Music on My Mind

 

Stellar Kart, "Procrastinating".

Multiformis Nominem Christi Dispensatio

But manifold in name is the dispensation of Christ:

Lord, because spirit;
Word, because God;
Son, because only-begotten from the Father;
Man, because born from a virgin;
Priest, because He offers himself as total sacrifice (holocaustum);
Shepherd, because guardian;
Worm, because He rose;
Mountain, because strong;
Way, because right (rectus);
Harbor, because through Him is the entry into life;
Lamb, because He has suffered;
Stone, because cornerstone (structio angularis);
Teacher, because demonstrator (ostensor) of life;
Sun, because illuminator;
True, because from the Father;
Life, because creator;
Bread, because flesh;
Samaritan, because guardian and compassionate;
Christ, because anointed;
Jesus, because savior;
God, because from God;
Angel, because sent;
Bridegroom, because mediator;
Vine, because we are redeemed by His blood;
Lion, because king;
Rock, because foundation (firmamentum);
Flower, because chosen;
Prophet, because he revealed the future.

[Gelasian Decree, my rough translation]

The Decretum Gelasianum is a decretal that is found in a number of versions in different early collections (going back in extant manuscript to the eighth century); it is always attributed to a council in Rome, although different versions are attributed to councils under different popes from Pope Damasus (d. circa 384) to Pope Hormisdas (d. circa 523). Historically the most common view was that it was due to Pope Gelasius (d. circa 496), probably using material from an earlier council under Damasus (with the opening chapters, including the the above passage, usually being attributed to Damasus). Thus the name. In the main, this is probably still the common view, with many variant forms as to details, although we don't really know anything for sure. In any case, this is a striking passage.

Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object

xkcd.com

 

Links of Note

 * Antoine D. Dessault, Fuctionalism without Selectionism: Charles Elton's "Functional" Niche and the Concept of Ecological Function (PDF)

* Irina Dumitrescu, What makes me mad about AI in education, at "the process"

* Molly, AI resistance isn't hopeless, at "style analytics"

* Melissa Moschella, The Pre-Political Origins of Parental Rights, at "Humanum"

* Daniel H. Spencer, Social Trinitarianism and the Tripartite God (PDF)

* Eline Gerritsen, The Second Revolution of Moral Fictionalism (PDF)

* Boze, Every Episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet Ranked, from Worst to Best, at "Biblioll College"

* Kieran Setiya, Who wants to live forever?, at "Under the Net"

* Therese Scarpelli Cory, Intentionality as vital striving? Edith Stein and Thomas Aquinas (PDF)

* Incertus, How Old is 'HaHa'? The Sound of Medieval Laughter, at "Incertus"

* Robert Keim, Modern Celebrations of Easter Are Woefully Inadequate, at "Via Medievalis"

* Deacon Tom, The Year of the Three Popes, at "Weird Catholic"

* Guido Alt, Empty Reference in Sixteenth-Century Nominalism: John Mair's Case (PDF)

* Fr. Stephen Freeman, The Tradition of Being Human, at "Glory to God for All Things"

* The Maccabees and 1 Corinthians 15:29, at "intertextual bible"

* Thorsten Sander, A hint as to my grounds for judgment: Frege's positive account of modality (PDF)

* Martin Butler, The Case for Being Non-Judgmental, at "3 Quarks Daily"

* Reuben Stern & Benjamin Eva, Causal Direction in Causal Bayes Nets (PDF)

* Clare Carlisle, George Eliot, at the SEP

* Frank Y. C. Chong & Chris Frazer, Dai Zhen, at the SEP

Dashed Off X

 timing in a process: change used to structure change

Anxiety highjacks imagination and therefore limits it.

Even in the deepest sorrow we may be genuinely glad for what keeps us from drowning in it; sorrow and gladness do not always nullify each other.

We take propositions to be true or false because we take lots of related things to be true or false.

spatial, temporal, and social reasoning as growing out of reasoning about presence and absence

"The Inner-Knower, the Searcher of hearts, is always with you; recognize Him as the Creator." SGGS 46
"God Himself acts and causes others to act; everything is in His hands. / He Himself bestows life and death; He is with us, within and beyond." 48
"The One Lord is the Doer, the Cause of causes, who has created creation." 51
"The Guru is the Sacred Shrine of Pilgrimage, the Guru is the Wish-fulfilling Elysian Tree." 52
"One who understands himself finds the Mansion of the Lord's Presence within his own home." 56

Every concept suggests a realm of applicability.

the 'mine' of use & the 'mine' of fruition

expressive persona, dominative property, cooperative contract, subordinative allegiance

The moral standpoint is the standpoint of the will insofar as it is rational appetite.

The moral good is the union of the particular gwill with the end of will as such.

