Dashed Off XXII

 "Admit the existence of a God, of a personal God, and the possibility of miracles follows at once." G. G. Stokes

At any given stage of scientific explanation, one cannot rule out all alternative assumptions by scientific theory alone.

Even self-evident principles are known only by abstracting from the sensible.

Translation inevitably diversifies interpretations, involving as it does interpretive choices.

We use qualities to determine quantities.

Understanding is an imitation of heaven.

The Church is the extension of Christ as both historical and heavenly.

"...the use of paradox is to awaken the mind." Chesterton

As it is easier to be an official than a scientist, official scientists slide toward being more officious and less scientific.

It is science as hard, tedious work that makes discoveries, but science as flashy rhetoric that collects the grants.

the romance of conscience

"Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head." Chesterton

Marriage is the institution which most requires a sense of reality.

Jeremiah 4:29 & Job 30:6 use 'keph' rather than the usual 'sur' for rocks; note that in both cases the context is about last-resort shelter.

there is one thing that you must know,
though you know it as you cry:
for the things that make life good to live
sometimes good men must die
gird up your loins, inflame your heart,
exhort your weary feet;
sometimes an evil worse than death
is the evil of defeat

"A sentence is too long either when length makes it obscure or unpronounceable, or else when the matter is too little to fill it." C. S. Lewis

The problem with Lyotard's account of the postmodern is that postmodernism is responsible for an explosion of metanarratives, metanarratives everywhere and multiplying like rabbits.

Jaki's argument for the universe (from Limits)
"...any totality, as a form of perfection, is really and consistently understood only insofar as it is set aganist a larger, more inclusive totality. But this again is subject to the same restriction.... As a result one may conclude that the sensory understanding or grasp of any totality depends ultimately on the reality of its supreme kind, which is the universe. Only this way can regress to infinity be avoided."

"Even as there is no branch of knowledge from which exact science is wholly excluded, so it would seem there is no branch which exact science wholly covers." Eddington

The brain has different functions depending on the system within which one considers it.

The scientific outlook is (deliberately) a never-ending tangle of riddles.

To say that Christ is King is to say that He is font of law, font of justice, font of mercy, font of honors.

"Great subjects do not make great poems; usually, indeed, the reverse." C. S. Lewis

While Bunyan gives us strict allegory, Spenser gives us loose allegory, something often ambiguous between allegory and allusion. Bunyan is describing an experience in personated terms; Spenser is narrating representative characters with a thematic meaning.

The difference between classical and neoclassical is the difference between genius and method.

passion, mood, season, climate

Sometimes a hug is next door to a prayer.

"The world-edifice puts one into quiet astonishment by its immeasurable greatness and by the infinite manifoldness and beauty which shine forth from it on all sides. If now...the presentation of all this perfection excites the imagination, on the other side another kind of enthralment seizes the understanding when it considers how so much splendor, so much greatness flows from a single universal rule with an eternal and right order." Immanuel Kant
"In the universal quiet of nature and in the tranquillity of mind there speaks the hidden capacity for knowledge of the immortal soul in unspecifiable language and offers undeveloped concepts that can be grasped but not described."

As the son of a Jewish woman, circumcised and presented in the Temple, Jesus is by blood, by nationality, by covenant, and by sacred sign a Jew.

Demythologizers are almost always transmythologizers; they strip away one to replace it with another.

States tend to fiscalize due services  over time, converting service obligations to the state into sources of revenue.

"Belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science." Einstein

"All philosophies survive by the metaphysical truth which they contain." Gilson

Places and times are only equivalent as the possible means of measuring them allow them to be.

Experimentation is socially structured by rituals that facilitate communication and cooperation.

Scientific inquiry is limited by the bounds of integrity of the inquirer.

transcendental arguments as arguments from final causes

authorial persona -> narrative voice -> lectoral impression

In the long run, activism can only bargain with either noncooperation or violence.

People treat their invention of new sins as proof of their moral progress.

"Assent is the acceptance of truth and truth is the proper object of the intellect." Newman

"Personality is always transcendent in relation to process." William Temple

Which social facts are relevant to laws depends on laws and other obligations.

Because we wonder, God exists.

