Quotes thread

Trajan Friday 14 Sep 2012

Three theological quotes I've come across recently, all related:

-- Lev Shestov, Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy

The knowledge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge. In launching this attack on the underlying assumptions of all other ethics, Christian ethics stands so completely alone that it becomes questionable whether there is any purpose in speaking of Christian ethics at all. But if one does so notwithstanding, that can only mean that Christian ethics claims to discuss the origin of the whole problem of ethics, and thus professes to be a critique of all ethics simply as ethics.

Already in the possibility of the knowledge of good and evil Christian ethics discerns a falling away from the origin. Human beings at their origin know one thing: God. It is only in the unity of their knowledge of God that they know of other men and women, of things, and of themselves. They know all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that they are no longer at one with their origin.

In the knowledge of good and evil human beings do not understand themselves in the reality of the destiny appointed in their origin, but rather in their own possibilities, their possibility of being good or evil. They know themselves now as something apart from God, outside God, and this means that they now know only themselves and no longer know God at all; for they can know God only if they know only God. The knowledge of good and evil is therefore separation from God. Only against God can human beings know good and evil.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

-- Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Body

Trajan Friday 14 Sep 2012

Ludlul Bel Nemeqi, an ancient Akkadian poem (shades of Jewish 'wisdom literature'):

For myself, I gave attention to supplication and prayer:
My prayer was discretion, sacrifice my rule.
The day for worshipping the god was a joy to my heart;
The day of the goddess's procession was profit and gain to me.
The king's blessing—that was my joy,
And the accompanying music became a delight for me.
I had my land keep the god's rites,
And brought my people to value the goddess's name.
I made the praise for the king like a god's,
And taught the people respect for the palace.
I wish I knew that these things would be pleasing to one's god!
What is good for oneself may be offense to one's god,
What in one's own heart seems despicable may be proper to one's god.
Who can know the will of the gods in heaven?
Who can understand the plans of the underworld gods?
Where have humans learned the way of a god?
He who was alive yesterday is dead today.
One moment he is worried, the next he is boisterous.
One moment he is singing a joyful song,
A moment later he wails like a professional mourner.
Their condition changes (as quickly as) opening and shutting (the eyes).
When starving they become like corpses,
When full they oppose their god.
In good times they speak of scaling heaven,
When they are troubled they talk of going down to hell.
I am perplexed at these things; I have not been able to understand their significance.

Trajan Saturday 15 Sep 2012

This is interesting -- Tertullian defends asceticism as a fundamentally bodily exercise, rather than as an exercise in mere self-denial (in order to 'purify' the flesh for the sake of the soul):

Now such remarks have I wished to advance in defence of the flesh, from a general view of the condition of our human nature. Let us now consider its special relation to Christianity, and see how vast a privilege before God has been conferred on this poor and worthless substance. It would suffice to say, indeed, that there is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, except it believe whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed, in order that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed (with the cross), that the soul too may be fortified; the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands, that the soul also maybe illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may fatten on its God. They cannot then be separated in their recompense, when they are united in their service. Those sacrifices, moreover, which are acceptable to God - I mean conflicts of the soul, fastings, and abstinences, and the humiliations which are annexed to such duty - it is the flesh which performs again and again to its own especial suffering. Virginity, likewise, and widowhood, and the modest restraint in secret on the marriage-bed, and the one only adoption of it, are fragrant offerings to God paid out of the good services of the flesh. Come, tell me what is your opinion of the flesh, when it has to contend for the name of Christ, dragged out to public view, and exposed to the hatred of all men; when it pines in prisons under the cruellest privation of light, in banishment from the world, amidst squalor, filth, and noisome food, without freedom even in sleep, for it is bound on its very pallet and mangled in its bed of straw; when at length before the public view it is racked by every kind of torture that can be devised, and when finally it is spent beneath its agonies, struggling to render its last turn for Christ by dying for Him-upon His own cross many times, not to say by still more atrocious devices of torment. Most blessed, truly, and most glorious, must be the flesh which can repay its Master Christ so vast a debt, and so completely, that the only obligation remaining due to Him is, that it should cease by death to owe Him more - all the more bound even then in gratitude, because (for ever) set free.

Tertullian's argument is precisely why I think the non-ascetic, 'libertine' forms of gnosticism such as Carpocratianism are probably more consistent -- if the body truly is nothing but profitless corruption, then who cares what you do with it?

Bronze Age Pervert

Team Zissou Saturday 15 Sep 2012

Tertullian needs a little correction. Asceticism isn't actually about the mortification of the flesh. It's about the elevation of the flesh to its true calling: communion with the Creator.

Bronze Age Pervert Saturday 15 Sep 2012

That is perverse blasphemy.

Trajan Saturday 15 Sep 2012

Did you actually read the quote?

Niccolo and Donkey Thursday 27 Sep 2012

""If you’ve got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood."'

Bob Dylan, September 2012

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Trajan Friday 28 Sep 2012

Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in an afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium for the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged."

-- Czeslaw Milosz

Trajan Friday 28 Sep 2012

"Now if you are to be true rulers, you must seize the very roots of government, following the command of Christ. Drive his enemies away from the elect; you are the instruments to do this. My friend, don't let us have any of these hackneyed posturings, about the power of God achieving everything without any resort to your sword; otherwise it may rust in its scabbard. ...Hence the sword, too, is necessary to eliminate the godless."

-- Thomas Muntzer

Niccolo and Donkey Friday 28 Sep 2012

Okay, here's something that I'm having trouble with: whether we are supposed to accept our lot under earthly rulers so long as they are not too oppressive because we will enter the Kingdom of Heaven or whether we are to use force of arms to set up our own regimes even though we are not supposed to be Utopians and because the Earth is already corrupted by corrupt men and sinners like us?

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