NeoPlatonism & Other Subjects

Interesting take on Augustine and the modern world.
1. Mundane reality of cause & effect, power, etc. is inherently oppressive
2. To live only in terms of this world is to prostitute yourself to domination
3. It is to cut one's self off from living Truth totally, and submerse one's self into military, economic, and political power, not to mention (ultimately) Occult power
4. Virtue exists within this system (bravery in Special Force solders is very real) but it is co-opted and will ultimately be "owned" by dominating powers.
5. To opt out of this ultimately frustrating situation which is ultimately the necessary condition of fallen man involves one in an effort of will.
6. The understanding follows the will.
7. Liberation occurs through ascesis (which begins with monastic rule & Church life).
8. This rule slowly but surely brings about greater experiences of God's grace, which creates harmony and peace, within and without.
9. This habit of Charity views Logos in people, refuses to use them, and reinforces a habit of virtue which aspires to and ascends a path of knowledge to God.
10. So, politics and private property are a result of the Fall
11. Society would have existed had the Fall never occured
12. Anyone who wishes to rule in the Church will have had to master the unique temptations of being human, and to do less of a "rule" and to be more of an "icon"
13. Human government can be changed and transformed, but will never be free of this problem in the same way that the Church ought to be (at least).

Servants of the Secret Fire

This Friday, it's about "riding the tiger" and reconciling Christianity with perennialism. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Guest Post

Another for Gornahoor.
And this was the week before.

Music & Silence

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is Music." Aldous Huxley

I've been meaning to post on music for awhile. I don't play much myself, just some fiddle tunes and an odd piece or two from classical or neoclassical music. However, several good pieces on music can be had. Spengler (Daniel Goldman) wrote a piece on Augustine, Time & Eternity, & Music for First Things (now archived), and OneCosmosBlogspot had some meditations on music last Fall (09). I'll try to post excerpts or links at some point. In any event, the consensus (and this is a thought that had occurred to me a while back in a nude form) seems to be that music evokes (literally) as if by magic the presence of eternity and allows us (for a moment) to hear that which is invisible to the eye. Music allows one to see God. At least, in a form analogous to the actual seeing of God with the inner, third eye, or the virtual seeing of God with the eyes of faith. Music may be the highest actual form of "Platonism for the masses" (credit to Joel Dietz for that thought in embryo). Music allows us to truly aspire to God, in a purity denied to the other senses. There is Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, Bach's Messe H-Molle, and many, many other pieces of music that summon portals into the precincts of heaven, which give one the sense of looking in.

Radical Orthodoxy & Basileia tou Theou

Things just keep getting crazier. Something is brewing in the catacombs of the "conservative" camp, & this is just one example.

For Radical Orthodoxy, the particular Neoplatonic hierarchies of being, Being, and "beyond Being" are not decisive. What matters is the way in which Neoplatonism treats the world as a differentiated realm of beings and events knit together, not in spite of or against the discrete identities of things, but in harmonious order and toward a common purpose. This view, which Radical Orthodoxy argues is advanced and intensified by classical Christianity (especially by Augustine), operates outside the contrastive logic of identity and difference. Identity is neither a wound in the flux of difference, nor a vulnerable citadel to be defended. Dynamism and difference—"I am coming from and going toward"—constitute identity. The glue is sticky, but it never dries.

This, of course, is exactly the banner the New Pantagruel marched under. "Augustinianism" being short-hand for a perfection that is known and experienced, but incompletely, in the joy of material life under the sun. Imperfection with linking implies shadows, archetypes, a goal. In short, "NeoPlatonism". "Being" is not, after all, something we can dispense with in Christianity without loss.

This amounts to nothing less than Resurrection for cultural Christianity & the West. A declaration of war. Fix bayonets, refuse the line. Fight hand to hand if you have to. With joy. This is nothing like ordinary evangelicalism, even of the high caliber/octane John Piper variety. Stone cold Christianity. The stonewall. Rebuilding.

I am not sure about Reno's concluding note, which sounds overly tentative. At least these guys are literally killing their weight every day in hecular summanists. There is a lot to be said for going off half-cocked once in a while. If you never lose your head, it proves only that you've no head to lose (Rosenstock-Huessy). Stay tuned for more examples of this sort of thing. The Spirit is stocking up kindling in many varied places, and the wind is picking up. Look to see a huge turning radius & some surprising "revelations" about the supposedly modern world we live in, and that right soon.