Renascentes Musae: Do ut des

15 July, 2010

Do ut des

One of the sources of social grease in the ancient classical world was reciprocity. Aristotle even defined friendship in terms of reciprocity: far less than being constituted by the self-immolation we on the basis of millennia of Christian formation today think of as being true friendship, it was built upon the mutuality of loyalty, trustworthiness, and all the friendly virtues. This, at least in the study of Roman religion, is known as the do ut des principle: I give so that you will give.

Well, in that spirit, and having been given to, it's only fair, I think to draw attention through this e-medium to the many folks and sites who have graciously advertised "Lutheranism & the Classics" for us. Readers may even wish to visit these sites in the hopes of finding new friends, new ideas--in fact, that's the hope. Meanwhile, to all of them, Renascentes Musae and "Lutheranism & the Classics" offer their thanks!

rogueclassicism (scroll down to 9 July 2010)

LCMS (front page, under news)

Concordia Theological Seminary (under events: conferences)

The Illinois Classical Conference

If you know of other venues where we could get the word out about "Lutheranism & the Classics," please drop us a line. Academic or non-, cleric or lay, if you have a blog or a church or personal website and would like to post a word about "Lutheranism & the Classics," we will be pleased to send you an appropriate blurb.

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How you say 'dat?

Renascentes Musae (reh-nah-SKEN-tays MOO-sigh). That's right. Reh-nah-SKEN-tays MOO-sigh. "The rebirth of the Muses," or, literally, "the Muses in the process of being re-born." That was Reformation-Era code for the kind of university reform that accompanied the Reformation, a revitalization of higher education that eschewed the scholasticism of the Late Medieval world for a bracing encounter with the classics, the literae humaniores, of both the pagan and Christian world, along with the intellectual tools needed for such study: the ancient languages (classical Greek, classical Latin, and Hebrew), rhetoric & dialectic. This blog is devoted to searching for and articulating a theologically faithful and intellectually responsible rationale for Lutheran higher education on the basis of Wittenberg Christian Humanism and to imagining what renascentes Musae might look like in 21st-century North American confessional Lutheranism. Need we mention it? Opinions expressed by an individual author are not necessarily those of all authors. Not only that--if we can't vouch for one another's opinion--it goes without saying that authors also speak on their own behalf and do not necessarily reflect the views of the institutions that employ them.