Eucatastrophe

“The main purpose of Tolkien’s stories of imaginary beings in an imaginary world was to provide a better understanding of our world and the real beings who inhabit it.” In other words, by using an imaginary world – the fantastic – as a way to make familiar things strange, Tolkien is able to comment upon the state of the ‘real’ world. C. S. Lewis wrote that by embarking on the journey to Middle Earth, “we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.” Tolkien himself described his hobbit story as “a study of simple ordinary man, neither artistic nor noble and heroic” and indicated that his novels did have “applicability” to modern life.  --  sections in quotes from Devin Brown, The Christian World of the Hobbit,  in Hobbit Hermeneutics  Today's society recognizes, sometimes sophistically, the ways that narrative can influence interpretation of meaning.    Part of Tolkien's impact on literature seems due to what is described above.    It is pretty ...

 This notion of the hermeneutical circle is recent, but its roots go back to antiquity and ancient rhetoric. This is especially true of the “circle” or interplay of the whole and its parts, which was at first a requirement for the composition and writing of texts and later became one for understanding them properly. Plato already states in his Phaedrus (264 c) that every speech is constituted like a living being, with a head, feet, a center and members woven together so that they form an organic unity, an idea that Aristotle would take up in his Poetics (23, 1459 a 20). Plato expresses here a requirement that was to become an important component of ancient rhetoric: the parts of a text or speech must be conceived with a view to its whole that has to form an organic body (compare, e. g., Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 7.10). It naturally became a hermeneutic requirement for the understanding of these texts: the parts of a text should be understood out of the whole (which can be ...

 I have often reflected on the point expressed here in an article by Shaun Blanchard called Traditionis Custodes was never merely about the liturgy:  Much more than a decree regulating liturgy, Traditionis Custodes is a decisive moment in the history of papal reception of Vatican II. No single English word encapsulates the concept I am trying to convey, but thankfully the Germans have a word for everything. I believe Pope Francis’ motu proprio is the latest in a long series of papal assertions of Deutungshoheit over the legacy of Vatican II. Literally “interpretation-sovereignty,” to have Deutungshoheit means to have sovereignty over a narrative, which is the power to control meaning.  ... Whatever discontinuities are present in the Francis pontificate, I think we should actually see a document like Traditionis Custodes primarily in continuity with an established preoccupation of the postconciliar popes: controlling the narrative about Vatican II. In fact, controlling o...

 Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.  Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. GK Chesterton , Ethics of Elfland  This is another way of saying what I was trying to say yesterday ; still another is the way Dietrich von Hildebrand says it.     I left it on an unresolved note, though.   Trying again..  People inherently stand on tradition; it's as unavoidable as time itself.    Continuity is as built into the state of material things as change is.   The Greeks pondered this extensively ...

 We can deepen our understanding of what the full implications of a doctrine are. But that deepening of understanding is completely dependent on an antecedent stability of meaning —....I hasten to add that this need for a clear meaning to words and their stability over time does not mean that doctrinal formulations cannot at times employ the rather technical language of theological discourse in the interests of greater precision. But it does mean that even such highly technical language (e.g., “consubstantial with the Father”) denotes something clear and precise, which is the original reason for using more technical forms of discourse in the first place. This is from a recent Larry Chapp article  "How to Tell Doctrinal Development from Cultural Corruption" .    This "antecedent stability of meaning" seems useful when you are talking about development of any form of language.    Of course, meanings of words themselves can change and even reverse over time....

 In Chapter 3, DVH brings up Hegelian dialectic theory of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.   He stays out of the question of whether this theory is sound from a historical point of view, though he sounds a bit skeptical.  His concern is whether this can be a way of arriving at truth.   He notes that it's thoroughly possible for thesis and antithesis (as intellectual positions) to both be wrong.  In that case, the middle way of synthesis as a compromise between the two could also be wrong.  (For the moment, we note but are not primarily concerned with the possibility that the thesis is outright wrong and the antithesis is correct.  For example, "there is no objective truth" is countered by "there is objective truth".  The synthesis between the two positions would also be wrong)  An example he uses to make the point about all three phases being wrong is that of individualism vs collectivism.   If individual liberty is overs...

Dietrich von Hildebrand calls " Ecclesiam Suam " by Pope Paul VI "luminous" and  Dogmatic Constitution on the Church  "magnificent".   He certainly wasn't targeting the Vatican Council itself in his book, but rather some of the subsequent excrudescences that took its name.  The Church is always in need of renewal, he says.   Renewal in this context means reform, restoration, elimination of worldly accretions.   Hiistorical examples he gives: The Benedictine and Franciscan reforms (Cluny and St Bernadine) The Council of Trent and other decisive councils reform of St Gregory VII Other examples could probably be added. He quotes Vatican II -- Lumen Gentium: The Council "desires now to unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church, and to the whole world its own inner nature and universal mission.  This it intends to do following faithfully the teachings of previous Councils."   On the process of renewal in the history of the Chu...