In what little I've read of this fellow, he is intriguing to me. Like T.S. Eliot, he is apparently one of those persons who so participated in apocalyptic vision (and, particularly, re-embodied it in a modern context, set the present tone for it) that I already owe a great deal to him without even knowing him. It's always odd to find the persons who were dreaming something of what you thought were your dreams, and dreaming them in such vivid colours long before you were born - to the point that you can only assume your vision somehow, in some small way, exists only insofar as it participates in theirs.
'The problem of America as a nation, in biblical perspective, remains the elementary issue of repentance. . . . Topically, repentance is not about forswearing wickedness as such; repentance concerns the confession of vanity. For America - for any nation at any time - repentance means confessing blasphemy.'[1]
'From the point of view of either biblical religion, the monstrous American heresy is in thinking that the whole drama of history takes place between God and human beings. The truth, biblically and theologically and empirically, is quite otherwise: the drama of this history takes place amongst God and human beings and the principalities and powers, the great institutions and ideologies active in the world. It's the corruption and shallowness of humanism which beguiles Jew or Christian into believing that human beings are masters of institutions or ideology. Or to put it a bit differently, racism is not an evil in human hearts or minds: racism is a principality, a demonic power, a representative image, an embodiment of death over which human beings have little or no control, but which works its awful influence over human life.'[2]
'Rejecting the suggestion that Christ's "resistance and renunciation of temptation to political authority" on Palm Sunday counsels political quietism, Stringfellow wrote:
["]Quite the contrary, it is the example of utter and radical involvement in the existence of the world, an involvement which does not retreat even in the face of the awful power of death. The counsel of Palm Sunday is that Christians are free to enter into the depths of the world's existence with nothing to offer the world but their own lives. And this is to be taken literally. What the Christian has to give to the world is his very life.["]'[3]
'"The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is a delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.'[4]
-r
[1]From p.230 of Politics and Spirituality [1984] by William Stringfellow
[2]From William Stringfellow's 1963 address to the Religion and Race Conference, as quoted by Bill Wylie-Kellermann in the article 'In One Another's Light: Reading King and Stringfellow'
[3]From p.113 of Dispatches from the Front [1994] by Stanley Hauerwas
[4]From Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 comment:
"Or to put it a bit differently, racism is not an evil in human hearts or minds: racism is a principality, a demonic power, a representative image, an embodiment of death over which human beings have little or no control, but which works its awful influence over human life.'[2]" This intrigued me because it is the exact opposite of my usual inclination to attempt to "humanize" evil. I'll have to think about it a bit more as my temptation (ah!) is to contrast it with the view I reacted against; that which dehumanizes evil doers.
I've never heard of him before, but the Wiki description brought up this envisioning of a tight rope walker who dances on the paradox of Truth; a very "full" expression of Christianity (I am discovering that "full" is one of the better ways for me to describe such things.) It reminds me of the affection I have for the Church's social doctrines which transcend narrow cordons of "liberal" and "conservative."
After Mass my sponsor and I were having an interesting conversation with Father regarding women in the diaconate/priesthood. My sponsor was discussing women deacons and their roles in the early church, to which Father responded: "That was when the Church was under attack with the barbarians/etc." In some sense, though, the Church is always under attack and the world is always in a state of crisis; a "normalized" state of exception, and as it has never been safe or comfortable to be a human or a Catholic, the question of "exigent circumstances" may become purely comparative rather than existent/non existent. I had been taught the concept of spiritual warfare, but I understood it better when I thought through to your earlier blogs on the current age and realized that you would oppose evil/error whether it occurred in 14th century France or in the 21st century United States.
"The counsel of Palm Sunday is that Christians are free to enter into the depths of the world's existence with nothing to offer the world but their own lives. And this is to be taken literally. What the Christian has to give to the world is his very life." Yes!
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