Came across this pithy quote regarding Christian doctrine…
Tradition without history has homogenized all the stages of development into one statically defined truth; history without tradition has produced a historicism that relativizes the development of Christian doctrine in such a way as to make the distinction between authentic growth and cancerous aberration seem completely arbitrary. (Pelikan, Byzantine Theology-Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, New York, 1979, 2nd ed., p. 224)
Francis Fukuyama is professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins School of International Studies. This piece is adapted from an article first published in Journal of Democracy 17:2 (2006) © National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Modern identity politics springs from a hole in the political theory underlying liberal democracy. That hole is liberalism’s silence about the place and significance of groups. The line of modern political theory that begins with Machiavelli and continues through Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the American founding fathers understands the issue of political freedom as one that pits the state against individuals rather than groups. Hobbes and Locke, for example, argue that human beings possess natural rights as individuals in the state of nature—rights that can only be secured through a social contract that prevents one individual’s pursuit of self-interest from harming others.
Continue reading “Fukuyama on Identity and Migration”
“… the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist’s instruments neatly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished–until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. The all of a sudden my reaction changes from “How shiny and beautiful they all are!” to “Get that damned thing out of my mouth!” Once I begin to read it anew, perhaps in the freshness of a new translation, it stops speaking in cliches and begins to address me directly” (Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It? 229).
This review-article was first published in Le Figaro Magazine in March 2004, under the title, “A propos du film de Mel Gibson, La Passion du Christ.” The publication of the article coincided with the release of The Passion of the Christ in France.
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Well before the commercial release of his film, Mel Gibson had organized private showings for important journalists and religious leaders. If he was counting on assuring the goodwill of those he invited, he badly miscalculated; or perhaps he instead manifested a superior Machiavellianism.
The commentaries quickly followed, and far from praising the film or reassuring the public, there were only terrified vituperations and anguished cries of alarm concerning the anti-Semitic violence that might erupt at the cinema exits. Even the New Yorker, so proud of the serene humor from which it normally never departs, completely lost its composure, and in all seriousness accused the film of being more like Nazi propaganda than any other cinematic production since World War II.
Nothing justifies these accusations. For Mel Gibson, the death of Christ is a burden born by all humanity, starting with Mel Gibson himself. When his film strays a bit from the Gospel text, which happens only rarely, it is not to demonize the Jews but to emphasize the pity that Jesus inspires in some of them: in Simon of Cyrene for example, whose role is amplified, or in Veronica, the woman who, according to an ancient tradition, offered a cloth to Jesus during the ascent to Golgotha on which the features of his face became imprinted. Continue reading “Rene Girard on “The Passion of the Christ””
Man’s moral deeds are not more or less identifiable handholds as he scales the heights of technical accomplishment but rather are steps in his self-realization (Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, 17).
For us men and women of today, who are of the opinion that in order to know the truth one need only more or less strain one’s
brain, and who scarcely regard as sensible the concept of an ascesis of the intellect–for us, the deeply intrinsic connection that links the knowledge of truth to the condition of purity has vanished from our consciousness (Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, 42).
… As we were saying goodbye, Guardini made the penetrating remark that I had yet to make the “breakthrough” from philosophy to the New Testament (Josef Pieper, No One Could have Known, p. 123).
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
DEUS CARITAS EST
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN LOVE
INTRODUCTION
1. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us”.
We have come to believe in God’s love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should … have eternal life” (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. The pious Jew prayed daily the words of the Book of Deuteronomy which expressed the heart of his existence: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might” (6:4-5). Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere “command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us. Continue reading “Pope Benedict XVI Encyclical Letter on Love”
“because the being of the world participates in the divine being which pervades it to its innermost core, the world is not only a good world; it is in a very precise sense holy” (Josef Pieper, “Guide to Thomas Aquinas”, p. 126).
Mind your Maker 
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