Today's Topics:
Re: THOMAS J.J. ALTIZER ON BLAKE?
Blake Sightings
Re: THOMAS J.J. ALTIZER ON BLAKE?
Kenosis
Re: Kenosis
Re: Kenosis
Re: Kenosis
Re: Kenosis
Re: Kenosis
Re: Kenosis
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 23:37:26 -0400
From: RobertsonG@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: THOMAS J.J. ALTIZER ON BLAKE?
Message-Id: <950722233724_120848352@aol.com>
This is rather strange, I just bought his book second hand and read it last
week. I found it a very important Blake book, somewhat of the
emotional/spiritual flip side to Thompsons book. Both share the same common
point of view that the critic must be brave and face the fact that Blake is
a religious artist - Atzler says he is unblushingly a prophet.
Atzler touches on the key point, I think, for the next decade or two of
scholarship: how does one handle the death of the Romantic? Hegal is scary, especially if seen through the lense of Nietzche and later Foucault types.
Atzler's theme is that it is the religious which will count, replacing the
Romantic, and it is religion that is accesible, the religion of "God is dead" and yet alive in man's imagination and thought. Naturally this brings us to Blake as the champion of the divinity of man. In anycase, we will need something soon to counter either the passion of nationalism or the nihilist.
And as i speak I am looking at a fantastic WEB site
"http://www.aa.net/"urizen/pageart/blake, in particular, as if illustrating
this letter - "The Web of Religion" by Blake.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 18:38:35 -0500
From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake Sightings
Message-Id: <95072418383496@womenscol.stephens.edu>
Two recent Blake allusions might stimulate a variety of feelings,
depending upon political orientation. In Michael Lind's review
of Speaker Newt's new book, in the *New York Times Book Review",
he says "'To Renew America' should be subtitled 'Songs of
Innocence and Experience.'" This is neither flattering to the
Speaker nor indicative of deep understanding of Blake on Lind's
part, since he goes on to characterize Gingrich's political
philosophy as based in "sentimentality about childhood";
Blake was many things, but not sentimental.
The other comment is by Katha Pollitt, columnist for *The Nation*
but this published in *Mother Jones* and reprinted in *Civilization*:
Blake's poems "are still for me the most important statement about
wealth and poverty, cruelty, the evil of authoritarian religion, and
the way an unjust society maintains itself by what he calls 'the
mind-forg'd manacles'--the ways in which you make your own prison
and your prison makes you." ON the whole, Pollitt's testimonial
seems more welcome, unless one subscribes to the principle that
any publicity is good, whether favorable or unfavorable.
Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) persisting in my
folly
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 20:04:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jonathan J Winsor
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: THOMAS J.J. ALTIZER ON BLAKE?
Mr. Smith said in his post on Altizer that kenosis is a Christian atheist
idea. Going back to my Merton interests that I was posting about a while
ago, recently I was reading _Ace of Freedoms: Thomas Merton's
Christ_ by George Kilcourse and this book is filled with discussions about
Merton's "kenotic christology." This seems to be the main buzzword of the
book. I'm not sure I understand the meaning of this term, even after looking it up in various encyclopedias.
Anyway, I also wanted to post again that Merton wrote an essay on
Altizer (the first essay in Merton's _Literary Essays_.) Merton seemed to
take him seriously, but had some things to say about the "most"s and "only"s that fill Altizer's Blake discussion. Merton challenges Altizer's
assumtions about the "only"-ness of Blake's thought by bringing up some
of his own long, eclectic list of authors he had been exploring.
--Jon Winsor.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 95 15:27:29 EDT
From: Kevin Lewis
To: BLAKE@albion.com
Subject: Kenosis
Message-Id: <9507251935.AA13242@uu6.psi.com>
Kenosis: self-emptying
This is a term with a long history in Christian theology. A kenotic Christ
is a Christ who gives himself to the world; the godhead in him is giving
and emptying itself into and for the Creation. To term this "atheistic"
is to label in haste a concept and term which Christian theologians have
rather obviously found congenial. (The word I keep seeing in Altizer's
writings is "reversal" -- he's in favor of reversals, as many as possible
apparently. Blake as an "atheist" would be an example. So this makes him
fun to read! Well.....)
