Daily Archives: May 12, 2009

Prayers from the East

Posted by on May 12, 2009 4 comments

I’ve recently been perusing a book entitled Prayers from the East, edited by Richard Marsh. The book is a delightful collection of prayers, liturgies, and ceremonies from the Oriental Orthodox Churches (i.e. Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Eritrean, etc.).  Some wonderful liturgical gems to be found here. Such as this prayer which forms the beginning of the Coptic Anaphora:

Worthy and just!
Now we are standing together with the heavenly choirs.
We praise Our Lord with the seven choirs of the angels and with the two choirs of Cherubim and Seraphim.
We become as the tenth choir of the heavenly creatures.

You who have give to those on earth, the hymn of the Seraphim, count us with the heavenly hosts.
As we are counted with the heavenly hosts, we ought to stand with them looking to the east; to the throne of the Sun of Righteousness.

Worthy and right, worthy and right,
truly, indeed, you are worthy and right.
You, who are Master, Lord, God of truth,
being before the ages and reigning forever,
you who dwell in the highest and look upon the lowly;
you who have created the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all that is therein.
the Father of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ,
by whom you have created all things, seen and unseen, who sits upon the throne.

You who are seated, stand.
Before you stand the angels,
the archangels,
the principalities, the authorities,
the thrones, the dominions, the powers.

Look towards the east.
You are he around whom stand the Cherubim
full of eyes, and the Seraphim with six wings
praising continuously without ceasing, saying:

Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts;
heaven and earth are full of your holy glory.
Glory be to you, who is worshiped by all the holy powers.

Pope John Paul II on Capitalism

Posted by on May 12, 2009 3 comments

Since socialism is the great fear of the day among many conservative Christians, here’s an interesting approach to the matter from an oft-claimed hero for conservative Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike:

Returning now to the initial question: can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?

The answer is obviously complex. If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”. But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.

The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and exploitation remain in the world, especially the Third World, as does the reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries. Against these phenomena the Church strongly raises her voice. Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty. The collapse of the Communist system in so many countries certainly removes an obstacle to facing these problems in an appropriate and realistic way, but it is not enough to bring about their solution. Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces. [Italics added]

~ Pope John Paull II, Centesimus annus, §42.

What might have been reasonably called a risk at the close of the Cold War is stark reality today, I’m afraid.

Localism and Cosmopolites

Posted by on May 12, 2009 1 comment

Daniel Larison has a great post today on the contradictions of contemporary conservatism in response to this quote from Patrick Deneen:

This, in a microcosm, is a central paradox of our political system: our cosmopolite meritocrats theoretically admire localism but abhore [sic] the idea of living within the confines that such life would entail; our Red-State locals tend to despise cosmopolites, but support (and vote for) an economic system that encourages borderlessness, placelessness, and a profoundly abstract economy that has the effect of eviscerating those very localities. This arrangement is one of the central features undermining the localist cause today, and it’s difficult to see how it will be reversed.

Larison responds incisively:

Could it be that this paradox is unavoidable? Is the paradox the product of human craving and the inevitable disappointment and dissatisfaction that follow from desire? If so, the answer could lie in the self-denial of humbling oneself exceedingly in imitation of the Lord’s kenosis, which would entail forsaking status and honor to take, as it were, the form of a slave. That probably sounds bizarre, but it points to what Caleb Stegall has been saying about the centrality of love in all of this and, I might add, the right ordering of loves, which would tell us not to seek greener pastures but rather cultivate the ground where we are. A culture in which kenosis, self-emptying, was the highest ideal rather than self-fulfillment would be one in which mobility and flight might be possible but would very rarely be considered desirable.

Bingo.

Does Capitalism Work?

Posted by on May 12, 2009 3 comments

Not according to John Médaille at FPR, who is in the midst of an essay on the economics of distributism which looks to be quite interesting:

. . .  there is a certain amount of resignation among distributists, the feeling that they are facing a system that “works,” and that our major task is to add a moral dimension to an already fully functioning system. For example, Daniel M. Bell writes, “The empirical question put to capitalism cannot be ‘does it work?’ The obvious answer is “yes.” At first glance, Prof. Bell’s statement would appear to be true: we do see a working system around us, however imperfectly. However, the working system we see is not capitalism, but Keynesianism. The best one can say from the empirical evidence is that Keynesian Capitalism works. But to say this is to already destroy the argument of the capitalists, or at least of the pure capitalists. If capitalism is a system that requires massive government intervention to balance supply and demand, then it’s purely economic claims must be called into question.

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Barth on Heresy

Posted by on May 12, 2009 Comments Off

In §2 of Cd I/1 Barth has a number of interesting reflections on the nature of heresy and its relationship to faith:

By heresy we understand a form of Christian faith which we cannot deny to be a form of Christian faith from the formal standpoint, i.e., in so far as it, too, relates to Jesus Christ, to His Church, to baptism, Holy Scripture and the common Christian creeds, but in respect of which we cannot really understand what we are about when we recognise it as such, since we can understand its content, its interpretation of these common presuppositions only as a contradiction of faith. (p. 32)

So heresy is paradoxical for Barth. On the one hand it can only be understood as something recognizably Christian. On the other hand understanding it as Christians presents one with a contradiction in terms of the essence of Christianity. Further to this:

Because of its paradoxical nature, heresy is for faith an important factor. Or, as we might say, unbelief in the form of heresy is for faith and important factor—which is not the case when it is present as pure unbelief. Because in heresy it is present as a form of faith, it must be taken seriously at this point and there can and must be serious conflict between faith and heresy. (p. 32)

Heresy is important for faith, not because it is complete unbelief, but precisely because it is a form of faith with which we have to reckon.

In true encounter with heresy faith is plunged into conflict with itself, because, so long and so far as it is not free of heresy, so long and so far as heresy affects it, so long and so far as it must accept responsibility in relation to it, it cannot allow even the voice of unbelief which it thinks it hears in heresy to cause it to treat it as not at least also faith but simply as unbelief. It must understand it as a possibility of faith [Italics added]. To be sure, it will see it as a profoundly incomprehensible one, which can be regarded only as a possibility of disruption and destruction of faith, as a possibility against which it must be on guard. Yet it must still understand it as a possibility of faith, and therefore and to this extent—hence the need for powerful defense—as its own possibility, a possibility within and not without the Church, hard though it may be to think of it as such. This is the reason why this conflict is a serious conflict. (p. 33)

This is also the reason why I often find it more important to criticize other forms of Christian faith and practice than the secular godless liberals of the world. Paganism can never be as important to Christian faith as heresy.

Anyone think Rowan Williams’s take on heresy and orthodoxy might have been influenced by these passages from Barth? There seems to be more than a few similarities to his arguments in Arius here.

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