"History is philosophy drawn from examples." Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De arte rhetorica 11.2)

A Sort of Symbol of Assent

 But reasoning by rule and in words is too natural to us, to admit of being regarded merely in the light of utility. Our inquiries spontaneously fall into scientific sequence, and we think in logic, as we talk in prose, without aiming at doing so. However sure we are of the accuracy of our instinctive conclusions, we as instinctively put them into words, as far as we can; as preferring, if possible, to have them in an objective shape which we can fall back upon, -- first for our own satisfaction, then for our justification with others. Such a tangible defence of what we hold, inadequate as it necessarily is, considered as an analysis of our ratiocination in its length and breadth, nevertheless is in such sense associated with our holdings, and so fortifies and illustrates them, that it acts as a vivid apprehension acts, giving them luminousness and force. Thus inference becomes a sort of symbol of assent, and even bears upon action.

[John Henry Newman, A Grammar of Assent, Chapter 8, Part 1.]

A Poem Draft

 Scribbledehobble

1. The Mystery of Creation

The word is wide around us;
it is a round us,
a roundel in a round,
written without a sound,
sundered from all note
yet written in a note.
I have ridden round the round,
written down the rood,
the road to heaven high,
down the way to sky.
The angles sing,
fair and square,
triangular up there,
where sigh the zephyrs fair
in the zithers of their hair.
Holly lute, hallowed lute,
with tambrel and with drum,
holly lute, yeah, hallowed lute,
with the damsel thrum.

2. The Mystery of The Adam

Man is woman working outward,
man is Highest working downward,
life from breathing on the water,
life from life through life all-bearing,
man and woman baring
in an Eden never boring.
Adam is of Adam half the Adam
(for man is Adam, not an atom);
Adam in Eden's evening
lightly leafing, breezes heaving,
having living haven,
dreams of loving Eve.
Truly she is heaven,
in woman man is even,
and here sleeps Adam dreaming
upon the eve of Eve;
crowned with sun-corona,
through sagehood and comprehension,
with no apprehension,
through grace and justice poured
la fille de la grâce
(for she just is the fill of grace)
and through splendor twice respendent,
she descends through victory,
eternity,
to the utter founding,
and there she is, the dwelling
of the light poured on the world.
Ave Eva, plenty gracious!
Ave, Eva, full of grace!
The anointed and his bride
are announced with holy banns.
But sorry, like a sword
is a sorrow slinking inward,
with sinuous insinuation
and seductive peroration.
The summer turns now autumn
and the leaves are brown in fall.
Ave, Eve, full of grace!
But salve, Eva, may God have mercy,
salve Eva, fallen grace.
The crown is dimmed on Adam
with the shadow of the damned.

3. The Mystery of the Chariot

Metatron  may measure
but there is higher and unmeasured;
none may mete it, it is not metric,
it rules all, a judicial ruler,
the root of righteous reason,
on a throne of light and fire.
We are thrown before the throne,
we bow down,
we cast our crowns,
as the leaping zap of lightning,
all-enlightening,
zigs and zags above our heads.
Blessed be the Glory from its Place!
(He is the Glory, He is the Place),
we sing with hallowed lute,
yeah, holy lute,
already by the river,
roving beneath the temple,
exiled by rolling time.
From the north, the wind and cloud,
resplendent above the river,
with a white-hot fire,
a living fire, a leavened fire,
a hale and high and hallowed fire,
flaming forth the fourfold four
facing four directions:
man and lion, ox and eagle,
with upward wings upwinging,
and wings around their bodies,
they straigthway move, unswinging,
unturning undeterred.
The lightening leaped between them.
Skydomed above the creatures
a throne with voices thundered,
and on the throne of Glory
was one like the son of man,
a man of molten fire
with a rainbow 'round his head.
Like a Son of Man,
like the Glory of the Lord,
he sits and rules:
under throne we cast our crowns,
for we are overthrown.
Ave Maria, plenty gracious!
Eva Maria, full of grace!

4. The Mystery of the Bride

A river not already but eternal from the throne
waters trees of plenty,
plenty gracious, unalone.
On the throne the Lamb,
seven eyes like seven suns,
the spring of living water
in the city jewel-encrusted
where the Jewish tribes all gather
to bring their sheaves to Zion
and the apostolic thrones.
The world is altered,
is an altar,
evermore will be unaltered,
evermore will be unaltared.
The word is wide around us,
all around us the world is worded,
as descending from the heavens
comes the Bride unto her Lamb.
All the lame are here unlamed,
by the blood they all are lambed,
waving sheaves of harvest
as the city comes in glory,
and they sing a psalm in honor:
Ave Zion, plenty gracious,
haily holy Bride well-graced!

