The topic of Bible translations offers never ending and largely useless fodder for discussion but in light of the previous post I thought one point worth noting. On of the great drawbacks of the New International Version of the Bible is its gender exclusive use of pronouns (using 'man' or 'brothers' or 'sons' when a cross gender audience is intended). Then came the recent release of Today's New International Version. The naming of Bible translations is of course a whole other conversation (like the presumptuous New Living Translation). Anyway, I thought that the primary change in the TNIV was to correct the use of gender. However, notice the difference in translation of the Philippians passage discussed in the previous post.
NIV Php 2:5-7
5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
TNIV Php 2:5-7
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
Interesting.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Translation
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Snow Birding
Well its been no Manitoba here in Southern Ontario but it has been cold enough. Next week my wife and I will be flying down to sunny Arizona to visit my parents in Yuma. Well spend a night in L.A.. And visit a little Mexican cantena. And just soak up some rays (I hope).
I would like to have been posting more these days but there will certainly be a break coming up after which I hope to post more on Balthasar's Mysterium Paschale.
Sucks to be cold!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
MP and Christ's Grasping
The first chapter of Mysterium Paschale attempts to link the incarnation of Christ with his passion. To demonstrate that "he who says Incarnation, also says Cross." What I find most interesting in this chapter is his account of Kenosis reflecting on Philippians 2. The phrase Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. I think this always left me with the impression that the Father still remained somehow 'higher' than the Son. Balthasar says that this passage refers not to a power relationship. He writes that the form of God is not something "which is to be conquered by force . . . but rather something precious." And that Christ "did not believe it necessary to hold on on to that condition as to some possession, precious, inalienable, all his own. . . . [Christ] can renounce his glory. He is so divinely free that he can bind himself to the obedience of a slave. In this reciprocal detachment of two images of God, the self-emptying Son stands opposed, for a moment, to God the Father who is still in some way depicted in the colors of the Old Testament palette. But theological reflection at once evens out this difference: it is in fact the Father himself who 'does not believe it necessary to hold on to this Son', but 'delivers him over' as the Spirit is continually described as the 'Gift' of them both."
"The question of some kind of 'mythical' premundane temptation of the Son (as primordial Man) does not, then, arise. It is not a matter of an incapacity to master the highest degree of glory without undergoing Incarnation. There is, therefore, no parallel with Adam who, anticipating the reward of the divine command to obey, 'grasped' the apple for himself. What is at stake, at least in a perspective of depth, is an altogether decisive turn-about in the way of seeing God. God is not in the first place , 'absolute power;, but 'absolute love', and his sovereignty manifests itself not in holding on to what is its own but in its abandonment - all this in such a way that this sovereignty displays itself in transcending the opposition, known to us from the world, between power and impotence." [emphasis mine]
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Mysterium Paschale - Lent 08
I just received my copy of Hans Urs von Balthasar's Mysterium Paschale (The Mystery of Easter). This will be my Lenten text. I am planning an Easter Vigil service on Saturday night of Easter weekend. I am hoping my readings here and the centrality of Balthasar's account of Christ's descent into hell will significantly shape what this service will look like.
From the preface to the second edition,
We shall never know how to express the abyss-like depths of the Father's self-giving, that Father who . . . makes himself 'destitute' of all that he is and can be so as to bring forth a consubstantial divinity, the Son. Everything that can be thought and imagined where God is concerned is, in advance, included and transcended in this self-destitution which constitutes the person of the Father, and at the same time, those of the Son and the Spirit. God as 'gulf' of absolute Love contains in advance, eternally, all the modalities of love, of compassion, and even of a 'separation' motivated by love.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Saturday, February 02, 2008
1-2-3
Well I have been tagged to perform the following
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Not wanting to cheat as I sat in my church office I saw my Bible laying to my left. So I thought I would start there but then work my way past the music stand where my Greek and Hebrew texts are laid out (mostly for show) and then look to my easy-access reference shelf for the 'real reading'.
First,
Place the alter of burnt offering in front of the entrance to the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting; place the basin between the Tent of Meeting and the alter and put water in it. Set up the courtyard around and put the curtain at the entrance of the courtyard. Take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and everything in it; consecrate it and all its furnishings, and it will be holy.
