Jesus is just a Jewish prophet from Roman-occupied Palestine

Benjaminian Studies in Nihilism and Thomism
from An und für sich by Anthony Paul Smith

More and more I am convinced that the theology ontology of John Milbank and his followers’ conception of the analogia entis shares, at least on the formal level, with the mathematical ontology of Badiou and his followers’ conception of the void. To make sense of this one needs to argue that Badiou’s philosophy is an analogia nihilio. I’m aware of passages in Being and Event which could be used to argue against this notion, but it seems to me that thinkers like Brassier are far more honest heirs of Badiou’s philosophy than the man himself. For ultimately Badiou’s philosophy posits the void as the groundless ground of being - ultimate being is nothingness. For the Thomist this groundless ground of being is God via an impressive folding of negative and positive theology not unlike Badiou’s own axioms and denigration of ‘mysticism’.

But what of these two quotes given? Brassier’s valorization of deterritorilized intelligence shares in the Thomist obsession with perfection and teleology. For him it is the end that counts and the end that is most perfect is anti-humanist in its rejection of any value in life. Of course Thomas has a conception of humanity and the rest of creation that lives on eternally in God, but is Brassier’s vision so different if humanity ends up as nothing when the nothing is itself primary?

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Looking like the Getreligion folks from Indistinct Union by cjsmith

The National Post (Canada) has been running a series called Beyond Faith, which is as badly titled as say a book called The End of Faith (oh wait, that was written). But the title of the series aside, there are some interesting pieces. But this one, today, on the Virgin Mary would not so much be in that category–by my lights. Though to be fair, they did post today the Fourth Sunday of Advent, traditionally honored as a Marian-theme liturgy. The article begins with different conceptions of faith and whether everyone in fact holds some version of faith (e.g. in the existence of the future). Then this:

Of all the beliefs across time, there is none so seemingly extraordinary as belief in the Virgin Birth. Yet for hundreds of millions of people over the past 2,000 years it is the central idea on which everything else stands: God entered into humanity through the womb of the Virgin Mary to create a man who was also God. Without it, Jesus is just a Jewish prophet from Roman-occupied Palestine who had a few nice things to say. Without it, there is no calming of the seas or feeding the 5,000 with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. And there is no resurrection from the dead and there is no Christianity.

There are so many illogical and bad leaps in this one, where to begin. (more…)