere man--but it is not wisdom to be commended to others. At various points Mr. Meeder assures the "average" man that the future is all foreintentioned by a loving God. Only a few chapters later, he insists that the whole problem boils down to our choices. His description of the spiritual life is inseparable from his experience of the California outdoors. He describes and petitions God in the pseudoromantic language of the modern praise chorus. He is unashamedly anti-intellectual (taking time for several incursions against lawyers, the educated, and those that would frequent "metrosexual coffee shops") and asserts the great fundamentalist arrogance: My ignorance is as enlightening as your knowledge. I believe, at root, this is the thesis of his whole book: My mediocrity is as satisfying as your accomplishment.

The book contains very little in the way of instruction for the "average Joe" initiate. Meeder's spiritual counsel only touches on sin management, with the remedy of "try harder" urged in various ways. At his worst, he appears to be advocating his experience as the destination of all Christians: What we all really need is to be middle-class Republican American evangelicals. Many of these types are my dearest friends, but most of them sense that they aren't the climax of Christendom. I'm afraid that Mr. Meeder thinks he is, or at least his purified version. He looks at Paul and David, and sees cowboys! Mr. Meeder may wish his life to be read in the Ford truck commercial voice, but he ought not suggest it be used for the Bible.

Orwell and a Hard Decision

A few weeks ago I found an Orwell novel at the local used bookstore called Keep the Aspidistra Flying. It was my last summer novel before the school year started, and it was, as is always the case with Orwell, a provocative book. It tells the story of Gordon Comstock, a poet who has declared a personal war on Money. Living in England after the first World War, he is disgusted by the servitude of all around him to the endless and pointless task of earning more money. He is pressed reluctantly through school towards employable skills, and then coerced into finding a "good job"--something that will preserve the appearance of middle-class respectability. This unspoken pressure to be respectable is personified by the aspidistra, an ugly and useless plant kept in most middle class windows at the time. It can survive with little water or light, and scarcely anything--even burning it with half smoked cigarettes--seems to be able to kill it. Gordon finds ready employment in the advertising industry, where he has an unwelcome talent for writing slogans. He despises his vapid co-workers, the artless job, and the waste of his real literary talent. He is allured by some small successes in his poetic work to quit the advertising firm and devote himself fully to real literature, taking a menial job as a bookseller to support himself. He finds in doing so that his creative and personal vitality is sapped by lack of money; he doesn't have money to eat, smoke, have a cup of tea, or even take his girlfriend (Rosemary) for a train ride in the country. Constantly feeling the pressure of family and the ubiquitous aspidistra to take a "good job," he maintains his principled stand and works when he can to become a real poet, tortured by days when success seems imminent, followed by days of utter despair at his failure. Broke, indebted, and friendless, he learns that Rosemary is pregnant with his child. With London Pleasures (his unfinished magnum opus) in his pocket, he reluctantly takes the hateful job that will cost him his literary future but will provide for Rosemary and his unborn child.


"He was aware of a lumpish weight in his inner pocket. It was the manuscript of London Pleasures. He took it out and had a look at it under the street lamp. A great wad of paper, soiled and tattered, with that peculiar, nasty, grimed-at-the-edges look of papers which have been a long time in one's pocket. About four hundred lines in all. The sole fruit of his exile, a two years' fetus which would never be born. Well, he had finished with all that. Poetry! Poetry, indeed! In 1935!
What should he do with the manuscript? Best thing, shove it down the w.c. But he was a long way from home and had not the necessary penny. He halted by the iron grating of a drain. In the window of the nearest house an aspidistra, a striped one, peeped between the yellow lace curtains. He unrolled a page of London Pleasures. In the middle of the labyrinthine scrawlings a line caught his eye. Momentary regret stabbed him. After all, parts of it weren't half bad! If only it could ever be finished! It seemed such a shame to shy it way after all the work he had done on it. Save it, perhaps? Keep it by him and finish it secretly in his spare time? Even now it might come to something. 
No, no! Keep your parole. Either surrender or don't surrender. 
He doubled up the manuscript and stuffed it between the bars of the drain. It fell with a plop into the water below.
Vicisti, O aspidistra!"

