Movement

I apologize to those who’ve been following me, but for administrative purposes I’ll be moving to a new location. WordPress’ overhead makes a writing a chore. I’ll only be importing a few posts from here, those I’ve deemed most indicative of what I’m thinking about. This address will be deleted sometime near the end of August. I’ll update you with the new address soon.

Sane

It is rarely assumed that not wanting to live; or finding one’s life – or as it is usually generalized in such states of mind, finding life itself – unbearable may, in certain circumstances, be the sane option, the utterly realistic view.

Adam Phillips (via)

Chalcedon

Official Christian orthodoxy is defined by the Confession of Chalcedon. Yet the only correct opinion it draws has to do with the nature of the incarnation, or, what Jesus Christ is.

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

With this, the great christological debates that began at the end of the first century were mostly quelled. What had sparked them was gentile dumbfoundness at the prospect of a god becoming flesh; and the only language at hand for understanding such an idea was that of Greek philosophy, obsessed as it was at the time with substance or ὑπόστᾰσις (hypostasis). For Jewish thought in the period of the Second Temple the question of Christ’s nature, his substance, was a non-question. What was essential for the members of this Jewish sect was who Christ was, not what he was made of. Who Chris was enabled redemption there on the cross. Who Christ was lent the utmost significance to his final words as found in the gospel of Mark: “Father, father, why have you forsaken me?!” You cannot understand these words if you are obsessed with substances and their transubstantiations, realms, their boundaries and traversals. Indeed, Western mind has thrived on fabricating distinctions where simplicity is due. Why have you forsaken me? This is a simple question.

Summa

In the final analysis it’ll have proven to be some genetic deficiency, a recessive trait allowed dominance by the laws of probability. It’d likely been inherited from my mother’s side since they have a history of mental disorder; my father should’ve asked these questions before conceiving me. Or perhaps it’ll be something much more accidental. I did fall down those concrete steps at my Grandfather’s home, the ones that led to his basement from outside. The scar looked like  a dinosaur in the mirror. The neurological damage has made a dinosaur of me. Now I’m an atavism, a silly herald of another time, another place. Out of time. Out of place. Here, now, my placement must follow necessity (I’m on this train to get to work, I’m live in this apartment to save money), my time must be spent accordingly (I need to sleep enough hours to perform my work, I must work enough hours to pay my rent, I must spend enough time with friends to keep them, etc), and my problem is a disposition averse to fragmentation. I see the whole thing. You can only want the whole thing once seeing it. But is this thing me, bigger and better? Fame and wealth are illusory: that I have the means to everything isn’t a purchase on the whole thing, the gossiped lives of celebrities have taught us that much. Fair enough. Perhaps I can know this whole thing: but the nature of knowledge isn’t simplification but complication. No, I can only see it. And I’m trying to describe it to you.

Sight

Philosophy is a visionary thing. It is not merely speculative, trying to see in a mirror darkly. It sees the thing itself. It sees clearly. It sees in anxiety and destruction. It sees in the midst of the destruction that dialectic has laid all around. The philosopher has gone through to the blindness that is sight to the visionary spirit. Or he sees nothing.

Gary Smith