Obligation does not merely call the obliged to what is obligated; it also calls the obligated to be conscientious.

conscience as the realm in which the 'objective' and 'subjective' aspects of morality intermingle

Martin Luther's comments on Revelation show that there are serious problems with his understanding of apostolicity and apostolic preaching.

maslin-farming approaches to inquiry

Note that Locke's standard of good distribution of property is the ability to use before spoiling.

mutual attention, mutual communication, and mutual recognition as elements of social relationships

meaning : apprehension :: truth : assent (Richard Burthogge)

Tillotson's argument against transubstantiation (1684) may be derived from Burthogge's Organum vetus et novum (1678).

"The rule of Proportion is the King-Key, unlocking all the mysteries of Nature." Burthogge

functionality of body : sanctity :: historicity of body : apostolicity
body in light of virtue : sanctity :: body in light of skill : catholicity

one, functional, active, historical body

"The body is the field of karma in this age; whatever you plant, you shall harvest." SGGS 78

perversion of another person's life -- in slavery, prostitution, etc.

Middle Earth as a sandbox for learning how to work with texts

We approach Scripture that we may be approached by the Holy Spirit through it.

Human beings are the animals that go into themselves and extract truth from themselves.

Puppets have no duties.

The household flows into civil society, which forms the state, which in a just society upholds the household. The circle must be completed.

Marriage as moral, jural, sacral friendship

Bureaucratic processes cannot take responsibility, so require a human role in assessing the process as it goes.

All powers of the state are borrowed from those of persons.

As a nation becomes more democratic, its state becomes more complicated.

the right to act for and the right to act through

Slavery is a child of war.

We learn our duties by studying virtues and refine our virtues in studying duties.

Arguably, Hegel's consistent criticism of Schlegel and teh Romantics generally is that what Schlegel wants unformed actually has a (dialectical) structure, and that this structure cannot be purely subjective.

It is alien to human will to be locked up in itself.

"The Deist, as a Deist, believes, implicite at least, so many and stupendous miracles as to render his disbelief of lesser miracles, simply because they are miraculous, gross inconsistencies." Coleridge

As the centuries pass, the tenor of historical evidence changes; fresh evidences fade, old evidences are unearthed again, new evidences slowly bloom.

"St. James sublimely says: What the *ceremonies* of the law were to morality, *that* morality itself is to the faith in Christ, that is, its outward symbol, not the substance itself." Coleridge
"...matrimony not only preserveth human generations so that the same remain continually, but it preserveth the generations human."

Jude teaches us that Christians with discernment may use apocryphal works, and Paul that they may use pagan works.

"In place of a hermeneutics  we need an erotics of art." Sontag

No matter how we understand ourselves, we do so by recognizing ourselves as the likeness of something prior to us.

"The incomprehensible is approached by way of this knowledge of one's ignorance." Nicholas of Cusa

Cusa, De visione Dei 7 as // to Malebranche

An unordered list unites a collection of possible ordered lists.

Consent builds responsibilities -- both culpabilities and authorizations.

idealization as a sign we are dealing with final causes

Pain is often not experienced as itself bad; this is straightforwardly a fact, and shown in a wide variety of human behaviors. And it is often treated as an indicator not of bad but of candidacy for bad.

feeling that pain is bad vs feeling that the painful thing is bad

One can tell the importance of the Petrine sees by how much the Devil has done to destroy them.

"As justice gives every man a title ot the produce of his honest industry, and the fair acquisitions of his ancestors descended to him; so charity gives every man a title to so much out of another's plenty as will keep him from extreme want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise." Locke

Everyone experiences that 'mixing one's labor with something' makes it theirs in some sense, making it something in which they are invested. It is merely inadequate for private property as an institution, not for property as mineness (which latter admits of degree).

The spoilage requirement for property in Locke would require that ownership respect the natural ends of what is owned, at least indirectly.

the executive power of the law of nature (Locke T2.13)

causing of gratuitious suffering vs gratuitous causing of suffering

"All other loves are transitory, as long as people do not love their Lord and Master." SGGS 83

Some beliefs are more like implications or intimations than assertions.

"...what makes representation possible in both painting and literature is the existence of a medium in which an artist can effectively direct our thoughts to pre-established objects." Scruton

profile-fitting and the root of aesthetic realism (the particular as things in general are)

There are lots of different ways of drawing the border between your body and its environment, many of which are legitimate depending on what you are trying to do.

Natural selection, not being intentional, is holistic; it does not, for instance, distinguish particular organs, but only this whole that includes them, in which they all act together for effects that may affect survival and reproduction.

