Word: sittler
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Negation is a part of faith's inmost character, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Sittler said last night in his fourth Noble lecture. Drawing up a "catalogue of forms of negation," Sittler first listed the "negation of no concern." If a man is absorbed solely in the "sheer operational activities" of human existence, he lacks "ultimate concern," and his negation is the "sheer stupidity of an ossified heart...
Defining Grace as God's "will-to-the-restoration, fulfillment, and blessedness of man," and Nature as "man in his actuality in the matrix of nature and in the human community of his fellows," Sittler drew a sharp distinction between "verification-as-proof" and "as-authentication." The "Narrative-character of the Christian story is a way of speaking about God, he said, but not necessarily a way of knowing...
Further, while "antiseptic and astringent criticism of the form of Christian affirmation" leads to clarification, it also brings about a "humorless constriction of the very terms it brings under analysis." In short, said Sittler, the context of confirmation is the "massive and organic story of man--in his analysis and anguish, his vision and his dread, his lusts, longings, loves, and loneliness...
Setting forth phases to suggest the "awkward discontinuity" in human drives, Sittler said that within Possession--"the fire of nature and the creator of culture"--there operates a dialectic called Immolation. As C. S. Lewis writes, "To attend to your own love or fear is to cease attending to the loved or dreaded object...
...phrase Actually and Surprise, said Sittler, suggests that God's Grace, meeting us in community with a neighbor, also meets us in the actuality of world as nature. As Augustine wrote, "Thou hadst not sought me hadst thou not already known me." And Pathos and Passion illustrates man's condition and Christ's sacrifice, as in Gerald Manley Hopkins' lines...