Author: Marco
Husband, father, Australian, collector of random ideas!
2 March
It has been a while. So here is a picture by Christian Olavius Zeuthen of Trinity Church (I think) in Copenhagen where SK preached.
10 December
RIP Thomas Merton! Your journals inspire me. Your life challenges me. Your hermitage is he one place I want to visit!
5 December
No person is ever an object!
Every person should be treated like a person who is loved not an object. No person is ever an object.
19 November
I have not written in a while which is completely my fault. Not that I have nothing to say – some may suggest I have too much to say – but I have not had the energy.
I have been having the most interesting and “edifying” conversation with a person on Instagram. It has centred on a book, The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context, by Myron Penner. It might be described as an attempt to give a Kiergaardian interpretation of modern apologetics. Of course, the book is about much more – the modern epistemological paradigm among others.
I am not the person to give a “book review” so I will not. The book has struck me as simply using SK’s categories to show the flaws of the modern Christian approach to life. It was an interesting read; but the book is not for everyone. Yet I am always edified by a person’s serious wrestling and this book is that.
Anyway …
Modernism in traditional form?
I found this blog post, The ironies of Catholic traditionalism, while searching for something completely different. And I was particularly struck by this paragraph:
There are many other ironies here, but the most striking – and, I suspect, the most consequential – is that the conservatives who attack Pope Francis in the name of tradition and magisterial authority have been pressed into holding a variation of the doctrine of private judgement. They no longer countenance any form of obsequium religiosum, religious assent or submission, to the ordinary teaching authority of the Pope. Rather, they advise that you withhold assent until you have established to your satisfaction that what he says is in accord with tradition.
Could anything like the modern traditionalist movements (in various Christian communities) ever have happened in the past? Or is the traditionalist movement a rebellion against itself?
5 November
SK was confirmed in this church.
And he later preached there. I wonder if he used that pulpit?
A little about the church, in English, from the website.
4 November
I have been reading and thinking about SK’s (in)famous journal entry for 1 August 1835. Especially this image:
What use would it be if truth were to stand there before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I acknowledged it or not, inducing an anxious shiver rather than trusting devotion?
Journals 1835 (1:19)
Truth calls for personal involvement, not detached reflection. But …
The Truth is a trap: you cannot get hold of it without getting caught; you cannot get hold of the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.
Journals 1854 (10:17)
Truth calls for passivity in a world of activity. Truth confronts with possibility.
Truth/Jesus does not play our games. He is not limited by us or our thinking. And that is why God needed to become a person – Jesus is so much more than we can imagine, Jesus does not fit neatly into a box.
