Sunday, May 16, 2010

God is incalculable


From Rosenstock-Huessy's"I am an Impure Thinker," p, 70:

God is incalculable.
Hemakes some children and some adults very good indeed and others,
elders or children, very wicked. He is incalculable and certainly is
quite indifferent to the date or year at which we are born. It is equally
difficult at all times to live the good life.

The good news, in emphasizing this complete indifference of
God to the year of our birth or our death, also says that we in fol-
lowing the trail blazed by the Firstborn Son, may become the people
of His inheritance. Hence the good news is related to a perpetual
relation of founder and heir, of testator and successors. This truth
is obscured today. Even the old term “Imitation of Christ” has been
weakened. Too often it is understood not as the inheritance of
Christ’s acquired faculty but as a pedantic imitation and aping. Let
us restate the good news.

Christ has acquired a new faculty, the timing of the Spirit. And
he has imparted to us this rightly timed spirit, this power not only
to talk, to think, to write, to proclaim, to sing, but also to obey these
promptings in God’s good time, neither too early nor too late.
Here, I forego the temptation to accuse the naturalists of rob-
bery and plagiarism. I could accuse them of having embezzled all our
terms of the Spirit’s life, presence, future, heredity, survival, history,
acquired faculties. Originally, all these terms of Darwin hail from
the Bible. Because only God can be present. Only the children of his
inheritance can have a future, only the fruits of the spirit can survive
death. And only the apostles can succeed in transmitting the newly
acquired faculties of our Savior. But I shall leave it to you to draw
these conclusions yourselves.

However, I may perhaps have to remind you that in society, in our
historical community, we move as men born through the living word
into our times and places, into our future destiny. We have the singular
privilege of contributing to the everlasting survival of acquired facul-
ties which we embrace and to contribute to the everlasting relegation
to hell of those acquired faculties which we wish to see extirpated.
Thus, Creation is taking place under our very noses. And nobody
can stay neutral in this spiritual war between bequeathing the good
qualities to the future through faith or giving up from despair the task
of weeding out the diabolical qualities.

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