To repeat: Altizer told me once that A.L. Morton (_The Everlasting Gospel_)
showed him what direction to take when he wrote that early book about Blake.
Kevin Lewis
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 16:18:09 -0500
From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Kenosis
Message-Id: <95072516180949@womenscol.stephens.edu>
Correct me if I am wrong, but is not the kenotic concept of the
Incarnation the exact opposite of the Muggletonian notion described
by Thompson (see esp. 77-79), which asserted that God, indivisible,
"'transmuted' himself into the infant Jesus in Mary's womb," so that
"there could then be no God in heaven or in any other part of the
cosmos--Christ, the man, was not only divine, he was the only
God." In the kenotic version, Jesus "emptied" himself of the
godhead in order to become human, leaving God in heaven to
announce his pleasure in his son at the time of John the Baptist's
baptism. The two views clearly involve completely different
notions of theophany. I realize that this is probably a simplistic
version of the difference--correct me if I am way off base.
Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) persisting in
my folly
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 22:28:43 -0400
From: RobertsonG@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Kenosis
Message-Id: <950725222129_122989351@aol.com>
I think you are right - it is the opposite of the Muggletonian concepts as I
understand it. The point I was making is the tremondous improvement and
quality of debate when looks at Blake with out embarrassment as a theological issue, rather than trying to plug him into the current ages pop pyschology or critical chic methodology. To see Balke as a religious artist perhaps makes him less interesting, but it puts him in the proper important placement.
The importance is that Thompson and Altizer start from a religious point
of view.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 95 22:40:32 EDT
From: Kevin Lewis
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Kenosis
Message-Id: <9507260300.AA15147@uu6.psi.com>
On Tue, 25 Jul 1995 16:18:09 -0500 said:
>Correct me if I am wrong, but is not the kenotic concept of the
>Incarnation the exact opposite of the Muggletonian notion described
>by Thompson (see esp. 77-79), which asserted that God, indivisible,
>
>"'transmuted' himself into the infant Jesus in Mary's womb," so that
>"there could then be no God in heaven or in any other part of the
>cosmos--Christ, the man, was not only divine, he was the only
>God." In the kenotic version, Jesus "emptied" himself of the
>godhead in order to become human, leaving God in heaven to
>announce his pleasure in his son at the time of John the Baptist's
>baptism. The two views clearly involve completely different
>notions of theophany. I realize that this is probably a simplistic
>version of the difference--correct me if I am way off base.
>Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) persisting in
>my folly
>
I think you are basically, and not too simplistically, right, Tom.
That passage from Thompson is correct about the Muggletonian notion of
God leaving heaven to become Jesus (leaving heaven, six miles high,
vacant of divinity, in the process). But since I have not read the
Thompson yet--to my shame, by the way, for I agreed to write a brief
book note on it for one of my professional society journals over half
a year ago--I don't know what application Thompson may be making to
the more complicated, more sophisticated case of Blake.
Myself, I don't think Blake adopts or even adapts this Muggletonian,
unkenotic Jesus. Is it not a *spiritual* Jesus we keep hearing about in
Blake? Ant-Trinitarian, humanistic, artful, and if in some sense "God"
(cf. the Laocoon annotations) still not the common sense/plain-spoken
God of the Muggletonians, who did indeed treat the Old and the New
Testaments as revealed Word: component elements in the Third Commission
rather than scripture to be revisioned if not superceded freely by each
and every new artist Christian.
Was it Methodists with their warm and friendly Jesus-as-a-friend who
influenced Blake more than the Muggletonians, at least when it comes to
his Jesus (eternally busting through the zones of death and hell to teach
the lesson, whatever it is, dramatized on plate 96 of _Jerusalem_)? I'm
still mulling that earlier discussion we had, sorry.
