Trying something new: feijoada, a black bean stew with pork and beef. It’s smells ridiculously good.
To the Trinity and beyond!
I'm still plowing through articles and sources for a paper on St. Augustine's De Trinitate, but I think I've got the basic outline in my head. I had originally glommed on to his analogies (which occupy much of the book's second half), but things get technical very quickly in the secondary sources.
So I've broadened my scope and will (briefly) survey the before-and-after of Trinitarian thought, including the so-called East/West split. I want to answer the question: why does getting the Trinity right matter? Marie LaCugna's assertion that Trinitarian theology's speculative turn in the West has made it largely irrelevant to most Christians has some merit, even if I'm not entirely sure about the rest of her arguments. I've read the Augustine chapter from Thomas Joseph White's recently published The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God and went ahead and ordered the book; it should arrive today.
For completeness, I've also been reading Edmund Hill, Lewis Ayres, Michel Barnes, John Cavadini, William Harmless, Earl Muller, and a host of others. I'm on the fence about trying to include Karl Rahner, but I'm not sure I can - or even should - avoid it. On the other hand, I think I've got a pretty good sample of pre-Nicene thought (the theophanies - Immanent moments - of Novatian, Justin Martyr, and Origen), so I probably owe space to the latter period as well.
So this weekend is some additional digging and hopefully tightening up the bibliography. In the background is another course on the Epistles, for which I owe an essay and additional reading in preparation for our next in-person class.
Is your library fully equipped?
Currently reading: The Trinity (Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century) by Saint Augustine 📚
Boreal chorus frog, according to Seek. Also showing a bit outside its normal range.
Pivoting between two piles of reading this evening: Origen on martyrdom to one side; articles/sources for a paper on Augustine’s De Trinitate to the other. So anyway, where’s the nearest desert?
Today was a strong-cocktail-before-dinner sort of day. This is a Boulevardier, which is basically a Negroni with bourbon. Dinner is a cassoulet of Italian sausage, gnocchi, and copious amounts of the garlic we harvested.
Tonight’s food pic is an Asian-style mushroom omelet, also from Milk Street. There’s supposed to be some green in there but we’re out of scallions and cilantro. :/
I should probably credit the website - both of these were generated by Stable Diffusion.
One more bit of AI-artwork in honor of St. Meinrad Archabbey. I also thought these turned out beautiful.