Okay and here is a rough translation,
All widows and orphans you shall not afflict. If you afflict them and they cry out to me I will surely hear their cry. And my face will burn and I will kill you with a sword and your wives will be widows and your sons orphans.
There were some of the scribes sitting there considering in their hearts, "Why does this man say this, he blasphemies? Who can forgive sins if not the one God?" And immediately Jesus, understanding with his spirit what they were considering within themselves, said to them, "Why are you considering this in your hearts?"
Here I had a few choices as to what would have been considered the closest book. I decided to start with the top shelf. The first book, however, was Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God which had less than 100 pages. The next book with the red spine was the writings of Evagrius of Pontus,
An irascible person will experience terrors; a gentle person will have no fears.
A violent wind drives away clouds; resentment drives the mind away from knowledge.
The person who prays for his enemies will be free of resentment; one who is sparing with his tongue will do his neighbour no injury.
Well there you go. Anyone who reads this can consider themselves tagged.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Alternative Education?
Anyone want to weigh in on the recent approval for the development of "black schools" in Toronto? There are already a number of alternative schools available which segregate communities at least in terms of economics. I am quite sure that our local private Mennonite high school does not limit enrollment to confessional belief (as I belief there is at least one Muslim student enrolled). The heat of course is in part historical after such effort was made for integration out of the civil-rights movement. The argument now is that black students in Toronto are statistically not succeeding and the belief is that this is in part due to the structure and content of the school system. The premier of Ontario has recently called to a stop to this decision. I don't have a real clear response as of yet . . . how about you?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Local Stuff
I had these links over at an old site, just wanted to move them over.
Events and Lectures
University of Waterloo
Conrad Grebel University College
St. Jerome's College
Religious Studies
Philosophy
Wilfred Laurier University
Waterloo Lutheran Seminary
Cultural Analysis and Social Theory
Cultural Studies
Languages and Literatures
Religion and Culture
McMaster University
Religious Studies
English and Cultural Studies
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition
Philosophy
Divinity College
University of Toronto
Religious Studies
Toronto School of Theology
Arts and Culture
Echo (Kitchener-Waterloo)
View (
Now (Toronto)
Exclaim!
Literary Groups
Lit Electric
Seraphim Editions
Kairos Literary Society
BookLand Press
The New Quarterly
Pandora Press
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Dividing Our Time
I came across this quote by Albert Einstein,
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
I find it represents well the tension I often carry with what sort of time I will give to various pursuits. I already took some comfort in the limited time I spend reading 'current events' with the statement made by M. Swann in Proust's Swann's Way in response to value of reading 'the papers'.
The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. Suppose that, every morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside it - oh! I don't know; shall we say Pascal's Pensees? . . . And then in the gilt and tooled volumes which we open once in ten years . . . we should read that the Queen of Hellenes had arrived at Cannes, or that the Princesse de Leon had given a fancy dress ball. In that way we should arrive at the right proportion between 'information' and 'publicity'.
Here Proust also refers to a 'division', or as he calls it a right proportion. I still hold to the position that I will be better equipped for political significance if I am formed by transformational texts (and contexts) and I am sensitive and alert to my immediate environment. And then I may well be able to understand what Stephen Harper is proposing for Canada.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
When the Sun Rises
A great quote from Rudy Wiebe's The Temptation of Big Bear. The Indian Chief Big Bear alludes to the presence of his authority as a government official tries to persuade him to sign a treaty.
When the sun rises my shadow is as long as any river on the plains.
Weil on Affliction: Only the Contact Matters
God's mercy is manifest in affliction as in joy, by the same right, more perhaps, because under this form it has no human analogy. Man's mercy is only shown in giving joy, or maybe in afflicting pain with a view to outward results, bodily healing or education. But it is not the outward results of affliction that bear witness to divine mercy. The outward results of affliction are nearly always bad. We lie when we try to disguise this. It is in affliction itself that the splendor of God's mercy shines, from its very depths, in the heart of its inconsolable bitterness. If still perserving in our love, we fall to the point where the soul cannot keep back the cry, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" if we remain at this point without ceasing to love, we end by touching something that is not affliction, not joy, something that is the central essence, necessary and pure, something not of the senses, common to joy and sorrow: the very love of God.
