Taking stock, and a rest
It's the end of my second week in Barsetshire, and I've finished a chapter already. The Book is coming along nicely: just one chapter and some odds and ends to go, plus reading the whole thing through to make sure it all hangs together. So today, after finishing the attack on the Radically Orthodox that I try to include in everything I write nowadays, I decided I would take the rest of the day off. I saw the Simpsons movie, which was about halfway between "Meh" and "Woohoo!"
Now where should I go to church tomorrow? I went to Saint Paul's, Silverbridge, last Sunday -- home of such musical adventures as this and this -- where I saw lots of old friends and recruited an external reviewer at coffee hour. (Don't tell anyone.) But that's close to a two-hour drive. In the next diocese over there's a well-known Anglo-Catholic parish with a great organist, and that's only a hour away. Maybe I should give that one a try.
In the meantime, I'll sit here and enjoy the episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit that the folks at the USA Network have so thoughtfully provided for me.
Labels: General musings, The other career
posted by The Postulant @ 7:17 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I want to hear more about your attack on RadOx. I've some thoughts on the matter, but I rarely here other criticisms.
To be honest, I can't really make out what RadOx is all about in general. My point of entry into their stuff is, not surprisingly, history. They are just beyond sloppy in their treatment of pretty much any historical figure you might care to name.
I first knew about them because they make such a bugbear of Scotus. His doctrine of univocity is supposed to be responsible for everything from authoritarianism to high cholesterol. Well, I'm a Scotus guy, so they got on my bad side immediately. Then I looked at them and found that they don't have the first clue what Scotus actually says. There was a symposium on Scotus and RadOx in the October 2005 issue of Modern Theology, and I contributed a rather nasty paper to that.
My latest hobbyhorse is John Milbank's bizarre assertion that Anselm's doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit is "on the road to modalism." I talk about that in the ATR piece and in The Book.
So on my part this isn't a sustained overarching response, but just occasional bursts of frustration. I find the rhetorical mode of RadOx, and its reliance on tendentious narrative masquerading as argument, too rebarbative to allow me a sustained engagement with their work.
I don't know much about RO myself. Is the Wiki article any good? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_orthodoxy
BTW, where did you go to church? And how was it?
Cheers,
Bob
The Wiki article is pretty thin. It gets trashed on the talk page, from quite different perspectives.
If I can get this current chapter finished, I may write a long post about church. Short version: I went to the nearest Cathedral, I sang in the choir, a dear old friend preached, and it was glorious.
I thought you might appreciate this. I had a larger comment, but it got lost in the attempt at posting. As far as I can tell RO tends to the ahistorical or poor historical treatment. Maddening.
Post a Comment
<< Home