The name of Erasmus will never perish John Colet (1516)
Erasmus has published volumes more full of wisdom than any which Europe has seen for ages. Thomas More
The chief aim of Erasmus in his life’s work as a humanist scholar was to restore theology. In his times this meant to replace the theology then being taught and practiced as a professional science by a more adequate study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the early Church.
John Olin
Those who have dipped into the life and prolific writings of Erasmus (1466-1536) might be aware of the importance and significance of the Praise of Folly. Others know Erasmus well because of his Adages and Colloquies.
The voluminous correspondence of Erasmus holds the attention of others.
The clash between Luther and Erasmus is part of Reformation lore and
legend.
The
fact that Erasmus was put on the Index makes him an activist and writer
of some interest. The peace theology of Erasmus makes him an anomaly of
sorts in the war stricken 16th century. Many 1st generation Anabaptists cut their peace tradition teeth by sitting at the feet of Erasmus in Basel. Erasmus was front and centre in heralding and doing new translations of the Bible. But, Erasmus was deeply committed as a Christian humanist and renaissance scholar in bringing to the fore the Fathers of the Church.
Michael Ignatieff, True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2009.
Michael Ignatieff could become the next Prime Minister in Canada. This means it is of some importance to know what Ignatieff thinks and why.
Ignatieff is the child of two important Canadian families: the Grant and Ignatieff clans. Michael has written of the roots of the Ignatieff family in The Russian Album. True Patriot Love is a turn to the better known Grant side of the family, and an exploration of how four generations of Grants have tried to make sense of what it means to be Canadian.
It is almost twenty-five years ago that I was writing a doctoral thesis on Martin Buber (1878-1965). There is little doubt that Buber was one of the most influential Jews of the 20th century. More than 2000 people turned up for his funeral. Buber was a leading Biblical scholar, philosopher, political theorist and activist.
Buber was a German Jew who argued strongly for the revival of cultural Zionism but opposed political Zionism. Buber challenged, in 1921, Chaim Weizmann (President of the Zionist Organization) for doing too little to foster good relations with the Arabs. Buber’s classic work, I and Thou, was published in 1922, and in many ways this wise missive anticipated the way the Nazis would treat the Jews (as objects to be exterminated) and the way Jews would treat the Palestinians. Buber fled Germany in 1938, and settled in Palestine where he was given a distinguished teaching position at the Hebrew University.
It is a rare day, indeed, when C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) and Thomas Merton (1915-1968) are breathed in the same breath. There are many who bow low to Lewis, and many others genuflect to Merton. Both men, for different reasons, have an ample following. Is it even possible to think of these men as having anything in common?
We do know that Lewis was quite fond of Merton. John Brown did a thesis at Union Seminary on race relations in the 1960s, and in a letter to Merton, he had this to say. “I am rather ashamed to admit that you are the first Roman Catholic writer that I have read seriously, and then only on the recommendation of C. S. Lewis, who in a letter not long before he died, stated that he had discovered your writing, and found it quite the best spiritual writing he had come across in a long time”. Merton replied to Brown (August 7 1968). “Thanks for your kind letter. I am certainly happy to think that so sound a judge as C.S. Lewis found something to like in my writing” (The Road to Joy: p. 369) . Merton’s interest in Lewis, though, can be traced back to a book review he did of The Personal Heresy in 1939.
It has been impossible to ignore the wanton violence in the Gaza in the last few weeks. How does the contemporary Jewish state justify its treatment of the Palestinians? The Jewish Tradition is complex, but the modern secular state of Israel should not be equated, as some do, with Biblical Judaism.
Biblical Judaism, for the most part, is a prophetic religion. Most of the books in the Jewish canon reflect the vision of the oral, major and minor prophets. The heart and core of Biblical-prophetic Judaism is about justice, mercy and peace. It is about caring for the homeless, marginalized, oppressed and foreigner. Jewish prophets dared, again and again, to criticize the Jewish nation for failing to live up to such ideals. Prophets, in short, were not uncritical Jewish nationalists.
David J. Goa, A Regard for Creation: Collected Essays (Dewdney: Synaxis Press, 2008).
It often takes a few decades for an ancient tradition such as Orthodoxy to fully root, then bear the full foliage and fruit of such a deep rooting. There is little doubt that with the publication of A Regard for Creation: Collected Essays, by David Goa, the attentive reader cannot help but be held by the breadth, insights and grandeur of Orthodoxy as such a tradition speaks to our current questions.
But there are remnants left around me….very strange remnants…in this case the Anglican church which has in it some of the ancient truth and therefore I will live within it. -- George Grant (CBC interview between George Grant-Adrienne Clarkson: June 1966)
I
I began an MA in English Literature at University of British Columbia in the spring of 1979. The course was on ‘Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and the Tradition of Impressionism and Stream of Consiousness’. I was taken, in the course, by a letter Virginia Woolf wrote to a friend on February 11 1928.
I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic believer in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.
Merton grew and developed over the years, in an
interior sense, more deeply than anyone I know, and came to be recognized as
the leading mystical writer in the English-speaking world. Robert
Giroux
I
September 18/Eagle River
Alaska-the Convent of the Precious
Blood-surrounded by woods, with a highway (too) near. The woods of
Alaska-marvelous-deep in wet grass, fern, rotten fallen trees, big leaved thorn
scrub, yellowing birch, stunted fir, aspens. Thick. Humid. Lush. Smelling of
life & of rot. Rich Undergrowth, full of mosses, berries-& probably (in
other seasons) flowers. The air is now here cool and sharp as late November in
the “outside” (ie. “the States”) (“lower 48”).
Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to take all (or almost all) of it Back (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2007).
I lived in Switzerland from 1972-1973, and while I was there my mother sent me a copy of Escape from Reason by Francis Schaeffer. I had not heard of L’Abri or Francis/Edith Schaeffer at the time, but as I read the slim missive in the Alps, I became quite interested in Schaeffer’s interpretation of the sweep of Western intellectual history. I was young, naïve and not grounded in much, so the argument in Escape from Reason seemed to make sense to me.
Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to take all (or almost all) of it Back (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2007).
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