Nothing New Under the Sun

A sad commentary on the times: "I see now no difference between the dress of matrons and prostitutes."

"Where is that happiness of married life, ever so desirable, which distinguished our earlier manners, and as the result of which for about 600 years there was not among us a single divorce? Now, women have every member of the body heavy laden with gold; wine-bibbing is so common among them, that the kiss is never offered with their will; and as for divorce, they long for it as though it were the natural consequence of marriage" (Apology, I.vi.).

Sound familiar?

Philip Schaff on Tertullian

"It is a wonder that he was not killed by the heathens, or excommunicated by the Catholics."

- History of the Christian Church

BEGINNING AGAIN

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you've all had a blessed and joyful Christmas season. And now it's time to gird up the loins of our reading and start in again on the Fathers. Do let's!

In the interest of taking advantage of the psychological effect of a New Start, I'm not only starting up the reading again after a distressingly long hiatus, but I'm skipping over the rest of Clement and starting us in volume III of the Ante-Nicene Fathers: Tertullian! We're starting a new year and a new book. Now, some of you (you know who you are, so don't look so innocent) will be irked and distressed at this because I DIDN'T FINISH VOLUME II! But relax. Get a grip. Deal with it. Pour a fresh cup. Or mug. Most of you, like me, still have some going back to do anyway, and now is a good time to start fresh and stick with it again, and if we do that we're more likely to have the will and motivation to go back and pick up the fragments here and there.

So join me, won't you? as we plunge into Tertullian, the great father of Latin (Western) Christianity. He's got some problems, but the editors are astute pointers-out and will help us, and Tertullian is undoubtedly very great.

Oh, and that reminds me. I just read Dr. Peter Leithart's Against Christianity and if you haven't read it yet, it's a must read. Short and full of real punch. Perhaps the book of the season for me. (And in the previous paragraph I didn't use "Christianity" in the sense in which Dr. Leithart uses it! So there.)

P.S. I invite all of you to subscribe to Scholegium, Schola Classical Tutorials' newsletter. It's got shortish essayish stuff on books, history, church history, the stars, and whatever else results from the maelstroms of the synapses that I suffer from now and then. Go to http://www.scholatutorials.org and click the "Scholegium newsletter" link in the left pane. Blessings!

ON NOT HAVING ENOUGH TIME

"If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come."

--C. S. Lewis, "Learning in War-Time", in The Weight of Glory

STROMATA BOOK III UNTRANSLATED

Y'all will notice that this week we finish Book II of the Stromata on Thursday. On Friday we should start Book IV but you'll see that 's not been translated into English; it's been translated into Latin by the Edinburgh editors and left that way by the editors of the ANF. The footnote on the bottom of page 381 will explain the reason, and the commentary in the six page Elucidations at the end will give the flow of the general argument in the book.

NEW WEB ADDRESS FOR THE COMPANY

We have a new domain and web address! I'm hosting the Company website on my own Hill Abbey website, though it's still through Blogger. Please adjust your bookmarks accordingly. Blessings to you all.

WE PRESS ON - CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

Well, dear Company, I"m a day late, but that's ok - you'll see that in the schedule I've just posted, the Elucidations are just a page and half... ish. But from Tuesday onward we're back to our regular 5 pages a day. If you're behind, that's ok. If you're WAY behind, that's ok! As long you can do a little each day, you're in the spirit of the Company, the Communio Patrum. You don't have to follow my schedule. If you can, great; but if not, it's ok. The point of the Fellowship of the Fathers is to make them part of our day - but not a rushed, gotta-do-it part. It's not a school assignment. "Sapientia fatalia non habet" ("Wisdom has no deadline"). If you can give yourself half an hour a day (get up early, stay up late, cut something else out), then you can read the scheduled five pages a day at a leisurely pace, aloud (or at least moving your lips), meditatively, with a pencil in your hand. For the love of Christ, don't speedread!

My suggestion: reflect as you read and find just one thing, one thought, one sentence, one phrase, in what you read to hand onto and chew on during the rest of the day, along with something from your daily Bible reading. Meditate on it. Ruminate. This is lectio divina.