Kevin Lewis (likewise persisting...)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 1995 09:25:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Michelle L. Gompf"
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Kenosis
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
The question of which religious beliefs influenced Blake more is
one that seems to me both very important and also impossible to answer
with complete confidence. I've been trying to place Blake in an
historical, and more recently religious context. (Reading Thompson, Mee
etc.) What I found interesting in Thompson's book is that, while arguing
strongly for a Muggleton influence, he does not try to pigeon-hole Blake
into one religious sect, but instead reads him, as Mee does, as a
bricoleur. (and as I see it, more human, how many people really believe
whole heartedly with one particular sects beleifs and don't incorporate
their own interpretations or outside influences?) Anyway, I too beleive
it is important to see Blake in a religious context, I'm not sure about
as a religious poet, I see him more as a social poet -- but can you
divide the two?
Sorry to go on, I'm finding creative ways to put off work I should be doing.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 1995 12:52:58 -0500
From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Kenosis
Message-Id: <95072612525837@womenscol.stephens.edu>
My brief reference to Thompson did not include the qualification that
he does not suggest that Blake adopted the Muggletonian view--quite
the contrary, he suggests only that "the Muggletonian Church preserved
a vocabulary of symbolism, a whole cluster of signs and images, which
recur--but in new form and organisation, an din asociation with others--
in Blake's poetry and painting. I will go further: of all the traditions
touched upon, I know of none which consistently transmits so large a
cluster of Blakean symbols" (91), and he goes on to argue that the
Muggletonian symbols are less important influences than the effect on
the structure of Blake's thought. But earlier he had said, (with reference
to the "two seeds" theory among Muggletonians) that "as always, Blake
does not *follow* doctrune but turns it to his own account" (77).
It's an interesting question whether Blake in his time or we in our
own would want to take seriously the notion that "religion" would
in some way repair the ravages or fill the vacuum left by ideologies,
nationalisms, or capitalisms. A hefty dose of Blake would surely
help in all such areas, but not as "religion" it seems to me. We
see enough of that at work in Bosnia (to mention only a distant
tragedy).
Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) persisting in
my folly
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 95 12:47:27 CDT
From: Mark Trevor Smith
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Kenosis
Message-Id: <9507271758.AA04479@uu6.psi.com>
In response to tomdill, quoted below, I do not see that the two
definitions are completely different. In both Altizer's kenosis
and Thompson's Muggletonian incarnation, the death of God occurs
as God becomes completely man and man becomes completely God. Tomdill
quotes Thompson: "there could then be no God in heaven." In the same
sentence--in a part that tomdill does not quote--Thompson continues,
"It followed also that between the crucifixion and the resurrection
there was no God either in heaven or on earth: God had been killed."
This stark overstatement of the meaning of the crucifixion is compatible
with Altizer's extreme formulations. "the full meaning of the
Incarnation is a dual and dialectical process whereby God empties
Himself of Himself and becomes man and man empties himself of his
historical particularity and his individual selfhood and becomes
God: 'Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.'...
Spirit _is_ this eternal movement of absolute self-negation" (Altizer
74-75). Thus both Altizer and Thompson try to explain the difficult
and strenuous relation between human and divine, A thru Hegel and T
thru Muggletonianism. Both elevate the human to the status of the
divine and vice versa.
-- Mark mts231f@vma.smsu.edu Mark Trevor Smith
On Tue, 25 Jul 1995 16:18:09 -0500 said:
>Correct me if I am wrong, but is not the kenotic concept of the
>Incarnation the exact opposite of the Muggletonian notion described
>by Thompson (see esp. 77-79), which asserted that God, indivisible,
>
>"'transmuted' himself into the infant Jesus in Mary's womb," so that
>"there could then be no God in heaven or in any other part of the
>cosmos--Christ, the man, was not only divine, he was the only
>God." In the kenotic version, Jesus "emptied" himself of the
>godhead in order to become human, leaving God in heaven to
>announce his pleasure in his son at the time of John the Baptist's
>baptism. The two views clearly involve completely different
>notions of theophany. I realize that this is probably a simplistic
>version of the difference--correct me if I am way off base.
>Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) persisting in
>my folly
>
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1995 Issue #4
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