Evening Note for Tuesday, September 9

 Thought for the Evening: Titles in Tradition

We classify things sometimes as 'traditional', and it is perhaps interesting to think of the ways in which something could be so classified. Perhaps we can draw a division of grounds for classifying something as traditional on an analogy with title for a right. Then we might perhaps get something like this:

(1) titulus per se
--- --- (a) recurring presentation in monuments and documents
--- --- (b) widespread at least semi-independent aceptance

(2) titulus per accidens
--- --- (a) occasional notice indicating continual handing down
--- --- (b) probability in light of established doctrines and principles

(3) titulus coloratus
--- --- (a) handed down in defective/distorted/damaged form
--- --- (b) handed down gappily

(4) titulus fictus
--- --- (a) accepted as traditional only because thought traditional
--- --- (b) handed down but in a manner displaced/discontinuous from its necessary & proper conditions

(5) titulus simpliciter nullius
--- --- (a) not handed down at all (invented)
--- --- (b) handed down but garbled into incoherence

If the analogy were to hold, one could say that things are properly traditional if they have per se title or per accidens title; the others are not traditional in the most proper sense. However, things under the color of tradition (colorate title) are sort-of traditional, and can be regarded as such when the title in question is widely accepted, or associated with honest attempts to be traditional, or if it is sufficientally similar to per se title or per accidens title for practical purposes, or if it is 'healed' by reasonable correction or by association with something else that has superior title.  

Fictive title and null title give us something that is not really traditional at all, but they might suffice for treating something as traditional in a looser sense if they are the result of what is unavoidable or if they are associated with something that has superior title. An example of null title that allows for classification as traditional in a looser sense would perhaps be the Kirishitan prayers; the Kirishitan community were Catholic Christians who were cut off, without priests, for nearly two centuries. They preserved a number of Christian prayers, but the prayers were all in Latin, which fewer and fewer of them knew anything about as time went on. Therefore the prayers, Latin spoken with Japanese pronunciation by people who for the most part did not understand Latin, became garbled, and were just memorized by people who didn't know what they meant, which allowed for further garbling. The prayers themselves, then, have null title as the traditional prayers, but many Kirishitan practices were in much better shape, and had at least colorate title, so the Kirishitan prayers can be regarded as the traditional Paternoster, etc., in a looser sense of the term.

I'm not sure how well this holds up across the board, but I think it's an interesting first approximation.

Links of Note

* Aron Wall, The Argument from Confusion is Weak, at "Undivided Looking"

* Ian J. Campbell, Zeno of Elea's Arguments Against the One (PDF)

* Susan Pickard, Beauvior on Trans, at "Beauvoirian Feminism"

* Martin Lin, Spinoza on Powers and Abilities (PDF)

* The Julia Wedgwood Site has information about and articles by Julia Wedgwood (1833-1913).

* Matthew Chrisman & Berislav Marušić, Transparency, Self-Knowledge, and the Sociality of Belief (PDF)

* Kailani B., I Tried Reading Brandon Sanderson's Books, at "Damsel in the Library". This is pretty close to my experience with Sanderson's works. If find some of the ideas interesting, and occasionally executed, but I find it very difficult to enjoy them. I occasionally try again, but have difficulty pushing through -- I recently tried The Final Empire in audiobook, but couldn't really get through, and I think a lot of it is that while his stories are sometimes interesting, his language is boring. It manages to be neither gravely dignified nor vigorously colloquial nor quietly self-effacing; it's always in the way and uninteresting.

Currently Reading

In Book

J. K. Huysmans, The Damned
Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest
Oliver O'Donovan, The Disappearance of Ethics

In Audiobook

Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice

A Strong and Vigorous Flame

 The Conquest
by John Norris 

 I. In Power or Wisdom to contend with thee,
Great God, who but a Lucifer would dare?
Our Strength is but Infirmity,
And when we this perceive, our Sight's most clear:
But yet I will not be excell'd thought I,
In Love; in Love I'll with my Maker vy.

