The City and the City

Over at Orrologion, we finally have a decent review of the New English Translation of the Septuagint for normal folks.

I have, and have been using, a copy of the NETS for about three months now. Readable it certainly is. Accurate it is. It perhaps lacks a certain beauty that those of us overly partial to the KJV appreciate, but I understand the complaints of even some educated (including people with seminary degrees!) people I know that it is simply too difficult to follow. Even if I think that the KJV language has some real evangelistic and cultural accommodation reasons behind it in parts of America.
There is one big problem to the use of the text for Liturgy, or even normal bible reading, for most Orthodox. The text offers up two different, parallel translations at different points. This is always because there are two divergent Greek manuscript traditions involved, but this is both needlessly confusing for most persons, if not downright anxiety-making for others.

However, it is a much better starting point for an English OT for the Orthodox in this country than the St. Athanasius Academy work.

Christ is risen!

Has it really been one month since we updated?

I have been busy with the work of Lent, the work of my work and the work of my health over the past month. On top of that, I have been travelling far & wide and even had the pleasure of meeting new friends and seeing new, wonderful places.

(Basketball may have also played some role in my absence. Mea culpa.)

There are a lot of serious things racking the Church in North America right now, to where it feels as if blogging becomes a burden. I am too close to the subjects to think objectively (when I see the pain this has already caused persons I dearly love, I feel it), so I just ruminate. Rumors, photographs, letters. There are blogs already providing the service of placing the information in the light of day far better than I can. There are others denouncing the blogosphere excesses far better than I can. Enough of that. I only want prayer, honest prayer.

I am trying to collect my thoughts, spirit and body for the approaching Holy Week. I have posts planned for next week, but we’ll see how well I deliver.

If you have access to New Blackfriars’ back issues online, it’s worth reading David Bentley Hart’s response to the “critical responses” to The Beauty of the Infinite.

In response to criticism of the tone of the work:

“I do, of course, regret those moments when my tone becomes “wearing.” But, if I may be frank, what I often find wearing is the faltering, apologetic, restrained, and hesitant tone of much modern theology. It is what I quite shamefully and unfairly tend to think of as “the modern Anglican inflection”: the sorrowful diminuendo towards embarrassed silence, by way of prolonged clearings of the throat and the occasional softly whistled tune, as one contemplates changing the subject before anyone is so indiscreet as to venture a firm opinion. I have little patience for the notion that we know so little (on account of the mystery of evil) that we must abandon our efforts to advance the story of Christ as the true story of the world. And I have even less patience for the claim that “we must speak . . . only ‘tentatively, indirectly, metaphorically’,” etc. I cannot, try as I might, make that description of evangelical rhetoric conform in my mind to the practice of Christ, the Apostles, or the martyrs of the Church, nor can I bring myself to think of that practice as in any sense violent, or even excessive in its confidence. And I should hate to think that theology should now become little more than a judicious preparation for Christianity’s ultimate obsolescence, and faith little more than a nostalgia for vanished gods. I simply do not believe that we have always somehow refused to recognize ambiguity or ignored the brokenness of others’ lives or been insufficiently attentive to uncertainty and pluralism if we choose to be forthright and even a bit unrestrained in our rhetoric. One reason for arguing that Being itself is “rhetorical,” and also an original peace, is to help quell the agitations of those oversensitive consciences that cannot adequately distinguish between speaking an unpleasant truth and kicking a puppy.”

On “the Other”:

I also do not know if I can entirely grant that, as Malcolm writes, “much postmodern thought” shares a biblical concern for “others.” At least, in the thought of Levinas and the later Derrida, “others” are nowhere to be found. Instead, one encounters only the Other, who —as far as I can tell—is obligingly devoid of an identity, a faith, an address, or any stated opinion regarding the designated hitter rule (a reference I fear only American readers will understand). In fact, the most attractive quality of the Other, I suspect, is his or her or its absolute purity from any of the obnoxious traits of others: convictions, prejudices, and customs; passions, discontents, and aspirations; and so on.

I agree with Ezekiel that the primary problem evolution poses for Christianity is what to do about the Fall. It’s an issue I’ve though a bit about without coming to any firm conclusion.

There is something which slightly bothers me about Ezekiel’s description of the “mythological escape” which sees the evolutionary process as itself a product of the Fall, which is the description of the Fall (in this view) “creeping back into time and altering the entire history of the planet.”  This sounds like the ME would hold that there is a (non-evolutionary or at least non-violent) “pre-history A” of humanity which is then substituted (whatever that would mean) by a violent, evolutionary “pre-history B” as a result of the Fall.  But it seems to me you could have a version of the mythological escape in which there only ever was, temporally, the violent, evolutionary “pre-history B” but where this fact is nonetheless result of human free choice in the middle of history.  So the effects of the Fall would temporally precede it but logically follow it.  (After all, it’s not like God creates partway through time and then hangs in suspense on the outcome of Adam’s choice, anyway).

As I’ve mentioned before, there is precedent for this sort of thing in Catholic theology in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.  Here, Mary’s own immaculate conception (analogous, perhaps, to the effects of the Fall) is dependent on the redemption effected by Christ which is itself dependent on Mary’s own fiat (analogous to the Fall itself).  If anything this pushes the idea of “Mary as the New Eve” even further.  On the other hand, the analogy is not quite adequate, since in the case of the Fall the circle is not complete because the Fall is not enabled by its own consequences.  Anyway, I’m not quite satisfied with this as a solution for a number of other reasons, but I’m not particular disturbed by its temporal hijinks.

Also worth thinking about in this context are Michael Liccione’s thoughts on evolution and original sin, though they seem to paint a somewhat more bleak picture of “nature” (in the nature/grace sense) than I’m inclined to, though perhaps don’t entirely understand everything involved.