φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” (Genesis 11:1, KJV) This is where we began. Not chronologically — we began with the tohu va bohu, with the face of the deep, with the logos hovering over the primordial waters and calling forth a world from undifferentiated chaos. But this is…
“And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.” (Genesis 9:20-21, KJV) The flood is over. The covenant has been made. The rainbow stands in the sky as the permanent token of the logos‘ commitment to…
We have established who Noah is. We have looked carefully at the world he inhabits and the condition of the civilization around him. We know what walking with God requires and what it costs. We know that the waters rising are the same waters that were there at the beginning. Now we enter the story…
The two essays that precede this one have established the pattern and the mode of being. We know what the flood is — the return of the tohu va bohu, the reassertion of the primordial chaos that was never eliminated but only held at bay. We know what Noah is — the tamim man, undivided,…
In the last essay we established the pattern that precedes the flood — the dual force of entropy and human failure, the return of the tohu va bohu, and the figure of Noah who survives not by escaping the chaos but by building a structure capable of carrying order through it. We ended with the…
Heraclitus, writing in the sixth century before Christ, opened his work with an observation that has never been surpassed for its combination of precision and devastation: the logos, he wrote — the organizing principle that governs all things — is always present, always operating, structuring everything that exists and everything that happens. And yet most…
As early back as 380 BC, in his Republic, Plato is interested in the role of perception on reality. In his famous allegory of the cave he illustrates the primacy of perception over unmediated reality with prisoners who perceive shadows on a wall as reality unaware of the true forms casting them. The metaphor underscores how…
The story of Cain and Able is a short one. It is fewer than 300 words. I timed myself reading it and it took fifteen seconds. I consider myself to be well read and I can say, especially given its brevity, I do not believe there exists a more profound story than the story of…
If you recall, this project began with an epilogue for very particular reasons which are outlined in that article. Now we find ourselves at the end of this first section and as we prepare to proceed we do so with a prologue. Before jumping into it, I want to take a moment here and discuss…
In the Catholic liturgy, during the Penitential Act at the start of mass, a prayer is read called the Confiteor (“I Confess”). In that prayer is the line peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere which means “I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed.” I have sinned. We are all sinners. But…this leaves a question. What is sin?…