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Deep calleth unto deep

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  In a world where everything is public and nothing is hidden, our life becomes void of mystery and eventually meaningless. We lose the sense of depth within our hearts (how pathetic these words sound - and how old-fashioned indeed!) What I tend to say is better expressed by Thomas Merton:  "Actually, our whole life is a mystery of which very little comes to our conscious understanding. But when we accept only what we can conceptually rationalize, our life is actually reduced to the most pitiful limitations, though we may think quite otherwise. We have been brought up with the absurd prejudice that only what we can reduce to a rational and conscious formula is really understood and experienced in our life. When we can say what a thing is, or what we are doing, we think we fully grasp and experience it. In point of fact this verbalization - very often it is nothing more than verbalization - tends to cut us off from genuine experience and to obscure our understanding instead of incr

The Meaning of Life

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the unicorn  Is it useless to ask for the meaning of life? Or is it arrogant to pretend that one can try to answer that? For many, "The Meaning of Life" suggests hardly more than the Monty Python film in 1983. On the whole, the answers given to the meaning of life are specimens of bird-brained commonsense: "the meaning of life is life itself", "live, laugh, love", "don't worry, be happy".  There are occasions when the search for meaning of life becomes urgent, as when one loses a close friend or a family member, ends up in a divorce, or has serious health issues. In that case it is of no use philosophizing about the perennial question of the meaning of life: "Look, many religions and philosophies have pondered about it, and, ultimately, there is no answer. Go on with your life and try to make the best of it." In an existential situation (as a Tillich or a Kierkegaard would call it) there has to be an answer, or if there is none, it

St Augustine's pear theft

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 In the second book of his Confessions , St Augustine recounts a boyhood incident: he and his fellows did steal some pears from the neighbourhood. A modern reader probably sneers at the moral pangs Augustine describes in the following chapters. Really, how does one feel guilty on such an occasion? He and other lads wanted to taste some pears from some other's garden. Augustine admits that he was not deeply fond of the pears themselves but rather liked the idea of doing something forbidden: "I joyed in the theft and sin itself." Clearly, it was a heedless act: some teenagers took fruits and threw them away, after hardly tasting them. It happens. Does it yet qualify for an object of serious remorse? Some regard this episode as a proof of the absurdity of Christian ethics, concerned on the minute naughty thoughts. There are true problems in the world, real viciousness takes place, other than folly of the adolescent.  On the other hand, St Augustine's thoughts on human be

Hamann's "Aesthetica in nuce"

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 I feel frightened to enter into discussion on Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88). He is an intriguing figure of the German enlightment and 18th century literature, whom many contemporaries (presumably those who were positively disposed towards him) regarded as an obscure thinker. The less positively disposed thought he has completely lost it. Those who need a magisterial introduction to his theological thinking should consult Oswald Bayer's superb "A Contemporary in dissent" (Eerdmans 2012). I admit that I lack the thoroughness and perspicuity of Bayer's study. Nevertheless, the very boldness of Hamann's writings, his disregard of rules of grammar and philosophy, his appetite for the lowly and contradictory, urge me to read and comment his famous essay "Aesthetica in nuce" (aesthetics in a nutshell). Hamann's texts are a jungle of diverse styles and literary genres where  "exuberant demonstrations of learning" (to employ words of Kenneth Haynes

"Pietà" by Rainer Maria Rilke

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Jesus' sexuality is a difficult issue for Christians. I still remember when I was a young theology student in the late 1980's, at the time of Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ . Outside the movie theater there were pious believers giving tracts that told that the movie was wrong. What was particularly abhorrent for conservative Christians was the episode where Jesus married Mary Magdalene and raised a family. In the movie it was just a dream of the Christ at the cross, a vision of the life of an ordinary man he could have had. Scorsese, or Nikos Kazantzakis, whose novel the movie was based on, did not claim it to be true. Nevertheless, the very idea of Jesus having sex - or even thinking about it - was enough to raise righteous indignation.  This moral indignation did not appear as theologically wise for the young student. According to the Scripture, Christ was tempted in every way as we are. Does it include sexual temptations? Not necessarily, respond some major