 II. I view'd the Glories of thy Seat above,
And thought of every Grace and Charm divine,
And farther to encrease my Love
I measured all the Heights and Depths of thine.
Thus there broke forth a Strong and Vigorous Flame,
And almost melted down my mortal Frame. 

 III. But when thy Bloody Sweat and Death I view,
I own (Dear Lord) the Conquest of thy Love;
Thou dost my highest Flights outdo;
I in a lower Orb, and slower, move.
Thus in this Strife's a double Weakness shewn,
Thy Love I cannot equal, nor yet bear my own.

In the Stubbles of Renown

 Gleaners of Fame: A September Sonnet
by Alfred Austin  

 Hearken not, friend, for the resounding din
 That did the Poet's verses once acclaim:
 We are but gleaners in the field of fame,
 Whence the main harvest hath been gathered in.
 The sheaves of glory you are fain to win,
 Long since were stored round many a household name,
 The reapers of the Past, who timely came,
 And brought to end what none can now begin.
 Yet, in the stubbles of renown, 'tis right
 To stoop and gather the remaining ears,
 And carry homeward in the waning light
 What hath been left us by our happier peers;
 So that, befall what may, we be not quite
 Famished of honor in the far-off years.

Somewhat ironic, perhaps. Austin was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, a number of years after publishing this sonnet, and spent the rest of his career being criticized for not deserving it and only having received it because of his friendship with Lord Salisbury. (The derogatory nickname that seems to be remembered even today is "The Banjo Byron".) He's quite a decent poet, but he followed Southey, Wordsworth, and Tennyson; almost no one was going to look impressive after that string of greats. It probably didn't help that earlier in his career he had foolishly written literary criticism bashing some of the great poetic names of the day, and, despite his poetic competence, his own poetry was not good enough to back up his big talk.  

Dashed Off XXI

 Love of the artwork makes it to be good in its kind; joy in the artwork ornaments it in a way appropriate to itself; peace in the artwork sets it in appropriate context.

Three parts of ancient Greek meal:
(1) sitos: staples, usually barley or wheat bread
(2) opson: salt, olives, cheese, boiled roots, vegetables, onions, fish
(3) potos: beverage
--> Note Xenophon (Mem 1.3.5): "[Socrates] ate just enough food to make eating a pleasure, and he was so ready for his food that his desire for sitos was his opson." Also note the criticism of the opsophage (Mem 3.14.4) and the comment about foods that persuade one to eat and drink when not hungry or thirsty (Mem 1.3.6). (Cf. Mobus on this.)

No one compares statements only with statements.

From the fact that a statement cannot be incorporated into a system of statements, we can only conclude that it is at least not part of this system, if it is viable or consistent; we cannot conclude that it is incorrect. That would requires us to know why it cannot be incorporated.

skill as a kind of security in difficult deed

'Her is no chos bot owder do or de." Wallace IV.593

Shy love as well bold love imitates God.

Joy is an adorning power.

Love deems it an honor to do good.

In the peace of charity, we dwell in the good of the loved as in something beautiful.

Our practical actions suppose contexts that give them meaning.

Akan proverbs (noted by Kwame Gyekye)
"If the occasion (situation) has not arisen, the proverb has not come."
"When the occasion arises, it calls for a proverb."
"Each destiny is unlike any other."
"The pursuit of beneficence brings no evil on the one who pursues it."
"Everything has its 'because of'."
"What is fated to prosper or succeed cannot be otherwise."
"God is the justification of all things."
"The earth is wide but God is the elder (chief)."
"All men are children, no one is a child of earth."
"Man is not a palm tree that he should be complete (self-sufficient)."
"The right arm washes the left arm, and the left arm also washes the right arm."
"If one eats the honey alone, it plagues one's stomach."
"The order God has settled, living man cannot subvert."
"Wisdom is not in the hand of one person."
"No one knows His beginning and His end."
"Everything is from God and ends up in God."
"Speech is one thing, wisdom another."
"The wise man is spoken to in proverbs, not in words (speeches)."
"Wisdom is not like money, to be tied up and hidden away."
"If a problem lasts for a long time, wisdom comes to it."
"All things depend on God."
"When a man dies he is not dead."
"God created everyone well."
"Trying hard breaks the back of misfortune."
"If a man is unhappy, his condut is the cause."
"Goodness is the prime characteristic of God."
"Character comes from your deeds."
"When a man descends from heaven, he descends into a human society."
"The prosperity of man depends on (fellow) man.
"No one teaches a child God."

