| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
with Jim Leffel
"I believe more and more that this is truly the central task of the Christian, to give the Lord the opportunity to exhibit his existence." (Letters, 63,4).
Relevance: Frustrated aspirations of "Generation X"
"Modern multiple divorce is rooted in the fact that many are seeking in human relationships what human relationships can never give. Why do they have multiple divorce, instead of merely promiscuous affairs? Because they are seeking more than merely the sexual relationship. But they can never find it, because what they are seeking does not exist in a purely finite relationship. It is like trying to quench thirst by swallowing sand. . . [O]n the basis of the finished work of Christ, human relationships can be substantially healed, and can be joyous. Christianity is the only answer to the problem of men." True Spirituality, 161.
What is a family?
"The family is the place where the deep understanding that people are significant, important, worthwhile, with a purpose in life, should be learned at an early age."
What Is A Family, 62.
Family as a shelter
"No Christian family is meant to live behind a moat filled with water and a drawbridge swung up out of reach! To protect your family life to this extent, to save your family life in complete selfishness, is to lose it in the end. . . If your children feel your honesty and willingness to help people, they will feel a reality as they talk outside the home, which will be a terrific help in their own spiritual growth. . . There is nothing more beneficial for your children then discovering how exciting it is to know that someone has ‘passed from darkness to light’ because of the time spent in your home. To find that happiness really comes in the midst of seeing someone else helped. . . teaches the whole family what life is all about. " What Is A Family, 200,1.
Discussion:
Relay of truth
"The primary place for the flag of truth to be handed on is in the family. The truth was meant to be given from generation to generation." What Is A Family, 107.
Conclusion:
What is a family? A witness to the existence of a personal loving God
What is culture?
Why culture matters
"There is a flow to history and culture. This is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind--what they are in their thought world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo’s chisel, and it is true of a dictator’s sword." How Should We Then Live, 19.
"It is important to realize what a difference a people’s world view makes in their strength as they are exposed to the pressure of life. . . . [Christians strength in Roman culture] rested on God’s being an infinite-personal God and his speaking in the Old Testament, in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, and in the gradually growing New Testament. He had spoken in ways people could understand. Thus the Christians not only had knowledge about the universe and mankind that people cannot find out by themselves, but they had absolute, universal values by which to live and by which to judge the society and the political state in which they lived. And they had grounds for the basic dignity and value of the individual as unique in being made in the image of God." How Should We Then Live, 22.
Middle Ages
- Man and nature
- Church and state
"Two swords"
"We proclaim, declare, and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human being to be subject to the Roman Pontiff." Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sancuam
"Praise all the precepts of the Church, holding ourselves ready at all times to find reasons for their defense, and never offending against them. . . If we wish to be sure that we are right in all things, we should always be ready to accept this principle: I will believe that the white that I see is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it." Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises
Renaissance
- Hypocrisy of the church (the great schism)
- Political and economic autonomy of princes and men of ability
- Humanism
- Recovery of classical literature and hermeneutics
Lorenza Valla’s work on "The Donation of Constantine"
Erasmus’ return to the biblical text and critique of monasticism
- Man and nature
Recovery of nature
Exaggerated role of man
"I have given you, O Adam, neither a fixed location, nor an especial appearance, nor any gift peculiarly your won; therefore, you may attain and possess, as you wish and as you will, whatever location, whatever appearance, whatever gifts you yourself desire. The nature of all other things is limited and confined within laws which I have laid down. You, confined by no limits, will determine your nature for yourself by your judgment, into whose power I have consigned you. I have placed you in the middle of the world, whence you may survey the more conveniently everything which is in the world. I have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal; thus, as a free and sovereign craftsman, you may mold yourself whatever form you choose. You will be able to degenerate into those lower creatures, which are brutes; you will be able, by the determination of your mind, to be reborn into those higher creatures, which are divine." Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man."
Reformation
The Bible is the final authority from God
Each individual stands before God, mediated by Christ alone
Early modern science: Bacon to Newton
Enlightenment
"Such observations upon what man has been and what he is today, will instruct us about the means we should employ to make certain and rapid the further progress that his nature allows him still to hope for. Such is the aim of the work that I have undertaken, and its result will be to show by appeal to reason and fact that nature has set no term to the perfection of human faculties; that the perfectibility of man is truly infinite; and that the progress of this perfectibility, from now onwards independent of any power that might wish to halt it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has cast us." Marquis de Condorcet, "Progress of the Human Mind"
Nature is a sufficient explanation for all that exists: A closed system of cause and effect. Nature has a built in teleology. Universe and man are machine.
From Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, On Adaptation and its Excellence:
"How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organization to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being to another being, been perfected?"
The Struggle for Existence:
"When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."
Read from Nietzsche, "The Gay Science." (Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 126,7).
