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“In Christ's Resurrection something began by which man's life ever since, and today and for all the future, received that incomprehensible exaltation that the language of theology calls Grace and New Life. And therefore in the Christian celebration of Easter quite particularly an affirmation of the whole of existence is experienced and celebrated. No more rightful, more comprehensive and fundamental affirmation can be conceived.
The gift of having been created, the promise of perfect bliss, the communication of divine vitality through Incarnation and Resurrection—all these are things, we might say, which determine human life every hour of every day, if the Christians are right.”
― In Tune With The World: A Theory of Festivity
The gift of having been created, the promise of perfect bliss, the communication of divine vitality through Incarnation and Resurrection—all these are things, we might say, which determine human life every hour of every day, if the Christians are right.”
― In Tune With The World: A Theory of Festivity
“Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your grand experiment. Or no; not an experiment, for you have no need to find things out. Rather your grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a 'spiritual animal.' To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, 'Now get on with it. Become a god.”
― A Grief Observed
― A Grief Observed
“But when the human being had once been made, and necessity required the healing, not for the things that were not, but for the things that had come to be, it followed that the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created, to heal what existed. He became a human being for this, and used his body as a human instrument. For if it was not right to happen in this way, how should the Word appear, when he wished to use an instrument? Or whence was he to take it, if not from those who already existed and had need of his divinity through one like [themselves]? For it was not non-existent things that needed salvation, so that a command alone would have sufficed, but the human being, already in existence, who was corrupted and perishing. Whence it was reasonable and good that the Word should use a human instrument and unfold himself to all things.”
― On the Incarnation
― On the Incarnation
“At this meridian of thought, the rebel thus rejects divinity in order to share in the struggles and destiny of all men...Each tells the other that he is not God; this is the end of romanticism. At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent furies. The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.”
― The Rebel
― The Rebel
“Our original liberal principle of value agnosticism neutralizes our critical energies. If we have no robust and demanding picture of what a good life would look like, then we are unable to articulate any detailed criticism of the particular sort of falling away from a good life that something like machine gambling represents. We are therefore unable to offer any rationale for regulation that would go beyond narrow economic considerations. We take the preferences of the individual to be sacred, the mysterious welling up of his authentic self, and therefore unavailable for rational scrutiny. The fact that these preferences are the object of billion-dollar, scientifically informed efforts of manipulation doesn't square with the picture of the choosing self assumed in the idea of a 'free market.' It is a fact without a noisy partisan, so our attention is easily diverted from it. Further, by keeping his gaze away from such facts, the liberal/libertarian keeps his own soul pure, lest he commit the sin of recommending to others some substantive ideal, one that will necessarily be controversial. But outside his garden wall there are wolves preying on the townspeople. In our current historical circumstances, his liberal purity amounts to a lack of public-spiritedness.”
― The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
― The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
Marina & Mikael
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— last activity May 12, 2020 07:26PM
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Mikael’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mikael’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
970 books
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60 friends
4,670 books
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320 friends
715 books
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102 friends
2,342 books
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648 friends
214 books
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22 friends
484 books
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13 friends
419 books
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73 friends
623 books
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60 friends
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