NB that in Akan predicates can be used as commands, questions, and assertions.

four kinds of proprium
(1) exists for the whole of a species but not for it alone (e.g., natural and potential possession of two feet)
(2) exists only for one species but not for every member (e.g., knowledge of medicine)
(3) exists for every member of only one species, but not always (e.g. gray hair in old age)
(4) eixsts always for every member of only one species (e.g., risibility)
-- The true proprium (4) is that which does not cause variation of degree in subject and is not essential to it. It differs from accidents in being convertible with their subjects and from differentia in not eing substantial. It is identified with respect to matter, with respect to form, or with respect to an action from the form.

Using the material cause in explanation almost always requires some principle of conservation or uniformity.

Accidents subsist in individuals, propria in species, differentiae in genera.

Diodorean possibility (p is or at some point will be) and necessity (p is and at every point will be) as Diamond and Box with respect to a forward lightcone

"The true artist is obedient to a conception of perfection to which his work is constantly related and re-related in what seems an external manner." Iris Murdoch

"The beauty of the world is the order of the world that is loved." Simone Weil

Saints who are given the grace of extraordinary mortifications are given them not to show us what to do but to show us that our own ascetic labors are not so difficult, much less impossible or unbearable, as we might imagine from only comparing them to more comfortable lives.

The primary task of the beginner in the spiritual life is to develop the habit of prayer, i.e., ease of and swiftness to prayer in routine and out, through all the aspects of life; and the primary means to this are routines of prayer, detachment and small ascetic self-disciplines, and memorative practices like spiritual reading or icons, which refresh us and remind us to prayer.

** EW Trueman Dicken's summary of the Four Waters in the Life:
(1) Active states = natural prayer
Beginners (vocal/discursive prayer = 1st water)
(2) Passive states = supernatural prayer
--- --- (A) Prayer of Quiet = Recollection = 2nd water (incipient contemplation)
--- --- --- --- (A1) First higher state -- quiet during daily tasks
--- --- --- --- (A2) Second higher state -- will and understanding involved, but not memory
--- --- (B) Sleep of the faculties = 3rd water
--- --- (C) Union = 4th water
** Summary of the Mansions
(1) Active states = natural prayer
--- --- (A) Beginners I (includes fervor novitium) = Mansions I
--- --- (B) Beginners II (arid vocal or discursive prayer) = Mansions II
--- --- (C) Beginners III (vocal or discursive prayer with sensible devotion) = Mansions III
(2) Passive states = supernatural prayer
--- --- (A) Passive Recollection = Mansions IV.iii
--- --- (B) Prayer of Quiet (infused consolations) = Mansions IV
--- --- (C) Union = Mansions V
** Summary of The Way
(1) Active states = natural prayer
--- --- (A) Beginners (vocal or discursive prayer)
--- ---  (B) [Active] Recollection (affective prayer)
(2) Passive states = supernatural prayer
--- --- (A) Prayer of Quiet (incipient contemplation)
--- --- --- --- (1) First higher state = quiet during daily tasks
--- --- --- --- (2) ?
--- --- (B) Union -- All faculties cleaving to God.
** Summary of Relation V
(1) Active states = natural prayer
Beginners (general awareness of the presence of God)
(2) Passive states = supernatural prayer
--- --- (A) Passive Recollection
--- --- (B) Sleep of the faculties -- during daily tasks(?)
--- --- (C) Union
** Final Tabulation up to Mansions
(1) Active states = natural prayer
--- --- (A) Beginners I (as in Mansions)
--- --- (B) Beginners II (as in Mansions)
--- --- (C) Beginners III (as in Mansions)
--- --- (D) Active Recollection (as in The Way [only])
(2) Passive states = supernatural prayer
--- --- (A) Passive Recollection (Mansions IV.iii)
--- --- (B) Prayer of Quiet, including
--- --- --- --- (1) Quiet maintained during daily tasks
--- --- --- --- (2) (?) An indefinable, highly confused state
--- --- (C) (?) Sleep of the Faculties
--- --- (D) Union

God is not a pedagogical tutiorist; He often teaches in daring or even dangerous ways.