"Artificial forms of society inevitably develop artificial forms of literature." Alexander Japp

The earliest undeniable treatment of 1 Timothy as Pauline is Polycarp to the Philippians 4:1, which cites, closely alludes to 1 Timothy 6:10 & 6:7 in a context talking about Polycarp being guided by the letters of Paul. Tehre are several other citations and allusions to 1 & 2 Timothy throughout the letter. This practically guarantees that they were used authoritatively as Pauline no later than the  middle of the second century, and perhaps as early as 110. If one accepts much less certain possible allusions in Ignatius of Antioch, this pushes it back to the first decade of the second century.

We do not have Paul's theology in the New Testament, but its impress -- its residual effect suggesting an image, originated in various contexts that serve as something like different media for the impress.

Pauline passages often taken to derive from hymns: Phil 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20; 1 Tim 3:16; 2 Tim 2:11-13.

justification
make right ontically: infused justice
make right morally: relational justice
make right jurally: imputed justice
make right sacrally: justice as represented in Christ as representative of us before God

the three modes of apostolic teaching clearly identified in the New Testament: personal visit, delegation, epistle

Jude 11 -- Cain's way, Balaam's error, and Korah's rebellion all have in common problematic sacrifice and giving to oneself an authority one does not have. And notably, this is a plausible interpretation of the accusation in Jude 12, as well.
--> Arguably there is a progression: way (hode) -> error (plane) -> rebellion (antilogia) -> these

Jude 24 and justification: Now to Him capable of (1) preserving you from stumbling, and (2) establishing before His glory, unblemished in ecstasy -- to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, glory, greatness, might, and authority therefore all time and now and to all eons.

All fields of knowledge may be considered dialectically (as inquiry), demonstratively (as scientia proper), rhetorically (as discourse), and poetically.

'seventh from Adam' in Jude 14 may be explicitly mentioned in order to underline how swiftly corruption enters

honesty -- selectivity with regard for truth -- selectivity without regard for truth -- dishonesty

What we call 'beliefs' are results of filtering processes; there are quite a few different filtering processes, and focusing on different filtering processes may result in different attributions of belief.

Justin Dial 82.1 // 2 Peter 2:1
-- "pseudodidaskaloi" is rare (before Origen, these and Polycarp Phil 7.2's "pseudodidaskalia" are the only cases) and the syntax is similar
-- Some have argued, based on multiple similarities between Dial 81 and 2 Peter, that the latter is based on the former. But this seems an entirely arbitrary hypothesis for a text in which Justin clearly takes himself to be explaining standard Christian themes. It makes more sense to say that Dial., 2 Pt, and the Apocalypse of Peter are all drawing on already common tropes in already common associations.

use of 'theos' applied to Jesus: Jn 20:28, Rm 9:5, Tit 2:13, 2 Pt 1:1, Hb 1:8, Jn 1:1, Jn 1:18

Scientific inquiry is something that can't be done without opening one's heart to it.

Mechanisms only explain by structuring possibilities, including counterfactual possibilities.

Pope Leo XIV

 The news says that Robert Cardinal Prevost was elected by the papal conclave, and has chosen the name Leo XIV. The new pope was born in Chicago, making him, quite unexpectedly, the first person born in the United States to become pope, but he has spent most of his ecclesiastical career in Peru, in service to the Order of St. Augustine (for whom he was prior general for a while). It's hard to guess what his tenure will bring;  his career for the most part hasn't been particularly notable (he seems to be a relatively quiet person), and he's mostly been a bit-of-everything bureaucrat, but perhaps that was what favored him in the voting.

Hidden in Them, and Veiled by Them

 I, O King, by the grace of God came into this world; and when I had considered the heaven and the earth and the seas, and had surveyed the sun and the rest of creation, I marvelled at the beauty of the world. And I perceived that the world and all that is therein are moved by the power of another; and I understood that he who moves them is God, who is hidden in them, and veiled by them. And it is manifest that that which causes motion is more powerful than that which is moved. But that I should make search concerning this same mover of all, as to what is his nature (for it seems to me, he is indeed unsearchable in his nature), and that I should argue as to the constancy of his government, so as to grasp it fully — this is a vain effort for me; for it is not possible that a man should fully comprehend it. I say, however, concerning this mover of the world, that he is God of all, who made all things for the sake of mankind. And it seems to me that this is reasonable, that one should fear God and should not oppress man.

[Aristides, Apology 1]

Aristides of Athens was one of the second-century Apologists; from Eusebius and Jerome we learn that he delivered his defense probably to Hadrian around 125, and he is usually thought to have died between 130 and 135. Beyond that, almost nothing is known about him. It was semi-lost for a long time -- that is, it was thought to be lost, although when it was rediscovered (first in an Armenian, then in a Syriac, version) in the 1870s and 1880s, it was also discovered that parts of it were preserved in the Life of Barlaam and Josaphat. These versions, plus a Greek fragment discovered in the twentieth century, make The Apology of Aristides the oldest extant apologetic work from the early Church.