We know then that joy is the sweetness of contact with the love of God, that affliction is the wound of this same contact when it is painful, and that only the contact matters, not the manner of it.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Weil on (Not) Overcoming
In reference to the 'obstacle' keeping her from being baptized.
I think with very important things we do not overcome our obstacles. We look at them fixedly as along as is necessary until, if they are due to the powers of illusion, they disappear.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Weil's Religionless Christianity - Part II
After a litany of all that she loves regarding God, faith, liturgy, saints and church architecture Weil writes this in her first letter.
But I have not the slightest love for the church in the strictest sense of the word, apart from its relation to all things that I do love. I am capable of sympathizing with those who have this love, but I do not feel it. I am well aware that all the saints felt it. . . . Anyhow, one cannot make oneself love. All I can say is that if such a love constitutes a condition of spiritual progress, which I am unaware of, or if it is part of my vocation, I desire that it may be granted to me.
She continues her reflections on the church in her second letter.
After thoroughly considering everything, I think this is what they [the obstacles to joining the church] come to. What frightens me is the Church as a social structure. Not only on account of its blemishes, but from the very fact that it is something social. It is not that I am of a very individualistic temperament. I am afraid for the opposite reason. I am aware of very strong gregarious tendencies in myself. My natural disposition is to be very easily influenced, too much influenced, and above all by anything collective. I know that if at this moment I had before me a group of twenty young Germans singing Nazi songs of chorus, a part of my soul would instantly become Nazi. That is a very great weakness, but that is how I am. . . . I am afraid of the Church patriotism existing in the Catholic circles. By patriotism I mean the feeling one has for a terrestrial country. I am afraid of it because I fear to catch it.
Nothing ever said or written goes as far as the devil's words to Christ in Saint Luke concerning the kingdoms of the world. "All this power will I give thee and the glory of it, for that is delivered unto me and to whomsoever I will I give it." It follows from this that the social is irremediably the domain of the devil. The flesh impels us to say me and the devil impels us to say us; or else to say like the dictators I with a collective signification. By social I do not mean everything connected with citizenship, but only collective emotions.
And then Weil offers her binding paradox.
I am well aware that the Church must inevitably be a social structure; otherwise it would not exist. But in so far as it is a social structure, it belongs to the Prince of this World.
Weil goes on to say that it because the Church is concerned with preservation and transmission that it remains a danger to those who are influenced by social pressures. In this form "what is purest and what is most defiling look very much the same" as they are all sanctioned by the church and give the same structure of language.
This remains my tension and perhaps it is a tension that should increase. How do look to preserve an institution (which is what much of my position involves) and also remain open and vulnerable to the presence of God?
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Conversion or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
No time to comment but I have only recently come across the story of Antony Flew. Worth checking out.
Simone Weil's Religionless Christianity - Part I
I have on several occasions heard references to Bonhoeffer as a theologian who articulates a 'religionless Christianity'. What I have not heard is this notion being attached to Simone Weil's reflections in Waiting for God. I am sure these connections have been made but I am surprised they are not more broadly engaged. In this collection of writings the six letters of Weil, philosopher, socialist and mystic, are addressed to a catholic priest who early had a profound impact on her. Weil wrestles with and rejects the attraction of being baptized into the church. Here is an excerpt.
In any case, when I think of the act by which I should enter the church as something concrete, which might happen quite soon, nothing gives me more pain than the idea of separating myself from the immense and unfortunate multitude of unbelievers. I have the essential need, and I think I can say the vocation, to move among men of every class and complexion, mixing with them and sharing their life and outlook, so far that is to sat as conscience allows, merging into the crowd and disappearing among them, so that they show themselves as they are, putting off all disguises with me. It is because I long to know them so as to love them just as they are. For if I do not love them as they are, it will be they whom I love, and my love will be unreal.
The language used here is quite relevant to my life. Prior to becoming a pastor I spent a year working in a factory greenhouse. It was in that context that I had some of the most meaningful discussions on faith and truth with people who likely would not be caught dead in church. As a pastor now I come carrying the weight of whatever stigma a person may attach to my office. And much more of my time is spent thinking of how I can attract heavily churched kids to a 'fun' event so that I can feel successful. To put it lightly this would seem to be missing the point.
