Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T07:41:20.669Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Living with Betrayal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Martin Henry
Martin Henry*
Affiliation:
St Patrick's College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
*
Email: md.henry@may.ie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article addresses the idea that, over the centuries, Christianity has survived only by betraying its own uncompromising ideals. It investigates how damaging this interpretation could be for Christianity, and suggests that Christianity's survival might paradoxically be a function of the very phenomenon that seems at first sight to undermine it.

Keywords

betrayalnaturegraceredemptionSt Augustine
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 91 , Issue 1034 , July 2010 , pp. 439 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2009. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/02m/0200-0258,_Cyprianus_Carthaginensis,_LiberdeLapsis,_MLT.pdf

2 See, for example, Mt 20: 20–24; Mk 9: 34; 1 Cor 3: 3–4.

3 Cf. Pensées, fr. 149: ‘[I]t is in vain that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realize that it is not within yourselves that you will find either truth or good’ (tr. A. J. Krailsheimer [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966], p. 77).

4 Cf. Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo, revised ed. (London: Faber, 2000), pp. 170–71Google Scholar: ‘The amazing Book Ten of the Confessions is not the affirmation of a cured man: it is the self-portrait of a convalescent.’

5 See Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Culture and Value, ed. Wright, G. H. von, rev. edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 51Google Scholar.

6 The sentiment is expressed in a letter to his sister, Madame Périer, and is quoted by Kolakowski, Leszek, Religion (Oxford: OUP, 1982), p. 200Google Scholar.

7 Daybreak, section 333, tr. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: CUP, 1983), p. 162Google Scholar.

8 In conversation: quoted in The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde. An Anthology by Redman, Alvin (London and Sydney: Alvin Redman Limited, 1952), p. 31Google Scholar.

9 See Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Schleifung der Bastionen (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1952), p. 16Google Scholar. The title, ‘Razing the Bastions,’ seems to be an allusion to Eph 2. 14.

10 Cf. Theissen, Gerd, On Having a Critical Faith, tr. Bowden, John (London: SCM, 1979), p. 88Google Scholar.

11 Cf. Theissen, Gerd, Die offene Tür. Biblische Variationen zu Predigttexten (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1990), pp. 187–88Google Scholar.

12 Cf. Romans 5: 20.