With the completion of the calendar year and another regular orbit of God’s earth around God’s sun (Genesis 1:14-19), many of us are giving thought to time. For example, have a look at Augustine’s philosophy of time in Confessions, Book 11.
Augustine begins his philosophy of time by asserting that we know the past by memory, the present by sensation, and the future by hope and anticipation.
His example is our experience of singing a verse from a biblical psalm. As we sing a word, we know the word we are singing by the sensation of hearing, the previous words of the verse by memory, and the upcoming part of the verse by expectation.
This is an insight into created time, into our human perception of time’s unbreakable continuity, and into liturgical time.
The Rhythm of the Church Year
Here is a marvelous and thought provoking consideration of liturgical time, the rhythm of the Church Year. It’s from a 2013 book, Journey Into the Heart of God: Living the Liturgical Church Year, by Philip H. Pfatteicher.
… no year is complete by itself. Each year overlaps the one ahead as well as the one behind in unbreakable continuity. Individual lives begin and end, but the enduring rhythms of the great cycle are the pattern of the earth and the stars.
Traces of the common time of the natural year are embedded in the liturgical year. There are feasts on the solstices, the Nativity of John the Baptist (June 24) at the summer solstice and Christmas at the winter solstice. The spring equinox is associated with Passover and Easter.
The day is sanctified by the liturgy of the Hours, the Daily Office of Prayer as the sun sets and prayer as the sun rises …
The year is sanctified by connecting it to the life of Christ and his Church. That life is all of one piece, but we benefit from the contemplation of it by stages, one event after another. Such sanctification is not transforming something profane into something holy but rather consecrating it to a larger and deeper purpose. Better still, it is uncovering a significance that eludes those who see only the surface of things and revealing how time in its many manifestations participates in the praise of God.
Uncovering and revealing: This is what we contemplate this Epiphany, in the Year of Our Lord 2023. The significance of time is unknowable NISI PER VERBUM, apart from God’s Word, the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.
First, consider the irony of the European Enlightenment of two centuries ago, and its goal of enlightening a society by censoring the Word of God while promoting human reason over all. Consider next the foolish Wokeism of our government, our universities, mass media, and corporations, and their goal of awakening people by censoring the Word of God while promoting Marxism over all.
Surely, the Enlightenment (which gave us world wars, genocides, legalized abortions, and euthanasia) and Wokeism (which is giving us anti-racist racism and state-sponsored physical and mental mutilations of our children) are defiant anti-epiphanies.
Second, consider the urgent relevance of the “larger and deeper purpose” of time, which is uncovered and revealed only in the Person of Christ and the Word of Christ.
As Philip H. Pfatteicher writes, “Individual lives begin and end.”
Because the “larger and deeper purpose” of time is uncovered and revealed only in the Person of Christ and the Word of Christ, here is our Flight Plan for LUTHERAN PHILOSOPHER from the season of Epiphany into Lent:
Our Readers Fellowship begins Monday, January 8th
We will be meeting on Zoom each Monday over the noon hour (12 noon Central Time) for a one-hour discussion. If you would like to access the ZOOM meetings you can sign up here …
The weekly discussion is open to every member of LUTHERAN PHILOSOPHER. You’re welcome to drop in as you’re able, no need to feel that you have to attend each and every discussion to be part of the Fellowship!
While I do not plan to record the noon-hour discussions, I do plan to record my own commentary of the chapter or section of our book. That way, interested readers who can’t make the usual discussion time can fellowship with us all the same. Those weekly recordings will be available to every air crew member on our site within a day or so after each Monday discussion.
Our first book will be Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (FT). Any edition will probably work well if you are okay following a different translation, but this is the edition I require when teaching FT and which I will be using:
- Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy): Evans, C. Stephen, Walsh, Sylvia
FT is a relatively short but inspiring book about Abraham sacrificing Isaac (Genesis 22). I guarantee that it will open up that historical and CHRISTological chapter of Scripture in a way that will inspire you, mind and heart. It will give you ideas for how to share the astonishing grace of God with your friends, your children, perhaps even enemies of the Gospel!
Wednesday Zoom Conversations (7-8 pm, Central Time)
This is the first leg of our flight on suffering in Christ. I begin with a series of Wednesday evening Zoom conversations from January 4 through February 15th on … The Seven Penitential Psalms (with special attention to Luther’s 1525 Commentary).
- January 4 — Psalm 6: “Therefore weeping is preferred to working, and suffering exceeds all doing.”
- January 11 — Psalm 32
- January 18 — Psalm 38
- January 25 — Psalm 51
- February 1 — Psalm 102
- February 8 — Psalm 130
- February 15 — Psalm 143
- February 22 — [No Wednesday Zoom-versations during Lent; but RECEPTIVE LIFE begins!]
You can watch the first video conversation here …
Lent 2023 – The Receptive Life
The second leg of our flight follows Pastor Paul Arndt’s The Receptive Life, a daily online immersion in suffering in Christ by means of Luther’s Catechisms, beginning Ash Wednesday, February 22.
Pr Arndt will provide access to his daily Receptive Life training course for all of Lent 2023.
On the Radar – Lutherans for Life Presentation in Washington D.C.
You may be interested to know that I am speaking in Washington, DC, Friday evening, January 20, as part of our LCMS Lutherans for Life participation in the annual March for Life.
The title of my speech is “The Self-Evident Proposition: Self-Evident in Itself, But Not to Us, Except in Christ the Life”. I understand that my speech is going to be live streamed, so I will pass along details as I learn them.
Your caring and competent Lutheran Philosopher,
Greg Schulz