The question by Weil is well taken. Can I love someone if they will not be themselves with me? I suspect this will be the case if someone feels the need to protect themselves against the power of my office and institution.
More excerpts to follow.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
A Miraculous Disincarnation
There is another tremendous scene towards the end of Swann's Way. The young boy of the story begins to anticipate a journey to Italy. His anticipation and wonder of this foreign land begins a process of increasing excitement within him.
During this month - in which I went laboriously over, as over a tune, though never to my satisfaction, these visions of Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited in me drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been love, love for another person - I never ceased to believe that they corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me conscious of as glorious a hope as could be cherished by a Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into Paradise.
And in a nod to my own childhood fascination with Atlases.
And for all that the motive force of my exaltation was a longing for aesthetic enjoyments, the guide-books ministered even more to it than books on aesthetics, and, more again then guide-books, the railway time-tables.
I was genuinely becoming excited as his anticipation grew until its climax. This climax was triggered by his father's words for him to be prepared for the weather there. (And in good Proustian style most of the following is all one sentence)
At these words I was raised to a sort of ecstasy; a thing I had until then deemed impossible. I felt myself penetrating indeed between those 'rocks of amethyst, like a reef in the Indian Ocean'; by a supreme muscular effort, a long way in excess of my real strength, stripping myself, as of a shell that served no purpose, of the air in my own room which surrounded me, I replaced it by an equal quantity of Venetian air, that marine atmosphere, indescribable and peculiar as the atmosphere of the dreams which my imagination had secreted in the name of Venice; I could feel at work within me a miraculous disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that vague desire to vomit which one feels when one has a very sore throat; and they had to put me in bed with a fever so persistent that the Doctor not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, to Florence and Venice was absolutely out of the question, but warned them that, even when I should have completely recovered, I must, for at least a year, give up all idea of travelling, and be kept from anything that was liable to excite me.
Oh snap! The young boy dissolves so fully into the imagination (his disincarnation) that his body begins to suffer from withdrawal. No further energy to comment at this point.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Feedburned
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Friday, December 28, 2007
Proust On Belief
Tis a season for rejoicing. I finally finished Swann's Way. It was not that it is a particularly difficult read but most of my more literary friends have begun and not finished it. In fact the local bookseller had a standing $25 gift certificate for anyone who could prove they read it. The book certainly lends itself to being dropped. It is not a page turner and it does not have what I would call 'flow'. The movement rather is like a type of emerging or organic still frame. The image developing in your mind becomes more nuanced, more unpredictable. And in the end the book is simply beautiful.
The book is an exercise of and a commentary on memory. In returning to a place that held rich and meaningful memories the young boy, nearing the end of the story, becomes disorientated by the present reality.
And seeing all these new elements of the spectacle, I had no longer the faith which, applied to them, would have given them consistency, unity, life; they passed in a scattered sequence before me, at random, without reality, containing in themselves no beauty that my eyes might have endeavoured, as in the old days, to extract from them and to compose in a picture. They were just women, in whose elegance I had no belief, and whose clothes seemed to me unimportant. But when a belief vanishes, there survives it - more and more ardently, so as to cloak the absence of power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new phenomenon - an idolatrous attachment to the old things which our belief in them did once animate, as if it was in that belief and not in ourselves that the divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent cause - the death of the gods.
This appears at least on the surface to indicate a loss of youthful imagination in the possibilities of reality. What it offers more profoundly is a commentary in the work it takes to experience reality. Reality is not a given in its basic thereness. Rather the present reality must be joined with belief and belief is the medium for the imagination required. And if we loose that belief we will suffer the increasing idolatrous attachment to the past which we will attribute divine presence (rather than our present bodies). The book concludes with the young boy's reflection on memory.
How paradoxical it is to seek in reality the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed. . . . The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are fugitive, alas, as the years.
The book ends, in my mind, in a type of liminal space where belief is the hardest and most necessary of tasks. Belief of the past can be recalled in memory but cannot engage the present. And without belief reality moves about pixalated without any form emerging and in this account the emergence of form signals the emergence of meaning.
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