I’ve been thinking for a while of blogging regularly again. The last time I tried was February 2015. Looking back over this site, there are materials on it dating from 2004! Some of it’s quite good (I think), most of it shows ways in which I’ve both changed and stayed consistent over more than a decade of writing. So, let me try to get it going again. We’ll start with a wonderful new book that you must read, A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies, by the late Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
Anyone must love a book that opens with a portion of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius asks “Lady Philosophy” to “reveal these mysteries and explain those things that are clouded and hidden.” At this request, Boethius says,
She hesitated a moment, then smiled and at last replied: ‘This is the great question, isn’t it? It is a problem that can never be fully soled even by the most exhaustive discourse. For when one part of the conundrum is resolved, others pop up, like the heads of the Hydra. What is needed to restrain them is intellectual fire. Otherwise, we are in a morass of difficulties — the singleness of providence, the vicissitudes of fate, the haphazardousness of events, God’s plan, predestination, free will. All these knotty questions come together and are intertwined. . . . [So] you must be patient for a bit while I construct the arguments and lay them out for you in proper sequence.’
It is these Hydra-headed problems Oakes addressed in this book. As we will see, Oakes did so gracefully and winsomely, without pretending to offer ultimate solutions.