Saturday, February 6, 2010

"In Heaven There Is No Beer," as sung by Aquinas and Pesch

"The Bavarian has in heaven no beer to expect, the Briton no Guinness, the Frenchman and the Italian and the Rhenish Hessian as well as the Franconian no wine, the Swiss no kirsch, the Pole and the Russian no vodka, the North German no corn schnapps, the Greek no ouzo."

Otto Hermann Pesch, "Das Streben nach der beatitudo bei Thomas von Aquin im Kontext seiner Theologie: historische und systematische Fragen," Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 52, no. 3 (2005):  441.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Pseudo-Melito on the Assumption

"Then the Saviour spake unto them, saying: . . . this woman did I choose out of the tribes of Israel by the commandment of my Father, to dwell in her.  What then will ye that I do with her?  Then said Peter and the other apostles: . . . it hath appeared right to us thy servants that, as thou having overcome death dost reign in glory, so thou shouldest raise up the body of thy mother and take her with thee rejoicing into heaven.
"Then said the Savior:  Be it done according to your will."

 Pseudo-Melito, Latin narrative of the Assumption XVI.2-XVII.1, trans. Montague Rhodes James (The apocryphal New Testament, corr. ed. (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1966 [1953]; cf. http://www.archive.org/download/apocryphalnewtes027548mbp/apocryphalnewtes027548mbp.pdf), 215-216).  I'm not endorsing this (not endorsing this fifth-century document either), just intrigued by the idea of a development of fact and dogma left up to the apostles.  I was put onto this by Fr. Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P., Initiation à la théologie mariale:  «tous les âges me diront bienheureuse», Bibliothèque de la Revue thomiste (Paris:  Parole et Silence, 2007), 175.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Colón-Emeric on the Methodist house and the Thomist cathedral

"The Methodist house of religion is no English manor but a simple dwelling with a porch, a door, and an interior.  The porch of this house is repentance; the door to this house is faith; the inside of the house is holiness itself.  When we turned to Aquinas the scene shifted tremendously.  We found ourselves not before a humble if hospitable house, but before a Gothic cathedral that threatened to overwhelm us by its sheer scale.  The interior of this cathedral is cavernous; there are such treasures in this place that centuries of Thomist commentators have not surveyed them all.  Our study amounted to little more than a cursory walk through.
     "Looking at Wesley and Aquinas side by side it is easy to feel dizzied by the differences.  Methodist house and Thomist cathedral, what can these two possibly have in common?  Even when focused on a central doctrine, like perfection, the differences seem to be so great as to render any comparison as fruitless as that of the proverbial apples and oranges.  Yet in the same way that both house and cathedral have generic common features (walls, roofs, doors, etc.) that allow for comparison, so do Aquinas' and Wesley's respective teachings on perfection.  The chief commonality that their teachings share is that they are grounded  in the Scriptural Witness [(the Sermon on the Mount)] as interpreted by the Christian tradition."

     Edgardo A. Colón-Emeric, Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian perfection:  an ecumenical dialogue (Waco, TX:  Baylor University Press, 2009), 125.  I haven't yet read this book, but, in skimming through it, stumbled upon this, which, understandably, caught my eye.  Cf. p. 149 and elsewhere.