The Smudge of Sin: Athanasius and Anselm

God expresses his beauty through creation. There is no doubt of the beauty of the lilies that do not toil or spin. One can only stand in awe when looking up at the night sky full of stars and galaxies. The complexities of even the smallest cells, molecules, atoms, and everything smaller show the immense detail of creation while the world, stars, and galaxies show the vastness of his power. Yet in all of creation, nothing is so unique as man who bears the image of God. He is God’s masterpiece of creation.

Yet something has happened. Anselm of Canterbury writes, “The human race, clearly his most precious piece of workmanship, has been completely ruined” (A, 269).  Sin has contaminated the great masterpiece and ruined it.

Athanasius and Anselm both refer to sin as a smudge on the masterpiece of God.

Athanasius focuses on the incarnation in his work so aptly named On the Incarnation. He delves into the purposes of the incarnation and why it was necessary. As he talks about man’s redemption, he compares it to an artist and an old portrait.

The Call to Love

The two authors we spend the most time discussing in Torrey are Plato and Augustine, and rightly so as both have deeply affected Western thought. Much of the development of theology, East and West, has come out of Augustine. I’ve already stressed the importance of Plato in an earlier post, which I’ll be referencing throughout this one.

Loving God

During my freshmen and sophomore years I wrote two papers on “The Call to Love” which took Plato and connected him to Christ’s command to love. While I am a better writer now, I believe the ideas in it have been the most important and fundamental to my spiritual growth as well as how I interact with the world around me. My thought forms around Plato’s tripartite soul and Christ’s command to love him and love others.

My theory originates from Mark 12:30.

The Empowering of Man by the Gods: the Iliad and Christians

Every Torrey student starts with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. As freshmen, students usually don’t have the skills to make connections between books, and sometimes even inside. The ability to have conversations cross books develops over time, and by the time they graduate, students are usually able to look back and make connections throughout the curriculum. That’s the purpose of this blog. To look back at the curriculum and make connections, flesh out ideas, re investigate topics, and see things that were hidden before. And what a better place to start than the very first book of the Torrey canon? This blog will be mostly based on the Morgan curriculum  as I am a Morgan houser. However, both houses start with the Iliad.

One of the common reactions I’ve heard to the Iliad is