March 2012
6 posts
Setting the record straight - a precis which must...
In fine, Abelard…
Abelard is an exemplarist, if, and only if, it can be shown that he understands Christ to be our example, through whose imitation we are redeemed — whereas it is clear that he understands Christ to be our example in the sense that, because we are redeemed by him, we now wish to imitate him. (Weingart, The Logic of Divine Love, 1970, p. 209).
Furthermore, he does...
February 2012
16 posts
...for all their pose as men of the world...
There was a certain rivalry over lunch. The womenfolk, those who were not too saddled by babies to travel, often organised a kaffeeklatsch at the parsonage while the men lunched at the local pub. This freed the women of cooking chores and made for a pleasant change from the usual routine.
The preachers, for all their pose as men of the world, often gave the game away. They couldn’t quite...
Karl's first "Tyndale Conference"
As a newcomer to the conference and the sole bachelor in the crowd, Karl followed the Greek text only with considerable compulsion. Most of those who sat there at the table with him he already knew by first name — Doug Harting, Ted Gruber, Milt Howeisen, Hans Mutli, Gene Bratlich, Tony Grandtwanger.
He had to smile at the names. They sounded not at all English. Teutonic, every one of them....
“Aphorisms such as “the medium is the message” could, like mystical...”
– Donald F. Theall, “McLuhan’s Basic Probes and Perceptions” in The Virtual Marshal McLuhan, pp. 12-13.
January 2012
16 posts
“Let no one think that, because the Psalmist says, “He established the...”
– St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Volume 1
The Profit Motive: Allied with Apartheid
An interview with Father Michael Lapsley on Reagan’s support of apartheid South Africa. Worth a read.
A teaser: Remarking on a Reagan quote* in defence of US support for the regime Father Lapsley observes:
I think the interesting thing about that comment is that it focuses on profit. It doesn’t focus on what happens to people.
* [SA is] “a country that stood by us in every war we...
“There is no more powerful mechanism for the short-term amplification of...”
– George Cooper, The Origin of Financial Crises
WatchPhilip Goodchild on the Global Financial System. How I spent my Friday evening. Verdict: You shouldn’t just watch it. You should watch it twice. And take notes.
God is dead. And we have killed him -- you and I....
The essence of the power of finance capital is not the accumulation of past labour. To the contrary, the history of past monetary transactions merely determines one’s present accumulated stock — a quantity, not a power. When one turns to the power of capital, however, one steps into an entirely heterogeneous element: value of credit is determined by expectations of future interest. The...
“It is permissible, yes profitable, to call the mass a sacrifice; not on its own...”
– Martin Luther
December 2011
7 posts
Annual Analysis of My Top 20 Scrobbled Artists of...
I deleted all my old blogs along with all of the content and kept no backups, deliberately, so I have no means of comparison of this data with prior years. Oh well. I’ll just have to throw it up on Tumblr.
Anyhow, for what it’s worth, which is undoubtedly nothing, here are my Top 20 artists listened to this year (excluding the CDs I listen to in the car which would probably have put...
My Luddite Score
16% Luddite
As calculated from The Telegraph’s list of 50 things killed by technology. I’ve highlighted the ones which I personally still do: 8/50.
1. Ring the cinema to find out times
2. Going into the travel agents to research a holiday
3. Record things using VHS
4. Dial directory enquiries
5. Use public telephones
6. Book tickets for events over the phone
7. Print ...
November 2011
4 posts
The Astonishingly Individualistic Conception of...
“…by the end of the thirteenth century the sacrament of marriage had come to be defined in such a way that it was the two principals, the man and woman marrying, who made the marriage bond, rather than a priest. The sacramental bond was created by the mutual consent of the two parties, and the two parties alone. Marriage vows did not have to be exchanged in a church, nor was a...
Über-Enlightenment
In Hamann’s vocabulary, therefore, the word “enlightenment” is always loaded with irony, arising from the discrepancy between his contemporaries’ secular and his own theological understanding of the term. For his contemporaries it meant an awaken ing to the immanent, “natural light” of reason, typically conceived in univocal terms, i.e., in the absence of any analogical relation to, or dependence...
October 2011
1 post
Enlightenment
One day the Buddha told the story of the blind men and the elephant. A king ordered all of his subjects who were blind to be assembled into groups and he placed an elephant in their midst. He then asked them to describe what was in their midst. One group touched the head of an elephant and said “It’s a water-pot”. One group felt the ears of the elephant and said “It’s...