I am among a minority of Classicists who believes that Seneca was a proto-Christian humanist. I am also among a minority of Catholics who thinks that planetis plicatis ante pectus should be used on Dominicae and feriae of the season of Advent.
I wonder. Are such dispositions measurable in the history of my salvation? When I stand before the just Judge on the Day of Judgement, will it avail me to say to Him: ''I was traditional in that respect,'' when I live in the knowledge that my life is a great moral vacuum? It reminds me of that passage in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth where Tar-Meneldur, the fifth King of Númenor, reads the letter of Gil-galad, musing on the judgement of Eru. For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
I wonder. Are such dispositions measurable in the history of my salvation? When I stand before the just Judge on the Day of Judgement, will it avail me to say to Him: ''I was traditional in that respect,'' when I live in the knowledge that my life is a great moral vacuum? It reminds me of that passage in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth where Tar-Meneldur, the fifth King of Númenor, reads the letter of Gil-galad, musing on the judgement of Eru. For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ ὑστεροῦνται τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ (Romans 3:23)
ReplyDeleteDespite the better advice of the LSJ, perhaps ὑστεροῦνται is better translated "are asynchronous". All humanity is doomed to lag behind in His creative narrative because of concupiscence. Perhaps our lives are badly dubbed films, where the dubbed dialogue is always a second slower than the lines. In this case the superimposition of another interpretation is patently contrived. Read lips betray an entirely different message.
If the koine aorist ἥμαρτον is read in the sense of the Attic noun ἁμαρτία, one could also say that the asynchrony of human conduct and thought before God is an inherent self-defeating defect. Because we are habitual sinners, we cannot see the defects of our slap-dash distortions of God's creative narrative without justification.
Patricius: "When I stand before the just Judge on the Day of Judgement, will it avail me to say to Him: ''I was traditional in that respect,'' when I live in the knowledge that my life is a great moral vacuum?"
And so? We are all morally vacuous, out of step, vain and ready to trip and fall. What will we be willing do in His name at the "Damascus of my meeting"?