Monday, October 03, 2005

fr. kimel on fr. zahl on pieter saenredam


Zahl comments: “There is no preacher in the pulpit. Christianity has become invisible: no mediator! The painting evokes the spiritual, the ’spirit-and-truth’ Word of Jesus in John 4:24, the finally fully abstracted character of God’s abiding presence with us in the negation of the object” (p. 36).

Zahl urges us to rid ourselves of all mediations of the ascended Lord. We must bravely face the truth that between the ascension and the parousia our relationship to God enjoys an enduring non-mediated character. God is with us always and everywhere, “but not with us now in any particular time or space” (p. 37).

Read the whole thing (Fr. Kimel's whole thing) here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ahhh- what a nice, open, inviting space, wide open for the prayers of a pious Muslim... or perhaps a mystical Jew eager for a sense of the Transcendent... or a Hindu seeking the Silence of God. There are none of the disturbing interruptions posited by particularity here; all is just right for a culture eager to define itself...

Anonymous said...

ahhh- what a nice, open, inviting space, wide open for the prayers of a pious Muslim... or perhaps a mystical Jew eager for a sense of the Transcendent... or a Hindu seeking the Silence of God. There are none of the disturbing interruptions posited by particularity here; all is just right for a culture eager to define itself...