Some necessary clarity from George MaDonald

 "

God will not conquer evil by crushing it underfoot -any god of man's idea could do that- but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all.

I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing. [I believe] such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren, rush inside the center of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn.

When souls have been ill-taught about God, the true God will not let them gaze too long upon the Moloch which men have set up to represent Him. He will turn away their minds from that which men call Him, and fill them with some of his own lovely thoughts or works, such as may by degrees prepare the way for a vision of the Father.

All those evil doctrines about god that work misery and madness have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of children.

I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children. Take any of those wicked people in Dante's hell, and ask wherein is justice served by their punishment. Mind, I am not saying it is not right to punish them, I am saying, justice is not, never can be satisfied by suffering-nay, cannot have any satisfaction in or from suffering. Human resentment, human revenge, human hate may."

 Deleted

Transcendence

 It feels like this, doesn't it?

"The Transcendence we aim at is so faint and uncertain, so easy to suspect of being a mirage, while the earthly lures are so loudly attractive, so seemingly real. This is reality, the sense world shouts at us. All else is illusion!"  -BV

A bit political, but for a good reason.

 From The Maverick Philosopher

MavPhil

Friday, August 06, 2021

Every Generation Faces a Barbarian Threat in its Own Children

David Horowitz, Radical Son:

Irving Kristol, who had second thoughts before me, has observed that every generation faces a barbarian threat in its own children, who need to be civilized. This is the challenge perennially before us: to re-teach the young the conditions of being human, of managing life's tasks in a world that is and must remain forever imperfect. The refusal to come to terms with this reality is the heart of the radical impulse and accounts for its destructiveness, and thus for much of the bloody history of our age. (Emphasis added)

The world is imperfect, and it cannot be perfected by us either individually or collectively. This is a defining truth of conservatism. The conservative stands on the terra firma of a reality antecedent to his hopes, dreams, and desires, a reality from which he must learn what is possible and what is not. The conservative is not opposed to such  piecemeal ameliorations as are possible, but he does not conflate the possible with what he can dream up or imagine.  He is rightly unmoved by the utopian imaginings of a leftist like John Lennon in his song Imagine, imaginings that presuppose human perfectibility and the possibility of a quasi-religious immanentization of the eschaton. But of course Lennon's leftist imaginings are not mere imaginings but veiled prescriptions for such destructive actions as the suppression and ultimate eradication of religion together with the eradication of the belief that we as individuals have a spiritual origin and destiny; the spread of a smiley-faced half-way nihilism, that of Nietzsche's Last Man ("noting to kill or die for") which, while denying genuine transcendence does not reject this life but degrades it to a life of self-indulgence; the levelling of all differences and the ultimately futile assault on natural hierarchies which of course reassert themselves in the end. In short:

• Humans are imperfect. They are structurally flawed and in such a way as to disallow any possibility of perfection.
• Being imperfectible, they cannot be improved in any fundamental ways by human effort whether individual or collective.
• The failure of leftists to understand these truths and their consequent misguided attempts at perfecting the imperfectible have led to an over-all worsening of the human condition. And that is to put it mildly: in the 20th century alone communist governments murdered over 100 million. That is a lot of eggs to break for an impossible omelet.
• Leftists are reality-deniers who refuse the tutelage of experience.

It's been a while!

 Extreme heat, fires and smoke, plus Covid strictures, here in southern Orygun have slowed your blogger way down. Let's work back toward normalcy, shall we?

One of my current projects is reading Langdon Gilkey's masterful work "Maker of Heaven and Earth." What makes it masterful? A thorough understanding of his theme; a paradigm clarity of expression; a pleasing rolling-out of the material, with plenty of recaps of earlier points; respect for the theological traditions, along with a respectful review and critique of same.

A short quote (from my edition, Doubleday and Company, 1959, page 41. 

"Thus theological understanding deliberately rests on faith in a God who is beyond our full comprehension, rather than on that clear delineation of ultimate principles which philosophy seeks. This position is not irrational, even though its source of meaning transcends that which may be made fully rational because, for the theologian, the attempt to make all things in this life completely intelligible endangers all hope of finding ultimate meaning and coherency therein. Thus as the methods of philosophy and theology differed sharply, so do their respective goals. And out of this difference arises the creative tension that is one of the concerns of this book."

