Christian Classics

Language is Evaluation

“For the poet, as for any speaker, language is a system of social evaluations; and the richer, more differentiated and complex it is, the more significant the work will be.” M. Bakhtin

“Christianity made total tragedy implausible. Whatever the sorrow or transient injustice, there is, as Milton put it, “no time for lamentation now.” The fall of man, pivotal to absolute tragedy, is a felix culpa, a necessary prologue to salvation.” George Steiner

At Home

“The ‘at home’ [‘chez soi’] is not a container but a site where I can, where, dependent on a reality that is other, I am, despite this dependence, or thanks to it, free.” E. Levinas

Essential Existence

“Only if we know that we do not yet know who we are do we ground the one and only ground which may release the future of a simple, essential existence of historical man from himself.” M. Heidegger

Artwork as a Myth

“Philosophy discovers, beyond the en-chanted rock on which it stands, all its possibles swarming about it. It grasps them by interpretation. This is to say that the artwork can and must be treated as a myth: the immobile statue has to be put in movement and made to speak.” E. Levinas

He begets me as Himself

‘The Word was with God and God was the Word’: the same in the same nature. I say more: he has borne him in my soul. Not only is she with him and he equally with her, but he is in her: the Father gives birth to his Son in the soul in the very […]

The Great Cathedrals of the Middle Ages

“Most aesthetic objects that we admire, Greek temples or the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages for example, were not created in this way. The people who conceived of them were not focused upon the dimension of art, which did not yet exist, but rather built edifices to the glory of God, edifices the functionality […]

Unexpected gift of Inner Life

“From within myself there is no soul as a given, axiological whole already present in me; in relation to myself l have nothing to do with [my soul]; my self–reûex, insofar as it is mine, cannot give rise to a soul, but only to an evil and fragmented subjectivity, something which ought not to be; […]

Hindus call off rally through Christian villages in eastern India

Dayal among three awarded for promoting religious freedom, civil liberties