We should often most docilely consider the saints with whom we have the least natural sympathies.

Lived experience is not foundational but holistic. We do not so much build on it as within it; it is not the Ur-text but the context of our articulated experience.

A problem with Schutz's coneption of 'finite provinces of meaning' is his assumption of the 'world of working' as 'paramount reality', when in reality it is more like an incomplete hallway or exchange-station that nobody regards as adequate even on its own terms. We also recognize that this interchange connects to greater as well as lesser realities -- e.g., that of scientific theory, or artistic beauty, or religious communion, which are taken to be in some sense more paramount.

Irrationality requires an extensive context of rationality.

Part of moral maturity is being able to recognize both other sins and natural penalties as punishment for sin.

"With shame, the human being manifests almost instinctively the need of affirmation and acceptance of this 'self,' according to its rightful value. He experiences it at the same time both within himself and externally, before the 'other'." John Paul II
"Man appears in creation as the one who received the world as a gift, and it can also be said that the world received man as a gift."
"Man appears as created, that is, as the one who, in the midst of the 'world,' received the other man as a gift."
"Masculinity and femininity -- namely, sex -- is the original sign of a creative donation and an awareness on the part of man, male-female, of a gift lived in an original way."
"Happiness is being rooted in love."
"In the mystery of creation, man and woman were 'given' in a special way to each other by the Creator."
"Man appears in the visible world as the highest expression of the divine gift, because he bears within him the interior dimension of the gift."

One may have all the elements of a proof of p, and even recognize this, and yet not know p, because knowledge of p is not mere possession of something that proves, even when aware of this possession. One may have adequate evidence to know p and yet not know p, because knowledge of p is not the meeting of a threshold of evidence.

** Dicken on John of the Cross's Ascent
The Understanding -- to be mortified in respect of knowledge received
--- (1) Naturally
--- --- --- By the exterior senses (Ascent I)
--- --- --- By the interior senses (Ascent II.xii-xiv)
--- (2) Supernaturally
--- --- --- (a) Corporally
--- --- --- --- --- By the exterior senses (Ascent II.xi)
--- --- --- --- --- By the interior senses (Ascent II.xvi-xxii)
--- --- --- (b) Spiritually
--- --- --- --- --- (i) Distinctly (Ascent II.xxiiii-end)
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- By visions
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- By revelations
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- By locutions
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- By spiritual feelings
--- --- --- --- --- (ii) Confusedly (contemplation)

"Some people are so patient about not making spiritual progress that God would certainly wish them to be less so!" St. John of the Cross

spiritus vertiginis (Night I, xiv.3)

Note Dicken's insistence, on the Stages of Prayer table comparing Teresa and John, that these are 'a highly integrated pattern' but that the stages are not necessarily identical because (1) the sanits are presupposing somewhat different methods and backgrounds (Teresa's for those whose devotion is mostly affective and of the heart, John's for those with a more formal and discursive background) and (2) Teresa's terms are primarily focused on prayer time, John's on the whole attitude of life; they identify the same stages but not the same thigns, and the terms are not perfectly coextensive.

You can prepare for confession as much as possible, and it will still be the case that when you finally say something in the confessional, you realize that what you said is not quite right.

Juridical entities always require some natural anchor, although as the sophistication of the legal system increases, the indirectness can increase.

Grounding is not a relation but a status.

"No style can be good in the mouth of a man who has nothing, or nonsense, to say." C. S. Lewis
"'Look in thy heart and write' is good counsel for poets; but when a poet looks in his heart he finds many things there besides the actual. That is why, and how, he is a poet."

The artist imitates nature by the very act of imitation.

funerals as ways of showing respect to human dignity

A system in which pregnancy is treated as a secondary matter or inconvenience is an inherently misogynistic system.

The damned are constantly represented in Scripture as bound to or in fire, in such terms as to indicate that this binding induces both a moral qulity (awareness of restriction) and a 'physical' quality (actual constraint of behavior).

purgatory as a sharing of the Cross of Christ

The New Testament is even more concerned to represent God as judge than the Old Testament; this is inevitable, given that the NT has a greater concentration of apocalyptic.

Realms are governed by authoritative documents and appointed channels of communication.

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." Einstein

"A philosophy may indeed be a most momentous reaction of the universe upon itself." William James