Skip to main content

Freedom that thinks

A small snip from Ratz's Introduction to Christianity:
For Christianity, the explanation of reality as a whole is not an all embracing conciousness or one single materiality; on the contrary, at the summit stands a freedom that thinks and, by thinking, creates freedoms, thus making freedom the structural form of all being.
I think that's terrific but I also read the two pages that lead up to it. Perhaps it looks like so much air to you, dear reader. It evades the pits of material determinism (a form of being that can't know itself can't be free; freedom that is the product of accident also cannot be free) and ideal determinism (a form of being utterly determined by another cannot be free). It posits that reality is self aware and, being self aware, is capable not only of exersizing freedom, but of granting it to its creations such that they are "made in God's image." An important caveat is that freedom cannot here be understood to mean "anything at all," but rather fulfilling one's nature in a way that is unique but still subject to the laws of creation. Just curious - is anyone else enjoying these posts from Ratzinger's book? Am I wasting my time typing them up?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Wordpress

My move to Mac has been very happy except for two issues - gaming and blogging. For websurfing and multimedia, a Mac is of course a terrific machine. Games on the Mac platform are often ports of games made for the larger PC market and that means a Mac gamer will have to wait for the port. I'm not a heavy gamer by any means but I am very happy that the Mac port of Civilization 4 is finally here. Well, my copy isn't here quite yet - but it has been ordered and ought to be here soon. The blogging issue is more complicated. I'm not fond of writing my posts in a browser window. This goes back to when I was first blogging and I lost one or two large posts into the ether. After that I moved to w.bloggar - a great little app that let me compose on my desktop and then click send when all was said and done. I have not been able to recreate that experience on my Mac, and not for a lack of trying! I looked at Marsedit , but that forces you to compse while staring at a bunch of HMT...

Da Vinci: It bleats, it leads

The trouble with The DaVinci code is certainly this : the fundamentals of the Christian creed can be summarized in a few sentences easily learned by schoolchildren and recited aloud from memory by the whole congregation on Sunday. They are great mysteries to be sure - Trinity, incarnation, redemption, salvation, crucifixion, resurrection - but they are simple enough to explain. Contrast that with the account Mr. Brown offers of a centuries-long fraud, sustained by shadowy groups, imperial politics, ruthless brutality and latterly revealed by a secret code "hidden" in one of the world's most famous paintings. The Christian Gospel offers a coherent, comprehensible account of reality that invites the assent of faith. It requires a choice with consequences. Mr. Brown's dissent from Christianity offers a bewildering and incredible amalgam of falsehoods and implausibilities, painting a picture of a world in which the unenlightened are subject to the manipulations of the fe...