- Javel, ja. Så har eg gjort ferdig ein liten kronikk om Prometheus, som eg håpar vi kan få på trykk ein stad. Ikkje nett rocket science, men eg tippar folk vil tykkje han er interessant å lese.
- Louis Dupre er ein veldig interessant filosof. Her er eit intervju med han. Eg skal gje nokre utdrag som du kanskje bør lese:
Christianity has become an historical factor subservient to a secular culture rather than functioning as the creative power it once was. The new attitude of benign atheism was, I think, prepared in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries by the three most prominent secularizers of the time, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche.
Moving further in that direction, contemporary secular culture, especially in its communications media, shows a surprising openness toward religion. But little suggests that this interest surpasses the purely horizontal cultural level. Culture itself has become the real religion of our time, and it has absorbed all other religion as a subordinate part of itself. It even offers some of the emotional benefits of religion, without exacting the high price faith demands. We have all become atheists, not in the hostile, antireligious sense of an earlier age, but in the sense that God no longer matters absolutely in our closed world, if God matters at all.
Why should the secularism of our time pose a more serious challenge to Christianity than the determined antitheism of the past?
Because religion in the 20th century has ceased to integrate public life altogether. By its very nature faith must integrate all other elements of life if it is to survive. Faith cannot simply remain one discrete part of life. My own writing about religion grew out of the fundamental question raised by the new situation: Is religion something that may or may not be very important to humans, or must it in some way integrate all other aspects of existence? I came to the conclusion that if it isn’t somehow everything, it’s nothing.
What then ought the Christian to do to survive as a genuine religious believer? I see no alternative but that he or she must now personally integrate what tradition did in the past. Nothing in culture today compels our contemporaries to embrace a religious faith. If they do, they alone are responsible for allowing their faith to incorporate all aspects of their existence. Hence the vital importance of a spiritual life.
To attain the religious life the believer must be alert to the inner voice. How essential such an attitude has become is evident in light of the massive apostasies that occurred in the 1970s and ‘80s (and continue in Western Europe) when the social pressure in support of religion suddenly seemed to have lifted. Because it lacks roots either in society or the self, people have simply abandoned the faith.
Many Christians (I am one of them) may feel nostalgic for a culture that is more God-oriented than ours, but this religious nostalgia must not be allowed to fly us on a magic carpet to a mystical fata morgana. Nor must the need for integration seduce us to reinvent a Christian "tradition" (mostly intended for "the masses") for social or political purposes, as some social theorists do today in America. They consider religion essential to cultural integration, but their primary concern is not with the truth of faith but with the order of society.
But Christianity was a new religious force in Augustine’s day. Today, as you say, its power to integrate culture has all but disappeared. Does Christianity still have the capacity to renew?
On a personal level, yes, and through a personal renewal it may spread to small communities which in turn could affect the entire culture. But the time of the res publica christiana—of what some would call Christendom—is past. Both the secularization of the West and the revolution in communications have converted our society into an intrinsically pluralist one. I expect it to remain so for any foreseeable time. But Christianity has always started with a personal conversion of the heart.
Spiritual life, as Bishop Joseph Butler knew, rests entirely on analogies. The Bible provides the analogies that enable the believer to convey meaning to private experience. But the Word will extend religious comfort only if we allow it to speak in its own name. The first lesson to learn in a time of need is that of listening. Only when we attentively heed the Word can it lift us beyond ourselves and convey divine meaning to private sorrows.
- Så fekk eg høyre at bror Haram brått døydde i dag. Veldig trist, må eg seie. Han var ein solid kristen som det "ikkje fanst svik i." Veldig grei å tale med, imøtekomande og reflektert og venleg. Samstundes var han litt som ei søyle som ein visste kvar ein hadde, ikkje minst i samfunnsdebatten. Det er eit stort tap for kristen-Noreg - og for tankesmia.
| Lyrics | Original texts | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Alleluia. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. | Horatio: Now cracks a noble heart. – Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! | Hamlet, Act V Scene ii[8], c. f.In paradisum |
| Alleluia. Remember me, O Lord, when you come into your kingdom. | O thou who reignest over life and death, in the courts of thy Saints grant rest unto him [her] whom thou hast removed from temporal things. And remember me also, when thou comest into thy kingdom. | Orthodox funeral service,[9] Luke 23:42 |
| Alleluia. Give rest, O Lord, to your handmaid, who has fallen asleep. | Where the choirs of the Saints, O Lord, and of the Just, shine like the stars of heaven, give rest to thy servant who hath fallen asleep, regarding not all his [her] transgressions. | Orthodox funeral service |
| Alleluia. The Choir of Saints have found the well-spring of life and door of Paradise. | The Choir of the Saints have found the Fountain of Life and the Door of Paradise. May I also find the right way, through repentance. I am a lost sheep. Call me, O Saviour, and save me. | Orthodox funeral service |
| Alleluia. Life: a shadow and a dream. | Guildenstern: Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Hamlet: A dream itself is but a shadow.
| Hamlet, Act II scene ii |
| Alleluia. Weeping at the grave creates the song: Alleluia. Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you. | Thou only art immortal, who hast created and fashioned man. For out of the earth were we mortals made, and unto the earth shall we return again, as thou didst command when thou madest me, saying unto me: For earth thou art, and unto the earth shalt thou return. Whither, also, all we mortals wend our way, making of our funeral dirge the song: Alleluia.
... Ye who have trod the narrow way most sad; all ye who, in life, have taken upon you the Cross as a yoke, and have followed Me through faith, draw near: Enjoy ye the honours and the crowns which I have prepared for you.
| Orthodox funeral service |
| Alleluia. | ||
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