CONTRA FATUM

“ The Bible was associated, and largely identified, with the tradition as early as Clement of Alexandria, at the turn of the century. He claims the authority of scriptural texts with the new phrase ‘as the Scripture has traditioned’ ( strom . I.21, 142.2; ib. 7.18, 109.2), and speaks of the ‘spiritual knowledge traditioned through the Scriptures’, by which Christ makes a man truly great–minded ( strom . 7.16, 105.1)...The genuine 'G nostic ' —that is to say, the devout and intelligent Christian, the man of real enlightenment—will grow old in the Scriptures, preserves the apostolic and ecclesiastic orthodoxy in his doctrines, and lives according to the Gospel; for his life ‘is nothing else than the deeds and words conforming to the Lord’s tradition’ ( ib. 104.1 & 2). In his maintenance of such an attitude, basing a deep reverence for the Bible on the unique character of the tradition which it contained, Clement is not singular. He merely gives expression in words ...

Likewise in the Canticle we read: 'I have drunk my wine with my milk.’ There too the breasts of the bride are likened to clusters of grapes. Good is the cluster pressed in the winepress of the cross, that the wine of his Passion, full of gall and vinegar, may be sweetened for us to drink like milk, and that his wounds may be transformed into breasts. For one who contemplates, his wounds are breasts; for one on his daily rounds, they are wine; for one who meditates, they are sweet fruit; for one who imitates him, they are somewhat bitter. In his breasts, by foretasting, we savor some knowledge of things to come; in his clusters, by a kind of inebriation, we drug the uprisings of the flesh. In his breasts, we are engrafted upon him unto life; in his clusters, we are buried with Christ unto death. For us his wounds are breasts, as long as through the merit of the Lord's Passion and his gift of grace, we live in hope of everlasting blessings; for us his wounds are clusters, as long...

Raphael: Paul in Athens "And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them." (Zech. 13:9) In my studies of American and global Christianities I've come across a phenomenon that is rather strange to my Danish background: Apologetics. The word means giving excuses for or defending something, and refers to the attempt to render Christianity 'reasonable' for the human intellect.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (??) "Fasting is primarily an act of willing abstinence or reduction from certain or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time." (Wikipedia) In Denmark celebrating lent mostly means eating loads of filled pastry. It seems, however, that the practice of fasting has gained increasing popularity amongst post-modern protestants recently: Inspiration is picked up from, e.g., the practices of the late-antique 'desert fathers' and medieval monasticism (which was of course much more severe, than its modern variants), or what have you.

“The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry” “There is a perfect likeness between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only toward destruction.” “The Christian and the anarchist: both are décadents ; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future[...]” (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, H. L. Mencken. The Selected Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche . p. 618)

"Fellowship is not an aggregate of individuals, nor is it an organism. In fact, Fellowship is no concrete thing at all. It is, rather, that Primal synthesis and relationship and apprehension of all distinct concrete things which is their final unobservable ONENESS. Fellowship is communion. It is, however, not a communion in which the 'otherness' of each particular individual is blurred or limited or dissolved, but that ONENESS which both requires the 'otherness' of each individual and makes sense of it. Fellowship is the ONE which lies beyond every 'other'. The ONE, the INDIVIDUAL, is therefore not one among others, not a cell in a larger organism, but simply the HOLY ONE - sanctus." (Barth, The Epistle to the Romans 1933, p. 443)

Hans Denck 1500-1527 While Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) defended the idea that human beings have a free will to choose the good (anti-determinism), Martin Luther (1483-1546) defended the Augustinian idea that the human will is determined by God, and is thus unfree (determinism): God is 'absolute' and 'necessary', and thus determines human beings who are 'relative' and 'contingent' ( On the Bondage of the Will ). There is a third option, however.