Home > Work > A Peculiar Orthodoxy: Reflections on Theology and the Arts

A Peculiar Orthodoxy: Reflections on Theology and the Arts QUOTES

A Peculiar Orthodoxy: Reflections on Theology and the Arts QUOTES

1 " Just as the Triune God lives as an endless momentum of attraction and joy, so God makes himself available not as an object for dispassionate scrutiny but through an overture of enticement, through which by the Spirit's agency we are made to long for God's presence, indeed, thirst for God. God "attracts our attention" by the outgoing Spirit, enabling us to respond, catching us up into the divine life. Indeed, can we not say that to experience the allure of God is nothing other than to experience the Spirit reconciling us to the Father through the Son and thus reordering our desires? No wedge need be driven between agape and eros provided the latter is not allowed to introduce notions of subsuming the "other" under manipulative restraint; indeed, as David Bentley Hart puts it, God's love, and hence the love with which we come to love God, is "eros and agape at once: a desire for the other that delights in the distance of otherness." As far as created beauty is concerned, beauty in the world that glorifies this God will also evoke desire--a yearning to explore and take pleasure in whatever is beautiful. There need be no shame in this provided our delight is delight in the other as other, and as long as we regularly recall that our love for God is the cantus firmus that enables all other desires to flourish. "

― Jeremy S. Begbie , A Peculiar Orthodoxy: Reflections on Theology and the Arts

2 " This aspect of sentimentality also has its cultural forms. The Croatian sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic has described the postmodern condition as 'postemotional.' Drawing on the works of David Riesman, Emile Durkheim, George Ritzer, George Orwell, and others, he contends that emotions are the primary object of manipulation in postmodern culture. Emotion has increasingly been divorced from the intellect and judgement, and thus from responsible action: 'postemotional types,' as he puts it, 'know that they can experience the full range of emotions in any field, domestic or international, and never be called upon to demonstrate the authenticity of their emotions in commitment to appropriate action...Today, everyone knows that emotions carry no burden, no responsibility to act, and above all, that emotions of any sort are accessible to nearly everyone. "

― Jeremy S. Begbie , A Peculiar Orthodoxy: Reflections on Theology and the Arts