The beauty of impassibility

James Dolezal:

God need not experience changes of relation in order to meaningfully relate Himself to His creatures. He need only ordain a change in the revelation of His unchanging being in accordance with His wisdom and the needs and requirements or the creature in time. In this way, it is not God who changes but rather the manifestations of God, which are perfectly suited to the needs and circumstances of His creatures - whether according to wrath or according to mercy - at any given moment of their lives. It seems audacious to conclude that this unique manner of God's care for His creatures is somehow impersonal and lacking vibrancy. Why must God be personal and related to others in the same way as finite persons are? Why must He undergo change in order for His love or opposition to sin to be regarded as genuine? Indeed, it would seem that the One who is unchanging, simple, and purely actual in all that He is - which is exactly what classical theism claims about God - is the One who is most profoundly vibrant and powerful in relating Himself to others. Such a God may appear strange and unlike us in many significant respects. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: classical theism is not in need of a replacement model, as all other models must fall short of the true confession of God's infinite fullness of being - the confession that all that is in God is God. 

(All That Is in God, pp. 136-137)

Charity

This passage from C.S. Lewis' masterpiece “Weight of Glory” has become a guide for how I hope to approach 2019. Any further explanation feels like it takes away from the beauty of Lewis' text.

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in the society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

(“Weight of Glory,” pp. 45-46)

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Today marks a decade of blogging. I’m thankful to have such a significant segment of my life preserved in writing, and only wish I had figured out a name for my blog sooner. Crazy to think that I started writing as a highschool freshman, and now I find myself married and holding a graduate degree, with so many new people, experiences, and places that have shaped my life in these past ten years. Hopefully I've grown since I've started (I always think back to this post around the turn of the new year). Here's to both the year ahead and my second decade of blogging!