If you haven't experienced the intuition of the infinite, then Schleiermacher believes he can lead you only so far. While he can attempt to outline the journey, in the end you have to experience it for yourself. Past a certain point, anything he has to say about it will become incomprehensible. But through the intersubjectivity of a community that finds at its root just such an intuition, you...
In his Religion[1] Kant lays out an atonement model whose initial dynamics look very much like those of Anselm of Canterbury. However, in keeping with his commitments to outlining a religion using human reason alone, Kant then eschews any metaphysical discussion of Jesus as God incarnate and vicarious restitution owed by humanity which only God can make, offering instead an alternative model for...
Through his Transcendental Deduction Kant sought to respond to several questions raised within his context within the Modern period.
In previous posts we have examined several iterations of the Eucharistic performance within the framework of a postmodern understanding of the inherent instability of the text. Now we turn to a final criticism often raised in opposition to innovations within the spiritual life of the church.
Let us turn to the final task laid out in the introduction: the potential for a reading of the Eucharistic text in which an unordained person acts as celebrant. From the perspective of the magisterium's teachings or the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this may seem an impossibility. However, let us draw on one other scenario in which (iterative) translations play out.
While the contemporary Eastern Orthodox fixation on the bishop runs just as deeply as the Roman Catholic tradition, there are differences in the iterative understanding of the episcopal role in the Lord's Supper. The modern Eastern tradition shares the understanding of the bishop's privilege in the Eucharist found in St. Ignatius' writings. But a fundamental difference remains within Orthodox...
In the middle of the third century a conflict emerged in the church over the use of water instead of wine as an element in the Eucharistic feast. Attacking the practice in a letter to a fellow bishop, Cyprian of Carthage argued: "For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is Himself the chief priest of God the Father, and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the Father, and has commanded this to...
In a previous post we discussed Derrida's claim that an adequate translation can only be made when we understand not only the grammar and vocabulary of a language, but also the rhetorical uses of the language, as well as the history and the cultural context of work. With this in mind, we return to Marion, whose explication of the Eucharistic site of theology and the role of the (Roman Catholic)...
In our previous post we explored Derrida's concepts of iterability and (un)translatability. In this post we apply the first of these concepts in an examination of iterations of the Eucharistic text.
il n'ya a pas de hors texte…[1] Summarizing Derrida's deconstructive project would be a colossal task. Because of its very nature, there is no short, clear exposition of deconstruction. However, for our purposes we will focus on only a couple of its concepts, gleaning insights from a few key texts. The first of these, perhaps the most famous axiom of postmodern thought: there is nothing...