I add, that LG does refer to philosophy and theology as 'blood-brothers' that certainly do fight, but ultimately discover that they are stronger together. 

More to follow.

Wisdom from Lin Yutang

 Lin Yutang never disappoints those who want to read the thoughts of a warm, wise, very smart human being. His most famous book - The Importance of Living - is a treasure house of Chinese insight, humor, and stories. Dave says - find a copy and buy it. Then relax in your favorite reading spot and indulge in the book.

A few snippets, and a link to more:

“Love of one’s fellowmen should not be a doctrine, an article of faith, a matter of intellectual conviction, or a thesis supported by arguments. The love of mankind which requires reasons is no true love. This love should be perfectly natural, as natural for man as for the birds to flap their wings. It should be a direct feeling, springing naturally from a healthy soul, living in touch with Nature.”

“Man’s dignity consists in the following facts which distinguish man from animals. First, that he has a playful curiosity and a natural genius for exploring knowledge; second, that he has dreams and a lofty idealism (often vague, or confused, or cocky, it is true, but nevertheless worthwhile); third, and still more important, that he is able to correct his dreams by a sense of humor, and thus restrain his idealism by a more robust and healthy realism; and finally, that he does not react to surroundings mechanically and uniformly as animals do, but possesses the ability and the freedom to determine his own reactions and to change surroundings at his will.”

“The critical mind is too thin and cold, thinking itself will help little and reason will be of small avail; only the spirit of reasonableness, a sort of warm, glowing, emotional and intuitive thinking, joined with compassion, will insure us against a reversion to our ancestral type. Only the development of our life to bring it into harmony with our instincts can save us. I consider the education of our senses and our emotions rather more important than the education of our ideas.”

Many more at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/48298.Lin_Yutang

C.S. Lewis on Goodness and/or infallibility

 "“Yes. On my view one must apply something of the same sort of explanation to, say, the atrocities (and treacheries) of Joshua. I see the grave danger we run by doing so; but the dangers of believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him ‘good’ and worshiping Him, is still greater danger. The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.

To this some will reply ‘ah, but we are fallen and don’t recognize good when we see it.’ But God Himself does not say that we are as fallen as all that. He constantly, in Scripture, appeals to our conscience: ‘Why do ye not of yourselves judge what is right?’ — ‘What fault hath my people found in me?’ And so on. Socrates’ answer to Euthyphro is used in Christian form by Hooker. Things are not good because God commands them; God commands certain things because he sees them to be good. (In other words, the Divine Will is the obedient servant to the Divine Reason.) The opposite view (Ockham’s, Paley’s) leads to an absurdity. If ‘good’ means ‘what God wills’ then to say ‘God is good’ can mean only ‘God wills what he wills.’ Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan.”

A helpful warning and a promise from Tennyson

 "But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire,
And leave the hot swamp of voluptuousness
A cloud between the Nameless and thyself,
And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel,
And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou
Look higher, then—perchance—thou mayest—beyond
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines,
And past the range of Night and Shadow—see
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day
Strike on the Mount of Vision!"

 

From The Ancient Sage by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

A link: Here

Happiness or meaningfulness?

 The most deep-seated American misunderstanding of religion is the presumption that the purpose of religion is to produce happiness. The primary function of religion is not to generate happiness but to construct meaning. Human beings can endure the most intense suffering with resolve and confidence as long as they believe their distress has a place in a larger context of meaning.
The threat of meaninglessness is deeper than the threat of pain, suffering, and guilt. When a system of meaning is threatened, the problem of evil is not primarily how to fathom and thereby endure particular experiences of suffering with equanimity but whether understanding and meaning are possible at all in the face of the apparent irrationality of the suffering.
Tyron L. Inbody, The Transforming God p.16 (Westminster John Knox Press 1997)

We can't live by philosophy alone.

 We need the critters to remind us of our affinity with them.