Similarly, but far more succinctly, Ong discusses "the present-day subject-oriented (not simply 'subjective'), historical-minded Catholic theology" in his 1986 book Hopkins, the Self, and God (page 95; but also see 83 and 130), mentioned above.
Digression: For a relevant related reading that is not explicitly about religious faith and belief, as Melville's Clarel is, see Thomas D. Zlatic's lengthy article "Faith in Pretext: An Ongian Context for [Melville's 1857 Novel] The Confidence-Man" in the anthology Of Ong and Media Ecology (2012, pages 241-280).
Even though Zlatic ably discusses Ong's thought, he does not happen to advert explicitly to Ong's short article that is explicitly about religious faith and belief, "Mimesis and the Following of Christ" in the journal Religion and Literature (University of Notre Dame), volume 26, number 2 (Summer 1994): pages 73-77, which is reprinted in volume four of Ong's Faith and Contexts (1999, pages 177-182).
As Ong describes "the Following of Christ," each follower's pilgrimage in life is unique. However, it does not necessarily follow that each follower in "the Following of Christ" constitutes a church unto himself or herself. No, Christians involved in "the Following of Christ" may band together with certain other Christians, as Ong himself banded together with other Roman Catholics in the Roman Catholic Church.
For Aquinas' multi-dimensional thought about disciples as followers of Christ the teacher, see page 371 of Fox's book Sheer Joy. End of digression.
Now, in the 1991 edition of Clarel, Bezanson says, "Overwhelmingly these [pilgrims in Clarel] are hommes deracines. They have, or had, their trades or professions, but if a single one of the major figures has wife, children, or relatives, or in any nameable sense belongs to a specific community [as Melville himself did], we do not know it; the absence of surnames expresses this. The sense of being 'cut off' - a key phrase of the poem (e.g., 1.14.24, 2.7.21) - is an arranged condition of the narrative" (page 578).
In addition, Bezanson says, "almost all have experienced disaster" (page 578). Knapp would have read the counterparts to these sentences in Bezanson's 1960 edition of Clarel. However, in effect, the way in which Bezanson describes these characters would warrant characterizing Melville as a proto-existentialist - which Knapp presumably recognized when he invoked certain aspects of Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's thought in his 1971 book (pages, respectively, 61, 106, 113, 119, and 120 on K, and 6 and 77 on N).
Now, much later in the book, Knapp says, "Previously Rolfe has ridiculed the claims of science made by Margoth, but when he speaks to Ungar he discloses his latent doubt about his own conviction. Rolfe also significantly relinquishes his rank as major guide in this same conversation with Ungar. For the first time he asks Clarel for his opinion - reversing the usual role of interpretive intelligence - in his attempt to decide whether Ungar is a wise judge of human experience. This reversal of roles will ultimately show Clarel that in spite of the help he has received from guides he will have to settle his own conscience for himself" (page 94).
As Knapp may have known from his Jesuit training in philosophy and theology, Aquinas has a lot to say about conscience. See Fox's Sheer Joy (pages 474-480).
Finally, Knapp says, "This deepest wisdom is the meaning of the mystery of endurance. . . . [T]he lessons learned from endurance are infra-conceptual and infra-verbal. . . . In his extraordinary sympathetic treatment of Jewish and Catholic traditions, he [Melville] had singled out their common trait of endurance for special praise and extended discussion. . . . Overtly and covertly, Melville has shown the grounds for endurance, and this is as far as he can lead Clarel and the reader. The rest of the journey is up to each" (pages 113-114; also see pages 6, quoted above, and 17-38).
As Knapp mentions in passing, the American Protestant novelist William Faulkner praised the quality of endurance in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech on December 10, 1950, which he subsequently revised for publication.
For Aquinas, endurance is a feature of the cardinal virtue of fortitude (also known as courage. See Fox's Sheer Joy (pages 341-343, 352, and 410). For a Protestant take on the cardinal virtue of course, see the German-American Protestant existentialist theologian Paul Tillich's 1952 book The Courage to Be.
Digression: The American Protestant Jungian psychotherapist and psychological theorist Robert Moore, mentioned above, claims that Jesuit training in Warrior training - that is, training in how to access the masculine Warrior archetype in men's psyches.
The founder of the Jesuit order was the Spanish nobleman and soldier and courtier St. Ignatius Loyola. As a soldier, he was seriously wounded after he had led a brash charge in battle at Pamplona. His famous mystical conversion experiences occurred during his recovery from his wound - and subsequently. He famously gave up his sword as a soldier - thereby symbolically turning away from the Sadist "shadow" form of the masculine Warrior archetype that had dominated his life as a soldier up to and including his brash charge at Pamplona. However, he did not automatically switch from one bipolar "shadow" form to the other. Instead, he gradually learned how to access the optimal form of the masculine Warrior archetype that Moore and Gillette (1992b) see as the ideal form to cultivate.
Now, in the Homeric epic the Iliad, the warrior-prince Hector is characterized by the epithet tamer of horses. In Plato's dialogue The Phaedrus, we find the famous imagery of two horses pulling a chariot driven by a charioteer. One of the horses symbolizes the part of the human psyche (soul) that both Plato and Aristotle refer to with the Greek word that can be transliterated as thumos or thymos - the part that needs to be tamed by our inner tamer of horses and cultivated into the virtue of courage, which both Plato and Aristotle (and others) define as the mean between the extremes of brashness and cowardice. The part of the psyche (soul) that Plato and Aristotle refer to as thumos (or thymos) involves what Moore and Gillette refer to as the masculine Warrior archetype.
As part of St. Ignatius Loyola's famous conversion process after he was wounded in the battle at Pamplona involved using his inner Hector, as it were, to tame his tendencies toward brashness and learn how to access the optimal form of the masculine Warrior archetype that Moore and Gillette refer to as the ideal form of that archetype.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
