Aristotle: Virtue to the Max & Contemplation

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

 

(U.S. Public Domain) LSpent_arist_070416_company

In many senses, Aristotle brings to fully flowered fruition Greek philosophical thought, stemming from the mythological roots of pre-Socratics such as Homer and Hesiod, nurtured into a philosophic awareness by the questionings of Socrates, and more fully formed into the trunk of Philosophy with Plato (of whom it was famously stated that all of philosophy is a but a footnote).[1] While Plato gave us the dialogues of Socrates and imbued them with form – literally with his positing of the ultimate guiding Forms of the Good, the True and the Beautiful – it was Aristotle who more fully pruned them into the branches of philosophy and intellectual disciplines we recognize today: ethics, metaphysics, aesthetics, rhetoric and biology to name but a few. As we consider this philosophical legacy, which has so profoundly shaped Western civilization, we are challenged to assess its value for the Christian.

 infj

Continue reading →

Homer’s Odyssey & Logos

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

od9

“Laughing, crying, tumbling, mumbling,
Gotta do more, gotta be more.
Chaos screaming, chaos dreaming,
Gotta be more, gotta do more.”

od sax

Knox Overstreet recites in the cave of the Dead Poets, in a youthful search for meaning.[1] Order or chaos? – a question pondered by physicists, political scientists and ethicists, to name but a few, has as much relevance for us today as it did for the Greeks of Homer’s day. While Dostoevsky shows how we often end up in chaos, “without God … everything is permitted,”[2] to Homer and the early Greeks, such chaos was something to be avoided, to elevate one’s self, community or polis, and civilization itself above.  But to the Christian, the message of God to this world, the divine Word or Logos, that is,  Christ, provides an interpretation to history and a meaning culled from the apparent (or perhaps all too real) chaos of our lives.

Continue reading →

The (Anti-?) Space Trilogy aka Ransom Trilogy / Heavens Trilogy

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

 

 

sp2

All good sci-fi series have at their heart some unique observation about man and his place in the cosmos.  Whether it be the swashbuckling defense of humanity in a James Tiberius Kirk, the divide between reason and emotion of a Commander Spock, or the youth and innocence of a Will Robinson, space seems to (rather oddly) bring out the humanity in its explorers.  C. S. Lewis’s ill-named Space Trilogy[1] [2] [3] (‘ill-named’ for reasons that will soon be made apparent) is no exception in this sense.  Set in a series of planetary explorations – the masculine-themed Mars or Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet, the feminine Venus or Perelandra in Perelandra, and the finale on Earth, Thulcandra or the Silent Planet, in That Hideous Strength, where marriage of the masculine and feminine is examined – the series has at its heart a singular observation, which can be found in Lewis’s own spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Lewis describes his resistance to yielding to God with the attitude “I had wanted (mad wish) ‘to call my soul my own’ “[4]

 

Continue reading →

The Great Divorce

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

“Blake has written of the marriage of heaven and hell … I have written of their divorce” Lewis began his preface to his 1946 fiction dream sequence work, The Great Divorce. “Not that I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius,” Lewis confessed, but because ultimately reality presents us with an “absolutely unavoidable ‘either-or.’ “ Or, quoting George MacDonald: “No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little bit of hell in it.”

Our decisions in life cause our path to fork, and fork again, repeatedly, like the branches of a tree. Bad choices, evil choices “cannot be undone” Lewis points out, but we must rewind back to the point of error and re-choose, in a sense:  “Evil can be undone, but it cannot develop into good.” And no part of evil can be clung on to, if we would make the journey from evil to good, from hell to heaven.  “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven;” further, “if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell” Lewis puts it.

Continue reading →

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: A Magical Land and a Lion King (Chronicles of Narnia #1)

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

lww3

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

“He’ll be coming and going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

Continue reading →

Prince Caspian: There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for (Chronicles of Narnia #2)

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

“Aslan” said Lucy “you’re bigger”.
“That is because you are older, little one” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

Continue reading →

Voyage of the Dawn Treader: The Son Begins to Reign, Demands Obedience (Chronicles of Narnia #3)

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

“But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder.”

  “Are – are you there too, Sir?” “I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

Continue reading →

The Silver Chair: Accept No Substitutes (Chronicles of Narnia #4)

/ Seth Myers / Leave a comment

silver chair1

“Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

Continue reading →