A little over two weeks ago I was offered a fellowship with the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami, FL. For the past ten years I have studied to be an orchestral trumpet player. I have practiced every day, I have attended six years of school, and I have taken more auditions than I can count. At times I've been among the last few standing at the finals. At times I've not even advanced beyond the first round.
My wife has waited patiently for me win an audition. She has endured daily hours of the same excerpts for years, listened to my inevitable vomiting the night before an audition, consoled me in the aftermath, and sacrificed much financial and personal stability that could be had by the same zealous pursuit of a career teaching music in the public schools.
The process of our decision was complicated and wretched. It came to us unsought, and with either choice would come much grieving. The orchestra, which is a musical academy functioning as a full-time performing orchestra, was only able to offer us dormitory-style housing in the company of twentysomethings. Accepting the fellowship would require us to leave friends and family in Rochester. It would mean the sacrifice of our professional inroads in the NY area. It would mean that our son would only see his uncles and grandparents over holidays. It would have no guarantee of a job or income at the end of the three and a half year program. It would mean the sacrifice of my uninteresting but hard-to-find teaching job at LCS.
I couldn't abide the thought of not going. Every former orchestra member and professional connection recommended the program with high praise. Those who knew us personally and our situation told us not to go. None envied the task of making the decision. Should we voluntarily turn down a won audition? Should we bring an infant to a cramped dormitory in Miami?
During and after I shrunk from the counsel of Christians. They simplified the decision to a choice between family or career values. They insinuated that God had purposed this, as some sort of test. They promised great rewards if I chose the right answer on the test. They are people I love and respect. And they (unwittingly) painted our God as a vivisectionist, directing me along ten years of work only to be forced to kill with my own hands the long-awaited issue. Yet perhaps it is time to rethink a God I would prefer be distant and, on my terms, benevolent.

ὃν γὰρ ἀγαπᾷ Κύριος παιδεύει,
     μαστιγοῖ δὲ πάντα υἱὸν ὃν παραδέχεται.

For the Lord loves he who he rears, and chastises every son he recieves.

I do not know why the events of the past few weeks have come. Was I committing some sort of career idolatry that needed to be punished? I still don't have an answer. I do know that there are two things I find untenable. One is to stop taking orchestra auditions, if there is, somewhere, a chair in an orchestra where I can play Brahms and Bach for a living. The second, and more important, is to compromise how I love my wife. It would have been dishonor to compel her to Florida, although, I think, she would have gone. It is dishonor now for me to sulk and hold it against her, as I have selfishly done for the past few days. No more--it was already a marvel and a wonder that I should have the privilege to be married to her. I will forget it no longer.

O aspidsitra, invicti erimus.

vosmet ipsos temptate si estis in fide

What are we to conclude? In every act of faith, there are two elements at work. First there is the formula, the conceptual complex containing the truth to which we assent. This presents itself to our mind like any other intentional knowledge: in the form of a judgement. But it does not enlighten the mind in the same way as ordinary knowledge. On the natural plane, a conceptual judgement illuminates the mind by the clear evidence which is contains. In an act of faith, the conceptual content of the proposition throws no light, of, itself, upon the understanding. The difference between belief and unbelief is not measured by our power to grasp the meaning of the articles of faith. A man may acquire a profound technical knowledge of the theology of the Holy Trinity and never believe in the Trinity. Another who has no grasp of the dogmatic problems involved in the mystery may believe it. He is the one to whom God has made Himself "present." He is the one who is "saved." He is the one who can be raised to contemplation. Hence in every act of faith there is a second and more important element: an objective and supernatural light, penetrating the depths of the soul and communicating to it the real content of truth which cannot be fully grasped in the terms of the credible proposition.
Each of these two elements is absolutely necessary for an act of living faith, because there is an intimate relation between them. If the articles of faith were merely an occasion for the infusion of supernatural light, then it would not matter what God proposed to us for our belief. One concept would serve as well as another. But this would mean that the intentional content of our creed would be without value or meaning. Any creed could do as well. Hold anything you like! If you are sincere, God will infuse light into you, and you will know Him. But the God Who is Wisdom would not uselessly reveal a whole body of truths that had, in the end, no objective value. He Who is Truth would not complacently put His grace at the disposal of all, on the sole condition that they be ready to adhere to falsity on His account!
The relation between the conceptual content of faith and the infused light by which God actually gives us His Truth lies in this: that the truth is actually contained, in a hidden manner, in the articles of faith themselves. And it is by the light of faith that we find the truth in those articles.

Upcoming

I have much to write about, and at present neither the leisure nor perspective to do so. I hope to make some time soon.

I'm currently reading Thomas Merton's Ascent to Truth, a sort of introduction to the work's of St. John of he Cross. Calvus and I (later with Beka) started reading All's Well that End's Well earlier in the week, and are attempting to make our readings a weekly event. M Laine, meanwhile, has put together a reading of The Importance of Being Earnest this weekend.

I owe great thanks to J's brother Tim, who returned our quickly aging Neon with several thousands dollars of work done substantially discounted. Our siblings have been extraordinarily kind to us lately, as have been, among many others, our pastor and his wife.

Meanwhile, it's time for more reading. Every pair of fingernail shears we own seems to have disappeared. I've now cramped my fingers beyond writing any more, and it isn't any easier to type. Bother.

More to come.